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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Man to Man, by Jackson Gregory
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Man to Man
+
+Author: Jackson Gregory
+
+Release Date: July 29, 2006 [EBook #18933]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN TO MAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: The blazing heat was such that men and horses and steers
+suffered terribly.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MAN TO MAN
+
+
+BY
+
+JACKSON GREGORY
+
+
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+JUDITH OF BLUE LAKE RANCH, THE BELLS OF SAN JUAN, SIX FEET FOUR, ETC.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY
+
+J. G. SHEPHERD
+
+
+
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP
+
+PUBLISHERS -------- NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
+
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+
+Published October, 1920
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+     I. STEVE DIVES INTO DEEP WATERS
+    II. MISS BLUE CLOAK KNOWS WHEN SHE'S BEAT
+   III. NEWS OF A LEGACY
+    IV. TERRY BEFORE BREAKFAST
+     V. HOW STEVE PACKARD CAME HOME
+    VI. BANK NOTES AND A BLIND MAN
+   VII. THE OLD MOUNTAIN LION COMES DOWN FROM THE NORTH
+  VIII. IN RED CREEK TOWN
+    IX. "IT'S MY FIGHT AND HIS.  LET HIM GO!"
+     X. A RIDE WITH TERRY
+    XI. THE TEMPTING OF YELLOW BARBEE
+   XII. IN A DARK ROOM
+  XIII. AT THE LUMBER CAMP
+   XIV. THE MAN-BREAKER AT HOME
+    XV. AT THE FALLEN LOG
+   XVI. TERRY DEFIES BLENHAM
+  XVII. AND CALLS ON STEVE
+ XVIII. "IF HE KNOWS--DOES SHE?"
+   XIX. TERRY CONFRONTS HELL-FIRE PACKARD
+    XX. A GATE AND A RECORD SMASHED
+   XXI. PACKARD WRATH AND TEMPLE RAGE
+  XXII. THE HAND OF BLENHAM
+ XXIII. STEVE RIDES BY THE TEMPLE PLACE
+  XXIV. DOWN FROM THE SKY!
+   XXV. THE STAMPEDE
+  XXVI. YELLOW BARBEE KEEPS A PROMISE
+ XXVII. IN HONOR OF THE FAIRY QUEEN!
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+The blazing heat was such that men and horses and steers suffered
+terribly . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
+
+The men about him and Packard withdrew this way and that leaving empty
+floor space.
+
+Terry's head, her face flushed rosily, her eyes never brighter, popped
+up on one side of the log.
+
+"Say it!" laughed Terry.  "Well, I'm here. Came on business."
+
+
+
+
+MAN TO MAN
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+STEVE DIVES INTO DEEP WATERS
+
+Steve Packard's pulses quickened and a bright eagerness came into his
+eyes as he rode deeper into the pine-timbered mountains.  To-day he was
+on the last lap of a delectable journey.  Three days ago he had ridden
+out of the sun-baked town of San Juan; three months had passed since he
+had sailed out of a South Sea port.
+
+Far down there, foregathering with sailor men in a dirty water-front
+boarding-house, he had grown suddenly and even tenderly reminiscent of
+a cleaner land which he had roamed as a boy.  He stared back across the
+departed years as many a man has looked from just some such resort as
+Black Jack's boarding-house, a little wistfully withal.  Abruptly
+throwing down his unplayed hand and forfeiting his ante in a card game,
+he had gotten up and taken ship back across the Pacific.  The house of
+Packard might have spelled its name with the seven letters of the word
+"impulse."
+
+Late to-night or early to-morrow he would go down the trail into
+Packard's Grab, the valley which had been his grandfather's and,
+because of a burst of reckless generosity on the part of the old man,
+Steve's father's also.  But never Steve's, pondered the man on the
+horse; word of his father's death had come to him five months ago and
+with it word of Phil Packard's speculations and sweeping losses.
+
+But never had money's coming and money's going been a serious concern
+of Steve Packard; and now his anticipation was sufficiently keen.  The
+world was his; he had no need of a legal paper to state that the small
+fragment of the world known as Ranch Number Ten belonged to him.  He
+could ride upon it again, perhaps find one like old Bill Royce, the
+foreman, left.  And then he could go on until he came to the other
+Packard ranch where his grandfather had lived and still might be living.
+
+After all of this--Well, there were many sunny beaches here and there
+along the seven seas where he had still to lie and sun himself.  Now it
+was a pure joy to note how the boles of pine and cedar pointed straight
+toward the clear, cloudless blue; how the little streams trickled
+through their worn courses; how the quail scurried to their brushy
+retreats; how the sunlight splashed warm and golden through the
+branches; how valleys widened and narrowed and the thickly timbered
+ravines made a delightful and tempting coolness upon the mountainsides.
+
+It was an adventure with its own thrill to ride around a bend in the
+narrow trail and be greeted by an old, well-remembered landmark: a
+flat-topped boulder where he had lain when a boy, looking up at the sky
+and thrilling to the whispered promises of life; or a pool where he had
+fished or swum; or a tree he had climbed or from whose branches he had
+shot a gray squirrel.  A wagon-road which he might have taken he
+abandoned for a trail which better suited his present fancy since it
+led with closer intimacy into the woods.
+
+It was late afternoon when he came to the gentle rise which gave first
+glint of the little lake so like a blue jewel set in the dusty green of
+the wooded slopes.  As he rose in his stirrups to gaze down a vista
+through the tree-trunks, he saw the bright, vivid blue of a cloak.
+
+"Now, there's a woman," thought Packard without enthusiasm.  "The woods
+were quite well enough alone without her.  As I suppose Eden was.  But
+along she comes just the same.  And of course she must pick out the one
+dangerous spot on the whole lake shore to display herself on."
+
+For he knew how, just yonder where the blue cloak caught the sunlight,
+there was a sheer bank and how the lapping water had cut into it,
+gouging it out year after year so that the loose soil above was always
+ready to crumble and spill into the lake.  The wearer of the bright
+garment stirred and stood up, her back still toward him.
+
+"Young girl, most likely," he hazarded an opinion.
+
+Though she was too far from him to be at all certain, he had sensed
+something of youth's own in the very quality of her gesture.
+
+Then suddenly he clapped his spurs to his horse's sides and went racing
+down the slope toward the spot where an instant ago she had made such a
+gay contrast to dull verdure and gray boulders.  For he had glimpsed
+the quick flash of an up-thrown arm, had heard a low cry, had guessed
+rather than seen through the low underbrush her young body falling.
+
+As he threw himself from his horse's back, his spur caught in the blue
+cloak which had dropped from her shoulders; he kicked at it savagely.
+He jerked off his boots, poised a moment looking down upon the
+disturbed surface of the water which had closed over her head, made out
+the sweep of an arm under the widening circles, and dived straight down.
+
+And so deep down under water they met for the first time, Steve Packard
+with a sense of annoyance that was almost outright irritation, the girl
+struggling frantically as his right arm closed tight about her.  A
+quick suspicion came to him that she had not fallen but had thrown
+herself downward in some passionate quarrel with life; that she wanted
+to die and would give him scant thanks for the rescue.
+
+This thought was followed by the other that in her access of terror she
+was doing what the drowning person always does--losing her head,
+threatening to bind his arms with her own and drag him down with her.
+
+Struggling half blindly and all silently they rose a little toward the
+surface.  Packard tightened his grip about her body, managed to
+imprison one of her arms against her side, beat at the water with his
+free hand, and so, just as his lungs seemed ready to burst, he brought
+his nostrils into the air.
+
+He drew in a great breath and struck out mightily for the shore,
+seeking a less precipitous bank at the head of a little cove.  As he
+did so, he noted how her struggles had suddenly given over, how she
+floated quietly with him, her free arm even aiding in their progress.
+
+A little later he crawled out of the clear, cold water to a pebbly
+beach, drawing her after him.
+
+And now he understood that his destiny and his own headlong nature had
+again made a consummate fool of him.  The same knowledge was offered
+him freely in a pair of gray eyes which fairly blazed at him.  No
+gratitude there of a maiden heroically succored in the hour of her
+supreme distress; just the leaping anger of a girl with a temper like
+hot fire who had been rudely handled by a stranger.
+
+Her scanty little bathing-suit, bright blue like the discarded cloak,
+the red rubber cap binding the bronze hair--she must have donned the
+ridiculous thing with incredible swiftness while he batted an
+eye--might have been utterly becoming in other eyes than those of Steve
+Packard.  Now that they merely told him that he was a blundering ass,
+he was conscious solely of a desire to pick her up and shake her.
+
+"Gee!" she panted at him with an angry scornfulness which made him
+wince.  "You're about the freshest proposition I ever came across!"
+
+Later, perhaps, he would admit that she was undeniably and most
+amazingly pretty; that the curves of her little white body were
+delightfully perfect; that she had made an armful that at another time
+would have put sheer delirium into a man's blood.
+
+Just now he knew only that in his moment of nothing less than stupidity
+he had angered her and that his own anger though more unreasonable was
+scarcely less heated; that he had made and still made but a sorry
+spectacle; that he was sopping wet and cold and would be shivering in a
+moment like a freezing dog.
+
+"Why did you want to yell like a Comanche Indian when you went in?" he
+demanded rudely, offering the only defense he could put mind or tongue
+to.  "A man would naturally suppose that you were falling."
+
+"You didn't suppose any such thing!" she retorted sharply.  "You saw me
+dive; if you had the brains of a scared rabbit, you'd know that when a
+girl had gone to the trouble to climb into a bathing-suit and then
+jumped into the water she wanted a swim.  And to be left alone," she
+added scathingly.
+
+Packard felt the afternoon breeze through the wet garments which stuck
+so close to him, and shivered.
+
+"If you think," he said, as sharply as she had spoken, "that I just
+jumped into that infernal ice-pond, clothes and all, for the pure joy
+of making your charming acquaintance in some ten feet of water, all I
+can say is that you are by no means lacking a full appreciation of your
+own attractiveness."
+
+She opened her eyes widely at him, lying at his feet where he had
+deposited her.  She had not offered to rise.  But now she sat up,
+drawing her knees into the circle of her clasped arms, tilting her head
+back as she stared up at him.
+
+"You've got your nerve, Mr. Man," she informed him coolly.  "Any time
+that you think I'll stand for a fool man jumping in and spoiling my fun
+for me and then scolding me on top of it, you've got another good-sized
+think coming.  And take it from me, you'll last a good deal longer in
+this neck of the woods if you 'tend to your own business after this and
+keep your paws off other folks' affairs.  Get me that time?"
+
+"I get you all right," grunted Packard.  "And I find your gratitude to
+a man who has just risked his life for you quite touching."
+
+"Gratitude?  Bah!" she told him, leaping suddenly to her feet.  "Risked
+your life for me, did you?"  She laughed jeeringly at that.  "Why, you
+big lummox, I could have yanked you out as easy as turn a somersault if
+you started to drown.  And now suppose you hammer the trail while it's
+open."
+
+He bestowed upon her a glance whose purpose was to wither her.  It
+failed miserably, partly because she was patently not the sort to be
+withered by a look from a mere man, and partly because a violent and
+inopportune shiver shook him from head to foot.
+
+Until now there had been only bright anger in the girl's eyes.
+Suddenly the light there changed; what had begun as a sniff at him
+altered without warning into a highly amused giggle.
+
+"Golly, Mr. Man," she taunted him.  "You're sure some swell picture as
+you stand there, hand on hip and popping your eyes out at me!  Like a
+king in a story-book, only he'd just got a ducking and was trying to
+stare the other fellow down.  Which is one thing you can't do with me."
+
+Her eyes had the adorable trick of seeming to crinkle to a mirth which
+would have been an extremely pleasant phenomenon to witness had she
+been laughing with him instead of at him.  As matters stood, Packard
+was quite prepared to dislike her heartily.
+
+"I'd add to your kind information that the trail is open at both ends,"
+he told her significantly.  "I'm going to find a sunny spot and dry my
+clothes.  No objection, I suppose?"
+
+He clambered up the bank and made his way to the spot whence he had
+dived after her, bent on retrieving his boots and spurs.  Her eyes
+followed him interestedly.  He ignored her and set about extricating a
+spur rowel from the fabric of the bright blue cloak.  Her voice floated
+up to him then, demanding:
+
+"What in the world are you up to now?  Not going to swipe my clothes,
+are you?"
+
+"I'd have the right," he called back over his shoulder, "if I happened
+to need a makeshift dressing-gown.  As it is, however, I am trying to
+get my spur out of the thing."
+
+"You great big brute!" she wailed at him, and here she came running
+along the bank.  "You just dare to tear my cloak and I'll hound you out
+of the country for it!  I drove forty miles to get it and this is the
+first time I ever wore it.  Stupid!"  And she jerked both the garment
+and the spur from him.
+
+The lining was silken, of a deep, rich, golden hue.  And already it was
+torn, although but the tiniest bit in the world, by one of the sharp
+spikes.  Her temper, however, ever ready it seemed, flared out again;
+the crinkling merriment went from her eyes, leaving no trace; the color
+warmed in her cheeks as she cried:
+
+"You're just like all of the rest of your breed, big and awkward,
+crowding in where you don't belong, messing up the face of the earth,
+spoiling things right and left.  I wonder if the good Lord Himself
+knows what he made men for, anyway!"
+
+The offending spur, detached by her quick fingers, described a bright
+arc in the late sunlight, flew far out, dipped in a little leaping
+spurt of spray, and went down quietly in the lake.
+
+"Go jump in and get that, if you are so keen on saving things," she
+mocked him.  "There's only, about fifteen feet of water to dig through."
+
+"You little devil!" he said.
+
+For the spur with its companion had cost him twenty dollars down on the
+Mexican border ten days ago and he had set much store by it.
+
+"Little devil, am I?" she retorted readily.  "You'll know it if you
+don't keep on your side of the road.  Look at that tear!  Just look at
+it!"
+
+She had stepped quite close to him, holding out the cloak, her eyes
+lifted defiantly to his.  He put out a sudden hand and laid it on her
+wet shoulder.  She opened her eyes widely again at the new look in his.
+But even so her regard was utterly fearless.
+
+"Young lady," he said sternly, "so help me God, I've got the biggest
+notion in the world to take you across my knee and give you the
+spanking of your life.  If I did crowd in where I don't belong, as you
+so sweetly put it, it was at least to do you a kindness.  Another time
+I'd know better; I'd sooner do a favor for a wildcat."
+
+"Take your dirty paws off of me," she cried, wrenching away from him.
+"And--spank me, would you?"  The fire leaped higher in her eyes, the
+red in her cheeks gave place to an angrier white.  "If you ever so much
+as dare touch me again----"
+
+She broke off, panting.  Packard laughed at her.
+
+"You'd try to scratch me, I suppose," he jeered; "and then, after the
+fashion of your own sweet sex when you don't have the strength to put a
+thing across, you'd most likely cry!"
+
+"I'd blow your ugly head off your shoulders with a shot-gun," she
+concluded briefly.
+
+And despite the extravagance of the words it was borne in upon
+Packard's understanding that she meant just exactly what she said.
+
+He was getting colder all the time and knew that in a moment his teeth
+would chatter.  So a second time he turned his back on her, gathered up
+his horse's reins, and moved away, seeking a spot in the woods where he
+could get dry and sun his clothes.  And since Packard rage comes
+swiftly and more often than not goes the same way, within five minutes
+over a comforting cigarette he was grinning widely, seeing in a flash
+all of the humor of the situation which had successfully concealed
+itself from him until now.
+
+"And I don't blame her so much, after all," he chuckled.  "Taking a
+nice, lonely dive, to have a fool of a man grab her all of a sudden
+when she was enjoying herself half a dozen feet under water!  It's
+enough to stir up a good healthy temper.  Which, by the Lord, she has!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+MISS BLUE CLOAK KNOWS WHEN SHE'S BEAT
+
+Half an hour later, his clothing wrung out and sun-dried after a
+fashion, Packard dressed, swung up into the saddle, and turned back
+into the trail.  And through the trees, where their rugged trunks made
+an open vista, he saw not two hundred yards away the gay spot of color
+made by the blue cloak.  So she was still here, lingering down the road
+that wound about the lake's shores, when already he had fancied her far
+on her way.  He wondered for the first time where that way led?
+
+He drew rein among the pines, waiting in his turn for her to go on.
+The blue cloak did not move.  He leaned to one side to see better,
+peering around a low-flung cedar bough.  His trail here led to the
+road; he must pass her unless she went on soon.
+
+Beside the vivid hue of her cloak the sunlight streaming through the
+forest showed him another bright, gay color, a streak of red which
+through the underbrush he was at first at a loss to account for.  He
+would have said that she was seated in a low-bodied, red wagon, were it
+not that if such had been the case he must have seen the horses.
+
+"An automobile!" he guessed.
+
+He rode on a score of steps and stopped again.  Sure enough, there she
+sat at the steering-wheel of a long, rakish touring-car, the slump of
+her shoulders vaguely hinting at despair and perhaps a stalled engine.
+His grin widened joyously.  He touched his horse with his one spur,
+assumed an expression of vast indifference, and rode on.  She jerked up
+her head, looked about at him swiftly, gave him her shoulder again.
+
+He rode into the road and came on with tantalizing slowness, knowing
+that she would want to turn again and guessing that she would conquer
+the impulse.  A few paces behind her he stopped again, rolling a fresh
+cigarette and seeming, as he had been before the meeting, the most
+leisurely man in the world.
+
+He saw her lean forward, busied with ignition and starter; he fancied
+that the little breeze brought to him the faintest of guarded
+exclamations.
+
+"The blamed old thing won't go," chuckled Packard with vast
+satisfaction.  "Some car, too.  Boyd-Merril Twin Eight, latest model.
+And dollars to doughnuts I know just what's wrong--and she doesn't!"
+
+She ignored him with such a perfect unconsciousness of his presence in
+the same world with her that he was moved to a keen admiration.
+
+"I'll bet her face is as red as a beet, just the same," was his
+cheerful thought.  "And right here, Steve Packard, is where you don't
+'crowd in' until you're called on."
+
+She straightened up, sitting very erect, her two hands tense upon the
+useless wheel.  He noted the poise of her head and found in it
+something almost queenly.  For a moment they were both very still, he
+watching and feeling his sense pervaded by the glowing sensation that
+all was right with the world, she holding her face averted and keeping
+her thoughts to herself.
+
+Presently she got out and lifted the hood, looking in upon the engine,
+despairing.  But did not glance toward him.  Then she closed the hood
+and returned to her seat, once more attempting to get some sort of
+response from the starting system.  Packard felt himself fairly beaming
+all over.
+
+"I may be a low-lived dog and a deep-dyed villain besides," he was
+frank to admit to himself.  "But right now I'm having the time of my
+life.  And I wouldn't bet two bits which way she's going to jump next,
+either--never having met just her type before."
+
+"Well?" she said abruptly.
+
+She hadn't moved, hadn't so much as turned her head to look at him.  If
+she had done so just then perhaps Packard's extremely good-humored
+smile, a contented, eminently satisfied smile, would not have warmed
+her to him.
+
+"Speak to me?" he asked innocently.
+
+"I did.  Simply because there's nobody else to speak to.  Don't happen
+to know anything about motor-cars, do you?"
+
+It was all very icily enunciated, but had no noticeably freezing effect
+upon the man's mood.
+
+"I sure do," he told her cheerfully.  "Know 'em from front bumper to
+tail-lamp.  Yours is a Boyd-Merril, Twin Eight, this year's model.
+Fox-Whiting starting and lighting system.  Great little car, too, if
+you ask me."
+
+"What I was going to ask you," came the cool little voice, more
+haughtily than ever, "was not what you think of the car but if you--if
+you happened to know how to make the miserable thing go."
+
+"Sure," he replied to the back of her head, with all of his former
+pleasant manner.  "Pull out the ignition button; push down the starter
+pedal with your right foot; throw out the clutch with your left; put
+her into low; let in your clutch slowly; give her a little----"
+
+"Smarty!"  He had counted upon some such interruption, and chuckled
+when it came.  "I know all that."
+
+"Then why don't you do it?" he queried innocently.  "You're right
+square in my way, the road's narrow, and I've got to be moving on."
+
+"I don't do it," she informed that portion of the world which lay
+immediately in front of her slightly elevated nose, "because it won't
+work.  I pulled out the ignition button and--and nothing happened.
+Then I tried to force down the starter pedal and the crazy thing won't
+go down."
+
+"I see," said Packard interestedly.  "Don't know a whole lot about
+cars, do you?"
+
+"The world wasn't made overnight," she said tartly.  "I've had this
+pesky thing a month.  Do you know what's the matter?"
+
+He took his time in replying.  He was so long about it, in fact, that
+Miss Blue Cloak stirred uneasily and finally shot him a questioning
+look over her shoulder, just to make sure, he suspected, that he hadn't
+slipped away and left her.
+
+"Well?" she asked again.
+
+"Speak to me?" he repeated himself, pretending to start from a deep
+abstraction.  "Oh, do I know what's the matter?  Sure!"
+
+She waited a reasonable length of time for him to go on.  He, secure in
+the sense of his own mastery of the situation, waited for her.  Between
+them they allowed it to grow very quiet there in the wood by the lake
+shore.  He saw her glance furtively at the lowering sun.
+
+"If you do know," she said finally and somewhat faintly, but as
+frigidly as ever, "will you tell me or won't you?"
+
+"Why," he said, as though he had not thought of it, "I don't know.  If
+I were really sure that I was needed.  You know it's mighty hard
+telling these days when you stumble upon a damsel in distress whether a
+stranger's aid is welcome or not.  If there's one thing I won't do it's
+shove myself forward when I'm not wanted."
+
+"You're a nasty animal!" she cried hotly.
+
+"For all I know," he resumed in an untroubled tone, "the end of your
+journey may be just around the bend, about a hundred yards off.  And if
+I plunged in to be of assistance I might be suspected of being a fresh
+guy."
+
+"It's half a dozen miles to the ranch-house," she condescended to tell
+him.  "And it's going to get dark in no time.  And if you want to know,
+Mr. Smarty, that's as close as I've ever come or ever will come to
+asking anything of any man that ever lived."
+
+He could have sat there until dark just for the sheer joy of teasing
+her, making her pay a little for her recent treatment of him.  But
+there was a note of finality in her voice which did not escape him; in
+another moment she would jump down and go on on foot and he knew it.
+So at last he rode up to the car, dismounted, and lifted the hood.
+
+"Ignition," he ordered her.
