The Joyous Trouble Maker/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII
"EATING BREAD AND HONEY …"
NOT Beatrice Corliss herself could have analysed the emotions with which she rode toward the new cabin at Hell's Goblet. In the main she imagined that she was irritable and indignant, though determined that no person other than herself should know it; least and last of all Bill Steele. Also she was inclined to feel mortified, almost humbled by a man whom she detested and was set upon continuing to detest more and more heartily as time went by and opportunity allowed. He had outgeneraled her before, twice she counted it. In a way this going to him was a tacit acknowledgment that the third crisis had come and that to him were the spoils. And yet, now and then as she rode through the forest lands, a little twitching at the comer of her mouth was a half smile.
Into that mouth, serious and sober enough the greater part of the time, she musingly and youthfully put a blistered thumb. She was thinking, and the thought puckered her brows, that she had dreaded today and yet that she had looked forward to it with the positive thrill of adventure. She told herself that this was in its way a mere matter of disagreeable business: she had foolishly given a promise and was keeping it. It was just as though, having made an unwise speculation, she in the end shrugged her shoulders and paid her promissory note. But that odd little thrill, that tingling sense of standing at those magic doors which open to give view of the port of adventure, that breathless eagerness which had been absent in past financial losses, was a most persistent companion to-day. … Every time that she found her lips twitching she frowned formidably.
In Steele's attitude as she remembered it there had been more than a polite hint of contempt for a pale handed hot house lady; she wondered, among a score of other considerations, if he would be observant enough to note how these latter days outdoors during which she had been abroad in the dawn and had moved homeward through the sweet dusk, had put a warmer tone into her cheeks? If he would notice how she came alone, on horseback. That she rode well, as well in fact as any girl of the sort of which he approved? Not that it mattered the least little bit in the world whether big impudent Bill Steele approved or not … she just wondered, that was all!
And yet … though Miss Corliss herself did not seek to analyse everything … it was because of what Bill Steele would think that she changed her first plan as to the mode of her arrival. She would go alone and he would know that she was no cowardly little thing; she would ride all the way on horse back, and he would know that, too, realizing that she did not require Parker and a car everywhere she went.
"I am going for a ride, Delia," she had told her maid lightly. "Since I may go on into Summit City I don't want to look like Farmer Brown's daughter."
Bill Steele had asked her how old she was: "About twenty-five?" She wondered if he was just making fun of her then, or if he meant that? The fine lines about one's eyes … he had said something of that sort. Her glass hadn't shown them. Today she didn't look more than seventeen or eighteen, and she knew it. … She laughed softly as she bent her head to avoid a low fir branch.
"I'll show him," she meditated, "that a Corliss promise is as good as gold though made lightly and to the most bitter of enemies or negligible of individuals; that I waste no more thought on Bill Steele than on a chipmunk."
Then, visualizing both the big bulk of Steele and the tiny body of the scampering little animal to whom she had likened him, she startled her horse by laughing gaily to herself. Then, in duty bound, she puckered her brows disapprovingly.
Down by the ford where the little meadow was and where Steele's horse still browsed and dozed and otherwise disported itself contentedly, she came upon Steele himself, his eyes brightening as they filled to the fresh beauty of her. He had admitted to himself … to no one else … the fine quality of her loveliness that other day when she received him in her well fitting house dress. Now, her lithe slender form in the most becoming of riding habits, her cheeks warm with the ride, her eyes glowing, her mouth redder, he thought, than ever mouth was before, he found her utterly perfect from the top of her head of curling brown hair to the soles of her black, spurred boots. And so the thing he said by way of welcome was:
"By jove, Trixie, you look like a boy in those togs! Glad to see you just the same. Fact is, I like you better that way. If you'd only been a boy, now … Can you get off alone, or shall I lend a hand?"
But she was ready for him today though her first emotion under the shock of his greeting was a distinct surge of resentment and disappointment. She nodded at him brightly, slipped from the saddle before he could come two steps toward her and said lightly:
"Here I am. You know we Corliss folk are very particular in the matter of keeping a promise; father once lost a lot of money, by dropping everything and going half across the continent to a wedding, simply because long before he had made a laughing promise to the groom. Who," she added in perfectly simulated carelessness and innocence, "was one of father's old negro servants."
Steele's sudden spontaneous laughter told her that he had not failed to understand.
"Good!" he chuckled. "Didn't think you had it in you, Trixie. Honest I didn't. Bet you've been shaping that speech up ever since you left the house!"
And here already was Beatrice Corliss blushing hotly. If she lived always she would always go on hating this impossible man more and more with every day. She had prepared her little speech, giving considerable thought to it on her way, desirous of insulting him as nicely as possible and yet clearly enough for him to be sure to catch the innuendo. And now it merely tickled him and afforded him an opportunity for further teasing.
She threw her horse's reins over the limb of a tree before he could come to her, determined that he should know that she required no service from him.
"Came alone, huh?" was his next irritating remark, "I thought you'd do just that!"
"Did you?" She smiled her cool, indifferent smile at him.
