Page:Jackson Gregory--joyous trouble maker.djvu/125

Rh it that she might build a town here, a town to drowse in silence through the winter snows, to awake and stir and grow noisy with tourist merriment in the full springtime and warm summer and rich fall. Here was a hotel with an already wide famed cuisine, with clean linen and impeccable service, with telephone and telegraph at the disposal of the holidaymaking city man; here were cottages with every convenience and attraction; a store with well filled shelves and accommodating clerks; here was a dancing pavilion for the summer merryrmakers. And down yonder, less than a mile away, was Corliss Lake, purchased at the time that this high tableland became hers, with blue and white row boats and launches and slim bodied, graceful canoes, with big trout to be had in season by the accomplished and fortunate fisherman. Then, everywhere about were racing streams for those who loved solitary rambles and the song of the water, woods where small game teemed and in which one might find the track of deer and even of the occasional bear and big mountain cat. And, on the slope at the far edge of the lake, the "Tent City" which had proven so popular last season.

Here was Beatrice Corliss Lord Mayor and board of aldermen. That this venture into the uncertain field of tourist interest had shown itself profitable was less satisfying to her than the fact that "she had made Summit City and it was hers." But one can not own all of the lands in the California Sierra, and not even Beatrice Corliss could expect to acquire unlimited ownership. Here or there, near or far, there must be an outer fringe to the greatest holding. Just beyond the