Page:Jackson Gregory--joyous trouble maker.djvu/159



OT 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, 143