"Sure thing," he assured her. "Just to show me that you were not afraid. If you ever want to win a man's heart, my dear boy of a girl, you're got to learn to surprise him now and then. Do the unexpected, you know."
"Thank you ever so much." She was very grave, looking to be frankly grateful as Steele noticed with rising approval. "I'll remember when I go back to town."
"Where the real nice men are? That's right," he advised. "They're your sort. Now, shall we visit the new palace? Built pretty nearly as speedily as Aladdin's and, to my notion, a blamed sight more desirable. Shall I emulate our friend Embry and help you along? Or think you can make it alone?"
No girl ever lived who knew better than Beatrice Corliss that purely feminine trick of a smile eloquently indicating that she had risen to serene heights very far above him, whence she regarded him confused with other insect life of the earth's grass.
They followed Steele's trail up the river to the slope which led to his tableland, Steele dropping a couple of paces behind her, his eyes showing his admiration now that she could not see it, Beatrice seeking to breathe evenly so that when they came to the top he could not offer further remarks upon her frailty. Arrived at the top she stopped with a quick little beat of the heart as she saw the cabin. She had not looked for this from him.
Now she had made it her business that not only was he to be denied supplies at Camp Corliss and Summit City, but any sort of lumber from either the Blue Cañon mills or from the Indian Valley camp. What Steele had done here must be accomplished very largely without tools and nails, unless he went far for them, without such hardware as hinges and door knobs. And at the first glimpse of Steele's cabin she told herself that her commands had not greatly inconvenienced him and that his abode was nothing short of charming.
He and Turk Wilson and Bill Rice had cut four young trees for the corner posts, leaving the branches unmolested save upon the sides which were turned toward the queer building's interior. With trunks sunk deep in the ground the trees appeared to be growing here, to have been standing here since the cones fell from the big mother. Though the construction of the walls had been the simple matter of stringing slender saplings horizontally and then interweaving them with the thick, flat branch-ends of fir, in their completed state they appeared to be flourishing where they were massed, catching the sunlight upon their myriad glistening needles, hinting at a bower within which was not to be expected from the big hands of Bill Steele.
Nor had Beatrice looked to him for these other things he had accomplished. A few old boards which Bill Rice had discovered off in the forest where many, many years ago a solitary individual had lived his solitary life in his rude shanty, now a lonesome ruin, had been made into the gabled roof of Steele's palace. But that Beatrice could not know; for the boards were concealed first by the damp leaf mould which Steele had brought a hundred yards for the purpose, and in the rich soil giving a gaily coloured thatch were the countless blue and yellow flowers which thrived here as they had done in the meadow.
Nor was that all; Beatrice wondered where was the end of all that "that man Steele" had accomplished in this handful of days? Up on the hillside, at some spot lost to view in a tangle of bushes, he had tricked a bright little stream from its course, swung it this way and that with an old spade serving quite as well as wand or Aladdin lamp, so that now the merriest of flashing rivulets gurgled by his door and sped away through grass and rocks to fall bickering into Thunder River. Along its rim were flowers of the sort that love the waterways, red blossomed with lush, thick green leaves.
On each side of the cabin door was a pile of rocks with rich black soil sifted among them, crowned with ferns with pretended at being very much at home here.
"Isn't it pretty!" cried Beatrice, her eyes brightening. Since she had come today, since that coming was a tacit acknowledgment of defeat, she had meant from the first to show him that she knew how to lose with no suggestion of a whimper. So, "I congratulate you, Mr. Steele. I should have had a man like you to advise me when I laid out Summit City."
"She's a good little sport, after all," said Bill Steele to Bill Steele. And to Beatrice, lightly: "All done in honour of the Queen, you know. Glad she approves. But she is interested most of all …"
"In the kitchen!" cried Beatrice quickly, guessing what was coming and promptly forestalling him. "May I peek inside?"
This time, turning swiftly, she surprised for the first time in Steele's eyes a flash of admiration. He hid it without delay, masking it with his old laughing look. But she had seen it. And … though of course there was no reason in it and she knew it … a little pleasurable thrill danced down her blood. Bill Steele at their first meeting had challenged all that there was of woman in her; now let him look out for himself. If it was to be war between them, then let it be war many sided, guerre à outrance! Let there be never an available weapon left rusting in its sheath.
"The chef's realm is apart from the king's palace," Steele told her with an assumption of dignified gravity. "Lest smells of onions and hot grease assail the royal nose. There is the kitchen."
He pointed. Beatrice saw it now, though until this moment it had gone unnoticed, so did it blend in with the forest behind it. It was what the folk of Mexico or Southern California would term a ramada, though its walls were of fir boughs instead of willow withes. A square, flat roofed shed rudely made but defying passage of the sun, with Steele's diverted mountain stream conveniently near it.
But this stream must be crossed before they came to the kitchen. There were hardly necessary but none the less picturesque looking stones making the ford and Beatrice stepped out upon them. As the first turned under her and she threw out her arm, balancing, Steele caught her hand, steadying her. She merely laughed, nodding her thanks, since he had done but the natural, unpremeditated thing and she was determined to play the part of one who loses good humouredly. But for an instant he held her hand thus and, with the thread of water between them, stood looking curiously into her eyes.
