The Joyous Trouble Maker. Jackson Gregory

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       Jackson Gregory

      The Joyous Trouble Maker

      Published by Good Press, 2020

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066063733

Table of Contents

       The Last of the House of Corliss

       Bill Steele and the Young Queen

       Concerning Hell's Goblet and Two Promises

       Into the Wilderness

       Orders to Move On

       Steele's Cache

       Beatrice Rises Early

       The Queen Declares War

       A Toad in the Flower Garden

       Three Men Call from the Little Giant

       A New Kind of Pole Team

       A Summons from King Bill of Hell's Goblet

       "Eating Bread and Honey … "

       Beatrice Makes Biscuits

       The Power of the Corliss Millions

       A Belated Discovery

       The Madness of Bill Steele

       When Two Men Hate

       Beatrice Decides She Will Never Marry

       The Goblet Surrenders Its Secret

       The Fight

       Joe Embry's Hand

       An Option on Summit City

       A Matter of Luck

       The Judgment of the Ivory Ball

       Two Men and a Girl

       Masks

       "Where Is Beatrice?"

       The Young Queen Sees the Truth

       "Out Into the Forests … All by Ourselves"

      CHAPTER I

      THE LAST OF THE HOUSE OF CORLISS

       Table of Contents

      MEN never loitered about their work on Thunder River ranch, the "Queen's Ranch" as it has grown to be known latterly. Booth Stanton, the lean jawed, keen eyed manager of the local Corliss interests, saw to that; it was his business as it was his knack to get out of every man upon his pay rolls all of the efficiency that lay within him. But since last Monday when the message had come to him over the fifty-mile-long telephone wire connecting the ranch headquarters with the railroad town of White Rock, Booth Stanton had outdone himself. Now the activity under his watchful eyes was incessant, would have appeared feverish were it not so invariably prolific of the desired results. From the office in his cabin a hundred paces removed from the big ranch house, employing his desk telephone he kept in intimate touch with everything that went forward, snapping out curt commands in Booth Stanton's crisp way.

      Quite like the enchanted palace in the wood the big mountain home that had so long drowsed behind drawn shades and shuttered windows awoke and bestirred itself. Curtains were whisked back, windows and doors flung wide in welcome to streaming sunlight and fresh spring air. The necessary house servants appeared as ​though they had materialized from the message which had whizzed over telegraph and telephone wires announcing the return of the last of the Corliss blood, and having scarcely glanced about them, the old ones with curiosity, the new ones with startled eyes, plunged forthwith into an orgy of dusting and cleaning and setting in order. Wagons jolted merrily into White Rock to return creaking and groaning under high heaped piles of trunks and chests and boxes.

      Not unlike an old castle the big house whose generous size and cost had won it the countrywide name of the Corliss Folly dominated Thunder River and Thunder River Valley from a position high up on the flank of Thunder Mountain. The approach was by means of a sinuous graded roadway, climbing gradually from the lower lands, a road into which had gone many thousands of the Corliss millions. Upon massive granite foundations rose massive walls, monster timbers with the bark and bits of green-grey moss still clinging to them upon the outer surfaces as it held on in the forests, the whole covering the small tableland save for the gravelled courtyard about which it was builded, a courtyard in which a man might wheel a running six-horse team. Just to the north of the house, set back from a cliff's edge and half hidden in a copse of young pines, was Stanton's cabin.

      Getting in touch with the railroad office in White Rock, Stanton learned that the overland limited was on time. By way of thanks for the information he jammed the transmitter back upon its nickelled hook viciously, his eyes resting thoughtfully upon his clock.

      ​"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