CHAPTER XVIII
WHEN TWO MEN HATE
CHANCE had it that Steele, seeking Joe Embry with wrath in his heart, found him with Beatrice. A fact in itself not calculated to cool his unaccustomed rage.
"Hey there, you Embry!" he shouted from a distance. "I want a word with you."
It was at Camp Corliss through which he was passing to come to Summit City where he expected to find Embry. Seeing the man he wanted at the door of Ed Hurley's office, just coming out apparently, Steele was glad rather than displeased that Beatrice should be on hand … though a distinct wave of disgust surged up within him that she should be so familiarly near and so familiarly disposed toward Embry. Through the open door behind them he caught a glimpse of Hurley's face looking like a man who had just received bad news. He wondered if Rose or Eddie Junior … and then he whipped all of his thought back to Beatrice and her companion.
Beatrice had heard his voice calling out, had whirled about just as he swung down from his saddle and strode toward them. He observed that her look was not unlike Hurley's, though in it there was more of plain disappointment and anger. Hurley's look was near tragic. …
"Mr. Embry," said Beatrice coolly, her voice carrying clearly above the sound of Steele's big crunching boots, "I shall be glad of your escort, after all. I hadn't foreseen a necessity for it …"
The rest was eloquently borne in upon Steele's understanding by the flash of her eyes, disdainfully aware of him; only now that he had unexpectedly appeared were Embry's services to be required.
Steele made no answer until he stood quite close to them where they had come down from the two steps of Hurley's entrance. A moment he stood looking down at her gravely; then his eyes were for Embry alone.
"There happens to be a certain merry warfare on between Miss Corliss and me," he said bluntly. "It's a friendly spat and a square one. Consequently there's no room in it for a crook. Get me, Joe Embry?"
His eyes were like steel now. Beatrice, staring up at him, impressed by the man's physical bigness, felt that odd little thrill go singing through her which she had experienced for the first time when at the Goblet she had watched two men who hated stab at each other with their eyes.
"I am ready if you are, Mr. Embry," she said quickly. "Shall we—"
"Queen or no queen," growled Steele savagely, deep down in his throat, "you're just a little girl, Trixie, and you've got to stand aside when I come to talk with Embry. I'm glad you're here, though. I've just heard that Embry here has said that I am financing the string of rotten dives working through the camps in the mountains, from Summit City south. How about it, Joe?"
"It strikes me, Steele," returned Embry, in that slow, smooth voice of his which gave no hint of his emotions, "that you have a way of picking a time for a show of temper when there is a lady present. If you care to look me up—"
"When I want a man I go find him," snapped Steele. "And I don't care who is present. Did you say that about me?"
"Suppose I did?" came quietly from Embry.
"Then you are a liar, and you will either eat your words right now or I am going to beat the eternal daylights out of you!"
"Yes?" said Embry tonelessly.
Beatrice, her breath catching, looked from one of them to the other, from Steele's blazing eyes into Embry's dark, smouldering ones, back to Steele's. He was making no windy boast and her sense was electrically pervaded with a clear conception of his purpose; that he would punish his enemy physically and mercilessly was no vain threat. His voice was vibrant with assurance.
At another time not unlike this she had marked the two men critically; now, as never before, she measured them. It seemed to her that the very bigness of Bill Steele was something triumphant and that must triumph. Embry was a big man, heavy and solid, and yet he lacked utterly Steele's superb magnificence. For at that vital moment Beatrice glimpsed in this man who warred against her and who mocked at her prestige almost the superman. Embry breathed power and mastery; so did Steele, and in the two this expression came differently, resulted differently. Embry's was smooth running, Steele's was rugged. … From their eyes her swift look dropped to their hands and it was as though she had peeped in on their souls. The hands of Joe Embry, large and carefully groomed and capable, were those of a man who directs other men and reaps through their bodily blows struck for him; the hands of Steele were big and hard and brown, those of a man who battles with life by coming to grips with her, who draws his own water and hews his own wood. … She was looking at two modern types, that of the city man, that of the man of the vast outdoors.
Suddenly it was borne in upon the girl that something within her, deep down and weak voiced and uncertain, was crying out, demanding to see these two big bodies hurled at each other. The primal in the situation had penetrated to the primal in her, covered though it was with many generations of softening civilization. And she wanted to see Bill Steele, the man she hated, drive his great hard fist into the expressionless face of Joe Embry, the man whom she knew she was on the verge of marrying! A strange sort of giddiness was upon her, had held her staring an instant, then passed to leave her clear thoughted. But in that brief time she had felt what she had felt, desired what she had desired, yielded ever so little to the currents in the hidden depths of her. It was unreasonable, it was unbelievable, it was impossible. And yet it was not so much as unusual that that which we cry out upon as unreasonable, unbelievable and impossible had come about. …
And then here was Beatrice Corliss herself, not an elemental Beatrice, but a Beatrice of cities and railroads and theatres and balls, laying her hand on Embry's arm, saying quickly:
"Mr. Embry, for my sake! Please! What this man says should not even interest us, let alone stir our anger. Shall we go now?"
