CHAPTER VIII
THE QUEEN DECLARES WAR
THE new day, fresh, dewy and fragrant, seemed to laugh about them under the ardent return of the young sun as Beatrice Corliss and Joe Embry made their flashing journey toward the Big Bend. The last rose-flush faded from a sky which swiftly grew a deepening blue. Everywhere about them were the season's offerings, dew-wet and glistening, the blue and yellow field-flowers sprinkled with the springtime's favourite colours which are the same as those of the reborn year's feathered harbingers, bluebird and lusty, aureate-throated lark; on every hand a visioned riot of alert young buds vigorous with mounting sap, taking their bright places in the sun; from brushy hillsides came the clear, thrilling call of lookout quail, while from the distant big-timbered ridges floated out through the brightening air a sound as of a far-off, gentle sea. The shouting song of the river rose like the triumphant burst of booming, joyous voices, eternally young and eager. The insistent hum of Parker's six cylinders was at once a confident note of man's conquering might and a discord in the ear of the morning.
The girl and the man had fallen silent together. Beatrice, unaccustomed to early rising, passed unconsciously from reflection upon the day's plans to a quiet enjoyment of this glowing phase of the day itself. Joe Embry, sitting back loosely, drawing slowly at the cigar she had requested him to smoke, was richly content to ponder his own plans and watch her. And this morning there was reason enough why a leisurely man should be satisfied just to ride with her and look at her. Never more than at this moment had Beatrice Corliss appeared richly alive, glowingly feminine, unquestionably beautiful. A man, told that here was the mistress of the Corliss' millions, might ignore the information, swiftly grasping the essential fact of a radiant loveliness no less vivid than that of the colourful world about her, A warm flush lay in her cheeks, she breathed deeply, enjoying the sheer sense of physical existence, her eyes shone softly. Like the sap in poplar buds, so did the blood in her body stir restlessly; like the little lifting everywhere of bent twigs and blades of grass, shaking down dew drops, so were there vague thrills and responses within her. Not only was she awake in the early morning; she was awake with it, electrically living the moment to the full because she was for the once in tune with it. Something like a reflected flush came slowly into Joe Embry's cheeks as he watched her.
Into the semi-intimate relationship which had gradually grown up between them there had never been so much as the suggestion of love-making. Beatrice had known Joe Embry casually for four years, had come to see a very great deal of him recently. During last winter's months, two San Franciscans in New York, they had found much in common. It had appeared that he was interested in certain ventures in which she had put money and they had talked together more of dollars and cents than of daisies and sentiment. Latterly he had gotten in the way of calling her his dear lady, but in his manner as using this and kindred expressions there was more of friendly admiration for her intellectual capability than of homage to her strictly feminine attributes. Respect, admiration and sincere friendship, these were the emotions which she believed that she had kindled in Joe Embry.
Yet … and the mental reservation was but natural … other men of whom she had seen far less than of Joe Embry made love lightly or seriously, either prompted to an expression of that which she awoke in their souls or just for the sake of weaving bright wings for the passing hours. Joe Embry enjoyed the sole distinction of being a man who appreciated her, who liked her and still who never sought to lure her into the sentimental land of sweet dalliance. Joe Embry and … the sudden thought coming to her contracted her brows … the impudent Bill Steele. The man at her side and the man toward whom she was now hastening, that she might mete out proper punishment for his presumption; the man who seemed never to have thought of her as every man must think of some woman, and the laughing man who had said gaily:
"You see, I'm not in love with you, I'm not planning to fall for your quaint charm."
The rebellious thought flashed into Beatrice's mind:
"Just for that, Mr. William Steele, I could make you fall for me! And I would … if you were worth it …"
At the wide swerve of the river known as the Big Bend they came upon a little knot of horsemen sitting restless, sweat-wet mounts. Parker brought his car quickly down from top speed to standstill. The men raised their hats. Joe Embry, lifting his own, smiled upon Beatrice.
"You get action out of your men," he said quietly. "You've got the trick of it."
"Learned from my father," she answered as she stepped out and to the road. "I pay them more than they can get from any one else. If they demur when an order goes out they lose their places. So they don't demur."
"Very simple," smiled Embry. "When you know how."