+
+She pulled out the little button again.  His eyes upon hers, his grin
+frank and unconcealed, he took a stone from the road and with it tapped
+gently upon the shaft running from the pump.  Immediately there came
+that little hissing sound she had waited for.
+
+"Starter," he commanded.
+
+And now her foot upon the pedal achieved the desired results; the
+engine responded, humming pleasantly.  He closed the hood and stood
+back eying her with a mingling of amusement and triumph.  Her face
+reddened slowly.  And then, startling him with its unheralded
+unexpectedness, a gay peal of laughter from her made quite another girl
+of her, a dimpling, radiant, altogether adorable and desirable creature.
+
+"Oh, I know when I'm beat!" she cried frankly.  "You've put one across
+on me to-day, Mr. Man.  And since you meant well all along and were
+just simply the blunderheaded man God made you, I guess I have been a
+little cat.  Good luck to you and a worth-while trail to ride."
+
+She blew him a friendly kiss from her brown finger-tips, bent over her
+wheel, and took the first turn in the road at a swiftly acquired speed
+which left Steve Packard behind in dust and growing wonderment.
+
+"And she's been driving only a month," was his softly whistled comment.
+"Reckless little devil!"
+
+Then, in his turn cocking a speculative eye at the sun in the west, he
+rode on, following in the track made by the spinning automobile tires.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+NEWS OF A LEGACY
+
+When Packard came to a forking of the roads he stopped and hesitated.
+The automobile tracks led to the left; he was tempted to follow them.
+And it was his way in the matter of such impulses to yield to
+temptation.  But in this case he finally decided that common sense if
+not downright wisdom pointed in the other direction.
+
+So, albeit a bit reluctantly, he swerved to the right.
+
+"We'll see you some other time, though, Miss Blue Cloak," he pondered.
+"For I have a notion it would be good sport knowing you."
+
+An hour later he made out a lighted window, seen and lost through the
+trees.  Conscious of a man's-sized appetite he galloped up the long
+lane, turned in at a gate sagging wearily upon its hinges, and rode to
+the door of the lighted house.  The first glance showed him that it was
+a long, low, rambling affair resembling in dejectedness the drooping
+gate.  An untidy sort of man in shirt-sleeves and smoking a pipe came
+to the door, kicking into silence his half-dozen dogs.
+
+"What's the chance of something to eat and a place to sleep in the
+barn?" asked Packard.
+
+The rancher waved his pipe widely.
+
+"Help yourself, stranger," he answered, in a voice meant to be
+hospitable but which through long habit had acquired an unpleasantly
+sullen tone.  "You'll find the sleeping all right, but when it comes to
+something to eat you can take it from me you'll find damn' poor
+picking.  Get down, feed your horse, and come in."
+
+When he entered the house Packard was conscious of an oddly bare and
+cheerless atmosphere which at first he was at a loss to explain.  For
+the room was large, amply furnished, cheerfully lighted by a crackling
+fire of dry sticks in the big rock fireplace, and a lamp swung from the
+ceiling.  What the matter was dawned on him gradually: time was when
+this chamber had been richly, even exquisitely, furnished and
+appointed.  Now it presented rather a dejected spectacle of faded
+splendor, not entirely unlike a fine gentleman of the old school fallen
+among bad companions and into tattered ill repute.
+
+The untidy host, more untidy than ever here in the full light, dragged
+his slippered feet across the threadbare carpet to a corner cupboard,
+from which he took a bottle and two glasses.
+
+"We can have a drink anyhow," he said in that dubious tone which so
+harmonized both with himself and his sitting-room.  "After which we'll
+see what's to eat.  Terry fired the cook last week and there's been
+small feasting since."
+
+Packard accepted a moderate drink, the rancher filled his own glass
+generously, and they drank standing.  This ceremony briefly performed
+and chairs dragged comfortably up to the fireplace, Packard's host
+called out loudly:
+
+"Hi, Terry!  There's a man here wants something to eat.  Anything left?"
+
+"If he's hungry," came the cool answer from a room somewhere toward the
+other end of the long house, "why can't he forage for himself?  Wants
+me to bring his rations in there and feed it to him, I suppose!"
+
+Packard lifted his eyebrows humorously.
+
+"Is that Terry?" he asked.
+
+"That's Terry," grumbled the rancher.  "She's in the kitchen now.  And
+if I was you, pardner, and had a real hankering for grub I'd mosey
+right along in there while there's something left."  His eye roved to
+the bottle on the chimneypiece and dropped to the fire.  "I'll trail
+you in a minute."
+
+Here was invitation sufficient, and Packard rose swiftly, went out
+through the door at the end of the room, passed through an untidy
+chamber which no doubt had been intended originally as a dining-room,
+and so came into lamplight again and the presence of Miss Blue Cloak.
+
+He made her a bow and smiled in upon her cheerfully.  She, perched on
+an oilcloth-covered table, her booted feet swinging, a thick sandwich
+in one hand and a steaming cup of coffee in the other, took time to
+look him up and down seriously and to swallow before she answered his
+bow with a quick, bird-like nod.
+
+"Don't mind me," she said briefly, having swallowed again.  "Dig in and
+help yourself."
+
+On the table beside her were bread, butter, a very dry and
+black-looking roast, and a blacker but more tempting coffee-pot.
+
+"I didn't follow you on purpose," said Packard.  "Back there where the
+roads forked I saw that you had turned to the left, so I turned to the
+right."
+
+"All roads lead to Rome," she said around the corner of the big
+sandwich.  "Anyway, it's all right.  I guess I owe you a square meal
+and a night's lodging for being on the job when my car stalled."
+
+"Not to mention for diving into the lake after you," amended Packard.
+
+"I _wouldn't_ mention it if I were you," she retorted.  "Seeing that
+you just made a fool of yourself that time."
+
+She openly sniffed the air as he stepped by her reaching out for
+butcher-knife and roast.  "So you are dad's kind, are you?  Hitting the
+booze every show you get.  The Lord deliver me from his chief blunder.
+Meaning a man."
+
+"He probably will," grinned Packard genially.  "And as for turning up
+your nose at a fellow for taking a drop o' kindness with a hospitable
+host, why, that's all nonsense, you know."
+
+Terry kicked her high heels impudently and vouchsafed him no further
+answer beyond that easy gesture.  Packard made his own sandwich, found
+the salt, poured a tin cup of coffee.
+
+"The sugar's over there."  She jerked her head toward a shelf on which,
+after some searching among a lot of empty and nearly empty cans,
+Packard found it.  "That's all there is and precious little left; help
+yourself but don't forget breakfast comes in the morning."
+
+"This is the old Slade place, isn't it?" Packard asked.
+
+"It was, about the time the big wall was building in China.  Where've
+you been the last couple of hundred years?  It's the Temple place now."
+
+"Then you're Miss Temple?"
+
+"Teresa Arriega for my mother, Temple for my dad," she told him in the
+quick, bright way which already he found characteristic of her.  "Terry
+for myself, if you say it quick."
+
+He had suspected from the beginning that there was Southern blood of
+some strain in her.  Now he studied her frankly, and, just to try her
+out, said carelessly:
+
+"If you weren't so tanned you'd be quite fair; your eyes are gray too.
+Blue-gray when you smile, dark gray when you are angry; and yet you say
+your mother was Mexican----"
+
+"Mexican, your foot!" she flared out at him, her trim little body
+stiffening perceptibly, her chin proudly lifted.  "The Arriegas were
+pure-blooded Castilian, I'd have you understand.  There's no mongrel
+about me."
+
+He drowned his satisfied chuckle with a draft of coffee.
+
+"I'm looking for a job," he said abruptly.  "Happen to know of any of
+the cattle outfits around here that are short-handed?"
+
+"Men are scarce right now," she answered.  "A good cattle-hand is as
+hard to locate as a dodo bird.  You could get a job anywhere if you're
+worth your salt."
+
+"I was thinking," said Packard, "of moseying on to Ranch Number Ten.
+There's a man I used to know--Bill Royce, his name is.  Foreman, isn't
+he?"
+
+"So you know Bill Royce?" countered Terry.  "Well, that's something in
+your favor.  He's a good scout."
+
+"Then he is still foreman?"
+
+"I didn't say so!  No, he isn't.  And I guess he'll never be foreman of
+that outfit or any other again.  He's blind."
+
+Old Bill Royce blind!  Here was a shock, and Packard sat back and
+stared at her speechlessly.  Somehow this was incredible, unthinkable,
+nothing short.  The old cattle-man who had been the hero of his
+boyhood, who had taught him to shoot and ride and swim, who had been so
+vital and so quick and keen of eye--blind?
+
+"What happened to him?" asked Packard presently.
+
+"Suppose you ask him," she retorted.  "If you know him so well.  He is
+still with the outfit.  A man named Blenham is the foreman now.  He's
+old Packard's right-hand bower, you know."
+
+"But Phil Packard is dead.  And----"
+
+"And old 'Hell-Fire' Packard, Phil Packard's father, never will die.
+He's just naturally too low-down mean; the devil himself wouldn't have
+him."
+
+"Terry!" came the voice of the untidy man, meant to be remonstrative
+but chiefly noteworthy for a newly acquired thickness of utterance.
+
+Terry's eyes sparkled and a hot flush came into her cheeks.
+
+"Leave me alone, will you, pa?" she cried sharply.  "I don't owe old
+Packard anything; no, nor Blenham either.  You can walk easy all you
+like, but I'm blamed if I've got to.  If you'd smash your cursed old
+bottle on their heads and take a brace we'd come alive yet."
+
+"Remember we have a guest with us," grumbled Temple from his place by
+the sitting-room fire.
+
+"Oh, shoot!" exclaimed the girl impatiently.  Reaching out for a second
+sandwich she stabbed the kitchen-knife viciously into the roast.  "I've
+a notion to pack up and clear out and let the cut-throat crowd clean
+you to the last copper and pick your bones into the bargain.  When did
+you ever get anywhere by taking your hat off and side-stepping for a
+Packard?  If you're so all-fired strong for remembering, why don't you
+try to remember how it feels to stand on two feet like a man instead of
+crawling on your belly like a worm!"
+
+"My dear!" expostulated Temple.
+
+Terry sniffed and paid no further attention to him.
+
+"Dad was all man once," she said without lowering her voice, making
+clearer than ever that Miss Terry Temple had a way of speaking straight
+out what lay in her mind, caring not at all who heard.  "I'm hoping
+that some day he'll come back.  A real man was dad, a man's man.  But
+that was before the Packards broke him and stepped on him and kicked
+him out of the trail.  And, believe me, the Packards, though they ought
+to be hung to the first tree, are men just the same!"
+
+"So I have heard," admitted the youngest of the defamed house.  "You
+group them altogether?  They're all the same then?"
+
+"Phil Packard's dead," she retorted.  "So we'll let him go at that.
+Old Hell-Fire Packard, his father, is the biggest lawbreaker out of
+jail.  He's the only one left, and from the looks of things he'll keep
+on living and making trouble another hundred years."
+
+"There was another Packard, wasn't there?" he insisted.  "Phil
+Packard's son, the old man's grandson?"
+
+"Never knew him," said Terry.  "A scamp and a scalawag and a tomfool,
+though, if you want to know.  If he wasn't, he'd have stuck on the job
+instead of messing around in the dirty ports of the seven seas while
+his old thief of a grandfather stole his heritage from him."
+
+"How's that?" he asked sharply.  "How do you mean 'stole' it from him?"
+
+"The same way he gobbles up everything else he wants.  Ranch Number Ten
+ought to belong to the fool boy now, oughtn't it?  And here's old
+Packard's pet dog Blenham running the outfit in old Packard's interests
+just the same as if it was his already.  Set a thief to rob a thief,"
+she concluded briefly.
+
+Steve Packard sat bolt upright in his chair.
+
+"I wouldn't mind getting the straight of this," he told her quietly.
+"I thought that Philip Packard had sold the outfit to his father before
+his death."
+
+"He didn't sell it to anybody.  He mortgaged it right up to the hilt to
+the old man.  Then he up and died.  Of course everything he left,
+amounting mostly to a pile of debts, went to his good-for-nothing son."
+
+A light which she could not understand, eager and bright, shone in
+young Packard's eyes.  If what she told him were true, then the old
+home ranch, while commonly looked upon as belonging already to his
+grandfather, was the property legally of Steve Packard.  And
+Blenham--yes, and old Bill Royce--were taking his pay.  Suddenly
+infinite possibilities stretched out before him.
+
+"Come alive!" laughed Terry.  "We were talking about your finding a
+job.  There's one open here for you; first to teach me all you know
+about the insides of my car; second--  What's the matter?  Gone to
+sleep?"
+
+He started.  He had been thinking about Blenham and Bill Royce.  As
+Terry continued to stare wonderingly at him he smiled.
+
+"If you don't mind," he said non-committally, "we'll forget about the
+job for a spell.  I left some stuff back at the Packard ranch that
+belongs to me.  I'm going back for it in the morning.  Maybe I'll go to
+work there after all."
+
+She shrugged distastefully.
+
+"It's a free country," she said curtly.  "Only I can't see your play.
+That is, if you're a square guy and not a crook, Number Ten size.
+You've got a chance to go to work here with a white crowd; if you want
+to tie up with that ornery bunch it's up to you."
+
+"I'll look them over," he said thoughtfully.
+
+"All right; go to it!" she cried with sudden heat.  "I said it was a
+free country, didn't I?  Only you can burn this in your next
+wheat-straw: once you go to riding herd with that gang you needn't come
+around here again.  And you can take Blenham a message for me: Phil
+Packard knifed dad and double-crossed him and made him pretty nearly
+what he is now; old Hell-Fire Packard finished the job.  But just the
+same, the Temple Ranch is still on the map and Terry Temple had rather
+scrap a scoundrel to the finish than shake hands with one.  And one of
+these days dad's going to come alive yet; you'll see."
+
+"I believe," he said as much to himself as to her, "that I'll have to
+have a word with old man Packard."
+
+She stared at him incredulously.  Then she put her head back and
+laughed in high amusement.
+
+"Nobody'd miss guessing that you had your nerve with you, Mr. Lanky
+Stranger," she cried mirthfully.  "But when it comes to tackling
+Hell-Fire Packard with a mouthful of fool questions--  Look here; who
+are you anyway?"
+
+"Nobody much," he answered quietly and just a trifle bitterly.  "Tom
+Fool you named me a while ago.  Or, if you prefer, Steve Packard."
+
+She flipped from her place on the table to stand erect, twin spots of
+red leaping into her cheeks, startling him with the manner in which all
+mirth fled from her eyes, which narrowed and grew hard.
+
+"That would mean old Hell-Fire's grandson?" she asked sharply.
+
+He merely nodded, watching her speculatively.  Her head went still
+higher.  Packard heard her father rise hurriedly and shuffle across the
+floor toward the kitchen.
+
+"You're a worthy chip off the old stump," Terry was saying
+contemptuously.  "You're a darned sneak!"
+
+"Terry!" admonished Temple warningly.
+
+Her stiff little figure remained motionless a moment, never an eyelid
+stirring.  Then she whirled and went out of the room, banging a door
+after her.
+
+"She's high-strung, Mr. Packard," said Temple, slow and heavy and a bit
+uncertain in his articulation.  "High-strung, like her mother.  And at
+times apt to be unreasonable.  Come in with me and have a drink, and
+we'll talk things over."
+
+Packard hesitated.  Then he turned and followed his host back to the
+fireplace.  Suddenly he found himself without further enthusiasm for
+conversation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+TERRY BEFORE BREAKFAST
+
+A gay young voice singing somewhere through the dawn awoke Steve
+Packard and informed him that Terry was up and about.  He lay still a
+moment, listening.  He remembered the song, which, by the way, he had
+not heard for a good many years, the ballad of a cowboy sick and lonely
+in a big city, yearning for the open country.  At times when Terry's
+humming was smothered by the walls of the house, Packard's memory
+strove for the words which his ears failed to catch.  And more often
+than not the words, retrieved from oblivion, were less than worth the
+effort; no poet had builded the chant, which, rather, grown to goodly
+proportions of perhaps a hundred verses, had resulted from a natural
+evolution like a modern Odyssey, or some sprawling vine which was what
+it was because of its environment.  But while lines were faulty and
+rhymes were bad, and the composition never rose above the commonplace,
+and often enough sank below it, the ballad was sincere and meant much
+to those who sang it.  Its pictures were homely.  Steve, catching
+certain fragments and seeking others, got such phrases as:
+
+  "My bed on dry pine-needles, my camp-fire blazin' bright,
+  The smell of dead leaves burnin' through the big wide-open night,"
+
+and with moving but silent lips joined Terry in the triumphant refrain:
+
+  "I'm lonesome-sick for the stars through the pines
+    An' the bawlin' of herds . . . an' the noise
+  Of rocks rattlin' down from a mountain trail . . .
+    An' the hills . . . an' my horse . . . an' the boys.
+  An' I'd rather hear a kiote howl
+    Than be the King of Rome!
+  An' when day comes--if day does come--
+    By cripes, I'm goin' home!
+      . . .  Back home!  Hear me comin', boys?
+      _Yeee_!  I said it: 'Comin' home!'"
+
+
+He sat up in bed.  The fragrance of boiling coffee and frying bacon
+assailed his nostrils pleasurably.  Terry's voice had grown silent.
+Perhaps she was having her breakfast by now?  With rather greater haste
+than the mere call of his morning meal would seem to warrant, he
+dressed, ran his fingers through his hair by way of completing his
+toilet, and, going down a hallway, thrust his head in through the
+kitchen doorway.
+
+"Good morning," he called pleasantly.
+
+Terry was not yet breakfasting.  Down on one knee, poking viciously
+into the fire-box of an extremely old and dilapidated stove, she was
+seeking, after the time-honored way of her sex, to make the fire burn
+better.  Her face was rosy, flushed prettily with the glow from the
+blazing oak wood.  Packard's eyes brightened as he looked at her,
+making a comprehensive survey of the trim little form from the top of
+her bronze hair to the heels of her spick-and-span boots.  About her
+throat, knotted loosely, was a flaming-red silken scarf.  The thought
+struck him that the Temple fortunes, the Temple ranch, the Temple
+master, all were falling or had already fallen into varying states of
+decay, and that alone in the wreckage Terry Temple made a gay spot of
+color, that alone Terry Temple was determined to keep her place in the
+sun.
+
+Terry, having poked a goodly part of the fire out, made a face at what
+remained and got to her feet.
+
+"I've been thinking about you," she said.
+
+"Fine!" said Packard.  "You can tell me while we have our coffee."
+
+But he did not fail to mark that she had given him no ready smile by
+way of welcome, that now she regarded him coolly and critically.  In
+her morning attitude there was little to lead him to hope for a
+free-and-easy chat across a breakfast-table.
+
+"You strike me," said Terry abruptly and emphatically, "as a pretty
+slick proposition."
+
+"Why so?" asked Packard interestedly.
+
+"Because," said Terry.  For a moment he thought that she was going to
+stop there.  But after a thoughtful pause, during which she looked
+straight at him with eyes which were meant to be merely clear and
+judicial but which were just faintly troubled, she went on: "Because
+you're a Packard, to begin with."
+
+"Look here," protested young Packard equably, "I didn't think that of
+you; honestly, I didn't.  How are you and I ever going to get
+anywhere . . . in the way of being friends, I mean . . . if you start
+out by blaming me for what my disreputable old scamp of a grandfather
+does?"
+
+Terry sniffed openly.
+
+"Forget that friendship gag before you think of it, will you?" she said
+quickly.  "Talking nice isn't going to get you anywhere with me and you
+might as well remember that.  It won't buy you anything to start in
+telling me that I've got pretty eyes or a dimple, and I won't stand one
+little minute for your pulling any of that girlie-stuff on me. . . .  I
+said, to begin with, you're a Packard.  That ought to be enough, the
+Lord knows!  But it's not all."
+
+"First thing," he suggested cheerfully, "are you going to ask me to
+have breakfast with you?"
+
+"Yes," she answered briefly.  "Since you are here and since dad had you
+stay all night.  If you were the devil himself, I'd give you something
+to eat."
+
+"Being merely the devil's grandson," grinned Packard, "suppose I tuck
+in and help?  I'll set the table while you do the cooking."
+
+"I don't bother setting any table," said Terry as tartly as she knew
+how.  "Besides, the coffee and bacon are both done and that's all the
+cooking there is.  You know where the bread and butter and sugar are.
+Help yourself.  There isn't any milk."
+
+She poured her own coffee, made a sandwich of bacon and bread, and went
+to sit as he had found her last night, on the table, her feet swinging.
+
+Steve Packard had gone to sleep filled with high hopes last night, and
+had awakened with a fresh, new zest in life this morning.  Like the
+cowboy in the ballad, he had wanted nothing in the world save to be
+back on the range, and he had his wish, or would have it fully in a few
+hours, when he had ridden to Ranch Number Ten.  Fully appreciating
+Terry's prejudices, he had meant to remember that she was "just a kid
+of a girl, you know," and to banter her out of them.  Now he was ready
+to acknowledge that he had failed to give Terry her due; with a sudden
+access of irritation it was borne in upon him that if she was fully
+minded to be stand-offish and unpleasant, he had something more than
+just a kid of a girl to deal with.  Frowning, he sought his tobacco and
+papers.
+
+"Going to eat?" asked Terry carelessly.  "Or not?"
+
+"I don't know . . . yet," he returned, lifting his eyes from his
+cigarette.  "Most certainly not if you don't want me to."
+
+"Ho!" taunted Terry, the bright light of battle in her eyes.  "Climbing
+on your high horse, are you?  Well, then, stay there."
+
+Packard lighted his cigarette and returned her look steadily.
+
+"Kid of a girl, nothing!" he told himself.  And going back to his
+epithet of yesterday, "Little wildcat."
+
+"Then," continued the girl evenly, taking up the conversation where it
+had broken down some time ago, "I'll say what I've got to say.  First,
+because you're a Packard.  Next, because it was pretty slick work, that
+stunt of yours, diving into the lake for me, pretending you didn't know
+who I was, and grabbing the first chance to get acquainted.  Much good
+it'll do you!  Maybe I haven't been through high school and you have
+fussed around at college; just the same, Mr. Steve Packard, Terry
+Temple's not your fool or any other man's!  And, on top of all of your
+other nerve, to try and make me think you didn't know you owned your
+own ranch!  And trying to pump me and corkscrewing away at dad when he
+was full of whiskey. . . .  Pah!  Your kind of he-animal makes me sick."
+
+"You think," he offered stiffly, "that I'm hand and glove with Blenham?
