The Joyous Trouble Maker/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII
THE MADNESS OF BILL STEELE
IN and about the Thunder River country folk began to speak of the madness of Bill Steele. Certainly he had come upon the Queen's Ranch with a chip on his shoulder, certainly he had in more than one way offended her, certainly he was seeking, in the face of her stubborn opposition, to accomplish some very absurd things. At least so said they who watched with interest.
In brief here are some of the bits of gossip which Timber-Jack carried to Mucker, Mucker to Cowboy, Cowboy to Farmer Brown, Farmer Brown into the Emporiums through which flowed the blood of the Sierra:
Steele was a gambler, whose profession it was to take big chances, whose winnings were the crooked winnings of his class; he was the actual spirit giving life to the string of gambling houses through the mountains, for at last Flash Truitt of the Summit City saloon had published the fact. In some underhand fashion Steele had acquired eighty acres of land about Hell's Goblet, planning other mystery-shrouded, underhand attacks upon the Queen's Ranch. (It was whispered that he was a sluice robber; also that he might be looked to for cattle thieving, using his ill gotten eighty acres as an outlet for his thefts; also that down in Mexico, taking advantage of a lawlessness made possible by the quarrelling of Carranza and Villa, he had pillaged ranches and held up trains. Wonderful, no less, is the growth of rumour!)
Further, to go on sketchily, he was more a fool than a business man; he had bought a lot of land lately, heaven only knew how much, timber lands on the fringe of the government reserve, whose standing forests were worthless because they were inaccessible and would remain inaccessible until the youngest Sierra baby was a greybeard or a tottering grandmother, as the case might be. Also that, in the flats at both ends of Sunrise Pass, in Indian Valley on one hand, in Bear Valley on the other, he had bought all the land to be had and had installed lumber camps … was actually cutting timber right and left! He had bought … the price varied from five thousand to two hundred thousand, as prices have a way of doing! … Grouse Lake and Mirror Lake, both twenty miles from nowhere. Over some two hundred square mountain miles Bill Steele was the busiest man to be found, busy in the achievement of absurdities. And, to put the proper crown upon all of this nonsense, he was building a town in Indian Valley, a town in Bear Valley!
"Just because he's set out to buck Summit City," people agreed. "Trying to run the Queen out of business!"
Whereat there were many winks and smiles and quiet nods.
Finally let it be mentioned in passing that those who seemed to know most of Bill Steele's plans and to see most clearly where they would end, were Joe Embry, Flash Truitt the gambler, and Jim Banks, Sheriff.
- "The war is on!"
wrote Steele to Beatrice.
"God save the Queen now!"
And Beatrice, having given a grave ear to the many persistent rumours, summoned Booth Stanton and Ed Hurley to a conference at which, through her request, Joe Embry also was present.
"He is a fool," cried Stanton.
"No fool, Bill Steele," muttered Hurley.
"A dangerous man, dear lady," cautioned Embry. "He must be broken before he grows to be an actual menace. He is vindictive."
At which Stanton scoffed and Hurley scowled while Beatrice reserved judgment.
"Everything in reach that Steele hasn't bought up," offered Embry thoughtfully, "he has an option on. There's something back of it."
"Bluff," snorted Booth Stanton. "Just colossal bluff. Next thing will come an offer to buy out some of Miss Corliss' interests. Summit City, perhaps."
"Keep informed of everything he does," commanded Beatrice at the end of the conference, "and let me know immediately. Mr. Embry," as Hurley and Stanton took their leave, "I have grown into the way of calling upon you so frequently that I wonder if I am not abasing your generosity?"
"Whenever it is a question of Steele," said Embry smoothly, "I am at any one's disposal. You know that I, too, have pledged myself to drive him out of the country. As for your calling upon me too frequently …"
He broke off abruptly, lifting his piercing eyes to hers.
"Dear lady," he continued softly, "the one thing I ask in the world is the joy of serving you. You have come to know that, haven't you? I have never known a woman like you, no surprising thing since there never was another like you created! I thank God that for a little you and I have had one common interest; if I could dare hope that always we might have our interests in common … Because I have not babbled of it, have you failed to know, Beatrice?"
Beatrice stared at him half incredulously, flushed and turned away. She was suddenly uncomfortable under eyes grown ardent; a few months sooner, a month, even, she might have been pleased … she wasn't sure, but she might have been pleased to hear such words from him. But now, for no particular reason to which she could lay her mind, she was both uncomfortable and disappointed.