One swift glance had showed Beatrice Corliss just who the waiting men were. Booth Stanton was there, signs of perplexity showing in his eyes. Ed Hurley, clearly having been peremptorily summoned by Stanton, held his horse reined in close to Stanton's. Two other men, both of them familiar to Beatrice merely as little wheels in her big local machinery, one of them holding her own sorrel mare, looked on interestedly.
"Mr. Embry is riding with me," said Beatrice to Stanton when, her toe in Embry's hand, she had mounted. "He will want a horse."
Stanton nodded to the man who had led Beatrice's mare.
"Give Mr. Embry your horse," he said shortly. "You can report back to work."
Joe Embry swung up into the saddle and riding close behind Beatrice turned into the trail leading toward the Goblet. After a brief word together, Stanton and Hurley followed them, sending the remaining mounted man back to the camp with the fellow on foot.
"It's the devil's own mess of an affair, any way you look at it," grunted Hurley savagely. "And plumb ridiculous. What's all the fuss about, do you suppose Booth?"
"Don't know," snapped Stanton, his eyes moody as they rested upon the backs of Embry and Beatrice. "Miss Corliss wants Steele put off, and I guess she wants the joy of watching us chuck him. As for that Embry gent … brr!"
"Don't like him, eh?" laughed Hurley, ready to salve his own irritation by plaguing his friend. "She does, though. You'll have to shove him off a cliff, my boy, before you ever get a chance to …."
"Shut up," growled Stanton. "You're talking nonsense."
But a dark flush had crept up into his cheeks, and his eyes were frowning thoughtfully. Hurley shrugged, then dropping the reins to his horse's neck rolled a cigarette and abandoned the subject.
"Here we go," he said presently as, the four riders strung out singly in the narrow trail, he brought up the rear, "three able bodied men and a pretty girl, to chuck old Bill Steele off the earth! Steele'll see the humour of it; he's the man for seeing things like that. Don't know him, do you, Booth?"
"No, and don't want to," was Stanton's curt answer.
Again Ed Hurley shrugged and now gave over all attempt at conversation, for the remainder of the ride speculating upon what had brought Bill Steele back here, what had set him down in the "Queen's" black books at so early a date, just what the game was, anyhow, where Joe Embry figured, and what was going to be the end of it all? Knowing both Miss Corliss and Mr. Steele as he did, Ed Hurley was of the opinion that perhaps life on the Thunder River ranch was going to prove interesting.
For the most part silence hung over the four travelling through the dusky woods. Beatrice herself, feeling a little thrill of excitement as she sought to look forward to the outcome, for the first half mile called frequently over her shoulder to Embry, relieving a slight nervous tension with casual chatter. But before long she grew silent as Hurley had done, sensing in Embry a thoughtlessness which for the first time which she could remember allowed no satisfactory response to her sallies. Once, when their way led for a little through a small open meadow and Embry rode at her side she noted that his face, though placid, was grave, that his eyes were narrowed meditatively. She turned from him frowning quickly, wondering what his thoughts were that he need turn them over so persistently, a little angered at him that he kept them locked up back of that immobile face of his.
Today Beatrice looked at the varied face of the country about her with new interest: it was hers, to have and to hold, and a man had come into it and defied her. She threw back her head, letting her eyes run to the dizzy heights of great, swaying tree tops, saying to herself: "Each tree is mine." She looked out across brief stretches of grazing land to the barriers beyond of stubborn old mountains with always the thought: "They are mine." And, though she had ridden here before, now that another than herself sought to wrest from her that which until now she had thought of but lightly she saw through clearer eyes the rough majesty about her. It was as though this portion of her big holdings were brought to her attention for the first time by a hand reaching out to snatch it away from her. Again and again she wondered just what explanation she would find beneath Steele's attitude.
They forded the upper river where Steele had crossed in the late afternoon of yesterday, and soon came to his horse tethered in the meadow where he had left it. Here Beatrice and Embry waited for the others to come up with them.
"That way," said Hurley, pointing upsteam. "There's the trail through the grass where Billy went, Turk and Rice after him."
"Billy?" Beatrice lifted her brows slightly. "You know him well, then?"
"Sure I do," said Hurley with emphasis. "I've known Billy Steele for a dozen years."
Beatrice dropped the subject, evincing no further interest but filing in her memory for possible future reference the fact that Ed Hurley and Steele were probably friends.