+And, perhaps, that I'm taking orders from my grandfather, trying to put
+one over on you?"
+
+"Thinking's not the right word," she corrected sharply.  "I know."
+
+He shrugged.  As he did so it struck him that there was nothing else
+for him to do.  She had the trick of utter finality.
+
+"And," she called after him as he turned abruptly to leave the room,
+"you can tell old Hell Fire for me that maybe he's got the big bulge on
+the situation right now but that it's bad luck to count your chips
+until the game is over.  There's a come-back left in dad yet, and . . .
+and if you or your hell-roaring old granddad think you can swallow the
+Temple outfit whole, like you've done a lot of other outfits . . ."
+
+Packard went out and slammed the door after him.
+
+"Damn the girl!" he muttered angrily.
+
+Terry, sitting on the table, grew very still, ceased the swinging of
+her feet, and turned to peek cautiously out at him from the kitchen
+window.  Her look was utterly joyous.
+
+"Men are always horrid creatures before they've had their breakfasts,"
+she informed the stillness about her complacently.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HOW STEVE PACKARD CAME HOME
+
+Had Steve Packard ridden straightway back to Ranch Number Ten he would
+have arrived at the ranch headquarters long before noon.  But, once out
+in the still dawn, he rode slowly.  His mind, when he could detach it
+from that irritating Terry Pert, was given over to a searching
+consideration of those conditions which were beginning to dawn on him.
+
+It was clear that his destiny was offering him a new trail to blaze,
+one which drew him on with its lure, tempting him with its vague
+promises.  There was nothing to cause surprise in the fact that the
+ranch was his to have and to hold if he had the skill and the will for
+the job; nor yet in the other fact that the outfit was mortgaged to his
+grandfather; nor, again, was it to be wondered at that the old man was
+already acting as actual owner.  For never had the oldest Packard had
+any use for the subtleties and niceties and confusing technicalities of
+the law.  It was his way to see clearly what he wanted, to make up his
+mind definitely as to a desired result, and then to go after it the
+shortest way.  And that way had never led yet through the law-courts.
+
+These matters were clear.  But as he dwelt upon them they were made
+complex by other considerations hingeing upon him.  Most of all he had
+to take stock of what lay in his own mind and soul, of all that dwelt
+behind his present purpose.
+
+Riding back to Ranch Number Ten, saying, "It is mine and I mean to have
+it," was simple enough.  But for him actually to commit himself to the
+line of action which this step would entail would very obviously
+connote a distinct departure from the familiar, aimless,
+responsibility-free career of Steve Packard.
+
+If he once sat into the game he'd want to stick for a showdown; if he
+started out now bucking old man Packard, he would perhaps wind up in
+the scrap-heap.  It was just as well to think things over before he
+plunged in--which set him musing upon Terry again.
+
+Swerving from yesterday's path, he followed a new trail leading about
+the edge of the Temple ranch and into the southeastern borders of Ranch
+Number Ten.  At a logging-camp well up on the slope of the mountains
+just after he had forded the upper waters of Packard's Creek, he
+breakfasted on warmed-over coffee and greasy hot cakes.
+
+He opened his eyes interestedly as he watched a gang of timberjacks
+cutting into a forest of his pines.
+
+"Old man Packard's crowd?" he asked the camp cook.
+
+"Sure thing," was the cook's careless answer.  Steve Packard rode on,
+grown more thoughtful than before.  But he directed his course this way
+and that on a speculative tour of investigation, seeking to see the
+greater part of the big, sprawling ranch, to note just what had been
+done, just what was being done, before having his talk with Blenham.
+And so the first stars were out before he came once more to the home
+corrals.
+
+
+While Steve was turning down into Packard's Grab from the foot-hills
+the men working for Ranch Number Ten, having eaten their supper, were
+celebrating the end of a hard day's work with tobacco smoke and
+desultory talk.
+
+There were a dozen of them, clear-eyed, iron-muscled, quick-footed to
+the last man of them.  For wherever Packard pay was taken it went into
+the pockets of just such as these, purposeful, self-reliant, men's men
+who could be counted on in a pinch and who, that they might be held in
+the service which required such as they, were paid a better wage than
+other ranches offered.
+
+Young, most of them, too, boisterous when upon occasion their hands
+were idle, devil-may-care scalawags who had earned in many a little
+cattle town up and down the country their title as "that wild gang of
+Packard's," prone to headlong ways and yet dependable.
+
+There are such men; Packard knew it and sought them out and held them
+to him.  The oldest man there, saving Bill Royce only, was Blenham the
+foreman, and Blenham had yet to see his thirty-fifth birthday.
+
+Ten years ago, that is to say before he came into the cattle country
+and found work for Packard, Blenham had been a sergeant in the regular
+army, had seen something of service on the border.  Now, in his
+dealings with the men under him, he brought here all that he had
+learned from a military life.
+
+He held himself aloof, was seldom to be found in the bunk-house, making
+his quarters in the old ranch-house.  He was crisp and final in his
+orders and successful in exacting swift attention when he spoke and
+immediate obedience when he ordered.
+
+Few of his men liked him; he knew this as well as another and cared not
+the snap of his big, blunt fingers.  There was remarkably little of the
+sentimental about Blenham.  He was a capable lieutenant for such as the
+master of the Packard millions, he earned and received his increase in
+wages every year, he got results.
+
+This evening, however, the man's heavy, studied indifference to all
+about him was ruffled.  During the afternoon something had gone wrong
+and no one yet, save "Cookie" Wilson, had an inkling of what had
+plunged the foreman into one of his ill-tempered fits.
+
+To-morrow it would be a ranch topic when Cookie could have had ample
+time to embroider the thin fabric of his surmise; for it had fallen to
+the cook's lot to answer the bunk-house telephone when there had been a
+long-distance message for Blenham--and Wilson recognized old man
+Packard's voice in a fit of rage.
+
+No doubt the foreman of Ranch Number Ten had "slipped up" somewhere,
+and his chief, in a very few words and those of a brand not to be
+misunderstood, had taken him to task.  At any rate Cookie was swelling
+with eager conjecture and Blenham was in an evil mood.  All evening his
+spleen had been rising in his throat, near choking him; now suddenly he
+spewed it upon Bill Royce.
+
+"Royce!" he burst out abruptly.
+
+The blind man was lying upon the edge of his bunk at the far end of the
+room, smoking his pipe.  He stirred uneasily.
+
+"Well?" he asked.  "What is it?"
+
+"Cool old cucumber, ain't you?" jeered Blenham.  "Layin' there like a
+bag of mush while you listen to me.  Damn you, when I talk to you,
+stand up!"
+
+Royce's form stiffened perceptibly and his lips tightened about the
+stem of his pipe.  But before he could shape his rejoinder there came
+an unexpected voice from one of the four men just beginning a game of
+pedro under the swinging lamp, a young voice, impudent, clear-toned,
+almost musical.
+
+"Tell him to go to hell, Bill," was the freely proffered counsel.
+
+Blenham swung about on his heel, his eyes narrowing.
+
+"That you, Barbee?" he demanded sharply.
+
+"Sure it's me," rejoined Barbee with the same cool impudence.  And to
+the man across the table from him, "Deal 'em up, Spots; you an' me is
+goin' to pry these two bum gamblers loose from their four-bit pieces
+real _pronto_ by the good ol' road of high, low, jack, an' the game.
+Come ahead, Spots-ol'-Spotty."
+
+Blenham stared a moment, obviously surprised by this attitude taken by
+young Barbee.
+
+"I'll attend to you when I got nothin' else to do, Barbee," he said
+shortly.  And, giving the whole of his attention again to the man on
+the bunk, "Royce, I said when I talk to you to stand up!"
+
+To the last man of them, even to young Barbee, who had made his
+youthful pretense at an all-embracing interest in the cards, they
+turned to watch Bill Royce and see what he would do.
+
+They saw that Royce lay a moment as he was, stiff and rigid to his
+hands and feet, that his face had gone a fiery red which threw the
+white of the long scar across his nose into bloodless contrast, that
+the most obvious thing in the world was that for the moment his mind
+was torn two ways, dual-purposed, perfectly balanced, so that in the
+grip of his contending passions he was powerless to stir, a picture of
+impotence, like a man paralyzed.
+
+"Blenham," he said presently without moving, his voice uncertain and
+thick and ugly, "Blenham----"
+
+"I said it once," cried Blenham sharply, "an' I said it twice.  Which
+ought to be enough, Bill Royce!  Hear me?"
+
+They all watched interestedly.  Bill Royce moistened his lips and
+presented his pitiful spectacle of a once-strong man on the verge of
+yielding to his master, to the man he hated most on earth.  A smile
+came into Blenham's expectant eyes.
+
+The brief silence was perfect until the youthful Barbee broke it, not
+by speech but by whistling softly, musically, impudently.  And the air
+which Barbee selected at this juncture, though not drawn from the
+classics, served its purpose adequately; the song was a favorite in the
+range-lands, the refrain simple, profane, and sincere.  Translated into
+words Barbee's merry notes were:
+
+"Oh, I don't give a damn for no damn man that don't give a damn for me!"
+
+
+Blenham understood and scowled at him; Bill Royce's hesitant soul may
+have drawn comfort and strength from a sympathy wordlessly expressed.
+At any rate his reply came suddenly now:
+
+"I've took a good deal off'n you, Blenham," he said quietly.  "I'd be
+glad to take all I could.  But a man can't stand everything, no, not
+even for a absent pal.  Like Barbee said, you know where you can go."
+
+Cookie Wilson gasped, his the sole audible comment upon an entirely
+novel situation.  Barbee smiled delightedly.  Blenham continued to
+frown, his scowl subtly altered from fierceness to wonder.
+
+"You'll obey orders," he snapped shortly, "or----"
+
+"I know," replied Royce heavily.  "Go to it.  All you got to do is fire
+me."
+
+And now the pure wonder of the moment was that Blenham did not
+discharge Royce in three words.  It was his turn for hesitation, for
+which there was no explanation forthcoming.  Then, gripped by a rage
+which made him inarticulate,--he whirled upon Barbee.
+
+Yellow-haired Barbee at the table promptly stood up, awaiting no second
+invitation to that look of Blenham's.  Were one staging a morality play
+and in search of the personification of impertinence, he need look no
+farther than this cocksure youth.  He was just at that age when one is
+determined that there shall be no mistake about his status in the
+matters of age and worldly experience; in short, something over
+twenty-one, when the male of the species takes it as the insult of
+insults to be misjudged a boy.  His hair was short--Barbee always kept
+it close cropped--but for all that it persisted in curling, seeking to
+express itself in tight little rings everywhere; his eyes were very
+blue and very innocent, like a young girl's--and he was, all in all,
+just about as good-for-nothing a young rogue as you could find in a ten
+days' ride.  Which is saying rather a good deal when it be understood
+that that ten days' ride may be through the cattle country back of San
+Juan.
+
+"Goin' to eat me alive?" demanded Barbee lightly, "Or roast me first?"
+
+"For two cents," said Blenham slowly, "I'd forget you're just a kid an'
+slap your face!"
+
+Barbee swept one of the fifty-cent pieces from the table and tossed it
+to the foreman.
+
+"You can keep the change out'n that," he said contemptuously.
+
+It was nothing new in the experience of Blenham, could be nothing
+unforeseen for any ranch foreman, to have his authority called into
+question, to have a rebellious spirit defy him.  If he sought to remain
+master, the foreman's answer must be always the same.  And promptly
+given.
+
+"Royce," said Blenham, his hesitation passed, "you're fired.  Barbee,
+I'll take you on right now."
+
+Few-worded was Blenham, a trick learned from his master.  Across the
+room Bill Royce had floundered at last to his feet, crying out mightily:
+
+"Hi!  None o' that, Blenham.  It's my fight, yours an' mine, with
+Barbee jus' buttin' in where he ain't asked.  If you want trouble, take
+a man your size, full-grown.  Blind as I am--and you know the how an'
+the why of it--I'm ready for you.  Yes, ready an' anxious."
+
+Here was diversion and the men in the bunkhouse, drawing back against
+the walls, taking their chairs with them that there might be room for
+whatever went forward, gave their interest unstintedly.  So completely
+that they did not hear Steve Packard singing far out in the night as he
+rode slowly toward the ranch-house:
+
+  "An' I'd rather hear a kiote howl
+    Than be the King of Rome!
+  An' when day comes--if day does come--
+    By cripes, I'm goin' home!
+  Back home!  Hear me comin', boys?
+    Yeee!  I said it.  Comin' home!"
+
+
+But in very brief time Steve Packard's loitering pace was exchanged for
+red-hot haste as the sounds winging outward from the bunk-house met
+him, stilled his singing, and informed him that men were battling in a
+fury which must have something of sheer blood-thirst in it.  He raced
+to the closed door, swung down from the saddle, and threw the door open.
+
+He saw Bill Royce being held by two men, fighting at them while he
+reviled a man whom Steve guessed to be Blenham; he saw Blenham and a
+curly-haired, blue-eyed boy struggling up and down, striking the savage
+blows of rage.  He came just in time to see Blenham drive a big, brutal
+fist into the boy's face and to mark how Barbee fell heavily and for a
+little lay still.
+
+The moment was charged with various emotions, as though with contending
+electrical currents.  Bill Royce, championed by a man he had never so
+much as seen, had given fully of his gratitude and--they meant the same
+thing to Bill Royce--of his love; after to-night he'd go to hell for
+"yellow" Barbee.
+
+Barbee, previsioning defeat at Blenham's hard hand, suffering in his
+youthful pride, had given birth, deep within him, to an undying hatred.
+And Blenham, for his own reasons and after his own fashion, was
+bursting with rage.
+
+"Get up, Barbee," he yelled.  "Get up an', so help me----"
+
+"I'm goin' to kill you, Blenham," said Barbee faintly, lifting himself
+a little, his blue eyes swimming.  "With my hands or with a knife or
+with a gun or anyway; now or to-morrow or some time I'm goin' to kill
+you."
+
+"They all heard you," Blenham spat out furiously.  "You're a fool,
+Barbee.  Goin' to get up?  Ever goin' to get up?"
+
+"Turn me loose, boys," muttered Bill Royce.  "I've waited long enough;
+I've stood enough.  I been like an ol' woman.  Jus' let me an' Blenham
+finish this."
+
+They had, none of them, so much as noted Steve Packard's entrance.
+Now, however, he forced them to take stock of him.
+
+"Bill Royce," he said sharply, "keep your shirt on.  Barbee, you do the
+same.  Blenham, you talk with me."
+
+"You?" jeered Blenham.  "You?  Who are you?"
+
+"I'm the man on the job right now," answered Packard crisply.  "And
+from now on, I'm running the Ranch Number Ten, if you want to know.  If
+you want to know anything else, why then you don't happen to be foreman
+any longer.  You're fired!  As for foreman under me--my old pardner,
+Bill Royce, blind or not blind, has his old job back."
+
+Bill Royce grew rigid.
+
+"You ain't--you ain't Stevie come back?" he whispered.  "You ain't
+Stevie!"
+
+With three strides Packard reached him, finding Bill Royce's hand with
+his.
+
+"Right you are, Bill Royce," he cried warmly as at last his and Royce's
+hands locked hard.
+
+"I'm fired, you say!" Blenham was storming, his eyes wide.  "Fired?
+Who says so, I want to know?"
+
+"I say so," returned Packard shortly.
+
+"You?" shouted Blenham.  "If you mean ol' man Packard has sent you to
+take my place just because--  It's a lie; I don't believe it."
+
+"This outfit doesn't happen to belong to old man Packard--yet," said
+Steve coolly.  "Does it, Royce?"
+
+"Not by a jugful!" answered the blind man joyously.  "An' it never will
+now, Steve!  Not now."
+
+Blenham looked mystified.  Rubbing his skinned knuckles he glared from
+Steve to Royce, then to the other faces, no less puzzled than his own.
+
+"Nobody can fire me but ol' man Packard," he muttered heavily, though
+his tone was troubled.  "Without you got an order from him, all signed
+an' ready for me to read----"
+
+"What I have," cut in Steve crisply, "is the bulge on the situation,
+Blenham.  Ranch Number Ten doesn't belong to the old man; it is the
+property of his grandson, whose name is Steve Packard.  Which also
+happens to be my name."
+
+Blenham sneered.
+
+"I don't believe it," he snapped.  "Expect me to pull my freight at the
+say-so of the first stranger that blows in an' invites me to hand him
+my job?"  He laughed into the newcomer's face.
+
+Packard studied him a moment curiously, instinctively aware that the
+time might come when it would be well to have taken stock correctly of
+his grandfather's lieutenant.  Then, before replying, he looked at the
+faces of the other men.  When he spoke it was to them.
+
+"Boys," he said quietly, "this outfit belongs to me.  I am Steve
+Packard, the son of Philip Packard, who owned Number Ten Ranch and who
+mortgaged it but did not sell it to his father--my grandfather.  I've
+just got back home; I mean to have what is mine; I am going to pay the
+mortgage somehow.  I haven't jumped in with my sleeves rolled up for
+trouble either; had Blenham been a white man instead of a brute and a
+bully he might have kept his job under me.  But I guess you all know
+the sort of life he has been handing Royce here.  Bill taught me how to
+ride and shoot and fight and swim; pretty well everything I know that's
+worth knowing.  Since I was a kid he's been the best friend I ever had.
+Anything else you boys would like to know?"
+
+Barbee had risen slowly from the floor.
+
+"Packard's son or the devil's," he said quickly, his eyes never leaving
+Blenham, "I'm with you."
+
+The man whom, over the card-table, Barbee had addressed as Spotty and
+whose nickname had obviously been gained for him by the peculiar tufts
+of white hair in a young, tousled head of very dark brown, cleared his
+throat and so drew all eyes to himself at his side of the room.
+
+"Bill Royce bein' blind, if you could only prove somehow who you are--"
+he suggested, tone and expression plainly indicating his willingness,
+even eagerness, to be convinced.
+
+"Even if I can't see him," said Royce, his own voice eager, "I know!
+An' I can prove it for my part by a couple of little questions--if you
+boys will take my word for it?"
+
+"Shoot," said Spotty.  "No man's called you liar yet, Bill."
+
+"Then, Stevie," said Royce, just a shade of anxiety in his look as his
+sightless eyes roved here and there, "answer me this: What was the
+first horse you ever rode?"
+
+"A mare," said Steve.  "Black Molly."
+
+"Right!" and Royce's voice rang triumphantly.  "Next: Who nailed the
+board over the door?  The ol' cedar board?"
+
+"I did.  Just before I went away."
+
+"An'," continued Royce, his voice lowered a trifle, "an' what did you
+say about it, Stevie?  I was to know----"
+
+"Coach him up!  Tell him what to say, why don't you?" jeered Blenham.
+
+"I don't think I need to," replied Royce quietly.  "Do I, Steve?"
+
+"I was pretty much of a kid then, Bill," said Packard, a half-smile
+coming into his eyes for the first time, a smile oddly gentle.  "I had
+been reading one of the Arabian Nights tales; that's what put it into
+my head."
+
+"Go ahead, Steve; go ahead!"
+
+"I said that I was going to seek my fortune up and down the world; that
+the board above the door would be a sign if all went well with me.
+That as long as I lived it would be there; if I died it would fall."
+
+There was a little, breathless silence.  It was broken by Bill Royce's
+joyous laughter as Bill Royce's big hand smote his thigh.
+
+"Right again, Steve!  An' the ol' board's still there.  Go look at it;
+it's still there."
+
+Again all eyes sought Blenham.  For a moment he stood uncertain,
+looking about him.  Then abruptly he swept up his hat and went out.
+And Barbee's laughter, like an evil echo of Royce's, followed him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+BANK NOTES AND A BLIND MAN
+
+"He'd as soon set fire to the hay-barns as not," said Royce.  "Better
+watch him, Steve."
+
+And so Steve, stepping outside, watched Blenham, who had gone swiftly
+toward the ranch-house and who now swung about sharply and stopped dead
+in his tracks.
+
+"He's up to something, Bill," conceded Packard.  And called quietly to
+Blenham: "Every step you take on this ranch, I'm right along with you,
+Blenham."
+
+Whereupon Blenham, his hesitation over, turned abruptly and went down
+to the corral, saddled, and rode away.
+
+On the heels of the irate foreman's wordless departure Steve Packard
+and Bill Royce went together to the old ranch-house, where, settled
+comfortably in two big arm-chairs, they talked far into the night.  A
+sharp glance about him as he lighted a lamp on the table showed Packard
+dust and disuse everywhere excepting the few untidy signs of Blenham's
+recent occupancy.
+
+An old saddle sprawled loosely upon the living-room floor, littered
+about with bits of leather and buckles; from a nail hung a rusty,
+long-rowelled Mexican spur; on the hearth-stone were many cigarette
+stumps and an occasional cigar-end.  An open door showed a tumbled bed,
+the covers trailing to the floor.
+
+"I'd give a year off my life for a good look at you, Steve," said Royce
+a trifle wistfully.  "Let's see--thirty-five now, ain't you?"
+
+"Right," answered Packard.
+
+"An' big?" asked Royce.   "Six foot or better?"
+
+"A shade better.  About an inch and a half."
+
+"Not heavy, though?  Kind of lean an' long, like Phil Packard before
+you?"
+
+Packard nodded; then, with Royce's sightless eyes upon him, he said
+hastily:
+
+"Right again, Bill; kind of lean and long.  You'd know me."
+
+"Sure, I would!" cried Royce eagerly.  "A man don't change so all-fired
+much in a dozen years; don't I remember just how you looked when you
+cut loose to see the world!  Ain't made your pile, have you, Steve?"
+
+Packard laughed carelessly.
+
+"I'm lord and master of a good horse, saddle, bridle, and seventy-odd
+bucks," he said lightly.  "Not much of a pile, Bill."
+
+"An' Number Ten Ranch," added Royce quickly.
+
+"And Number Ten Ranch," Packard agreed.  "If we can get away with it."
+
+"Meaning what?  How get away with it?"
+
+"It's mortgaged to the hilt, it seems.  I don't know for how much yet.
+The mortgage and a lot of accrued interest has to be paid off.  Just
+how big a job we've got to find out."
+
+"Seen your grandfather yet?"
+
+"No.  I should have looked him up, I suppose, before I fired Blenham.
+But, being made of flesh and blood----"
+
+"I know, I know."  And Royce filled his lungs with a big sigh.  "Bein'
+a Packard, you didn't wait all year to get where you was goin'.  But
+there'll be plenty of red tape that can't be cut through; that'll have
+to be all untangled an' untied.  Unless your grandfather'll do the
+right thing by you an' call all ol' bets off an' give you a free hand
+an' a fresh start?"