Some day, no doubt, when the right time came and brought with it the right man, she would marry as did other girls. If in an hour of cool thought she had asked herself which one of the men she knew was the logical husband for her she would have perhaps singled out Joe Embry. He was of her class, of her station, be was one upon whom she came as near leaning as she had ever come to lean upon any man or woman in the world. She liked him, just how much there had never until now come the need to say. And now, suddenly putting a flush into her cheeks which merely confused her and which misled Embry, there flashed into her thought a picture of the impudent, gay hearted Bill Steele … the man she detested. …
"Let us not speak of this today, please!" she cried hurriedly. "I don't know … I don't think that I could ever care for you that way. I … I am acting like a school girl, and I know it!" she burst out impatiently. "I am ashamed of myself. But … please let's not talk of it now."
Embry bowed, gravely accepting his dear lady's wish as his law. But his eyes had brightened; Beatrice fancied that she saw a look almost of triumph in them. His massive shoulders filled her eyes as he turned away; she noted as she had noted so many a time the masterly carriage. The man was forceful, dynamic … he could push a steady way from little things to big, he could put out his hand for what he wanted, take it and hold it. And now he wanted her. … She wondered, with a puzzled, half frightened look in her eyes, what answer she would give him when he came again?
"Pooh!" she cried out suddenly, whisking about and going to her room. "I am a little fool this morning and Joe Embry is a mere man that I could break between my thumb and finger. What has come over me?"
It was characteristic of Embry that he did not seek to communicate with her again for several days. He came and went about Summit City, ostensibly upon the business he had mentioned to her long ago, looking for both a summer home site and for timber investments. But he had made no outright purchases and rumours even of options were vague.
In the meantime Bill Steele's endeavours went forward in full swing. He had both hands filled, filled and overflowing. Wasting no time seeking men here he got his crews from Sacramento and San Francisco, necessary supplies and materials with them. The first building to go up in Indian Valley was a store; the first in Bear Valley a store. And, with the arrival of the initial consignment of goods at each, a note from Steele to Beatrice apprised her of the fact, adding that he was ready to return her an answer to her "embargo act." Hereafter he could supply not only himself and his own crews, but the scattering families through the mountains. "Poor little Summit City," he concluded. "I feel almost sorry for it, Trixie. It's on the giddy slide to oblivion right now!"
Where he had bought timber tracts he lost no time in installing lumber mills. Where the money came from was still a mystery to the countryside, much credence having been given the earlier report that Steele was playing a game on a shoestring. But his mills spelled actual big cash investments, and though still branded as mad, he began to cause much debate.
Still another crew of men was reported busy upon Steele's land at the Goblet. Just what was being accomplished here, even what was being planned, was not dearly known abroad. Steele kept his men hard at their work, giving them no time for trips and gossip outside; Beatrice, for her part, unwilling to appear concerned in anything which "that man Steele" did, gave strict orders that no Thunder River men were to manifest either curiosity or interest. Joe Embry, though he strove unaffectedly to learn what was afoot, was puzzled to know whether Steele was beginning mining operations or was insanely seeking to develop water power. The latter surmise was the more colourful of the two, since Steele's men were labouring close down to the bed of the stream near the Goblet and were reported to be preparing to swerve the river from its course just above the big bowl. There came thoughtful, puzzled days for Joe Embry.
Soon came the stringing of telephone wires through the forest lands; employing his instrument at the Goblet Steele was enabled to keep in touch with what went forward at Indian City and Bear Town, as his two new village sites were already known; to talk with his timber bosses, to get San Francisco on the line when need was. And, now and again when the mood was on him, to brighten Beatrice's eyes with anger by calling her up despite her emphatic request to be let alone. As the weeks went by and the full spring with them, bringing in the summertime, every day saw some fresh accomplishment an established and stupefying fact.
And then came late July and the first of the railroad men to the mountains. The little mountain papers caught the news and made big headlines, full page excitement of it. Men talked of it exclusively. The road was coming, but from neither White Rock nor the Junction. It was running from Selby Flat through Sunrise Pass, into Indian Valley and on! Joe Embry' face went chalky-white from rage. Beatrice, stubbornly set in her disbelief until she had talked with one of the higher-ups in Sacramento, was dazed. Steele had known all along; Steele had promised to "slap Summit City's little pink and white face for it"; … and the promise was no idle boast. Before the year was over her little tourist town would be standing empty and useless as the mountainseeking crowds followed the line of the coming railroad; in another year who would ride forty miles by stage to Summit City and Corliss Lake when they might come by train into Indian City or Bear Town and to the little lakes which Steele had bought?