Presently they were forced to dismount as Steele had done before them, working their slow way among the rocks, leaving their horses tied in a little grove of young firs. Now and then Beatrice accepted Embry's proffered hand, nodding her thanks. When they reached the small tableland at Hell's Goblet they came suddenly not only upon Steele's burnt out camp fire, but upon Turk Wilson and Bill Rice and Steele himself. The two recently discharged Little Giant men were squatting on their heels, smoking with every appearance of considerable enjoyment of the moment. Steele standing, the sun in his hair, his eyes mirthful and shining, waved his own pipe widely as he came forward, shouting in that big voice of his to vie with the boom of the water:
"The Queen! Your majesty is welcome, welcome as water on the desert. You honour our poor abode; the skyey roof for our house should be vaster and bluer, the woodland columns more massive. The Queen!"
Purposely had Beatrice mounted slowly to this plateau, meaning to bring cool cheeks and regular breathing to testify to Bill Steele that he had made never a dent in the smooth armour of her serenity. But the blood of Beatrice Corliss was red blood that ran swiftly, and as again she read in his greeting impudent mockery of the place she had made for herself in the world, her cheeks reddened to her ready anger.
Steele saw and laughed from the depths of his intolerable good humour and put out his big hand as still he came forward. Beatrice whipped her own behind her, her head lifted. But before she could speak or Steele so much as laugh again his eyes had passed from her to her companions. Without warning she saw the light change in his eyes, the careless good humour go from his lips, his jaws set. He stopped dead in his tracks, his hand slowly going back to his side.
"So," he said after a brief silence in which Beatrice looked curiously from him to Joe Embry upon whose expressionless face Steele's eyes rested, "I find you again, do I, Joe Embry?"
Startled wonderment surged into Beatrice's heart, wonderment that that voice could be the voice of "that man" Steele. The boyish heartiness had flown from it, leaving it harder, colder, more implacable than she had ever known a man's tone could be. It was not raised in anger; rather was it hushed, so quiet that the words barely came to her attentive ears. And yet, unprepared for just this, she shivered at it and at what she read in his face. And now in Joe Embry's eyes, eyes which so seldom gossiped of what lay in Joe Embry's thought, she read the answer to Steele's look. It was but a flash that came and went with lightning swiftness, and yet in that vital instant it illuminated as brightly as lightning itself illumines the dark heavens, the thing that lay in Joe Embry's soul. Again Beatrice shivered; though she had never seen it before, she recognized it instinctively. It was ugly, naked hatred.
"When two men hate as those two hate!" she thought fearfully.
The instant had come, cast its sinister radiance and gone, with not so much as a hand raised or clenched. The old inscrutability was back in Joe Embry's eyes, the shades were down over the windows of his soul, his rejoinder to Steele's words came quietly.
"Rather it would seem, Mr. Steele," he said, lifting his hat to run a handkerchief across his brow, "that I am the discoverer. I find you here where, it appears, you have no business to be."
Steele's lungs swelled perceptibly to a deep breath. Slowly, as he expelled it, the rigidity of his frame relaxed.
"It's well to know when a rattlesnake is around," he said carelessly. "I wouldn't have thought, though, that you'd have quite had the nerve to go out of your way to look me up, Joe."
"Miss Corliss has ordered you off her property," returned Embry equably. "Since your latest game seems to be picking out a girl to persecute it is perhaps only natural that a friend of Miss Corliss' should go out of his way to look you up."
Steele's brows bunched up ominously, throwing his eyes into shadows.
"Out after big game, as usual, I see," he grunted. "You … Miss Corliss!"
He flung about, confronting her now, his eyes blazing.
"You take a tip from me and watch every little play Joe Embry makes," he cried warmly. "I don't know what he's up to this trip, but I do know him to the bottom of his crooked heart. He's a damned low down contemptible cur!"
These words to Beatrice Corliss, spoken in her presence, of a friend of hers! And yet the amazing thing is that for a breathless moment she was caught high upon a tide of uncertainty, swept away from all solid footing upon surety, dazed and bewildered. Only yesterday had Joe Embry said to her: "Look out for that man; he is a crook." And now was that same man crying in a voice which went ringing through her ears, saying not behind Joe Embry's back but to his very face: "He's a damned low down contemptible cur!" And for that brief, immeasurably brief, fragment of time, so charged was the decrying voice with vibrant denunciation, Beatrice Corliss believed!