+
+"All of which you rather doubt, eh, Bill?"
+
+Royce nodded gloomily.
+
+"I guess we've gone at things sort of back-end-to," he said
+regretfully.  "You'd ought to have seen him first, hadn't you?  An'
+then you kicked his pet dawg in the slats when you canned Blenham.  The
+old man's right apt to be sore, Steve."
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised," agreed Steve.  "Who are the Temples, Bill?"
+
+"Who tol' you about the Temples?" came the quick counter-question.
+
+"Nobody.  I stayed at their place last night."
+
+Royce grunted.
+
+"Didn't take you all year to find her, did it?" he offered bluntly.
+
+"Who?" asked Packard in futile innocence.
+
+"Terry Temple.  The finest girl this side the pearly gates an' the
+pretties'.  What kind of a man have you growned to be with the women,
+Steve?"
+
+"No ladies' man, if that's what's worrying you, old pardner.  I don't
+know a dozen girls in the world.  I just asked to know about these
+people because they're right next-door to us and because they're
+newcomers since my time."
+
+Again Royce grunted, choosing his own explanation of Packard's
+interest.  But, answering the question put to him, he replied briefly:
+
+"That little Terry-girl can have anything I got; her mother was some
+class, too, they tell me.  I dope it up she just died of shame when she
+come to know what sort she'd picked for a runnin' mate.  An' as for
+him, he's a twisty-minded jelly-fish.  He's absolutely no good.  An',
+if I ain't mistaken some considerable, you'll come to know him real
+well before long.  Watch him, Steve."
+
+"Well," said Packard as Royce broke off, sensing that this was not all
+to be said of Temple; "let's have it.  What else about him?"
+
+But Royce shook his head slowly, while his big, thick fingers filled
+his pipe.
+
+"We ain't got all night to jus' squat here an' gossip about our
+neighbors," he said presently.  "There's other things to be said before
+things can be done.  First rattle, an' to get goin', I'm much obliged
+for that little bluff you threw Blenham's way about me being your
+foreman.  What you need an' what you got to have is a man with both
+eyes wide open.  Oh, I know, Steve," as Packard started to speak.
+"You'd offer me the job if both my legs an' arms was gone, too.  But it
+don't go."
+
+"I'm going to need a man right away," argued Steve.  "I'll have to do a
+lot of running around, I suppose, looking up the law, arranging for
+belated payments, and so forth.  I don't want to leave the ranch
+without a head.  You know the men, you know the outfit."
+
+But Royce, though his lips twitched, was firm.
+
+"I don't know the men any too well either," he said.  "They're all your
+grandfather's hirin'.  But they're all live an' they all know the game.
+I won't swear as to how far you can trust any one of 'em; but you'll
+have to find that out for yourself as we go on."
+
+"Name one of them for me," was Packard's quiet way of accepting his old
+foreman's ultimatum.  "I'll put him on at least temporarily."
+
+"There's Yellow Barbee," suggested Royce.  "Somethin' of a kid, maybe
+kind of wild an' harum-scarum, maybe not worth much.  But he ain't a
+Blenham man an' he did me a good turn."
+
+Already Packard was on his feet, going to the door.
+
+"Barbee!" he shouted.  "Oh, Barbee!"
+
+The bunk-house door opened, emitting its stream of light.
+
+"Call me?" came Barbee's cool young voice, impudent now as always.
+
+"Yes, come here a minute, will you?"
+
+Barbee came, his wide hat far back upon his tight little curls, his
+swagger pronounced, his sweet blue eyes shining softly--his lips
+battered and bruised and already swelling.
+
+"Come in and shut the door," said Packard.
+
+Barbee entered and stepped across the room to lounge with his elbow on
+the chimney-piece, looking curiously from Packard to Royce.
+
+"I'm here to run this outfit myself, Barbee," Packard told him while
+returning the youth's regard steadily.  "But I need a foreman to keep
+things going when I'm obliged to be away.  I gave the job to Royce.  He
+won't have it.  He suggests you."
+
+Barbee opened his eyes a trifle wider.  Also the quick flush running up
+into his brown cheeks made him look more boyish than ever, giving him
+almost a cherubic air.  But for all that he managed to appear tolerably
+unmoved, quite as though this were not the first time he had been
+offered such a position.
+
+"How much is in it?" was what Barbee said, with vast indifference.
+
+Steve hesitated.  Then he frowned.  And finally he laughed.
+
+"You've got me there," he admitted frankly.  "All the money I've got in
+the world to-night is right here."  He spilled the contents of his
+pocket upon a table.  "There's about seventy-five bucks.  Unless I can
+turn a trick somewhere before pay-day all you boys will have to take
+your pro rata out of that."
+
+Bill Royce shifted nervously in his chair, opened his mouth, then
+closed it wordlessly.  Barbee shrugged elaborately.
+
+"I'll take a chance," he said.  "It would be worth it if I lost; jus'
+to put one across on Blenham."
+
+"All right," and still Packard eyed young Barbee keenly, wondering just
+how much ability lay hidden under that somewhat unsatisfactory
+exterior.  "You can go back to the boys now and tell them that you're
+boss when I'm not on hand.  Before they go to work in the morning you
+show up here again and we'll talk a lot of things over."
+
+Barbee ducked his head in token of acquiescence and perhaps to hide the
+glitter in his eyes, and walked on his heels to the door.  Packard's
+voice arrested him there.
+
+"Just one thing, Barbee: I don't want any trouble started.  Not with
+Blenham or with any of old man Packard's men.  I know how you feel, but
+if you work for me you'll have to let me be the one who starts things.
+Understand?"
+
+The new foreman paused irresolutely.  Then, without turning so that
+Packard might see his face, and with no spoken reply, he ducked his
+head again and went out, slamming the door after him.
+
+"I ain't sure he's the right man for the job, Steve," began Royce a
+trifle anxiously.  "An' I ain't sure whether he's square or crooked.
+But I don't know the rest of the men any better an'----"
+
+"I'll watch him, Bill.  And, as I've said already, I'm here to do most
+of the foreman act myself.  We'll give Barbee his chance."
+
+He came back to the table from whose top there winked up at him the few
+gold and silver coins which spelled his working capital, and stood
+looking at them quizzically.
+
+"I got a yarn to spin, Stevie," came thoughtfully from Royce with a
+great puff of smoke.  "You better listen in on it now--while we're
+alone."
+
+Packard returned to his chair, made his own smoke, and said quietly:
+
+"Go to it, Bill.  I'm listening."
+
+"Barbee's gone, ain't he?  An' the door shut?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then pull up close so's I won't have to talk loud an' I'll get it out
+of my system: Before your father died he wasn't makin' much money, not
+as much as he was spendin'.  He'd tied into some minin'-stock game that
+he didn't savvy any too well, an' for a long time all I'd been clearin'
+here he'd been droppin' outside.
+
+"An' the deeper he got in the hole the wilder he played the game: there
+was times when I didn't believe he cared a tinker's damn what happened.
+Whenever he needed any cash all he had to do was soak another plaster
+on the ranch, borrow again from his father.  An' ol' Number Ten is
+plastered thick now, Steve; right square up to the hilt.
+
+"Well, when Phil Packard died he did it like he'd done everything else,
+like he had lived, makin' a man think he was in a hurry to get a job
+over an' done with.  Ridin' horseback one week an' the nex' week
+sendin' for me in there."  He jerked his head toward a remote room of
+the big house.  "An' he talked to me then about you."
+
+Packard waited for him to go on, offering no comment.  Royce, hunched
+over in his chair, straightened up a little, shook himself, and
+continued:
+
+"He had drawed some money out'n the bank, all he had left.  I dunno
+what for, but anyways he had it under his pillow alongside his ol'
+Colt.  An' he give it to me, sayin' he was caught sudden an' unexpected
+by his death, an' for me to take care of it an' see that you got it
+when you come back.  It was in greenbacks, a little roll no bigger'n
+your thumb, an' when I counted 'em I near dropped dead.  Ten little
+slips of paper, Steve, an' each good for one thousan' bucks!  Ten
+thousan' dollars did Phil Packard slip me that night not a half-hour
+before he went over.  For you.  An' I got 'em for you, Steve; I got 'em
+safe for you."
+
+His big shoulders rose and fell in a deep sigh; he ran a toil-hardened
+hand across his forehead.  Packard opened his lips as though to speak,
+but was silent as Royce continued:
+
+"I took the money, Steve, an' went outside for a smoke, an' my hands
+was shakin' like I was cold!  Ten thousan' bucks in my tail pocket!  It
+was a dark night an' I didn't lose nineteen secon's hidin' the wad in a
+good safe place.  Which," slowly, "was the las' time I ever saw it!"
+
+"I thought you said----"
+
+"I got it safe?  I have.  But I ain't ever seen anything since that
+night, Steve.  The night your dad died, the night I hid the money, was
+the night I went blind."
+
+"You haven't told me about that yet, Bill," said Packard gently.
+
+"No; but I'm goin' to now.  It's part of the yarn I got to spin
+to-night.  Like I said I took the wad--your father had slipped it back
+in a flat sort of pocketbook--an' went outside.  It was night already
+an' dark.  Ten thousan' bucks for me to keep safe for you!"
+
+Again he ran his hand across his forehead.
+
+"I knew where there was a rock in the corner foundation of the house
+that I could work loose; where if I put the greenbacks they wouldn't
+spoil if it rained or even if the house burned down.  I stuck 'em in
+there, got the rock back like it was before, made sure nobody saw me,
+an' went off by myself for a smoke.
+
+"'Cause why did I take that chance?  I didn't take no chances at all, I
+tell you, Steve!  How did I know, your father gettin' delirious at the
+finish which came downright quick, but he'd give the game away?  An' on
+the ranch then there was men that would do mos' anything for ten
+thousan', give 'em the show.
+
+"Your gran'father had come over an' he had brought Blenham with him an'
+his mechanic, Guy Little; an' there was a couple of new men in the
+outfit I'd picked up myself that I knew was tough gents.
+
+"No!  I didn't take no chances, seein' the money was yours an' not mine
+to fool with.  I stuck it in the wall an' I sneaked off an' for three
+hours I squatted there in the dark with my gun in my hand, waitin' an'
+watchin'.  Which was playing as safe as a man could, wasn't it, Steve?"
+
+Packard got up and came to Royce's side, putting his hand gently on the
+foreman's shoulder.
+
+"It strikes me you've done rather a good deal for me, Bill," he said
+quite simply.
+
+"Maybe," said Royce thoughtfully.  "But no more'n one pardner ought to
+do for another; no more'n you'd do for me, Stevie.  Don't I know you?
+Give you the chance you'd do as much for me; eh, boy?  Well, here's the
+rest of the story: Your dad was dead: ol' Hell-Fire was blowin' his
+nose so you'd hear it a mile an' I was feelin' weak an' sick-like,
+knowin' all of a sudden that Phil Packard had been damn' good to me an'
+wantin' to tell him so now it was too late.  Late an' dark as it was I
+went down to the bunk-house, tol' the boys to stick aroun' for orders
+in the mornin', saddled my horse and beat it for a quiet place where I
+could think.  I never wanted to think so much in my life, Steve.
+Remember the ol' cabin by the big timber over on the east side?"
+
+"The old McKittrick place?  Yes."
+
+"Well, I went there to make a fire in the ol' fireplace an' sit an'
+think things over.  But I got to tell you about a feller name of Johnny
+Mills.  You didn't know him; he's workin' for the Brocky Lane outfit
+now.  Well, Johnny was as good a cow-man as you want, but you always
+had to watch him that he didn't slip off to go quail-huntin'.  With a
+shot-gun he was the best wing-shot I ever heard a man tell about.
+
+"He used to sneak for the McKittrick cabin where he kep' an ol'
+muzzle-loadin' shot-gun, an' shot quail aroun' them springs up there
+when he'd ought to be workin'.  Then he'd come in an' brag, tellin' how
+he'd never missed a shot.  The boys, jus' to tease Johnny, had gone to
+the cabin that very day an' drawed his shot out, jus' leavin' the
+powder alone so Johnny would think he'd missed when he pulled the
+trigger an' no birdies dropped.
+
+"See what I'm drivin' at?  I tied my horse an' started along the little
+trail through the wild-holly bushes to the cabin.  Somebody was waitin'
+for me an' give me both barrels square in the face.  That's when an'
+how my lights went out, Steve."
+
+It came as a shock, and Packard paled; Royce had been so long making
+his explanations and then put the actual catastrophe so baldly that for
+a moment his hearer sat speechless.  Presently--
+
+"Know who did it, Bill?" he asked.
+
+"If I knew--for sure--I'd go get him!  But I don't know; not for sure."
+His big hands clenched until they fairly trembled with their own
+tenseness.  "It's tough to go blind, Steve!"
+
+His hands relaxed; he sat still, staring into that black nothingness
+which always engulfed him.  When he spoke again it was drearily,
+hopelessly, like a man communing with his own sorrow, oblivious of a
+listener:
+
+"Yes, it's fair hell to be blind.  If there's anything worse I'd like
+to know what it might be.  To be walkin' along in the dark, always in
+the dark--to stumble an' fall an' hear a man laugh--to pitch head firs'
+over a box that had been slipped quiet in your way----"
+
+"Blenham did that sort of thing?" demanded Packard sharply.
+
+It would have done Bill Royce good to see the look in his eyes then.
+Royce nodded.
+
+"Blenham did whatever he could think of," he muttered colorlessly.
+"An' he could think of a good many things.  Just the same--maybe some
+day----"
+
+"And yet you stayed on, Bill?" when Royce's voice stopped.
+
+"I'd promised your dad I'd be here--with the coin--when you come back.
+He knew an' I knew you might blow in an' blow out an' never get word
+unless I was right here all the time.  An' ol' man Packard, after I was
+blind I went to him an' he promised I could stick as long as I just
+obeyed orders.  Which, I've done, no matter what they was.
+
+"But the end's come now; ain't it, Steve, ol' pardner?  But to get this
+tale tol' an' the money in your hands: I didn't know who'd tried to do
+for me, but I guessed it must have been some one who'd found out
+somehow about the ten thousan' an' thought I had it on me.  When I come
+to at the cabin an' firs' thing tried to get a chaw of tobacco I foun'
+my pockets all turned wrong side out.  It might have been Johnny Mills
+himself; he didn't know about the gun bein' fooled with; it might have
+been Blenham; it might have been Guy Little; it might have been
+somebody else.  But I've thought all along an' I pray God I was right
+an' that some day I'll know, that it was Blenham."
+
+He rose suddenly.
+
+"Come ahead, Steve," he said, his voice matter of fact as of old.
+"It's up to you to ride herd on your own simoleons now."
+
+"You've left it in the same place?  In the rock foundation-wall?"
+
+"Yes.  I couldn't find a safer place."
+
+"And you haven't been back to it all these months?"
+
+"Not until las' Saturday night.  It was jus' six months then.  I
+figgered it out I'd make sure once every six months.  I went in the
+middle of the night an' made sure nobody followed me, Steve.  Come
+ahead."
+
+Packard slipped his arm through Royce's and they went side by side.
+The night was filled with stars; there was no moon.  The wall, as they
+came around the corner of the house, shone palely here and there where
+a white surface glinted vaguely through the shadows.
+
+"Nobody aroun', is there, Steve?" whispered Royce.
+
+"Nobody," Packard assured him.  "Where is it, Bill?"
+
+Royce's hands, groping with the wall, rested at last upon a knob of
+stone near the base of the foundation.  He tugged; the stone, rudely
+squared, came away, leaving a gaping hole.  Royce thrust his hand in,
+searched briefly, and in a moment brought out a flat wallet clutched
+tightly.
+
+"Yours, Steve!" he said then, a quick, palpitating note of pure joy in
+his cry.  "Blind as I was, I put it over for you!  Here's ten thousan',
+Steve.  An' the chance to get ol' Number Ten back."
+
+Packard was taking the wallet proffered him.  Suddenly Royce jerked it
+back.
+
+"Let me make sure again," he said hastily.  "Let me be dead sure I've
+made good."
+
+He fumbled with the wallet, opened the flap, drew out the contents, a
+neat pack of folded bank-notes.  He counted slowly.
+
+"Ten of 'em," he announced triumphantly as he gave the wallet over to
+its proper owner.
+
+Packard took them and they went back to the house.  The rays of the
+lamp met them; through the open door, back to the living-room, they
+walked side by side.  The table between them, they sat down.  Packard
+put the wallet down, spread out the ten bank-notes.
+
+"Bill," he said, and there was a queer note in his voice, "Bill, you've
+gone through hell for me.  Don't I know it?  And you say I'd do as much
+for you?  Are you sure of it, Bill?"
+
+Royce laughed and rubbed his hands together.
+
+"Dead sure, Stevie," he said.
+
+Packard's eyes dropped to the table.  Before him were the ten crisp
+bank-notes.  Each was for one dollar.  Ten dollars in all.  His
+heritage, saved to him by Bill Royce.
+
+"Bill, old man," he said slowly, "you've taught me how to play the
+game.  Pray God I can be as white with a pardner as you have been."
+
+And, crumpling the notes with a sudden gesture, he thrust them into his
+pocket.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE OLD MOUNTAIN LION COMES DOWN FROM THE NORTH
+
+It was perhaps eight o'clock, the morning blue, cloudless, and still.
+Packard had conferred briefly with Barbee; the Ranch Number Ten men had
+gone about their work.  Steve and Bill Royce, riding side by side, had
+mounted one of the flat, treeless hills in the upper valley and were
+now sitting silent while Royce fumbled with his pipe and Steve sent a
+long, eager look down across the open meadow-lands dotted with grazing
+cattle.
+
+Suddenly their two horses and the other horses browsing in a lower
+field, jerked up their heads, all ears pricked forward.  And yet Steve
+had heard no sound to mar the perfect serenity of the young day.  He
+turned his head a little, listening.
+
+Then, from some remote distance there floated to him a sound strangely
+incongruous here in the early stillness, a subdued screech or scream, a
+wild, clamorous, shrieking noise which for the life of him he could not
+catalogue.
+
+It was faint because it came across so great a distance and yet it was
+clear; it was not the throbbing cry of a mountain lion, not the scream
+of a horse stricken with its death, nothing that he had ever heard, and
+yet it suggested both of these sounds.
+
+"Bill!" he began.
+
+"I heard it," Royce muttered.  "An' I've heard it before!  In a
+minute----"
+
+Royce broke off.  The sound, stilled a second, came again, seeming
+already much closer and more hideous.  Steve's horse snorted and
+plunged; some of the colts in the pasture flung up their heels and fled
+with streaming manes and tails.  Royce calmly filled and lighted his
+pipe.
+
+Stillness again for perhaps ten or twenty seconds.  Steve, about to
+demand an explanation from his companion, stared as once more came the
+shrieking noise.
+
+"You can hear the blame thing ten miles," grunted Royce.  "It's only
+about half that far away now.  Keep your eye glued on the road across
+the valley where it comes out'n Blue Bird Cañon."
+
+And then Steve understood.  Into the clear air across the valley rose a
+growing cloud of dust; through it, out of the cañon's shadows and into
+the sunlight, shot a glistening automobile, hardly more than a bright
+streak as it sped along the curving down-grade.
+
+"Terry Temple?" gasped young Packard.  Royce merely grunted again.
+
+"Jus' you watch," was all he said.
+
+And, needing no invitation, Packard watched.  The motor-car's siren--he
+had never heard another like it, knew that such a thing would not be
+tolerated in any of the world's traffic centres--sounded again a long,
+wailing note which went across the valley in billowing echoes.
+
+Then it grew silent as, with the last of the dangerous curves behind
+it, the long-bodied roadster swung into the valley.  Packard, an
+experienced driver himself, with his own share of reckless blood,
+opened his mouth and stared.
+
+It was hard to believe that the big, spinning wheels were on the ground
+at all; the machine seemed more like an aeroplane content with skimming
+the earth but hungry for speed.  Only the way in which it plunged and
+lurched and swerved and plunged again testified to highly inflated
+tires battling with ruts and chuck-holes.
+
+"The fool!" he cried as the car negotiated a turn on two wheels with
+never a sign of lessened speed.  "He'll turn turtle.  He's doing sixty
+miles an hour right now.  And on these roads----"
+
+"More likely doin' seventy-five," grunted Royce.  "Can do ten better'n
+that.  Out on the highway he's done a clean hundred.  That car, my
+boy----"
+
+"He's going into the ditch!" exclaimed Steve excitedly.
+
+The car, racing on, was already near enough for Steve to make out its
+two passengers, a man bent over the steering-wheel, another man, or
+boy, for the figure was small, clinging wildly to his place on the
+running-board, seeming always in imminent danger of being thrown off.
+
+"He's drunk!" snapped Packard angrily.  "Of all blind idiots!"
+
+Another strident blast from the horn, that sent staid old cows
+scurrying this way and that to get out of the way, and the car swerved
+from the road and took to the open field, headed straight toward the
+hill where the two horsemen were.  Jerking his horse about, Steve rode
+down to meet the new arrivals.  And then----
+
+"My God!  It's my grandfather!  He's gone mad, Bill Royce!"
+
+"No madder'n usual," said Royce.
+
+The car came to a sudden stop.  The man on the running-board--he had a
+man's face, keen and sharp-eyed and eager, and the body of a slight
+boy--jumped down from his place and in a flash disappeared under the
+engine.  The man at the wheel straightened up and got down, stretching
+his legs.  Steve, swinging down from his saddle, and coming forward,
+measured him with wondering eyes.
+
+And he was a man for men to look at, was old man Packard.  Full of
+years, he was no less full of vigor, hale and stalwart and breathing
+power.  A great white beard, cut square, fell across his full chest;
+his white mustache was curled upward now as fiercely as fifty years ago
+when he had been a man for women to look at, too.
+
+He was dressed as Steve had always seen him, in black corduroy
+breeches, high black boots, broad black hat--a man standing upward of
+six feet, carrying himself as straight as a ramrod, his chest as
+powerful as a blacksmith's bellows, the calf of his leg as thick as
+many a man's thigh; big, hard hands, the fingers twisted by toil; the
+face weatherbeaten like an old sea captain's, with eyes like the frozen
+blue of a clear winter sky.
+
+His voice when he spoke boomed out suddenly, deep and rich and hearty.
+
+"Stephen?" he demanded.