For if Summit City gave access to a wild, beautiful country, then did Steele's towns gave easier access to a land both more rugged and more beautiful. Beatrice, herself, would have selected as a town site some spot higher in the mountains were it not that she counted expectantly upon the railroad coming from White Rock or the Junction and penetrating her own holdings. She had known that such were the earlier plans of the railroad; that those plans had recently altered came to her now as a complete shock. It was not what she would lose in dollars and cents; she could afford that, and a loss here was always balanced by bigger gains there. But to have Bill Steele laugh at her … this was unbearable.
"Don't you care, Trixie," he said over the telephone. And, when she cut him short there, clicking up her receiver, he was unruffled and wrote:
"Don't you care, Trixie; you'll get it all back some day. I'm just holding it for you."
Which, the first step in the love making of Bill Steele, came perilously close to driving her into Joe Embry's eager arms. It did drive her to call upon Embry again, to plan with him the final breaking of the presumptuous and utterly detestable Bill Steele.
"In an ordinary affair of business, Miss Corliss," said Embry thoughtfully, scoring with her more than he knew by making no reference to his proposal of a few days ago, "I know that you are as capable as I am, and in perfect sincerity I believe you are considerably more capable. You have had the training, your fortune is bigger than mine, you have inherited the ability of Ben Corliss. But this is no ordinary business affair, very largely for the reason that Steele is in no particular a business man. Also his methods, as I know better than you, are questionable. If you care to put fifty thousand dollars into my hands I will put with it a similar amount of my own and not only break him and drive him out but make good on our investment."
To Beatrice Corliss that morning fifty thousand dollars or a hundred thousand constituted a small matter provided they inflicted upon Steele the defeat she so devoutly wished him. Furthermore, she trusted Embry. She would, largely as a matter of form, take his note for the amount. But, even then, in the hot flush of the moment, she hesitated. It was an old Corliss adage not to throw good money after bad but to pull off the hounds when the scent was lost or led to a lair too dangerous to be attacked. The question rose in her mind: "Business man or not, is Steele too much for Embry?"
Embry, quick to see her hesitation, did not press the point. He even turned the conversation away from it, speaking generally of the situation which had arisen, undertaking to make fresh investigations and acquaint her with what he learned. For it was Embry's way, having planted a seed, to stand back from it and give it sun, not to trample it to death.
But, from this conference and others, the impression got out that not only were Miss Corliss and Embry associated in their desire to combat the successes of Steele, but that Embry was Miss Corliss' agent, that he had stepped into Booth Stanton's shoes as local manager. This report, with every seeming of being correct, came in due time to Steele and brought one of his rare frowns.
"I've warned her against him," he muttered thoughtfully. "But of course she wouldn't believe me against him. The slimy, slick son of a gun. I won't have him seeing too much of her."
Beatrice's losses didn't trouble him; he told himself, as he had told her, that she was too rich anyway. Further, if loss to her now meant gain to him, why he was but holding what he took in trust for her later on! But to have Embry in her camp, not to know what Embryos game was, was a different matter. It was a word from Turk Wilson upon another matter which brought Steele to action in Joe Embry's direction.
"Say, Bill," asked Wilson abruptly, "you got a way about playin' your own hand an' not takin' the other feller in. Jus' the same I'm goin' to ask something."
"Fire away, Turk," nodded Steele. "What is it?"
"Do you or don't you own an' operate the gamblin' house in Summit City? An' the others strung through these hills?"
"I do not," was the prompt answer. But Steele had looked up curiously, waiting for Turk to go on.
"Then Flash Truitt an' Joe Embry is both damn liars," said the succinct Turk.
"They are. At least Embry is. Did they say that?"
"What's more," continued Turk slowly, "Jim Banks says the same thing. When a sheriff says a thing like that an' it ain't so—"
"Then," cut in Steele, "it's high time I had a talk with Joe Embry."
"I'd step easy, pardner," advised Turk, seeing the new look in his employer's eyes. "An' I'd remember one large size thing: Jim Banks is sheriff an' he ain't the same man he used to be."
"Meaning just what, Turk?"
"Meanin' that Embry's somehow got him under his thumb. He used to be a square guy; now he looks out of his eyes at you like a dawg. An' he minds to his name when Embry says, 'Lie down,' or 'Sick 'em.' … Say, Bill, will you get me a plug tobacco? … Aw, I forgot! We got our own stores now, ain't we? … Say; what I was goin' to say was this: Let me mosey along when you look Embry up? You an' me work fine in a scrap together. Remember Johnnie Thorp an' them Little Giant boys. …"
But Steele laughed at him and shook his head.
"There'll be no fight this time, Turk," he said.
And Turk, following him with musing eyes, shook his own head.