Even the calm self-mastery of a Joe Embry must feel to its very roots the shock of such accusation, even the face of a Joe Embry must flush hotly, his eyes cease once more to mask his thought. The man does not live into whose face there does not spring a line of crimson to the whip lash laid across it.
In a certain sense never had Beatrice Corliss lived to the full as she lived through these few vital seconds. Trained since early girlhood to cope with big situations, she had directed sortie and assault from the castellated citadel of a secure position, sending forth her emissaries to do battle for her, to come to close grips with what obstacles were in the paths of her success, herself unruffled by the life which pulsed and beat and clamoured and even raged at her bidding but always beyond the physical reach of her hand. From her vantage point, aloof and secure, she had but watched the marching forth of her serried ranks which were countless dollars and stubborn mercenaries, had but smiled as they went on and were lost in the obscurity of conflict, confidently awaiting their orderly return with word of victory for her. Nothing had been more characteristic of her method, of the Corliss method than this: she directed largely and in general, leaving to her lieutenants all matters of detail. She had fancied that she was living life to the uttermost, that, though gloved, her hand was on its throat. And yet this morning she had been stirred vaguely by the mere merging of dawn into broad day, and now by the look in the eyes of two men, by the primal qualities in their voices. Swiftly the thought rushed upon her: These men put out no gloved hands to grip at the throat of life, but rather hands naked and hot and hard.
Both Hurley and Stanton, watching with frank interest, turned their eyes upon Embry. To Steele's sharp words there was but the one answer … if Joe Embry was the man that Hurley was or Stanton. Or Turk Wilson or Bill Rice. These two had risen, had come a little forward, their gaze, too, on Embry.
Beatrice, breathless, was for a moment held rigid and powerless by the new emotions which came to her from this new phase of life. One swift glance at the four faces of the men who watched, merely watched, told her that she had hopelessly failed to plumb the souls of these of her hirelings she thought she knew so well. They would stand by, just as they stood now, and watch death done, grave and hard-eyed and unnterfering; it was Steele's quarrel and Embry's, no other man's. They, to the last man of them, had utterly forgotten Beatrice Corliss. Not a tongue remembered to turn to the pale words: "There's a lady here."
Then abruptly she realized that they had not all stood thus an eternity as it had seemed, but the very brief time in which Joe Embry was actually springing forward toward the few paces between him and Steele, yielding unreservedly to the stormy gust of rage and anger within him. And then Beatrice, once more a Corliss whose habit was that of dominance, called out sharply, her arm thrown out across Embry's breast:
"Stop! I will not have this. You have come this morning in my quarrel, not your own. That can wait. Stop, I tell you."
The thing which surprised Stanton and Hurley, Wilson and Rice, Steele himself and even Beatrice Corliss, was that Embry stopped. Though his face was still white, his old, habitual air of mastery, of self-mastery above all, returned to him. His hands fell to his sides, lax. Into his eyes, just now blazing with fury, came once more quick narrow-lidded speculation. There was even a hard smile as they rested briefly upon Beatrice's flushed face.
"I beg pardon. Miss Corliss," he said evenly. "As you say, any business between Steele and myself can wait."
"Yes, at least until my business with him is done," Beatrice hurried on, instinctively tightening her grasp upon the situation. She turned from him to Steele, the vague, troubled impressions of the past few seconds gone before the tangible fact that she had to do with an interloper who had defied her. "Mr. Steele, I have sent word to you that your presence upon my property is obnoxious. Will you go peaceably or must I have you thrown off?"
She marvelled at the man anew. For, even while she spoke, the hardness had faded from his face, the shining mirth came back into his eyes. Since his "business" with Joe Embry was postponed it seemed that it was also forgotten.
"Your majesty," he said in his old, teasingly impudent way, "I have heard the royal mandate. The only trouble is that your imperial highness has gotten her signals mixed. Your two adorable little feet," and his twinkling glance at them made Beatrice desire to shift them though she stirred not the fraction of an inch, "are just now planted daintily upon Steele land. I offered to buy from you, as you will remember, just for the sake of the neighbourly good will that would go with the unnecessary transaction. But the land here, eighty acres of it, is mine. Absolutely."