+
+Steve said "Yes" and put out his hand, his eyes shining, the surprising
+realization upon him that he was tremendously glad to see his father's
+father once more.  The old man took the proffered hand into a
+hard-locked grip and for a moment held it, while, the other hand on his
+grandson's shoulder, he looked steadily into Steve's eyes.
+
+"What sort of a man have they made of you, boy?" he asked bluntly.
+"There's the makings of fool, crook an' white man in all of us.  What
+for a man are you?"
+
+Steve flushed a little under the direct, piercing look, but said
+steadily--
+
+"Not a crook, I hope."
+
+"That's something, if it ain't everything," snorted the old man as,
+withdrawing his hand, he found and lighted a long stogie.  "Blenham
+tells me you fired him las' night?"
+
+Young Packard nodded, watching his grandfather's face for the first
+sign of opposition.  But just now the old man's face told nothing.
+
+"Thinking of runnin' the outfit yourself, Stephen?" came the next
+question quietly.
+
+"Yes.  I had intended looking in on you in a day or so to talk matters
+over.  I understand that my father left everything to me and that it is
+pretty heavily mortgaged to you."
+
+"Uhuh.  I let Phil have a right smart bit of money on Number Ten firs'
+an' las', my boy.  Don't want to pay it off this mornin', do you?"
+
+Steve laughed.
+
+"I'm broke, Grandy," he said lightly, unconsciously adopting the old
+title for the man who had made him love him and hate him a score of
+times.  "My working capital, estimated last night, runs about
+seventy-five dollars.  That wouldn't quite turn the trick, would it?"
+
+The old man's eyes narrowed.
+
+"You mean that seventy-five dollars is all you've got to show for
+twelve years?" he asked sharply.
+
+Again, hardly understanding why, Steve flushed.  Was a man to be
+ashamed that he had not amassed wealth, especially when there had never
+been in him the sustained desire for gold?  He owed no man a cent, he
+made his own way, he asked no favors--and yet there was a glint of
+defiance in his eye, a hint of defiance in his tone, when he replied
+briefly.
+
+"That's all.  I haven't measured life in dollars and cents."
+
+"Then you've missed a damn' good measure for it, my son!  I ain't
+sayin' it's the only one, but it'll do firs' class.  But you needn't
+get scared I've gone into the preaching business. . . .  An' with that
+seventy-five dollars you're startin' out to run a big cow outfit like
+this, are you?"
+
+There was a gleam of mockery in the clear blue eyes which Steve gave no
+sign of seeing.
+
+"I've got a big job on my hands and I know it," he said quietly.  "But
+I'm going to see it through."
+
+"There's no question about the size of the job!  It's life-size, man's
+size--Number Ten size, if you want to put it that way.  It wants a real
+man to shove it across.  Know just how much you're mortgaged for?"
+
+"No.  I was going to ask you."
+
+"Close to fifty thousan' dollars, countin' back interest, unpaid.
+More'n you ever saw in a day, I reckon."
+
+Steve shrugged.  This to hide his first inclination to whistle.  Fifty
+thousand--why, he didn't know Number Ten ranch was worth that much
+money.  But it must be worth a good deal more if his grandfather had
+advanced so much on it.
+
+"It is a nice little pile," he admitted carelessly.
+
+The old man grunted, thrust his hands into his pockets, and drew deeply
+at his stogie.  Steve rolled a cigarette.  In the silence falling upon
+them they could hear the sound of the mechanician's wrench.
+
+"Anything wrong with the car?" asked Steve for the sake of breaking
+unpleasant silence.
+
+"Not that I know of.  He's jus' takin' a peek to make sure, I guess.
+That's what he's for.  He knows I got to get back to my place in a
+couple of shakes."
+
+Steve smiled; by wagon road his grandfather's ranch home was fifty
+miles to the northward.
+
+"You won't think of going back before noon."
+
+"Won't I?  But I will, though, son; Blenham's sticking aroun', waitin'
+for my say-so what he'll do nex'."  He snapped open a big watch and
+stared at it a moment with pursed lips.  "I'll be back home in jus' one
+hour an' a half.  All I got is fifteen minutes to talk with you this
+mornin'."
+
+"You mean that you can drive those fifty miles in an hour and a
+quarter!"
+
+"Have done it in less; if I was in a hurry I'd do it in an hour flat.
+But allowin' for time out I want fifteen minutes more'n that.  And now,
+if we're goin' to get anywhere----"
+
+He stopped suddenly and stood toying with his big watch passing it back
+and forth through the loop he made of its heavy chain, his gaze steady
+and earnest and searching upon his grandson.
+
+"Stephen," he said abruptly, "I ain't playin' any favorites in my ol'
+age.  An' I ain't givin' away big chunks of money hit or miss.  You
+wasn't countin' on anything like that, was you?"
+
+"No, I wasn't," announced Steve quickly.  "I remember your old theory;
+that a man should make his own way unaided, that----"
+
+"That whatever he got he's got to get with his one head an' one set of
+han's.  Now, the things I got to say I'll spit out one at the time:
+Firs', I'd like to have you come visit me for a spell at my place.
+Will you do it?  To-day, to-morrow, any time you feel like it."
+
+"Yes; I'll be glad to."
+
+"That's good.  Nex', not even if you was the right man for the job you
+can't save this ranch now; it's too late, there's to much to dig up in
+too short a time.  I've got my hooks in deep an' whenever that happens
+I don't let go.  I want you to quit before you get started."
+
+Steve looked his surprise.
+
+"Surely," he said wonderingly, "you don't want me to give you the ranch
+just because you happen to hold the mortgages on it?"
+
+"Business is business, Stephen," said the old man sternly.  "Sometimes,
+between Packards, business is hell.  It'd be that for you.  I've
+started out to get this outfit an' I'd get it.  An' doin' it I'd be
+wastin' my time besides breakin' you all to smithereens.  Better drop
+it."
+
+Steve had hardly expected this.  But he answered calmly, even lightly.
+
+"I think I'd like a try at holding it."
+
+"That's two things," old man Packard said crisply.  "Number three is
+this here: Blenham tells, me you've put Royce in as foreman under you?"
+
+"I offered him the place.  He could have it yet if he wanted it.  But
+he refused.  I've passed the job on to a man named Barbee."
+
+"Barbee!" cried the old man.  "Barbee!  That yellow canary-bird?
+Meaning him?"
+
+"Yes," retorted Steve a trifle stiffly.  "Anything wrong with him?"
+
+"I didn't roll them fifty miles to talk about jay-birds an'
+canary-birds an' such," growled his grandfather.  "But here's one thing
+I've got to say: This ranch is goin' to be mine real soon; that's in
+the cards, face up.  It's as good as mine now.  I've been runnin' it
+myself for six months.  I want it right, hear me?  What do you know
+about running a big outfit?  What does a kid without whiskers like
+Barbee know about it?  Think I want it all run down in the heel when it
+comes to me?  No, sir!  I don't.  Blenham knows the lay of the land,
+Blenham knows my ways, Blenham knows how to run things.  I want you to
+put Blenham back on the job!"
+
+Steve bit his lip, holding back a hot reply.
+
+"Grandfather," he said slowly, "suppose we take a little more time in
+getting squared around?  I want to do what's right; I know that you
+want to do what's fair and square.  I am willing to consult you about
+ranch matters; I'll come to you for advice, if you'll let me; I'll try
+to keep the ranch up to time and"--with a smile--"in my hands and out
+of yours.  That's a good sporting proposition.  But as for Blenham----"
+
+"Put him back as foreman and I'll talk fair with you.  I want Blenham
+back here, Stephen.  Understand that?"
+
+"And," cried Steve a trifle heatedly at last, "I tell you that I am
+going to run the ranch myself.  And that I don't like Blenham."
+
+"Damn it," cried the old man violently, "hear the boy!  Don't like
+Blenham, huh?  Goin' to run the ranch yourself, huh?  Why, I tell you
+it's as good as mine right now!  How are you goin' to pay your men, how
+are you goin' to buy grub for 'em, where are you goin' to find
+runnin'-expense money?  Go an' tell folks you're mortgaged to me for
+fifty thousan' dollars an' see how much they'll stake you for on top of
+that.  Or come over my way an' try to borrow some more, if you think
+I'm an easy guy.  Why, Steve Packard, you--you're a tomfool!"
+
+"Thanks," said Steve dryly.  "I've heard that before."
+
+"An' you'll hear it again, by the Lord!  In ten languages if you'll
+find men talkin' that many lingos.  Here I come chasin' all this way to
+be decent to you, to see if there ain't some way to help you out----"
+
+"Help me out of my property," amended Steve.  "I can't remember
+anything else you offered to do for me!"
+
+"I said it once," shouted his grandfather, his two big fists suddenly
+clinched and lifted threateningly; "you're a howlin' young ass!  That's
+what for a man you've turned out to be, Stephen Packard.  Come here
+empty-handed an' try to buck me, would you?  Me who has busted better
+men than you all my life, me who has got my hooks in you deep already,
+me who ain't no pulin' ol' dodderin' softy to turn over to a lazy,
+shiftless vagabond all I've piled up year after year.  Buck me, would
+you?  Tuck in an' fire my men, butt on my affairs--  Why, you impudent
+young puppy-dog, you: I'll make you stick your tail between your legs
+an' howl like a kiote before I'm done with you!"
+
+Steve looked at him hopelessly; he might have expected this all along
+though he had hoped for amity at least.  If there were to be a conflict
+of purpose he could have wished that it be conducted in friendly
+fashion.  But when did Hell-Fire Packard ever clasp hands with the man
+he opposed in anything, when did he ever see a business rival without
+cloven hoof, horns, and spiked tail?
+
+"I am sorry you look at it that way, Grandy.  It is only natural that I
+should seek to hold what is mine."
+
+"Then hold your tongue, you young fool!" blazed out the old man.  "But
+don't ask me to hold my hand!  I'm goin' after you tooth and big
+toe-nail!  If Ranch Number Ten ain't mine in all partic'lars before
+you're a year older I want to know why!"
+
+"I think," said the grandson, fighting with himself for calmness and
+quiet speech, "that any further business I can take up with your
+lawyer.  Past due interest----"
+
+"Lawyer?" thundered Packard senior.  "Since when did I ever have call
+for law an' lawyers in my play?  Think I'm a crook, sir?  Mean to
+insinuate I'm a crook?"
+
+"I mean nothing of the kind.  A mortgage is a legal matter, the payment
+of interest and principal----"
+
+"Guy Little!" called the old man.  "Guy Little!  Goin' to stay under
+that car all day?"
+
+The mechanician promptly appeared, hands and face greasy and black and
+took his place on the running-board.
+
+"All ready, sir," he announced imperturbably.
+
+With half-a-dozen strides his master reached the car; in as many
+seconds the powerful engine was throbbing.  The screaming horn gave
+warning, the quiet herds in the valley heeded, lifted their heads and
+stood at attention, ready to scamper this way or that as need arose.
+The wheels turned, the car jolted over the inequalities presented by
+the field, swerved sharply, turned, gathered speed and whizzed away
+toward the valley road.
+
+
+Three times before they shot back into the mouth of Blue Bird Cañon the
+mechanician fancied that his employer had spoken; each time listening,
+he failed to catch any other sound than that made by the engine and
+speeding wheels.  Once he said, "Sir?" and got only silence for an
+answer.
+
+He shook his head and wondered; it was not Packard's way to mumble to
+himself.  And again, ready to jump for his life as the big car took a
+dangerous turn, his eyes glued to the sheer bank a few inches from the
+singing tires, he caught a sound through the blast of the sparton which
+surely must have come from the driver's lips.
+
+"What say?" yelled Guy Little.
+
+No answer.  He caught a fleeting glimpse of a farmer at the head of his
+two plunging horses where the man had hurriedly got them out of the way
+and up the flank of the mountain.  They raced on.  And again, surely
+Packard had said something.
+
+"Talkin' to me?" called Little.
+
+Then, for just a wee fraction of a second, Packard drew his eyes from
+the road and his look met the mechanician's.  The old man's eyes were
+shining strangely.
+
+"Damn it, Guy Little," he boomed out boisterously, "can't a man laugh
+when he feels that-away?"
+
+And it suddenly dawned upon Guy Little that ever since they had left
+Ranch Number Ten the old man had been chuckling delightedly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+IN RED CREEK TOWN
+
+The little town of Red Creek had an individuality all its own.  It
+might have prided itself, had it any civic sense whatever, upon its
+aloofness.  It stood apart from the rest of the world, at a safe
+distance from any of its rival settlements, even drawn apart as though
+distrustfully from its own railroad station which baked and blistered
+in the sun a good half-mile to the west.  Grown up here haphazardly
+long before the "Gap" had been won through by the "iron trail," it
+ignored the beckoning of the glistening rails and refused to extend
+itself toward the traffic artery.
+
+More than all this, Red Creek gave the impression, not in the least
+incorrect, of falling apart into two watchful sections which eyed each
+other suspiciously, being cynically and unsociably inclined.  Its main
+street was as wide as Van Ness Avenue and down the middle of it, like a
+border line between two hostile camps, sprawled a stream which shared
+its name with the town.
+
+The banks here and there were the brick-red of a soil whose chief
+mineral was iron; here and there were screened by willows.  There were
+two insecure-looking bridges across which men went infrequently.
+
+For the spirit which had brooded over the birth of Red Creek when a
+sheepman from the north and a cow-man from the south had set their
+shacks opposite each other, lived on now; long after the old feuds were
+dead and the whole of the grazing lands had been won over to the cattle
+raisers, a new basis for quarrels had offered itself at Red Creek's
+need.
+
+Much of this Steve Packard knew, since it was so in his time, before he
+had gone wandering; much he had learned from Barbee in a long talk with
+him before riding the twenty-five miles into the village.  Old Man
+Packard had drawn to himself a host of retainers since his interests
+were big, his hired-men many, his wages generous.  And, throughout the
+countryside across which he cast his shadow, he had cultivated and
+grown a goodly crop of enemies, men with whom he had contended, men
+whom he had branded sweepingly as liars and thieves and cutthroats, men
+whose mortgages he had taken, men whom, in the big game which he
+played, he had broken.  The northern half of Red Creek was usually and
+significantly known as Packard's Town; the southern half sold liquor
+and merchandise, offered food and lodging, to men who harbored few
+friendly feelings for Packard's "crowd."
+
+Hence, in Red Creek were two saloons, confronting each other across the
+red scar of the creek; two stores, two lunch-counters, two blacksmith
+shops, each eying its rival jealously.  At this time the post-office
+had been secured by the Packard faction; the opposition snorted
+contempt and called attention to the fact that the constable resided
+with them.  Thus honors were even.
+
+
+Steve Packard rode into town in the late afternoon, his motive
+clear-cut, his need urgent.  If Blenham had stolen his ten thousand
+dollars for which he had so imperative a call now, then Blenham had
+been the one who had replaced the large bank-notes with the small;
+there was the chance that Blenham, just a week ago to-night, had gotten
+the dollar bills in Red Creek.  If such were the case Packard meant to
+know it.
+
+"There are things, Barbee," he had said bluntly, "which I can't tell
+you yet; I don't know you well enough.  But this I can say: I am out to
+get Blenham's tag."
+
+"So'm I," said Barbee.
+
+"That's one reason you've got the job you're holding down right now.
+Here's one point though, which it's up to you to know; I very much
+suspect that for reasons of his own Blenham hasn't set foot for the
+last time on Ranch Number Ten.  He'll come back; he'll come snooping
+around at night; he'll perhaps have a way of knowing the first night
+I'm away and come then.  There's something he left there that he wants.
+At least that is the way I'm stringing my bet.  And while I am away
+you're foreman, Barbee."
+
+A flickering light danced in Barbee's blue eyes.
+
+"Orders from you, if Blenham shows up at night----"
+
+"To throw a gun on him and run him out!  The quickest way.  To-night I
+want you to squat out under a tree and keep awake--all night.  For
+which you can have two days off if you want."
+
+"If I thought he'd show," and the boy's voice was little more than an
+eager whisper, "I couldn't sleep if I tried!"
+
+Then Packard had spoken a little about Red Creek, asking his few
+questions and had learned that Blenham had his friends in "Packard's
+Town" where Dan Hodges of the Ace of Diamonds saloon was an old pal,
+that "Whitey" Wimble of the Old Trusty saloon across the street hated
+both Hodges and Blenham like poison.
+
+"Us boys," added Barbee, "always hung out at the Ace of Diamonds, bein'
+Packard's men.  After now, when I go on a rampage, I'm goin' to make
+frien's across the street.  Friends sometimes comes in handy in Red
+Creek," he added smilingly.
+
+
+The road, as one comes into Red Creek from the east, divides at the
+first bridge, one fork becoming the northern half of the intersected
+street, the other the southern half.  Steve Packard, filling his eyes
+with the two rows of similar shacks, hesitated briefly.
+
+Until now he had always gone to the Packard side; when a boy he had
+regarded the rival section with high contempt, looking upon it as
+inferior, sneering at it as a thoroughbred might lift lip at an
+unworthy mongrel.  The prejudice was old and deep-rooted; he felt a
+subtle sense of shame as though the eyes of the world were upon him,
+watching to see him turn toward the "low-down skunks an' varmints"
+which his grandfather had named these denizens of the defamed section.
+
+The hesitation was brief; he reined his horse impatiently to the left,
+riding straight toward the flaunting sign upon the lofty false front of
+the Old Trusty saloon.  But short as was his indecision it had not
+ended before he had glimpsed at the far end of the street the
+incongruous lines of an automobile--red racing type.
+
+"Boyd-Merril.  Twin Eight," thought Packard.  "So we'll meet on the
+same side after all, Miss Terry Pert!"
+
+There were seeds of content in the thought.  If it were to be range war
+between him and his grandfather, then since obviously the Temples had
+already been drawn into contention with the old man Packard, it was
+just as well the fates decreed that he and Terry should be on the same
+side of the fence, the same side of the fight, the same side of Red
+Creek.
+
+He tickled his horse with a light spur; despite the manner of their
+last encounter he could look forward with something akin to eagerness
+to another meeting.  For, he told himself carelessly, she amused him
+vastly.
+
+But the meeting was not just yet.  He saw Terry, jauntily, even saucily
+dressed, as she came out of the store and jumped into her car, marked
+how the bright sunlight winked from her high boots, how it flamed upon
+her gay red scarf, how it glinted from a burnished steel buckle in her
+hat band.  As bright as a sunbeam herself, loving gay colors about her,
+across the distance she fairly shone and twinkled.
+
+There was a faint shadow of regret in his eyes as she let in the clutch
+and whizzed away.  She was headed down the street, her back to him,
+driving toward the remote railroad station.  Off to the north he saw a
+growing plume of black smoke.
+
+"Going away?" he wondered.  "Or just meeting some one?"
+
+But he had come into Red Creek on a business in no way connected with
+Terry Temple.
+
+He had figured it out that Blenham, if it had been Blenham who had
+chanced on Bill Royce's secret and no longer ago than last Saturday
+night, would have wasted no time in acquiring the one-dollar bills for
+his trick of substitution; that if he had come for them to Red Creek
+that same night, after post-office and stores were closed, he would
+have sought them at one of the two saloons; that, since currency is at
+all times scarce in cattle towns in the West, he might have had to go
+to both saloons for them.
+
+Packard began investigations at the Old Trusty saloon whose doors stood
+invitingly open to the faint afternoon breeze.
+
+In the long room half-a-dozen idle men looked up at him with mild
+interest, withdrawing their eyes briefly from solitaire or newspaper or
+cribbage game or whatever had been holding their careless attention as
+he entered.
+
+A glance at them showed him no familiar face.  He turned to the bar.
+
+Behind it a man was polishing glasses with quick, skilful hands.  Steve
+knew him at once for Whitey Wimble.  He was a pronounced albino,
+unhealthy-looking, with overlarge, thin ears, small pale eyes, and
+teeth that looked like chalk.  Steve nodded to him and spun a dollar on
+the bar.
+
+"Have something," he suggested.
+
+Wimble returned his nod, left off his polishing to shove forward a
+couple of the glistening glasses, and produced a bottle from behind him.
+
+"Regards," he said apathetically, taking his whiskey with the
+enthusiasm and expression of a man observing his doctor's orders.
+"Stranger in Red Creek?"
+
+"I haven't been here," Steve answered, "for several years.  I never saw
+the town any quieter.  Used to be a rather gay little place, didn't it?"
+
+"It's early yet," said Whitey, going back to his interrupted task.
+"Bein' Saturday, the boys from the ranches will be showin' up before
+long.  Then it ain't always so quiet."
+
+Packard made his cigarette, lighted it, and then said casually: "How
+are you fixed for dollar bills in your strong-box?"
+
+"Nary," returned Whitey Wimble without troubling himself to look into
+his till.  "We don't see overmuch rag money in Red Creek."
+
+"Guess that's so," admitted Steve.  "They do come in handy, though,
+sometimes; when you want to send a dollar in a letter or something of
+that kind."
+
+"That's a fac', too; never thought of that."  Which, since he never
+wrote or received letters, was no doubt true.
+
+"Men around here don't have much use for paper money, do they?"
+continued Packard carelessly, his interest seeming to centre in his
+cigarette smoke.  "I'd bet a man the drinks nobody else has asked you
+for a dollar bill for the last six months."
+
+"You'd lose," said Whitey.  "I had three of 'em in the drawer for a
+coon's age; feller asked me for 'em jus' the other night."
+
+"Yes?"  He masked his eagerness as he thrust a quarter forward.  "The
+drink's on me then.  Let me have a cigar."
+
+Whitey also took a cigar, indicating friendliwise the better box.
+
+"Who was it asked you for the paper money?" Steve went on.  "He might
+have one he doesn't need."
+
+"It was Stumpy Collins.  The bootblack across the street."
+
+"I'll look him up; yesterday he had them, you say?"
+
+Wimble shook his head, gave the matter his thought a moment, and said:
+
+"It was las' Saturday night; I remember 'cause there was a right smart
+crowd in an' I was busy an' Stumpy kep' pesterin' me until I 'tended to
+him.  He won't have nothin' lef by this, though; it ain't Stumpy's way
+to save his money long.  Firs' time I ever knowed him to have three
+dollars all at once."
+
+From the Old Trusty Steve went across the street, leaving his horse in
+front of Wimble's door where there was a big poplar and a grateful
+shade.  Crossing the second of the two bridges he turned his eyes
+toward the railroad station; the red touring-car stood forth
+brilliantly in the sunshine, a freight train was just pulling in, Terry
+was not to be seen.