"Is it an omen?" he asked quite gravely.
"I don't understand."
He let her fingers slip slowly through his and she merely lifted her brows in careless interrogation.
"A man and a girl standing as we have stood," he informed her, "hands clasped across running water … means something to certain peoples."
"Does it? Just what?"
"A very simple and rather sensible way of getting married!"
Beatrice's laughter, as spontaneous as ever his had been, fell pleasantly on his ears, mingling with the musical gurgle of the water.
"You would make it appear, Mr. Steele, that the wilderness is, after all, immensely conventional; that, since I offended it by coming without a chaperone, it takes matters into its own hands. Really, you are the most absurd man I ever heard of! Now, shall the cook look at her province?"
"Just the same," maintained Steele stoutly, looking as grave as before, "it's a sign and a token. Maybe a warning. We'd better look out. Queen Bea. Wouldn't it be awful …" He achieved a shudder which she found remarkably well done.
"Perfectly terrible," she laughed back at him, and he noted that the dimples were still there and, as he put it, "working."
In the ramada, which they reached side by side, Beatrice found no evidences of want. Bill Rice's trip to the Junction had resulted in the sides of bacon swinging from the roof pole, in the strings of onions and red peppers which should constitute the chief interior decoration of any ramada in the world, in tin cups and plates and iron knives and forks, in all that went to make a real kitchen in the woods. There was a rustic table covered with red oilcloth, chairs improvised from boxes and upholstered in crash sacking. And there was a stove, a little sheet iron camping affair, set on rocks, and with a real stove pipe pushing upward through the fir bough ceiling. Pendant from the roof poles were tin cans labelled flour, beans, salt, butter, cottolene, onions, and so on, all doubly protected against inroads of the chipmunks.
Beatrice stood looking about her with the critical eye of the new domestic who for the first time comes into the field of her fresh endeavours. She noted pots and pans against the wall, the keg of water close at hand, the pile of dry stove wood. Upon the table was a gaily flowered covered dish, the one fragile article to be seen, set conspicuously alone, insistent upon drawing attention.
"Must be nectar of a sort," suggested Beatrice. "To demand so wonderfully beautiful a receptacle."
Steele chuckled.
"Scarcely less," he rejoined. "That dish, chosen I might say painfully in a distant city by the Chief Emissary, Bill Rice, set the royal exchequer back to the tune of ninety-eight cents. Notice the new colour scheme, purple roses against a field of orange with violets flirting between a pale shade of red and a deep shade of pink! Will the queen deign to lift the cover?"
Realizing that she was always on the verge of forgetting that she would rather have "died than come here today," Beatrice obeyed. Steele, explaining, offered the remark:
"From the only literature pot to the occasion with which I happen to be conversant, the good old poem dealing with a situation not unlike today's, I judge that whenever the Queen is in the kitchen she ought to be …"
"Eating bread and honey!" laughed Beatrice. "Mr. Steele, your thoughtfulness touches me deeply! And I do love bread and honey. And here's butter, too. If you don't mind … you see, with the ride over and a pretty fair appetite at ordinary times …"
And Steele wasn't quite so sure of his Beatrice Corliss as he had been before. He saw her perched on the edge of his table, a trim booted little foot swung back and forth and Beatrice's white teeth met through a most delectable morsel. Her eyes were dancing quite as though she would a great deal rather be here doing just what she was doing than anywhere else he could think of. Both dimples were there … very much there, he thought …
"Poor little daughter of the rich," he said, and it struck her that his voice was strangely gentle for him, "you'd have amounted to something if you'd only had half a chance."
"I thought," objected Beatrice, having swallowed, "that it was your plan to make me over into what I should be. You spoke very eloquently in that vein the day I first saw you."
"But that was long ago," he said, watching her very keenly. "Much may happen in twenty-six days …"
"Twenty-four," corrected Beatrice. And then she could have bitten her tongue out. For again the laughter leaped up in his eyes and she knew that he had tricked her and her face was hot. For an instant she could not hold her eyes steady on his.
"So you've kept count, too?" was what he said. "Yes, twenty-four is right. Funny we both remembered … funny about our holding hands out there …"
"I didn't promise to make the fire," said Beatrice quickly. "If you will get it started I'll prepare … What will it be? Luncheon? Just as soon as I finish my bread and honey."
"Right," said Steele. "But it is funny, just the same. Isn't it?"
"Very," answered Beatrice aloofly. "But, if you care for the actual fact of the matter, I don't believe that I held your hand at all."
"You did," he assured her positively. "You even squeezed it a little too. Shall I show you?"
"No, thanks." It was high time for the coolness of her tone to congeal to ice and Beatrice gave the matter her skilled attention. "And now, what shall I serve for you?"
"Better a feast of herbs …" began Steele. But Beatrice sighed in nicely simulated ennui and turned her back on him to peek into the tin cans swinging from the ceiling.