"Good!" cried Steele. "I'll be going now. And, remember, I'll look for you within three or four weeks. I'll rush work on the cabin. And, say: make them quit calling you the Queen. That sort of stuff cheapens you. You're too nice a girl to stand for a baby make-believe game like that. Show the bunch that, even if you haven't got the most amiable disposition in the world and even if you're not as pretty as some others, there's something to you besides your dad's money. Come out of the ice box and use your dimples a little. … You just keep in touch with me and I'll make life worth while for you."
"You are very kind, Mr. Steele," said the girl, her pulses hammering, her voice low in her throat with the constraint she put upon herself.
"Not at all," laughed Steele. "Only you see I'm not in love with you, I'm not planning to fall for your quaint charm, I'm not trying to curry favour for any reason in the world. So I can talk to you straight out! It's good for your soul to have a man like me around. Good-bye, Neighbour."
She did not move as she watched Bill Steele, the most maddening of men she had ever met, go out. As he strode down the veranda he was humming and snatches of the little song, the most maddening of songs, came back to her in his rich untrained voice; it was La Donna e mobile.
"Ugh!" said Beatrice Corliss. "The brute!"
CHAPTER IV
INTO THE WILDERNESS
BEATRICE CORLISS, when Steele had gone down the mountain roadway to the stable for his horse, turned back to her office table. The man's word of what he meant to do was of course, like the man himself, absurd. A big block of land was not to be stolen as though it were a pocket handkerchief. Still her eyes were frowning. His air of cheerful certainty was disquieting despite her conviction that he could do nothing. His voice had rung with a seemingly outspoken sincerity which troubled and puzzled her.
For perhaps fifteen minutes she sat before her table motionless, seeking to explain to herself the purpose of Steele's empty vaunt. If his own account of himself were truthful and he was a mining engineer and before now had prospected through the Hell's Goblet country, then it was more than merely probable that he had found gold there. The Little Giant mine, now running full blast and profitably, was only a half dozen miles from the Goblet across the ridge. It would not be surprising if Steele had stumbled upon a strike. This would explain his desire for the land.
But it fell short of the explanation she sought. Steele's positive statement that he meant to have the land in question willy-nilly, with her good will if that were forthcoming, without it if need be, was quite another matter. It might be just his misshapen idea of a further "joke." Was he seeking, as he would have expressed it, "to throw a scare into her, also for the good of her soul"? Or did he mean what he said and did he know what he was talking about?
When, still puzzling over the matter, she went again to her outer door she saw Steele down in the valley riding a bay, white stockinged horse toward the upper end of the valley. That way lay the Little Giant and the new mining town of Camp Corliss beyond … that way, also, lay the Goblet country.
With sudden inspiration the girl turned back into her office, took from its case in her table drawer a pair of field glasses, and with them in her hand hastened through the house, coming out at the back into a little flower garden just under a line of low granite cliffs. She hurried through the flowers, came to a steep path cut long ago into the rocky wall and mounting swiftly mounted after a breathless moment to the old lookout. Here, at the top of the slight precipice, was a level space some twenty paces across where were benches and a rustic table under an open pavilion like that in front of which Steele had sat earlier in the day. From here one might have a fuller, wider sweep of valley land and broken mountain. What was more to the present purpose, from here the girl could pick up with her glasses the spote where the Goblet trail branched off to the right from the Little Giant road.
Steele had disappeared, but in a moment rode again into view passing beyond a grove of river poplars. She focussed her glasses upon him. Before she marked anything else she noted how he rode. It was as her own outdoors men rode, with a seat which, while it seemed loosely careless, was both sure and confident. His horse was in high spirit, dancing out of the way of a wind blown leaf, snorting its distrust of a bobbing rabbit, ready in a flash to whirl and plunge to this side or that. And yet, ever across the lengthening distance intervening, it was patent that a firm hand on the reins was amply competent to cope with the caprice of a half broken four-year-old, while the big body in the saddle moved in unison with the animal as though the two were co-ordinating parts of one organism.
He had not yet reached the parting of the ways. Now she took stock of what things he carried with him. Under his knee, in its case, was a gun, rifle probably. She fancied that strapped to it was a second case containing the sections of a fishing rod. Behind his saddle, done up in a compact bundle, was a roll of blankets; from the moment she saw them she was certain that he would turn off at the trail.
He was lost to her as he rode down closer to the river, hidden by the fringe of trees. She would not be able to see him again until he had traversed another five hundred yards. Her brows contracted with her impatience; his careless leisureliness irritated her quite as though he had known she was watching him and in order to anger her had refused to hasten.
She turned from him, looking toward the lower valley. She did not require her glasses to see an automobile approaching from the direction of White Rock. Her guests were coming already.
With increased impatience she turned again toward Steele. She must be at the house to meet her friends and the man was so annoyingly slow.
But at length he appeared again, galloping now.
"That's the first decent thing you've done today, Bill Steele," she murmured. "Hurry, will you?"
Steele hurried on. At a swinging gallop he passed along the winding road, hidden to her now and then by a tree or a shoulder of the ridge, riding into view again in a moment, the bulk of him growing smaller with the distance. At last he had come to the foot of the trail which passed to the right and into the southern half of the ranch. The girl watched breathlessly. Steele swerved his horse into the trail.
"He is going straight to Hell's Goblet!" she said sharply. "Whatever his game is, that man means business!"
And so did the young queen of Thunder River ranch. She waited no longer to watch him, gave but a speeding glance to the two automobiles now in full view in the valley. Running down the steep rocky pathway, she hastened to her office and her table telephone.
She rang three bells, a call for Ed Hurley at the Little Giant and, while waiting for his voice, set her finger to the bell set in her table. To Bradford, who came immediately, she said briefly:
"I want Booth Stanton. Just as quick as he can get here."
Hurley was in his little office, having barely returned from his talk with her. She gave him his orders without wasting words or time:
"Send a couple of your best men immediately into the Goblet country," she said coolly. "Your best men, understand? They are to remain there until further orders. Their chief duty is to see that no trespassers come onto the land; in particular if they find a man there who calls himself William Steele, they are to see that he gets off of my property and stays off. Further, they are to prospect every inch of that section for gold; there's gold there."
Leaving Hurley without any further information, she clicked up the transmitter, waited a second, then rang White Rock and asked for the telegraph office.
"This