+
+"She'll eat before she starts back home," he thought, hastening his
+stride on to Hodges's place, the Ace of Diamonds.  "I'll see her at the
+lunch-counter."
+
+Tucked in beside the Ace of Diamonds was a bootblack stand, a crazy,
+home-made affair with dusty seat.  The wielder of the brush and polish
+was nowhere in evidence.   Steve passed and turned in at the saloon
+door, wishing to come to Hodges, Blenham's pal.  For it required little
+imagination to suspect that it had been Hodges at Blenham's behest, or
+Blenham himself, who had sent Stumpy across the street to the Old
+Trusty.
+
+Here, as in Wimble's place, a few men loitered idly; here as there the
+proprietor stood behind his own bar.  Hodges, a short, squat man with a
+prize-fighter's throat, chest, and shoulders and a wide, thin-lipped
+mouth, leaned forward in dirty shirt-sleeves, chewing at a moist
+cigar-stump.
+
+"Hello, stranger," he offered offhandedly.  "What's the word?"
+
+"Know Blenham, don't you?" asked Steve quietly.  "Works for old man
+Packard."
+
+"Sure, I know him.  What about him?"
+
+"Seen him lately?"
+
+"Ten minutes ago.  Why?  Want him?"
+
+Packard had not counted on this, having no idea that Blenham was in
+town.  He hesitated, then said quickly:
+
+"Hasn't left yet, has he?  Where is he now?"
+
+"Down to the depot.  Trailin' a skirt.  An' some skirt, too, take it
+from me."
+
+He laughed.
+
+Steve wanted suddenly to slap the broad, ugly face.  Since, however, he
+could formulate no logically sufficient reason for the act, he said
+instead:
+
+"Maybe I'll see him before I pull out.  If I don't, ask him if he lost
+a wad like this?"
+
+Fleetingly he flashed the little roll of banknotes before Hodges's eyes.
+
+"Greenbacks?" asked Hodges.  "How much?"
+
+Packard laughed.
+
+"Not so all-fired much," he said lightly.  "But enough to buy a hat!"
+
+"If hats are sellin' ten dollars or under?" ventured Hodges.
+
+Packard affected to look surprised.
+
+"What do you know about how much is in this roll?" he demanded
+innocently.
+
+"One-dollar bills?" said Hodges.  "Ten of 'em?"
+
+"You don't look like a mind-reader."
+
+"Well, you're right about the wad bein' Blenham's.  Leave it with me,
+if you want.  I'll see he gets it.  There ain't enough there for a man
+to steal," he added reassuringly.
+
+"How do you know it's Blenham's?  If he told you that he had lost it
+he'd have told you where.  What's the answer; where did I pick this up?"
+
+"Blenham didn't say he los' nothin'.  But I know it's his because he
+got most of them bills from me."
+
+"Tell me when," and Packard held the roll in a tight-shut hand, "and
+I'll leave them with you."
+
+"Las' Saturday night," said Hodges, after a brief moment of reflection.
+
+Packard tossed the little roll to the bar.
+
+"There's the money.  Tell Blenham I thought it was his!"
+
+He turned to the door, his blood suddenly stirred with certainty:
+Blenham had stolen the ten thousand dollars, and the theft had been
+committed no longer ago than last Saturday night.  Just a week--there
+was the chance----
+
+"Hey, there," called Hodges.  "Who'll I say lef this?  What name,
+stranger?"
+
+Steve turned and regarded him coolly.
+
+"Tell him Steve Packard called.  Steve Packard, boss of Ranch Number
+Ten."
+
+And Dan Hodges, dull wit that he was, felt that something was wrong.
+The look in the stranger's eyes had altered swiftly, the eyes had grown
+hard.  Steve went out.  As he reached the sidewalk he glimpsed a red
+automobile racing townward from the station.  Behind it, riding in its
+dust, came Blenham.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"IT'S MY FIGHT AND HIS.  LET HIM GO!"
+
+Steve Packard, walking swiftly, reached the west bridge just before the
+front tires of Terry's car thudded on the heavy planks.  He glimpsed
+Blenham jogging along behind her and knew that Blenham had seen him.
+
+But his eyes were for Terry now.  She, too, had recognized him with but
+a few yards separating them.  She gave him a blast of her horn
+warningly, and, slowing down no more than was necessary for the sharp
+turn, came on across the bridge.  He read it in her eye that it would
+be an abiding joy for Miss Terry if she could send him scampering out
+of her way; the horn as much as said: "You step aside or I'll run you
+down!"
+
+With no intention of going under the wheels, Steve waited until the
+last moment and then jumped.  But not to the side as Terry had
+anticipated.  Obeying his impulse and taking his chance, he sprang up
+to her running-board as she whizzed over the bouncing planks of the
+bridge, grasping the door of her car to steady himself.  The feat
+safely accomplished, he grinned up into Terry's startled eyes.
+
+"We meet again," he laughed sociably.  "Howdy!"
+
+Her lips tight-pressed, she gave her attention for a moment to her
+wheel and the rutty road in front of her.  Her cheeks were red and grew
+redder.  Perhaps a dozen men, here and there upon the street, had seen.
+She had meant them to see; it would have tickled her no little to have
+had them note Steve Packard flying wildly to the side of the road while
+she shot by.  She had not counted upon him doing anything else.
+
+"Smarty!" she cried hotly.
+
+"Smart enough to climb out from under when an automobile driven by a
+manslaughter artist comes along," he chuckled, sensing an advantage and
+drawing a deep enjoyment from it.  "Don't you know, young lady, you've
+got to be careful sometimes?  Now, if you had run over me----"
+
+"Serve you right," sniffed Terry.
+
+"Yes, but think!  Running over a man who hasn't had time to take his
+spurs off yet, why you stood all kinds of chances getting a puncture!
+You don't want to forget things like that."
+
+Terry bit her lip, stepped on the throttle, swung across the street,
+made a reckless turn, and brought up in front of the lunch-counter.
+
+"Do you know," remarked Packard lightly, ignoring the fact that she had
+answered him with only the contempt of her silence, "you remind me of
+my grandfather.  Fact!  You two have the same little trick of driving.
+Wonder what would happen if you and he met on a narrow road?"
+
+"At least," said Terry, eying him belligerently, "he is a man, if he is
+a scoundrel.  Not just a hobo!"
+
+"Oh, I didn't mean to call you a scoundrel!  Nor yet to say that you
+struck me as mannish.  Of course----"
+
+"Oh, you make me sick!" cried Terry.  And she flashed away from him,
+going into the lunch-room.
+
+He followed her with speculative eyes.  Then he glanced across the
+street.  Blenham had dismounted in front of the Ace of Diamonds and was
+watching.  As Packard turned Blenham went into Hodges's saloon.
+
+"Wonder what he'll have to say when Hodges hands him his roll?" mused
+Packard.
+
+Well, he had accomplished his purpose.  He had done all that he had
+hoped to do in Red Creek this afternoon, had assured himself that his
+suspicions against Blenham were justified by the fact and that the
+theft was only a week old.  He went back slowly to his horse in front
+of the Old Trusty.  But his eyes were frowning thoughtfully.
+
+What would be Blenham's next move?  What would Blenham do, what would
+he say when Hodges gave him Packard's message?  Might he, in an
+unguarded moment, give a hint toward the answer of that other question
+which now had become the only consideration: "Were the larger banknotes
+still hidden at Ranch Number Ten or had Blenham already removed them?"
+
+Instead of mounting to ride away, Packard hung his spurs upon his
+saddlehorn and turned again into Whitey Wimble's place.
+
+The late afternoon faded into dusk, the first stars came out, Whitey
+Wimble lighted his lamps.  Steve, advised of the fact by the purr of a
+motor, knew when Terry left the lunch-room and drove to the store for a
+visit with the storekeeper's wife.  Was she going to remain in town
+overnight?  It began to look as though she were.
+
+Across the street Hodges came out and lighted the big lamps at each
+side of his doorway.  A cowboy swung down from his horse and went in,
+his spurs winking in the lamplight as though there were jewels upon
+them.  A buckboard pulled up and two other men went in after him.  A
+voice in sudden laughter boomed out.  Saturday night had come.  As
+Whitey Wimble had predicted, the boys were showing up and Red Creek
+stood ready to lose something of its brooding afternoon quiet.
+
+Once again Packard crossed the bridge and made his way along the
+echoing wooden sidewalk to the Ace of Diamonds.  A dozen saddle-horses
+were tied at the hitching-rail.  Among them was Blenham's white-footed
+bay.  Up and down the street glowing cigarette ends like fireflies came
+and went.  In front of the saloon a number of men made a good-natured,
+tongue-free crowd, most of whom had had their first drinks and were
+beginning to liven up as in duty bound on a Saturday night.
+
+A four-horse wagon came rattling into town from the east to pour out
+its contents, big, husky men, at Hodges's door.  Among them Packard
+recognized one man.  He was the lumber-camp cook from whom he had
+gotten coffee and hotcakes the other day, that morning after he had
+refused to accept Terry's cool invitation to breakfast.
+
+"I'll have to look in on those fellows tomorrow," he thought as they
+shouldered past, boisterous and eager.  "Grandy's sure had his nerve
+cutting my timber with never so much as a by-your-leave."
+
+Their foreman was with them; one glance singled him out.  He was of
+that type chosen always by old man Packard to head any one of the
+Packard units, a sort of confident mastery in his very stride, the
+biggest man of them, unkempt and heavy, with a brutal face and hard
+eyes.  Joe Woods, his name.  Packard had already heard of him, a rowdy
+and a rough-neck but a capable timberjack to the calloused fingers of
+him.  He followed the men into the saloon.
+
+At his place behind the long bar was Hodges, busy filling imperative
+orders, taking in the money which he counted as good as his once it
+left the paymaster's pocket.  But it struck Packard that the bartender
+did not appear happy; his face was flushed and hot, his eyes looked
+troubled.  Now and then he flashed a quick look at Blenham who stood
+leaning against the bar at the far end, twisting an empty whiskey-glass
+slowly in his big hand, staring frowningly at nothing.
+
+"Hodges is a fool and he has just been told so!" was Steve's answer to
+the situation.
+
+"Hi, Blenham!" called big Joe Woods.  "Have a drink."
+
+"No," growled Blenham, deep down in his throat.  "I don't want it.
+I----"
+
+His eyes, lifted to the lumber-camp boss, passed on and rested on Steve
+Packard.  He broke off abruptly, his look changing, probing, seeming
+full of question.
+
+"Get the money I gave Hodges for you?" asked Packard, coming into the
+room.  "The ten one-dollar bills that you left behind you?"
+
+"They wasn't mine," said Blenham quickly, his hand hard about the
+whiskey glass, his manner vaguely nervous.  "I tol' Dan to give 'em
+back to you."
+
+Steve smiled.
+
+"Funny," he said carelessly.  "Hodges said----"
+
+"I made a mistake," called Hodges sharply.  "I got Blenham mixed up
+with some other guy.  I don't know nothin' about this here."  He
+slammed the little roll down on the bar.  "Come get it, if you want
+it."  Packard promptly stepped forward, taking the money.
+
+"I figured there was a chance to make ten dollars, easy money, if I
+just walked across the street for it," he said, looking pleasantly from
+Hodges to Blenham.  "Sure, I want it.  It's luck-money; didn't you
+know?  You see, when a man loses anything he loses some of his luck
+with it; when another man gets it, he gets the luck along with it.
+Thanks, Blenham."
+
+Blenham made no answer.  His eyes were bright with anger and yet
+troubled with uncertainty.  The uncertainty was there to be recognized
+by him who looked keenly for it.  Blenham did not know just which way
+to jump.  From that fact Steve drew a deep satisfaction.  For there
+would have been no reason for indecision if Blenham knew that he had
+those other, bigger bank-notes, safe.
+
+At the rear of the long room a man was dealing cards for
+seven-and-a-half.  As though to demonstrate the truth of his boast
+about "luck-money" Steve stepped to the table, the roll of bills in his
+hand.  He was dealt a card.  Without turning it up to look at it he
+shoved it under the ten banknotes.
+
+"Standing?" said the dealer.
+
+Steve nodded.
+
+"Playing my luck," he answered.
+
+The dealer turned lack-lustre eyes upon Steve's card, then upon his own
+which he turned up.  It was the four of clubs.
+
+"I've the hunch that will beat you, pardner," he said listlessly.  "But
+I'll come again."
+
+He turned another card, a deuce.
+
+"That'll about beat you," he suggested.  He leaned forward for Steve's
+card.  "Unless you've got a seven in the hole."
+
+And a seven it was; the bright red seven of hearts.  The dealer paid,
+ten dollars to Steve's ten.
+
+"Come again?" he asked.
+
+"Not to-night," returned Packard.  "I took just the one flutter to show
+Blenham."
+
+He turned and saw that Blenham had already slipped quietly out of the
+room.  Dan Hodges, his face a fiery red, was just coming back from the
+card-room.  With him was the big timber boss.
+
+"Tin-horn!" shouted Joe Woods at Packard.  "Quitter!"
+
+A quick joy spurted up in Steve Packard's heart; he was right about
+Blenham.  Blenham, filled with anxiety, had gone already, would be
+rushing back to Ranch Number Ten to make sure if the ten thousand
+dollars were safe or had been discovered already by the rightful owner.
+He had slipped away hurriedly but, after the fashion of a careful,
+practical man, had taken time to confer with Dan Hodges and had
+commissioned Joe Woods to hold Packard here.  And so, though he could
+not remember of having ever run away from a fight before, Steve Packard
+was strongly of that mind right now.
+
+"Joe Woods, I believe?" he said coolly, his mind busy with the new
+problem of a new situation.  "Boss of the timber crew on the east side
+of Number Ten?  I was planning on riding out to-morrow for a word with
+you, Woods."
+
+"So?" cried Woods.  "What's the matter with havin' that word to-night?"
+
+"Haven't time," was the simple rejoinder.  "I'm about due across the
+street now; at Whitey Wimble's place."
+
+"Which is where you belong," growled Woods, his under jaw thrust
+forward, his whole attitude charged with quarrelsome intent.  "Over at
+the White Rat's with the rest of the Willies!"
+
+The ever-ready Packard temper was getting into Steve's head, beating in
+his temples, pounding along his pulses.  He had never had a man bait
+him like that before.  But he strove to remember Blenham only, to take
+stock of the fact that this was a bit of Blenham's game, and that any
+trouble with another than Blenham was to be avoided at this juncture.
+So, though the color was rising into his face and a little flicker of
+fire came into his eyes, he said briefly:
+
+"Then I'd better go across, hadn't I?  See you in the morning, Woods."
+
+But there is always the word to whip the hot blood into the coolest
+head, to snare a man's caution out of him and inject fury in its stead,
+and Joe Woods, a downright man and never a subtle, put his tongue to
+it.  On the instant Packard gave over thought of such side issues as a
+man named Blenham and hidden bank-notes.
+
+He cried out inarticulately and leaped forward and struck.  Joe Woods
+reeled under the first blow full in the face, staggered under the
+second, and was borne back into the tight-jammed crowd of his followers.
+
+The men about him and Packard withdrew this way and that, leaving empty
+floor space to accommodate the two pairs of shuffling boots.  Joe Woods
+wiped his lips with the back of a big, hairy hand, saw traces of blood,
+and charged.  The sound of blows given and taken and of little grunts
+and of scraping feet were for a space the only sounds heard in Hodges's
+saloon.
+
+[Illustration: The men about him and Packard withdrew this way and
+that, leaving empty floor space.]
+
+Packard's attack had been swift and sure and not without a certain
+skill; against it Woods opposed all he had, ponderous strength,
+slow-moving, brutal force, broad-backed, deep-chested endurance.  But
+from the first it was clear to all who watched and was suspected by
+Woods himself that he had chosen the wrong man.
+
+Steve was taller, had the longer reach, was gifted by the gods with a
+supple strength no whit less than the bearish power of the timber boss.
+With ten blows struck, with both men rocking dizzily, it was patently
+Steve Packard's fight.  But a dull, dogged persistence was in Joe
+Woods's eyes as again he shook his head and charged.
+
+Steve struck for the stomach and landed--hard.  Woods doubled up; the
+sweat came in drops upon his forehead; his face went suddenly a sick
+white.  But the light in his eyes, as again he lifted his head, was
+unaltered.
+
+"He can lick me--I know it!  He can lick me--I know it!" he muttered
+and kept muttering.  "But, by God, he's got to do it!"
+
+And Steve did it and men looked on queerly, appraising him anew.  He
+took Woods's blows when he must and felt the pain go stabbing through
+his body; but he stood up and struck back and forced the fight
+steadily, crowding his adversary relentlessly, seeming always to strike
+swifter and harder.
+
+It was a bleeding fist driven into Joe Woods's throbbing throat,
+followed by the other fist, going piston-like, at Joe Woods's stomach,
+that ended the fight.
+
+The bigger man crumpled and went down slowly like one of his own trees
+just toppling, and lay staring up into Packard's face with dull eyes.
+Steve stepped over him, going to the door.
+
+"I'll see you in the morning, Woods," he panted.
+
+But again boots were shuffling on the floor and already several men,
+Dan Hodges among them, were between him and the door.  It dawned upon
+him that Blenham must have given emphatic orders and that Blenham had
+the trick of exacting obedience.
+
+"Hold him here," shouted Hodges, and being a man of little spirit he
+withdrew hastily under Steve's eyes, thrusting another man in front of
+him.  "Keep him for the sheriff.  Startin' a fight in my place--it's
+disturbin' the peace, that's what it is!  I won't stand it!"
+
+Packard drew back two or three paces, his eyes narrowing.  At that
+instant he was sure of what he saw in the faces of at least three of
+the men confronting him; they were going to rush him together.
+
+But now Joe Woods was on his feet again.  Packard drew still further
+back, getting the wall behind him.  And then came a diversion.  It was
+Joe Woods speaking heavily:
+
+"I fought him fair an' he licked me.  Think I'm the kind of a she-man
+as stands for you guys buttin' in on my fight?  Stand back an' let him
+go!"
+
+"Blenham said--" screamed Hodges.
+
+"Damn Blenham an' you, too," growled Woods.  "It's my fight an' his.
+Let him go!"
+
+They let him go, drawing apart slowly.  With watchful eyes Steve passed
+down the little lane they made.  At the door he turned, saying briefly:
+
+"I'll see you in the morning, Woods!"
+
+Then he went out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A RIDE WITH TERRY
+
+Returning at once to the Old Trusty, on the way passing Terry's car
+which still stood in front of the store, Steve Packard asked for the
+use of a telephone.  Whitey nodded toward the office, a little room
+thinly partitioned off from the larger.  A moment later Barbee's voice
+was answering from Ranch Number Ten.
+
+"He's on the way, Barbee," said Steve quickly.  "Left Red Creek just a
+few minutes ago.  I'll trail him.  Give him the chance to prowl around
+a little; try and find what he's after.  But don't let him get away
+with it!  Understand?  Shoot the legs out from under him if you have
+to.  I'll give you a month's pay for the night's work if you nail him
+with the goods on."
+
+Clicking up the receiver he went out on the street again, giving no
+heed to the many glances which followed him.  They knew who he was;
+they were speculating on him.  "Ol' man Packard's gran'son," he heard
+one man say.
+
+In the thick darkness lying under the poplar tree it was several
+minutes before he was certain that his horse was gone.  He had tethered
+the animal himself; there was no dangling bit of rope to indicate a
+broken tie-rope.  Blenham, the practical, had simply taken thought of
+detail.
+
+"Not missing a single bet, is Blenham," he thought savagely.
+
+He swung about and reentered the saloon.  A buzz of talk up and down
+the long room promptly died away as again the eyes of many men
+travelled his way.  It struck him that they had all been talking of
+him; he knew that they must have marked those signs which Joe Woods's
+fists had left on his face; he stood a moment looking in on them,
+conscious for the first time of his rapidly swelling right eye, seeking
+to estimate what these men made of him.
+
+It seemed to him that the one emotion he glimpsed on all hands and in
+varying degrees, was distrust.  Little cause for surprise there: he was
+a Packard and this was not the Packard side of Red Creek.
+
+"Somebody's put me on foot," he announced crisply.  "I left my horse
+outside, tied.  It's gone now.  Know anything about it, any of you
+boys?"
+
+They looked their interest.  Hereabouts one man did not trifle with
+another man's horse.  But there was no answer to his direct question.
+
+"I've got to be riding," he went on quietly.  "Who can lend me a
+saddle-horse for the night?  I'll pay double what it's worth."
+
+Whitey Wimble gave his bar a long swipe with his wet towel.
+
+"If you're askin' favors, seems to me you're on the wrong side the
+street, ain't you, stranger?"
+
+"Meaning I am a Packard?"
+
+"You got me the firs' time.  That's Packard's Town over yonder.  Your
+crowd----"
+
+"Look at my eye!" then said Steve quickly.
+
+A big man with a thin little voice at the far end of the room giggled.
+
+"I seen it already," said Wimble.
+
+"Know Joe Woods?  Well, he's got another just like it.  Know Blenham?
+Blenham sicked him on me!  Know old man Packard?  He's sicking Blenham
+on me.  Want to know what I want a horse for?  Blenham's got a head
+start and I want to overhaul him!  To tell him he's a crook and a
+thief.  Now is this side of Red Creek open to me or is it shut?  What's
+the answer, Whitey Wimble?"
+
+Wimble appeared both impressed and yet hesitant.  Here was a Packard to
+deal with and Whitey Wimble when taking over the destiny of the Old
+Trusty had been set clear in the matter that he had a ripe, old feud to
+maintain; and still, looking at it the other way, here was a man who
+carried the sign of Joe Woods's fist upon his bruised face, who
+announced that he was out to get Blenham, that there was open trouble
+between him and old man Packard.
+
+Whitey Wimble, beginning by looking puzzled, wound up by turning a
+distressed face toward Steve.
+
+"It's kind of a fine point," he suggested finally.  "Now, come right
+down to it, it sort of looks to me----"
+
+"Fine point!" cried Steve hotly, a sudden anger growing within him as
+he thought how Blenham had played the game all along the line, how
+Blenham might well prove too shrewd for a boy like Barbee, how a set of
+prejudiced fools here in the Old Trusty by denying him the loan of a
+horse might seriously be aiding Blenham whom none of them had any love
+for.  "Why, damn it, man, haven't I told you that Blenham has just put
+a raw deal across on me, that he's coming close to getting away with
+it, that all I ask is a horse to run him down?  Who's going to let me
+have one?  I'm in a hurry!"
