her feet.
"You have done a very ungentlemanly thing … "
"Betrayed your trust, eh? Played spy and sailed under false colours?" laughed Steele. "Come now, Beatrice Corliss, be a good sport. I have only had my little joke and no harm done."
"Bradford," said Beatrice Corliss with crisp distinctness, "you may serve the remainder of my lunch in the breakfast room. And," the words reminding Steele of little separate bits of tinkling ice, "you may report to me in my office at one o'clock."
Her head lifted very high, with no further glance toward the table from which she turned, she left the room.
"Such a little Queen!" observed Steele dramatically.
Beatrice Corliss' cheeks as she went through the door which Bradford flung open for her were as red as Bradford's own.
CHAPTER III
CONCERNING HELL'S GOBLET AND TWO PROMISES
ESSENTIALLY an outdoors-man, William Steele's mental attitude toward the class of people whom he grouped and branded as the "soft-handed sort" was pleasantly tinged with amused toleration. Which was natural and, since he himself was no less human than another, to be forgiven him. It was not that he looked down upon these other fellow beings sneeringly or even with conscious condescension; rather was he prone to ridicule them mirthfully and without venom, realizing that they had their privilege as he had his of living life as it pleased them. In his many bouts with fortune there had been too frequent and undisguised defeats for him to nourish any overweening sense of his own superiority. He was just plain man, was Bill Steele, which means that a great deal of the boy lived on in him, joyously and perhaps impudently.
The blood of the outdoors-man, be he man of the plains, mountaineer or one who takes his chances with the sea, is likely to be ruffled by the calm gaze of authority. Too long has he recognized but the one majesty of the natural world, too long has he battled with hard hands at that, to accept any other. Dictatorial mandates irritate, anger or … as in Steele's case … amuse him. Kingly attitudes assumed by his own brother mortals are little enough to his liking. "Here below there is no sovereign but Earth," sums up his unformulated doctrine of existence, "and against her I wage unceasing and rebellious warfare." So Steele, without asking himself the clear-cut reason, was prepared to laugh at the serene graciousness of Beatrice Corliss, a girl.
A chance situation had tempted him and it was not his jovial way to refuse such invitations. Had he been a different sort of man in this particular he would not have remained, as he put it, "lord of an empty pocket and a full heart." Without premeditation he promptly acted the part of William Steele as the blood of his ancestors and his own life had made him. That his lot had been to incur the blazing anger of Miss Corliss brought him no visible regrets.
"It's good for her soul," was his cheerful way of thinking. "She'd be a corking fine girl if she wasn't so damned queenish."
He finished his meal alone and with hearty appreciation, conscious now and then of a horrified stare from the passing Bradford, filled his pipe and strolled outside. That he did not go by the billiard room for the hat he had left there bespoke his decision not to accept just yet his unwilling hostess' emphatic desire for his departure. He went back to his chair, rested his heels as before upon the chain strung between the concrete posts and with contented eyes gave his attention to the valley lands spread out below him.
Meantime Beatrice Corliss, having given Bradford his opportunity for an explanation which failed somewhat to placate her, sought to shut out of her mind all thought of William Steele and his "boorish rudeness." In the first grip of her anger, before she had had time for the nicer selection of a word, she termed him to herself as just "fresh." It had not been her lot before to meet a man like him, a man who in his first talk with her should manifest toward her a degree of unpleasant familiarity so marked and so "insufferable." The adventure left no memories she cared to treasure. And yet, through its very novelty, the episode maintained a stubborn place in her thought. Seeking to plan in her former cool, untroubled, clear way for her interviews with her foremen, she found herself asking of a kind fate the joy of someday having in her two hands the opportunity of meting out to Mr. William Steele the punishment he so plainly merited.
She heard Steele go out and a few minutes later, having pushed her dessert aside, she went through the house to the front veranda. Here, set out in the cheer of the sun, was her chair whence, upon occasion, she could look across certain miles of her possessions and dream the dreams which pleased her. Today, however, she did not even seat herself; out yonder, his broad back turned upon her like a further rudeness, was Steele. She whirled and returned to the living room, resurgent annoyance reddening her cheeks.
"Bradford," she instructed her head servant coolly, "Mr. Steele is waiting outside. You will take him his hat and anything else he may have left here. You will tell him that he is free to go as soon as he chooses. If he fails to understand you may add that if he makes it necessary I shall have him put off the ranch."
Bradford bowed and departed, a look of eagerness in his eye, a new elasticity in his walk. Beatrice, without paying Mr. Steele the compliment of watching while he received his hat and her ultimatum, went to her office. Here, in an atmosphere of austere dignity created by massive furniture, her high-heeled slippers falling soundlessly upon the thick carpet, she walked restlessly back and forth, again seeking to gather her thoughts. She was to talk with Hurley of the Little Giant mine, with Brown, her cattle foreman, with Emmet Trent, her horse foreman, all due within a few moments. Further, she was to be in readiness for the coming of a dozen guests sometime during the afternoon. Bradford had assured her that everything was in readiness, or would be before her friends arrived, but …
Through the still air came William Steele's answer to her emissary, a joyous roar of laughter. And soon thereafter appeared Bradford himself, the look of eagerness in his eye having given place to one of uncertainty.
"Well?" asked Miss Corliss sharply.
"I gave him his hat, Miss Corliss," said Bradford. "And he … he said … "
"Well?" she repeated quickly. "Go on."
"He said, 'Thanks, old man.'"
Bradford, a man not easily upset, blurted the words out as though to get his mouth clean of them with all possible dispatch.
Beatrice Corliss was guilty of the suspicion of a sniff.
"You should have resented the familiarity, Bradford," she said briefly. "You gave him my message?"
"Yes, Miss Corliss. And he … perhaps you heard him? … he just laughed."
The eyes of a thwarted Corliss were not pleasant to look into.
"He said nothing?"
"I repeated your words. To make certain he had understood. Then he said … "
"Well?" cried the girl impatiently.
"He said," stammered Bradford, "'Go chase yourself, old party. I'm no rattlesnake. Besides, I want a talk with … with … "
Bradford mired down, floundered, grew
