Page:Jackson Gregory--joyous trouble maker.djvu/199

Rh road was coming, but from neither White Rock nor the Junction. It was running from Selby Flat through Sunrise Pass, into Indian Valley and on! Joe Embry' face went chalky-white from rage. Beatrice, stubbornly set in her disbelief until she had talked with one of the higher-ups in Sacramento, was dazed. Steele had known all along; Steele had promised to "slap Summit City's little pink and white face for it"; … and the promise was no idle boast. Before the year was over her little tourist town would be standing empty and useless as the mountainseeking crowds followed the line of the coming railroad; in another year who would ride forty miles by stage to Summit City and Corliss Lake when they might come by train into Indian City or Bear Town and to the little lakes which Steele had bought?

For if Summit City gave access to a wild, beautiful country, then did Steele's towns gave easier access to a land both more rugged and more beautiful. Beatrice, herself, would have selected as a town site some spot higher in the mountains were it not that she counted expectantly upon the railroad coming from White Rock or the Junction and penetrating her own holdings. She had known that such were the earlier plans of the railroad; that those plans had recently altered came to her now as a complete shock. It was not what she would lose in dollars and cents; she could afford that, and a loss here was always balanced by bigger gains there. But to have Bill Steele laugh at her … this was unbearable.