+
+Never until now did he realize how strong a factor in the life of the
+community was the prejudice against his blood.  On every hand he saw
+doubt, clouded eyes, distrust.  Plainly many a man there held him for a
+liar; would even go so far, it was possible, as to suggest later that
+Steve Packard had meant to steal the horse he asked for.  Steve stared
+about him a moment, his back stiffening.  Then, with a little grunt of
+disgust, he strode across the room.
+
+"At least," he flung over his shoulder at Whitey Wimble, "I am going to
+use your telephone again!"
+
+Without waiting for an answer and caring not the snap of his fingers
+what that answer might be, he went to the telephone, jerking down the
+receiver, saying brusquely to the operator:
+
+"Ranch Number Ten, please.  In a hurry."
+
+He waited impatiently and, it seemed to him, an inexcusably long time.
+Finally the operator said after the aloof manner of telephone girls:
+
+"I am ringing them."
+
+And again----
+
+"I am ringing them."
+
+And then----
+
+"They do not answer."
+
+And at last, and then only when Steve made emphatic that there must be
+some one at the Number Ten bunk-house at this hour, the girl said:
+
+"Wait a minute."
+
+And after that:
+
+"There seems to be something the matter with the line.  I can't raise
+any of the ranch-houses out that way.  We'll send a man out in the
+morning."
+
+So he couldn't even warn Barbee that Blenham had made good his
+head-start; that Blenham was plainly of one mind to-night; that it was
+up to young Barbee to keep his eyes open and his gun cocked.  He began
+to understand why his grandfather had made Blenham one of his
+right-hand men; he had the cool mind and the way of acting quickly
+which makes for success.
+
+"I got a horse for you, pardner," said a slow voice as Packard came out
+of the office.  "A cayuse as can't be beat for legs an' lungs.  Come
+ahead."
+
+Steve looked at him eagerly.  He was a little fellow, leather-cheeked,
+keen-eyed, leisurely; a stranger, obviously a cowboy.
+
+"I work for Brocky Lane," offered the stranger as they went out
+together.  "Know him, don't you?"
+
+"I did a dozen years ago," answered Steve absently.  "Where's your
+horse?"
+
+"You're Steve Packard, ain't you?  You done Brocky a favor when you was
+a kid, didn't you?  Brocky told me.  Brocky's done me a favor.  I'm
+doin' you a favor.  That squares us up all 'round.  Like a circle, all
+in a ring, sort of; get me?"
+
+"Yes," agreed Steve, feeling vaguely that the cowman had unknowingly
+touched upon a problem in higher mathematics.  He slipped a hand into
+his pocket.
+
+But the friend whom an old, long-forgotten kindness raised now for him
+at his need, shook his head, would have none of Packard's money, and
+led the way to a shed behind the saloon.  Out of the darkness he
+brought a tall, wall-eyed roan, quickly saddled and bridled and handed
+over to Steve.
+
+"Heeled?" came solicitously from the little man as Steve swung up into
+the saddle.
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, Blenham is.  He goes that way all the time.  An' he's a right
+good shot, the boys say.  If there's some real sour blood stirred up
+between him an' you there's no use bein' a plumb fool, is there?  The
+store's apt to be open yet; there's a firs'-class double-barrel
+shot-gun, secon'-hand but as good as new, in the window.  Only seven
+dollars an' a half."
+
+"I'll send the horse over to Brocky's to-morrow," called Steve.  "And
+as for being square--call on me at any time for the next favor.  So
+long."
+
+"So long," responded the slow-voiced man.
+
+Steve swung out toward the east, curbing his mount's eagerness,
+settling himself in the saddle for a couple of hours of hard riding.
+Slowly he would warm up the big roan, letting him out gradually,
+steadily.  Already he sensed that in truth here was "a cayuse hard to
+beat for legs an' lungs."  And Blenham's head-start was but a matter of
+minutes, half an hour at most.
+
+But before he had ridden fifty yards Steve whirled his horse and rode
+back, going straight to the store.  After all, since Blenham was
+playing a game in which the stakes were no less than ten thousand
+dollars, since Blenham was without doubt the man who had sought to kill
+Bill Royce six months ago for the very same money, since Blenham always
+"went heeled and was a right good shot," why then, as Brocky Lane's
+cowboy put it, "there was no use bein' a plumb fool."  And to ride a
+hundred yards or so and buy a Colt .45 and a box of cartridges required
+but a moment.
+
+In the store the long shelves upon one side held dry-goods, while upon
+the opposite shelves a miscellany of groceries was displayed; toward
+the rear was the storekeeper's assortment of hardware near a counter
+piled high with sweaters, boots, chaparejos, all jumbled hopelessly.
+At the flank of this confusion was a show-case containing a rather fair
+line of side-arms.  Steve, his eye finding what it sought, went
+straight to the back of the house.  And then, looking through an open
+door which gave entrance to the living-room of the storekeeper's
+family, his glance met Terry's.  She was rising to her feet, drawing on
+her gauntlets.
+
+"That's your train now," a woman's voice was saying.
+
+Packard heard the whistling of a distant engine.  He lifted his hat,
+she promptly whirled about, giving him her back to look at.
+
+"Here's what I want," said Steve as the storekeeper came to his side.
+"That .45, and a box of cartridges."
+
+Terry turned again quickly and he surprised a little look of interest
+in her slightly widened eyes.  A man doesn't buy a gun and a box of
+cartridges at this time of night unless he has a use for them.  Packard
+took up his new purchases, went out, swung again into the saddle, and
+clattered down the street.
+
+The night was bright with stars, clear and sweet.  Presently, with only
+a handful of miles behind him, the moon rose above the distant ridge,
+at the full, glorious and generous of light.  He loosened his reins a
+little, gave the big roan his head, and swept on through the
+ghostly-lighted country.
+
+Now and then, remarking some old remembered landmark, he glanced from
+it to his watch; more than once, having slipped his watch again into
+his pocket, he leaned forward and patted the horse's neck.
+
+Then--he had done a little more than half the distance and was riding
+through the thick shadows of Laurel Cañon, which marks the beginning of
+the long grade--the unforeseen occurred; the unlooked-for which, he
+knew now, he would have fully expected, had he not counted always upon
+Blenham playing a lone hand.
+
+In the middle of the inky blotch made by the laurels standing up
+against the moon there was a spot through which the moon-rays found
+their way, making a pool of light.  As Packard rode into this bright
+area he heard a rifle-shot, startlingly loud; saw the spit of flame
+from just yonder, perhaps ten feet, certainly not more than twenty feet
+away; felt the big roan plunge under him, race on unsteadily, and sink.
+
+He slipped out of the saddle as the horse crashed down in the bushes at
+the side of the road, and as he did so emptied his revolver into the
+shadows whence had come the rifle-shot.  But he knew that he was a fool
+to hope to hit; the man had had time to select his spot, to screen his
+own body with a boulder or fallen log, to leave open behind him a way
+to safety and darkness.
+
+"Not Blenham himself but one of his crowd did that," muttered Packard
+as he turned back to the fallen horse.  "Just to set me on foot again.
+He isn't up to murder when he sees another way.  And for ten dollars he
+could hire one of his hangers-on to kill a horse."
+
+Well, it was just another trick for Blenham.  On foot now he must make
+what time he could to the Pinchot farm, some three or four miles
+further on, demand a horse there, and pray that Barbee was equal to his
+task.  But first he must not leave the big roan to suffer needlessly
+and hopelessly.
+
+He struck a match and made a flaring torch of a little wisp of dry
+grass.  Loving a good horse as he did, he felt a sudden and utterly new
+sort of hatred of Blenham go rushing along his blood.
+
+It was with a deep sigh of relief that he straightened up when he saw
+that either chance or a remarkable skill with a rifle had saved Brocky
+Lane's roan from any protracted pain.
+
+Packard pushed on, seeking to make what time he could, breaking into a
+jog-trot time and again upon a down-slope, conserving wind and strength
+for the up-hill climbs, keeping in the shadows for the most part but
+taking his chance over and over in the moonlit open.
+
+Yet it was being borne in upon him that it was useless to hurry now;
+that Blenham had made of his advantage a safe lead; that he might as
+well slow down, make a cigarette, take his time.  And still, being the
+sort of man he was, he kept doggedly on, telling himself that a race is
+anybody's race until the tape is broken; that Blenham might be having
+his own troubles somewhere ahead; that quitting did no good and that it
+is not good to be a "quitter."  But he had little enough hope of coming
+up again with Blenham that night.
+
+And then, when he had been on foot not more than twenty minutes, a
+faint, even, drumming sound swelling steadily through the night
+somewhere behind him put a new, quick stir in his blood.  He stopped,
+stood almost breathless a moment, listening.
+
+The smooth drumming grew louder; suddenly topping a rise the two
+headlights of an automobile flashed into his eyes.  Terry Temple, her
+errand done in Red Creek, was racing homeward.
+
+"And I'll beat Blenham to it yet!" cried Steve.
+
+Where the moonlight streamed brightest and whitest across the road he
+sprang out so that she could not fail to see him, tossing up both arms
+in signal to her to stop.  Her headlights blinded him one moment; he
+heard the warning blast of her horn; he entertained briefly the
+suspicion that she was going to refuse to stop.
+
+Incredible--and yet he had not thought of her own likely emotions.  To
+have a man leap out into the road in front of her, all unexpectedly,
+waving his arms and calling on her to stop--  Why, she'd think herself
+fallen into the hands of a highwayman!
+
+She was coming on, straight on, her horn emitting one long, sustained
+shriek of menace.  Packard ground his teeth; either she did not
+recognize him and was bound upon getting by him, or she did recognize
+him and was accepting her opportunity to emphasize her attitude toward
+him.
+
+In any case she was going by, she in whom lay his sole hope to come to
+grips with Blenham.  If he let her evade he might as well quit, quit in
+utter disgust with the world.
+
+With the world?  Disgust with himself, that he had let Blenham beat
+him, that he wasn't much of a man, that his old grandfather was right
+about him.  Her car was rushing down upon him; if he let it pass, why,
+he'd be letting, not only a girl laugh at him, but he'd be letting his
+chance rush by him.  His chance that loomed up bigger than the oncoming
+machine and more real; his chance not for to-night alone but for ever
+after.
+
+For if Blenham beat him to-night and his grandfather beat him again
+later on, he knew that he would pass away from the country about Ranch
+Number Ten, that he would give over all sustained effort to make
+something of his life, that he would go back to drifting, rounding out
+his days after the fashion of the last twelve years.  It was while
+Terry's car was speeding toward him that all of this ran through his
+mind.
+
+There was the possibility that, knowing who he was, Terry would try to
+bluff him out of the road, counting confidently upon his leaping to
+safety at the last moment; there was the other possibility that she
+mistook his motives and would run him down in a sort of panic of
+self-defense.
+
+Packard, with his rather clear-cut conception of the girl's character
+to steer by, saw the one way to master the situation.  Whirling about,
+his back to her now, he broke into a run, speeding along the road in
+front of her.  As he ran the hard lines about his mouth softened into a
+rare grin: he'd have her guessing for a minute, anyway.  And by the
+time she got through guessing----
+
+He had duplicated his feat of the afternoon at the bridge in Red Creek.
+Terry, in her first astonishment that the man should turn and run
+straight on in front of her, slowed down, hesitation in her mind.  What
+was he up to?  Then there came sudden shadows in a narrow part of the
+road, a sharp turn, the absolute necessity of slowing down just a
+trifle more, and then----
+
+"It's all right; go ahead!" called Packard lightly.  He was standing on
+her running-board.
+
+She had thrown off her hat to the cool of the evening.  As they passed
+out from the shadows he could see her eyes.  He pushed back his own hat
+and Terry saw his eyes.  For a moment, while the car sped on, neither
+spoke.
+
+Looking at her he had glimpsed wonder, an annoyance that was swiftly
+growing into anger, and a certain assurance that Miss Terry Temple
+fully intended to remember this day and to square accounts with Stephen
+Packard.
+
+Returning his look, Terry had seen but one emotion in his eyes: pure
+triumph.  She could not know how the man of him, having but just now
+succeeded in this first task he had set himself, felt a sudden
+confidence of the future.
+
+"If I had let you go by," said Packard quietly, "I should have felt
+that I had let my destiny pass me!"
+
+"Don't you start in getting fresh just because it's moonlight!"
+
+Steve looked puzzled, understood, put back his head and laughed
+joyously.  Then, his face suddenly serious again, he considered her
+speculatively.  Now for the first time he became aware that Terry was
+already carrying a passenger.  A small man, Japanese, immaculate, and
+frightened so that his teeth were chattering.
+
+He was Iki, who had come into Red Creek this evening by train and due
+to cook for the Temple ranch.  Just now he was screwed up in his place,
+ready to jump if Steve moved his way, his purse clutched in his plump
+hand, half offered already.  Steve beamed upon him, then turned his
+eyes, still speculative, upon Terry.
+
+"Do you care to tell me," said Terry tartly, "why you're always getting
+in my way?  Think you're smart, climbing aboard like a monkey?  You've
+done the trick twice; do I have to look out for you every time I take
+the car out?"
+
+"I just happen to be in a hurry," said Packard.  "And going your way.
+Somebody shot my horse back there for me."
+
+Her eyes grew actually round; Iki shivered audibly.  But in the girl's
+case the emotion aroused by Packard's words was short-lived.  Why
+should a man shoot the horse under Steve Packard?  Disbelief reshaped
+her eyes; she cried out at him as her foot went down on the accelerator:
+
+"Think I'm the kind to believe all the yarns you can tell?  If you want
+to know what I think, Steve Packard--you're a liar!"
+
+He laughed, well content with the moment and the situation, well
+content with his unwilling companion just as she was.
+
+"And do you know that what I told you this afternoon was true?" he
+countered cheerfully.  "You're just like my blazing old Grandy!
+Instead of being my grandfather he ought to be yours.  By golly, Miss
+Terry Pert," teasing the blood higher into her cheeks with his
+laughter, "that might be arranged, too!  Mightn't it?  You and I----"
+
+"Oh!" cried Terry, and he had no doubts about her meaning what she
+said.  "Oh, I hate you!  Yes, worse than I hate old Hell-Fire: he keeps
+out of my trail, anyway.  And you, you big bully, you woman-fighter,
+you--you----"
+
+Just in time he guessed her purpose and threw out his hand across her
+steering-wheel and grasped her right hand.  The car swerved dangerously
+a moment, then came back to its steady course as Steve's other hand
+closed over Terry's left.  Slowly, putting his greater strength gently
+against hers, he took her automatic from her.
+
+"Thirty-eight calibre?"  he  said  coolly.  "There's nothing little
+about your way of doing things, is there?  And you meant to drill a
+hole through me, I'm bound!"
+
+Terry's face gleamed white in the pale light; and he knew from the look
+in her eyes as they seemed fairly to clash with his, that it was the
+white of sheer rage.
+
+"I'd just as lief blow your head off as shoot a rattlesnake," she
+announced crisply.
+
+"I believe you," he grunted.  "Just the same, if you'd only----"
+
+"Oh, shut up!" she cried, shaking his hand free from hers on the wheel
+and driving on recklessly.
+
+"I would like to mention," came an uncertain voice from a very pale
+Japanese, "that I must walk on my feet.  I am most regretful----"
+
+"Oh, shut up!" cried Terry.  "Shut up!"
+
+And for the rest of the ride both Iki and Steve Packard were silent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE TEMPTING OF YELLOW BARBEE
+
+"Here's where I get down," said Steve after a very long silence during
+which he watched Terry's pretty, puckered face while Terry, gripping
+her wheel, recklessly assumed the responsibilities of their three
+lives, hurling the car on through the moonlit night.
+
+Iki, breathing every now and then a long quivering sigh and forgetting
+to breathe betweenwhiles, held on tightly with both hands.
+
+"Here's where I get down," said Steve again.  Here the road followed
+the line of his north fence; less than a mile to the southward he could
+see a light like a fallen star, gleaming cheerfully through the trees.
+
+He sensed rather than saw a quick stiffening of Terry's already tense
+little body; fancied that the car was steadily taking on greater speed,
+read Terry's purpose in a flash.  If he forced her to carry him, why
+then she would take him as far out of his way as possible.
+
+"Terry Temple!" he cried sharply, leaning in a little toward her.
+"What's the matter with you anyway?  What if we're not friends exactly?
+I never did you any harm, did I?  Why, good Lord, girl, when a man
+tells you his horse has been shot under him; when he is trying to
+overhaul the crook at the bottom of the whole mess whom you hate as
+well as I do--  Oh, I mean Blenham and you know it----"
+
+"Liar!" cried Terry, flashing her eyes at him, and back to the road
+alternately white with the moon and black with shadows.  "Liar on two
+counts!  Didn't I see your horse this afternoon?  Tied in front of
+Wimble's whiskey joint?  Oh, it's where I'd expect him!  Well--and you
+needn't think I looked to see or cared, either--when I came by just
+now, leaving town, I saw your horse standing there yet.  So you
+needn't----"
+
+"That couldn't be," muttered Steve.  "And yet--  Anyhow, I've got to
+get off here.  Will you stop, please?"
+
+"No, I won't stop please!  Nobody asked you to ride that I know of.
+Get off the same way you got on!"
+
+Packard realized two things very clearly then:
+
+If he jumped with the car going at its present speed he would probably
+break his neck; if he gave any considerable time to arguing the matter
+with her he would be carried as far in five minutes as he could walk in
+an hour.
+
+"I mean business to-night," he told her bluntly.  "If you don't slow
+down before I count ten I am going to lean out a little--like this--and
+shoot a hole in your tire.  Then, if you keep on, I'll shoot a hole in
+the other tire.  Understand?"
+
+Terry laughed mockingly.
+
+"You wouldn't dare!" she told him serenely.  "That would be some kind
+of a crime; they could put you in jail for it.  You'd be scared to."
+
+"One, two, three, four, five," he counted briskly.
+
+"I would seek to interrupt to advise, oh, Miss Lady!" chattered Iki.
+"His voice has the sound of bloodthirstiness."
+
+"Six, seven, eight, nine--ten," counted Packard.
+
+Terry sniffed.  He leaned out, she saw the glint of the moon upon his
+revolver.
+
+She threw out her clutch and jammed down both brakes, hard.  Steve
+swung out and down to the ground.  The car, as though it had gained
+fresh power from the fact of being freed of his weight, shot forward,
+stopped again.
+
+"Not exactly friends?" cried Terry, and he marked a new trembling in
+her voice.  "I should say not.  You--you darned snake, you!"
+
+And she was gone, spinning along into the night, hidden from him by the
+first hill around whose base the road curved.  He stared after her a
+moment, shrugged, turned his back, and strode rapidly toward the Ranch
+Number Ten corrals.
+
+He had planned correctly; he had correctly measured Blenham's impulses
+and desires.  Further, he had come in time, just in time.
+
+The light was in the ranch-house.  Though but little after eleven
+o'clock it was dark within the bunk-house, the men long ago asleep.
+But Barbee was awake, his wits about him; his voice and Blenham's, both
+quiet, met Steve's ears as he slipped about the corner of the house,
+coming under the window where the light was.
+
+Blenham was talking now.  He sat loosely in a chair, his hands one upon
+the other, idle in his lap.  Barbee, his eyes narrowed and watchful,
+stood at the far side of the room.  On the floor, near his feet, was a
+revolver; from its position Steve guessed that Barbee had just kicked
+it safely out of Blenham's reach.  Barbee's own gun was in the boy's
+hand.
+
+"You're a pretty foxy kid, Barbee," Blenham was saying tonelessly.
+"You got the drop on me; you're the firs' man as ever did that little
+trick.  Yes; you're a pretty foxy kid!"
+
+Barbee shrugged and spat and answered Blenham with a curse and a
+grunted:
+
+"Nobody's askin' your opinion, Blenham."
+
+But Steve saw and Blenham must have seen the gleam of triumph in
+Barbee's eye.
+
+"What are you goin' to do with me?" asked Blenham presently.
+
+"Nothin'," replied Barbee.  "Jus' keep you where I got you until Steve
+Packard comes back.  Which ought to be mos' any time now."
+
+"He'll be late," said Blenham.  "He won't be here for two or three
+hours.  Suppose while we wait, let's me an' you talk!" he said sharply,
+sitting forward in his chair.
+
+"Well?" said Barbee.  "Talk an' be damned to you, Blenham.  Only you
+don't talk yourself out'n the hole you're in right now.  An', I promise
+you, you make a quick jump for a get-away, an' I'll shoot you dead."
+
+"I know," Blenham nodded.  "You'd do it.  But I ain't goin' to try any
+fool thing like that.  I'm jus' goin'--  Like I said to you, let's
+talk.  What's Packard payin' you for this night's work?"
+
+"He's no tightwad, if that's what you're drivin' at.  I'd of done
+to-night's job an' glad of the chance an' you know it, Blenham, an'
+never asked pay for it.  But I'm drawin' down a whole month's pay
+extra, if I've got you like you are when he comes in."
+
+Blenham laughed softly.  Then he moved the hands resting in his lap.
+Packard saw that they were folded loosely about an old leather wallet.
+
+"He's sure payin' you generous, Barbee," jeered Blenham.  "You know it!
+Why, look here: This is yours an' more to trail it if you jus' pocket
+your gun an' let me go!  I ain't askin' much an' I'm payin' my way.
+Look it over, kid!"
+
+Packard saw how he stripped a bank-note from a thin sheaf of its
+fellows; how he tossed it toward Barbee.  It fell to the floor; a
+little draft set it drifting; Blenham set his foot upon it.
+
+"Look at it!" he snapped, for the first time giving sign of the strain
+he was laboring under.  "It's yours--if you ain't a fool."
+
+Barbee, not to be tricked were this some ruse to snare his attention,
+said crisply:
+
+"Put you' han's up while I get it!"
+
+Blenham obeyed; Barbee stooped swiftly, all the while with eyes riveted
+on his prisoner.  Then, the muzzle of his gun raised another inch, he
+looked at what he held.  When he looked back at Blenham his eyes were
+round, his mouth stood a little open.
+
+"My God!" he gasped.  "It's a thousan' dollars!"
+
+"Yes," said Blenham quietly.  "It's a thousan' dollars.  That's quite a
+little wad, Barbee; it's more, anyhow, than an extra month's wages,
+ain't it?  An' it's yours if you want it!  Think of the times you can
+go on, think of the way you could make Red Creek open its eyes!  An'
+there's more to come if you take that an' let me go an' jus' watch my
+play an' take a chance with me when I say so.  What's the word, Barbee?"