Beatrice frowned. Again the man's positive statement of an absurdity sounded like most undeniable truth. But from her voice she kept all hint of uncertainty as she said:
"Just what do you mean?"
Steele chuckled in high amusement.
"Your father bought a lot of land here thirty years ago, didn't he?" he asked pleasantly. "Land wasn't worth much in here at that date; for a lot of this he paid about two dollars an acre, getting for the most part titles from men who had gotten theirs direct from Uncle Samuel. Now, it so happened that this particular bit of land on which you do me the honour of calling upon me, mostly rock and scrub brush and big timber that it was impracticable to get out and for which there was no use at that time, had no charm for the early homesteader. When your father bought up his big blocks of land it either escaped his attention, or else appeared as a negligible trifle, that some eighty acres here at the fringe of his holdings still belonged to the government. Such things happen, my dear Miss Corliss. And old Mr. Steele, browsing around, got hep to the fact. So, having taken a fancy to the Goblet down there and the view up here, he negotiated with the government and bought these aforesaid eighty acres at a ridiculously low sum. That's the whole tale."
He stood smiling at her as though he fully expected her to draw from the situation as full a glee as it afforded him.
"I don't believe a word of it!" cried Beatrice.
"Be a good sport, Neighbour, and look cheerful," laughed Steele. "You can afford as well as any one I know to lose a few acres that don't belong to you and never did! Glance at this." It was a folded paper which he proffered and which she took quickly, "Also, have inquiries made in the proper quarters and you'll find that the deal has gone on record, all trig and shipshape. Oh, we're adjacent landholders, you and I, and you can't get away from it."
Almost from the first, making a sharp scrutiny of the proffered document unnecessary, she had known that he spoke the truth. And that her lawyer had spoken the truth when he had assured her that her titles were all right. It was simply that she had never held a title to this particular block of acreage. If she felt either mortification or embarrassment she showed neither as, very stiffly, she returned Steele's paper, folded nicely.
"Since," continued Steele, "I let you make a mistake, I am going to do you a favour. Turk Wilson tells me that you have fired him and Bill Rice for their failure to eject me. Now you will see that they couldn't do any more than they did, and it would be best to reconsider their discharge. They're two all-fired good men and you'd better take them back."
"I never take back a man whom I have let go," said Beatrice emphatically, glad that the subject had changed a little.
"You'd better," insisted Steele. "If you don't, I'll take the two of them on myself, and I don't like to start in our neighbourly dealings by robbing you of men like Bill and Turk. Honestly, I don't. I advise you—"
"When I want your advice, Mr. Steele, I'll gladly let you know," said Beatrice scornfully. "And as for the beginning of our neighbourly dealings, let me tell you something: If it takes every dollar I've got I'm going to drive you out of this country."
Keen, mirthful enjoyment danced high in his eyes.
"The Queen declares war!" he cried, as though the privileged herald of joyous news. "Vive la reine! Long live good Queen Bea! Why, you grey-eyed, dimpled little beauty, do you know it would be the biggest lark of the nineteenth century, to wage friendly warfare with you? And, just as I whispered to you yesterday: You come and play with old Bill Steele and he'll teach you how to get the real juice out of life!"
"Miss Corliss," offered Joe Embry, tactfully coming to the rescue as he saw Beatrice for a moment gasping for an answer, "with your permission I should be glad to throw my fortunes in with yours for a little. I think that I, too, would enjoy watching the exit of Mr. Steele from our midst."
"Clever boy, Joe," admitted Steele, as he noted the promptness with which Embry twisted the situation to his own service. "A trifle crude, perhaps, but clever. Just the same," and again he turned to Beatrice, "you take another tip from me and keep your chief lieutenant out of my way if you don't want him all mussed up. I can stomach most things the good Lord lets trail slime over the earth, but I do gag on Joe Embry."
Then for the first time he went to shake hands with Ed Hurley. Beatrice and Embry went together back across the tableland and out of sight. Hurley, catching the look of Embry's averted face, muttered to his old friend:
"Look out for him, Billy. I've seen men look like that before."
And Steele, grinning broadly, responded:
"Quite like some little girl, isn't she? She's coming over to cook for me some day next week!"