Embry paused as though uncertain. Steele's short laugh was as ugly a sound as Beatrice had ever heard.
"If he takes what I have given him and lies down under it," he said bluntly, "then he's not only a liar, but a damned skulking coward!"
In her heart she knew that that was so. And yet, secure now in her place in the twentieth century and with her back stubbornly turned upon that earlier time which, at crises, goes shouting down the blood of man, she said gently:
"Because I ask it, Mr. Embry? I know it is hard, but … Will you come … for me?"
There had crept into her voice a tone which startled both men who heard it and yet of which Beatrice was all unconscious; as instinctively as men's fists clench so, with equal instinct, can the woman's voice, her very attitude, become at need her own glorious weapon, and the woman never so much as know it.
"I will come with you," cried Embry quickly. "For your sake."
She laughed at Steele then, the woman the victor, her cheeks grown red, her eyes like his with the fire in them. And she kept her hand on Joe Embry's arm.
"By God!" shouted Steele, taking a sudden step toward them and fairly glaring at her so that she must fight with herself not to shrink back, so that almost must she fear his clenched fist was meant for her. "I won't have you giving yourself to that man that way! I won't have you touch him!"
Embry's lips were twitching, his close-lidded eyes were watchful. Steele suddenly threw out his hand, thrusting Embry backward so that he was hurled away from Beatrice's side, so that his shoulders struck against the wall of Hurley's shack. Even Embry, anxious to do his dear lady's bidding, was not the man to suffer that without retaliation. He struck back and though the blow landed square in Steele's chest, Steele scarcely felt it. For his blood was no longer the peaceful blood of the man who made merry war but of the man who hates, hates doubly because he loves elsewhere. The great blow he struck in answer made even Ed Hurley cry out in wonderment. … Embry's arms flew out, Embry went down. …
"You have killed him!" cried Beatrice.
But Embry's hand, though he had not risen, went the short way it knew to Embry's hip. There was the flash of the sun on a glinting gun barrel and he fired. But Steele had not waited and Embry had not taken that one other half second which, had he been cool minded, he would have reserved. And before he could fire twice Steele's big boot had smashed into his hand and the gun fell ten feet away into the grass. Steele went to it, took it up, hurled it far out into the brush.
"Guns next time, is it, Joe?" he demanded, as Embry got slowly to his feet. "All right. Only quicker and straighter, Joe. For you'll get just one shot."
He half turned, looking for Beatrice. She had gone. With another look at Embry, he strode back to his horse.
"I'm going to get you, Bill Steele," called Embry, on his feet now, his face black with passion. "No, not now. I know I don't stand a chance in the prize ring with you. But, just the same—"
"Shut up," snapped Steele. "So long, Ed."
But, as he swung up into the saddle. Hurley was coming out toward him, calling out:
"Wait a minute. Bill. I've just got a jolt today … maybe you can help me. …"
"Not Rose?" asked Steele quickly. "Or the kid?"
"No." Hurley's dejection, which he had observed before, still stood at the back of his eyes. "It's my job. I've lost it."
Steele frowned.
"Not because of me? Your being a friend of mine?"
"No. Just because there's no job left here. The Little Giant hasn't been paying for two months. It's pinched out entirely now. We've shut down."
This was news to Steele and he lifted his brows at it. But his first thought was for Ed Hurley and, through Hurley, of Rose and little Eddie.
"Tie your baggage up in your bandanna and come over to the Goblet," he said quietly. "There's a job open for you there, Ed. No, I'm not just making it for you, either; I need you." And, as he watched the departure of Joe Embry in the direction in which Beatrice had gone, suddenly the good humour came back up into his eyes. "Poor little Queen!" he chuckled. "Losing right and left right now, huh? Well, it won't hurt her and she'll get it back some day. We'll see to that, eh, Hurley?"
"How's that?" asked Hurley, not quite catching the drift of what Steele had said.
But the fuller explanation Steele made only to himself.
"I don't believe there's more than one girl in sixteen dozen tons of them," was his thought, "who could go through all this and come up like a new pin at the end of it. Your luck is trying you out, Trixie mine, and Bill Steele is lending a hand to make you the finest, real girl that ever was!"
But, as he waved his hand to Hurley and rode back toward the Goblet, he was thinking of how Beatrice's hand had laid on Joe Embry's arm. ...