Page:Jackson Gregory--joyous trouble maker.djvu/19

Rh "It's nip and tuck if Parker will be there with the car when the train pulls in," he mused. "If he is two seconds late ... Well, it's Parker's job, not mine."

His telephone bell jingled. It was Bates, the road boss, saying that he was having trouble with bridge reconstruction across Little Thunder where, according to Bates, the spring washouts had played merry hell.

Booth Stanton cut him short.

"The train gets into White Rock in three quarters of an hour," he said coolly. "Parker's gone in to meet it and he'll burn up the roads on the way back. You know what that means. Bates. Oh, I don't want to hear your tale of woe; think all I've got to do is squat here and listen to a man cuss? Get busy."

In turn he called up the cattle foreman, the horse foreman, the superintendent of the new mine across the ridge some fifteen miles to the eastward, saying alike to each man of them:

"You'll report at the house office at one o'clock. Take a tip from me and come in early."

He went to his door and for a little stood looking out across the green valley stretched below, marking the roaming herds of cattle and horses, noting the men who rode among them or teamed along the winding road or appeared and disappeared as they went about their various duties, duties set them by Booth Stanton in the absence of the last of the Corliss blood who was returning today. Well, it was not unlike some petty kingdom, this Queen's Ranch, and he had ruled it like some petty king since the autmun [sic] of last year. His hard eyes brightened to the glorious expanse lying below