under the compelling eyes of his mistress he continued hurriedly, tone and manner alike apologetic:
"With Trixie before he went! He called you … Trixie!"
The frown upon the girl's brows was one now of sheer perplexity. She dismissed Bradford with a gesture, suddenly aware that the situation was rapidly becoming absurd … ridiculous. Steele's crime was not one which would warrant his being bundled off, under armed escort, to jail. To put a man off of a thirty-thousand-acre ranch has its difficulties, especially when that man is of the William Steele type; it is quite another matter than having one's servants thrust him down the front steps into a city street and lock the door against his return. She could send for Booth Stanton, she could have a couple of cowboys take Steele into their custody and ride with him to her boundary line, half a dozen miles across the mountains. Perhaps she would do it. For the moment but one thought restrained her: what she could not do was guard against his return. For, under the sunny good nature in the man she had sensed a stubbornness of determination which she suspected was as indomitable as her own. As matters were she was impressed with the wisdom and efficacy of simply ignoring him for the present.
The mine superintendent and the two stock foremen … she had them all come in together … had a very bad half hour of it. She dismissed them abruptly at last with a final admonition to report here again ten days later, with a blunt warning to Brown that he would be given just those ten days to show cause why he should not be discharged. The next hour she spent with Booth Stanton, touching upon a score of ranch matters. Stanton's tanned cheeks were flushed dully when he went out, his head held stiffly.
Miss Corliss, with Bradford at her heels, going through the many rooms of the big house upon a tour of inspection; found fault wherever possible because of the mood upon her. Then she went to her own bed room, dismissed her maid and sat down at her window, looking out at the rugged slope of Thunder Mountain where it rose into broken cliffs.
"I'll get you, Mr. William Steele," she said quietly. "And I'll get you right!"
They were the words of her father, Ben Corliss, money maker. She had heard him use them more than once, just as she was using them now, his voice dispassionate and hard. Ben Corliss had bequeathed to his daughter much besides a fortune in gold, stocks, bonds and lands. He had given her himself as an object lesson, he had passed into her hands the keen ability to hold the great investments of his millions in an integral bundle destined to swell and increase because of its potential force and her acumen. His present to her upon her sixteenth birthday was ten thousand dollars in mining shares. With it went a few words of advice to which she hearkened and which she assimilated because she was Ben Corliss' daughter. His ways, being eminently successful, became her ways, his methods her methods. For nearly four years before his death Ben Corliss had trained her as he would have trained a son and on his death bed he told her simply: "You have got it in you to be a bigger figure in the financial world than I could ever be. It's born in you, Beatrice, bred in the bone."
He and Beatrice's mother had learned to be autocratic; Beatrice was born to autocracy. They had learned the power of wealth; she knew it instinctively. They were clear thoughted, capable parents; she was the expression of their union. She loved them sincerely; perhaps she respected and admired them more. Where they had led she followed, blazing new trails here and there.
As Corliss had dealt with men, so did Beatrice deal with them. If a man defied Ben Corliss, why then, soon or late, Ben Corliss "got him and got him right." He could afford to bide his time. So could Ben Corliss' daughter.
She rang for her maid. Her cheeks were cool now, her eyes on the verge of a smile.
"Tell Bradford to inform Mr. Steele that I shall be glad to talk with him in the office," she said. "That is, of course, if he still cares to speak with me."
The maid departed with customary speed, noting and wondering at the change a few moments had worked in her mistress. Beatrice, her eyes at last unmistakably smiling, her lips curving for the first time in some hours to lines which were not scorn's, rose and went to her glass. Her hands she lifted swiftly to her hair, fluffing it a little, winding a bronze curl about a forefinger. She was still smiling when, in answer to her maid's assurance that Mr. Steele had been shown to her office, she left her room.
She kept him waiting a moment, not too long so as to hint at premeditated intention but merely a sufficient time to suggest that she would come as soon as she finished some trifling matter which detained her. He looked at her curiously as she came in. She saw the expression which leaped into his eyes … he did not seek to hide it … and paid him back for it with a quick smile.
"There were two dimples," said Steele, nodding approval. "I thought so."
She had planned to remain standing during a brief interview. But he had come a step closer and his great bulk towering above her gave her a certain troublesome feeling of helplessness which she knew would not do at all. So, swiftly changing her campaign like any capable general, she moved to her chair at the long table.
"Yes," she answered lightly. "But the poor little things don't get much of an opportunity to show themselves these busy days. Now, Mr. Steele, though every one knows that a girl would rather talk about her own irresistible charms than speak of anything else in the world, I very much regret that I have but a few minutes I can give you. I have some guests coming this afternoon and you know what that means."
He moved around the table so as to stand on the far side of it facing her. Again she noted the bigness of him, sensing the power that lay in the wide shoulders. Taking swift stock of him just as Ben Corliss had ever taken stock of a man in his path, she judged that in Bill Steele there was besides a large happiness a certain dynamic forcefulness of character which it might chance to be as well not to overlook.
Steele had been regarding her intently; she marked in him that little trick of holding his words until he had sought to look at what lay back of one's eyes.
"You are Ben Corliss' girl, up and down," he said abruptly. "Only I wonder if there got squeezed out of your ego something which made him the fine chap he was? Or," he added thoughtfully, "if the spark in poor old Ben burnt out before you knew him?"
"I don't quite understand you, Mr. Steele," she said quietly.
How could she? Here was Bill Steele, a confessed penniless gentleman of misfortune, speaking of her father as "poor old Ben"!
"He had a soul when I knew him," said Steele simply. "But that was before he got both hands full of money."
"I believe," said Beatrice, "that you will find other voices than your own lifted in decrying money and money making; I believe, also, that you will find that the owners of the voices are either miserable failures or are still putting in their spare time grabbing for what nickels they can get."
Steele laughed.
"Money's all right," he answered. "Why, I am always chasing the rolling discs and find it one of the best sports a man can devise. Only it doesn't happen to be the whole game. I just made a goodly pile down in Mexico myself, tried to double it speculating, slipped up and went broke, and now what am I doing? Why, trying for another pile! Great little game, Trixie, great little game! But, Lord! there's another thing or two!"
It seemed to her that that "Trixie" just slipped out without intention and without Steele's consciousness of it. She wished that she knew. She decided quickly not to notice it.
"You made your money mining, I suppose?" she offered.
"Sure thing. That's the only right way … go find it and