+
+Packard, having held back thus long, remained motionless, glimpsing
+unexpectedly something of Barbee's soul; watching a little human drama,
+become spectator to the battle royal of the two contending factions
+which made up a man's self.
+
+It seemed to him that young Barbee was pale and grew paler; that a
+shiver ran through him; that he was, for the moment, like one drugged.
+And, side by side, two emotions, both primal and unmistakable, peered
+out of his eyes: a savage hatred of Blenham, a leaping greed of gold.
+
+Thus for a little forgetting his own interest in this scene, Packard
+watched, wondering what the outcome would be.  Blenham tempted.  Barbee
+hesitated.
+
+"Right here in my hand," Blenham was saying coldly, "are nine more like
+that, Barbee.  Ten thousan' dollars in all.  One thousan' to go to you
+for jus' keepin' out of my way.  I said once you're a foxy kid.  Now
+let's see if you are.  Tie to a man like me that's out to make a pile,
+a damn big pile, Barbee--or hang to a fool like Steve Packard an' take
+his pay in dribbles an' let him be the one that gathers in all the big
+kale.  Him an' me when I get things goin' right; him an' me with you
+jus' gettin' the scraps.  Which is it?  Eh, kid?  Which way're you
+goin'?"
+
+Barbee held the bank-note in his left hand; slowly his calloused
+fingers closed tightly about it, crumpling it, clutching it as though
+they would never release it.  And then slowly the fingers opened so
+that the wrinkled bit of paper lay in his palm under his eyes.  Barbee
+ran his tongue back and forth between his dry lips.  Steve, staring in
+at him through the window, saw in his eyes the two lights, that of
+hate, that of covetousness; they burned side by side as a yellow candle
+and a red might have done.
+
+Which way would Barbee go?  Did Barbee know?  Blenham did not; Steve
+did not.  Suddenly, seeing how the two fires flickered in Barbee's
+eyes, Steve cried out within himself:
+
+"It's unfair!  It's asking too much of Barbee!"
+
+And aloud, shoving the nose of a Colt .45 through the window-pane which
+splintered noisily:
+
+"Hands up there, Blenham!  Good boy, Barbee.  You've got him, all
+right!  Watch him while I slip in."
+
+Blenham jumped to his feet, threw out his arms, and cursed savagely.
+Then, grown abruptly quiet, he dropped back into his chair, his two big
+hands loose about the wallet hidden under them.  Steve threw a leg over
+the window-sill and came in, his gun ready, his eyes taking stock of
+Barbee while they appeared to be for Blenham only.  And Barbee, white
+now as he had never been until now, shivered, filled his lungs with a
+long sigh, and fell back a couple of paces, staring at Steve, at
+Blenham, but most of all at the thing in his hand.
+
+"You put it across, Barbee!" cried Steve heartily.
+
+He reached forward and snatched the wallet from Blenham's knee.
+Blenham's big hands, clenching slowly, fell to his sides; Blenham's
+eyes, sullen and evil, clung steadily to Packard's.
+
+"You've saved me my inheritance to-night; you've helped save me my
+ranch.  You've helped me square the game with a dirty dog named
+Blenham!"
+
+Like a dog Blenham showed his teeth.  His drawn face was stamped in the
+image of fury.
+
+"You're a sweet picture of a dead game sport," he growled, shifting
+nervously in his chair.  "I ain't got a gun; you an' Barbee have; go
+ahead an' call me all the names you like!"
+
+Steve counted the bank-notes in the wallet.  Blenham had spoken truly;
+there were nine one-thousand-dollar bills.  He put out his hand to
+Barbee for the tenth.  Barbee, staring strangely like one rudely
+awakened from sleep and not yet certain of his surroundings, let the
+bank-note go.  His eyes, leaving it at last to rest steadily on
+Blenham, looked red and ugly.  Packard slipped the wallet into his
+shirt.
+
+"Barbee," he said quietly, while he busied his eyes with Blenham's
+slightest movement, "this money was left to me by my father.  He gave
+it to Bill Royce to keep for me.  You know all that Bill has stood from
+Blenham; now you know why.  There's quite a load of scoundrelism dumped
+off at Blenham's door.  And, thanks to you, we've got the dead wood on
+him at last!"
+
+"What are you goin' to do with him?"  Barbee, speaking for the first
+time since Steve's entrance, was husky-voiced.  Blenham shifted again
+in his chair; now there was only cold hatred in the boy's look.  "We'd
+ought to be able to put him in the pen for a good long time."
+
+Blenham laughed jeeringly.
+
+"Try it!" he blustered.  "See what you can prove, actually prove to a
+jury an' a judge!  Try it!  You go to the law an' see----"
+
+"To hell with the law!" cut in Steve, and though his voice was not
+lifted for the imprecation Blenham shot a quick, startled look at him.
+
+And both Blenham and Barbee, listening wonderingly, understood that
+here was a Packard talking; that in the shoes of the grandson, even
+now, there might be standing the big bulk of the uncompromising
+grandfather.
+
+"What do I want with the law now?  Blenham would wriggle out, I
+suppose; or he would get a light sentence and trim that down to nothing
+with good behavior.  No, Blenham, if you ever go to jail it will be
+somebody's else doing; not mine.  Is it just jail for the man who shot
+down my old pardner in cold blood, just for the sake of a handful of
+money?  Is it to be just jail for the man who has made Bill Royce's
+life a hell for six months?  Just jail for the brute who had a horse
+shot under me to-night?  Why, damn you--" and at last his voice broke
+through the ice of restraint and rang out angrily, full of menace--"do
+you think I'm going to let you go out of my hands into the hands of
+judge and jury after all you've done?"
+
+Blenham sprang up, drawing back.  The muzzle of Steve's .45 followed
+him threateningly.
+
+"Barbee," said Packard, his voice once more under control, "go to the
+bunk-house and send Bill Royce here.  Don't wake the other boys.  Then
+you come back here with him.  And bring a whip with you."
+
+"A whip?" repeated Barbee.
+
+"Yes; a whip.  Any kind you can lay your hands to in a hurry; quirt or
+buggy-whip or bull-whip!"
+
+Blenham watched Barbee go.  Then, drawn back into a corner of the room,
+sullen and vigilant, he stood biting nervously at a big, clenched,
+hairy fist.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+IN A DARK ROOM
+
+Bill Royce, hastily and but half dressed, came promptly to the house,
+stumbling along at Barbee's heels.  Blenham, his silence and
+watchfulness unbroken, still chewed at his fist.  Barbee brought a
+heavy blacksnake in his hand.
+
+"Barbee says you want me, Steve?" said Royce from the threshold.  "An'
+that Blenham's here?"
+
+"Yes, Bill," Steve answered.  And to Barbee, "Close the door behind
+you.  Lock it.  Give me the key.  Now fasten the shutters across both
+windows."
+
+Barbee obeyed silently.  Blenham's eyes followed him, seeming
+fascinated by the whip in Barbee's hand.
+
+"Listen a minute, Bill," said Steve when Barbee had done.  "I want to
+tell you something."
+
+And, as briefly as might be, he told Royce of the ten dollar bills
+substituted for the real legacy, of the results of his evening in Red
+Creek, of Barbee's trapping Blenham, of the recovery of the ten
+thousand dollars, of a horse shot dead on the Red Creek road.
+
+"Then," said Royce at the end of it, his mind catching eagerly one
+outstanding fact, "I was right, Steve?  An' it was Blenham as gave me
+both barrels of Johnny Mills's shot-gun?  It was Blenham for sure,
+wasn't it, Steve?"
+
+"Yes, Bill.  It was Blenham."
+
+"An'--an' Blenham's right across there now?  It's him I can hear
+breathin', Steve?"
+
+"Yes, Bill."
+
+"An'--an' what for did you sen' for me, Steve?  What are you goin' to
+do to him?"
+
+Packard beckoned to Barbee.  The boy came quickly to his side, giving
+him the blacksnake.  Steve laid it across Bill Royce's hand.
+
+"I'm going to give him a taste of that, Bill," he said.  "And I wanted
+you here.  You can't see it; but before I am through with him, you can
+hear it!"
+
+"Goin' to tie him up an' whip him, Steve?  That it?"
+
+"Pack of low-bred mongrel pups!" cried Blenham wrathfully, for the
+first time breaking his silence.  "Sneakin', low-lived curs an'
+cowards!"
+
+"That it, Steve?" persisted Royce.  "Goin' to tie him up an' give him a
+whippin' with a blacksnake?"
+
+"I am going to whip him--for your sake, Bill," answered Steve sternly.
+
+He threw off his coat, tossing it behind him.
+
+"Get the chairs and table out of the way, Barbee!  No, I am not going
+to tie him up; that isn't necessary, Bill.  I can handle him with my
+hands without tying him; I am going to do it.  And then I am going to
+take the whip and lay it across him until his hide is in strips--or
+until he begs to be let go.  Ready, Blenham?"
+
+"Mean that?" snarled Blenham, a new look in his eye.  "Mean you're
+goin' to give me an even break?"
+
+But Bill Royce, fairly trembling with an eagerness strange to him, had
+clutched at Steve's arm, had found it, was holding him back, crying out
+excitedly:
+
+"You're a good pal, Stevie; you're the best pal as ever was an' I know
+it!  Didn't I always know you'd be like this?  But can't you see,
+Stevie, can't you see it ain't enough another man should lick him, even
+when that man's my pardner, even when it's Stevie himself doin' it!
+Ain't I been waitin' an' waitin' to get my hands on him!"
+
+Blenham, a little comforted by Steve's words, jeered openly now.
+
+"Come on, Blind Billy," he taunted.  "An' when I've throwed you into
+the junk pile I'll take on your friends!  One at the time--you know how
+the sayin' goes!"
+
+Steve was shaking Royce's hand from his arm.
+
+"Let me do this for you, Bill," he said firmly.  "It's only fair.  If
+you could see, it would be different."
+
+But Royce clung on desperately, crying out insistently:
+
+"Blind as I am I can lick him!  I know I can lick him!  Ain't I done it
+in my sleep a dozen times, a dozen ways?  Ain't I always promised
+myself sometime I'd get him in my two hands, I'd feel him wriggle an'
+squirm?  This is my fight, Steve, an'--Blenham, where are you?"
+
+"Here!" cried Blenham.  "An' gettin' tired of waitin'!"
+
+Royce plunged toward him.  But Steve Packard caught his old friend
+about the body, holding him back a moment.
+
+"Easy, Bill," he said gently.  "Easy.  I was wrong, you are right.
+It's your fight.  But take your time.  Get your coat off.  Barbee,
+stand by that window there; if Blenham tries to get out stop him.  I'll
+stand here.  All ready, Bill?"
+
+"Ready!" cried Royce, his voice a roar of eagerness.
+
+"All ready, Blenham?"
+
+"Ain't I said it?" jeered Blenham.
+
+"Then--" and suddenly Steve had snatched up the lamp, blowing down the
+chimney and plunging the room into thick darkness--"go to it!  The
+light is out, Bill!  The room is pitch-black.  You're as well off as he
+is.  And now, old pardner.  Now!"
+
+It was suddenly very still in the room; the thick, impenetrable
+darkness seemed almost a palpable curtain screening what went forward;
+the silence was for a little literally breathless.
+
+Then there came the first faint, tell-tale sound, the slow, tortured
+creaking of a board as a man put his weight upon it.  Through the
+darkness, across the room, Bill Royce was going slowly, questing the
+man who, surprised by the action of Steve's which had reduced his
+advantage over a blind man, held to his corner.  And then, stranger
+sound still through that tense silence, came Bill Royce's low laugh.
+
+"Good boy, Steve," he said softly.  "I'd never thought of that!  In the
+dark Blenham's as blind as me!  How do you like it, Blenham?  How'd you
+like to have it this way all the time?"
+
+Blenham's only answer lay in his leaping forward, out from his corner,
+and striking; Royce's answer to that was another quiet laugh.  He had
+slipped aside; Blenham had flailed at the thin air; Royce, grown still
+again, knew one of the moments of sheer joy which had been his during
+these last weary months.
+
+Packard and Barbee, frowning unavailingly toward each little noise,
+could only guess at what went forward so few inches from them.  A
+scraping foot might be either Royce's or Blenham's; a long, deep sigh
+or quick breathing now here, now there, might emanate from either man.
+The strange thing, thought both Barbee and Packard, was that even ten
+seconds could pass without these two men at each other's throats.
+
+But, a supreme moment his at last, Bill Royce found himself grown
+miserly in its expenditure; he would dribble the golden seconds through
+his fingers, he would draw out the experience, tasting its joy fully.
+
+For the moment his blindness was no greater than Blenham's; for a
+little Blenham would grope and wonder and hesitate and grow tense after
+the fashion the blind man knew so well.  And then at the end, when an
+end could no longer be delayed, Bill Royce would mete out the
+long-delayed punishment.
+
+But, since the natures of both men were downright, since their hatreds
+were outright, since there was little of finesse in either and a great
+impatience stirring both, Royce's playing with Blenham was short.
+
+There came a sudden shuffling of feet--and Royce's laugh; a blow
+landing heavily--and Royce's laugh; another blow, a grunt, and a panted
+curse from Blenham--and Royce's laugh.
+
+And then only a scraping of feet up and down, back and forth along the
+bare floor, the thudding of heavy shoulders into an unexpected wall,
+the impact of fist against body.  In the utter darkness the two men
+gripped each other, struck, swayed together, staggered apart, only to
+come together again to strike harder, more merciless blows.
+
+Packard and Barbee now held their breaths while the others panted
+freely; both Packard and Barbee, stepping quickly now this way and now
+that as the battling forms swayed up and down, sought to gauge what was
+happening by the sounds which came to their ears.
+
+Muttered imprecations, scuffling feet in a rude dance of rage, another
+heavy, thudding blow, a coughing curse.  Whose?  Blenham's, since after
+it came Bill Royce's laugh.  Another blow, fresh pounding and scraping
+of boots--blow on top of blow, curse on top of curse--a man falling
+heavily----
+
+Who was down?  Royce of Blenham?
+
+"Bill!" called Packard.  "Bill!"
+
+No answer save that of two big bodies rolling together on the floor.
+Both were down, Royce and Blenham.  Both were fighting, wordless and
+infuriated.  Who was on top?
+
+No man on top long, no man under the other more than a second.  The
+rolling bodies struck against Packard's leg and he drew back, giving
+them room.  The dust puffing up from the floor filled his nostrils.
+The room was becoming unendurably close, sickeningly close.  The sweat
+must be streaming from both men by now.  Packard sniffed, fancying the
+acrid smell of fresh blood.  The big bulks rolled and threshed and
+whipped here and there----
+
+"Hell!"
+
+It was a cry of mingled rage and pain; it came bursting explosively
+from Blenham's lips.  Royce's laugh followed it; Packard shivered.
+
+"Bill!" he cried.  "Bill!"
+
+Royce did not answer; perhaps for the very good reason that he did not
+hear.  There were other matters now engaging his attention solely and
+exclusively.  The fighting fury, the hate frenzy was riding him and he
+in turn was riding his enemy.  Cool sanity and hot blood-lust do not
+find places side by side in the same brain.  A second time came the
+horrible cry from Blenham.  Packard struck a match hastily and lighted
+the lamp.
+
+Packard and Barbee together dragged Royce away, letting Blenham lie
+there.  Both men were naked to their waists, their shirts and
+undershirts in rags and strips hanging grotesquely about their hips;
+Royce looked like some hideously painted burlesque of a ballet-dancer
+in a comic skirt.  Only there was nothing of burlesque or comedy in his
+face.
+
+Packard, glancing from him down to the tortured body of Blenham that
+breathed jerkily, noisily, turned with a sudden revulsion of feeling
+and hurled the heavy blacksnake away from him.  He had not fancied the
+sharp smell of fresh blood.
+
+"I got him!" said Royce shakily.  "With my two hands, I got him!
+Didn't I, Stevie?"
+
+"Better than you know, Bill!" muttered Packard.  "Better than you know."
+
+The thing had been an accident, at least in so far as Bill Royce's
+intent was concerned.  Packard knew that; he knew that his old pardner
+fought hard, fought mercilessly, but fought fair.  But in a larger
+sense was it an accident?  Or rather a mere retributive punishment
+decreed by an eternal justice?  There in the pitch dark, for no man to
+see the how of it, this is perhaps what had happened:
+
+There had been the old, long-rowelled Mexican spur hanging on the wall;
+Royce's shoulder or Blenham's had knocked it down; their feet had
+pushed it out to the middle of the floor.  They had fallen, together,
+heavily; they had rolled.  Blenham had gone over on his face, Royce's
+hands worrying him.  The spur----
+
+But it mattered little how it had come about.  The result was the
+thing.  Blenham would never see with his right eye again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+AT THE LUMBER CAMP
+
+They did what they could for Blenham--which was but little--and let him
+go when he was ready.  Before daylight he had ridden away, dead white,
+sick-looking, and wordless save for his parting words in a strangely
+quiet voice--
+
+"I'll get all three of you for this, s'elp me!"
+
+They had bound his head up in a strip torn from an old sheet; the last
+they saw of him in the uncertain light was this bandage, rising and
+falling slowly as his horse bore him away.
+
+Blenham gone, Barbee and Bill Royce went down to the bunk-house again,
+slipping in quietly.  Steve Packard, alone in the ranch-house, sat
+smoking his pipe for half an hour.  Then he went to bed, the bank-notes
+still in his shirt, his gun under his pillow.
+
+Twice last night he had said to Joe Woods, the lumber-camp boss, "I'll
+see you in the morning."
+
+Morning come, Steve breakfasted early, saddled his horse, and turned
+out across the fields to meet the rising sun.  And it seemed to his
+fancies, set a-tingle in the early dawn freshness, that the rising sun,
+ancient symbol of youth and vigor and hope with triumph's wings, was
+coming to meet him.
+
+At this period of the day, especially when he rides and is alone and
+the forests thicken all about him, man is prone to confidence.  It had
+been a simple matter, so he looked upon it now, to have discovered the
+truth of the substituted bills last night; as simple a matter had been
+his winning at seven-and-a-half or his whipping big Joe Woods or his
+recovery of the lost legacy.
+
+Blenham, or rather an agent of Blenham, had killed his horse; what
+then?  His destiny had stepped forward; Terry had come; he had whizzed
+back to the ranch in her car and on time.
+
+What if the ranch were mortgaged and to the hardest man in seven
+counties?  What though his grandfather had obviously fallen supine
+before the old man's tempting sin, which is avarice, and was bound to
+break him?  Was fate not playing him for her favorite?
+
+To Steve Packard, riding to meet the sun and to keep his promise to the
+lumber boss, the world just now was an exceedingly bright and lovely
+place; in this hour of a leaping optimism he could even picture Terry
+Temple in a companionably laughing mood.
+
+So early did he take to saddle that the fag end of the dawn was still
+sweet in the air when he passed under the great limbs of the stragglers
+of the forests clothing his eastern hill-slopes.  He noted how between
+the widely separated boles the grass was thick and rich and untrampled;
+reserved against the time of need.  There was no stock here yet.
+
+He passed on, swung into the little-used trail which brought him first
+to the McKittrick cabin where a double-barrelled shot-gun six months
+ago had brought Bill Royce his blindness; then to the lumber-camp a
+mile further on.  Both were on the bank of Packard's Creek; the flume
+constructed by Joe Woods's men followed the line of the stream.
+
+The new sun in his eyes, Steve drew his hat low down on his forehead
+and looked curiously about him.  The timberjacks had come only
+recently; so much was obvious.  They had come to stay; that was as
+plainly to be seen.  Rough slabs of green timber, still drying and
+twisting and splitting as it did so, had been knocked together rudely
+to make a long, low building where cook and cookstove and a two-plank
+table indicated both kitchen and dining-room.
+
+A half-dozen other shacks and lean-tos, seen here and there through the
+trees, completed the camp.  Great fallen trees--they were taking only
+the full-grown timber--looking helpless and hopeless, lay this way and
+that like broken giants, majestically resigned to the conqueror's axe.
+
+Here in the peace and quiet of the pinking day this inroad of
+commercialism struck Steve suddenly both as slaughter and sacrilege;
+among the stalwart standing patriarchs and their bowed brethren he sat
+his horse staring frowningly at the little ugly clutter of buildings
+housing the invaders.
+
+"My beloved old granddad had his nerve with him," he grunted as he rode
+on into the tiny settlement.  "As usual!"
+
+The cook, yawning, bleary-eyed, unthinkably tousled, was just
+bestirring himself.  Steve saw his back and a trailing suspender as he
+went into the cook-shed carrying some kindling-wood in one hand and a
+bucket of water in the other.  It was only when Packard, having ridden
+to his door and looked in, startled the cook into swinging about, that
+the dull-eyed signs of a night of dissipation showed in the other's
+face.
+
+"Up late last night, I'll bet," laughed Steve, easing himself in the
+saddle.  The cook made a face unmistakably eloquent of a bad taste in
+his mouth and went down on his knees before his stove, settling slowly
+like a man with stiff, rheumatic joints or else a head which he did not
+intend to jar.
+
+"Drunk las' night," he growled, settling back on his haunches as his
+fire caught.  "A man that'll get drunk is a damn' fool.  I'm t'rough
+wid it."
+
+"Where's Woods?" asked Steve.  "Up yet?"
+
+"Yes, rot him, he's up.  He's always up.  He's--holy smoke, I got a
+head!"
+
+"Where is he?" demanded Packard.
+
+The cook rose gently and for a moment clasped his head with both hands.
+Then he immersed it gradually in his bucket of icy water.  After which,
+drying himself with a dirty towel and setting the bucket of water on
+his stove, he turned red-rimmed eyes upon Steve.
+
+"You're the guy I fed the other mornin', ain't you?" he asked.
+
+Steve nodded.
+
+"More'n which," continued the cook, "you're the guy as licked Woodsy
+las' night in Red Crick?"
+
+Again Steve nodded.
+
+"An' again you're claimin' to run the ranch here?  An' to own it?  An'
+to be ol' Hell-Fire's gran'son?"
+
+"I asked you where Woods was," Packard reminded him sharply.  The cook
+threw up his hand as though to ward off a blow.
+
+"Whatcha yellin' in my ear for?" he moaned dismally.  "Want to split my
+head off?  Woodsy's over yonder; talkin' with a man name of Blenham.
+Ever hear of him?"
+
+"Over yonder" plainly meant just across the creek where there was a
+little flat open space among the trees in which stood one of the larger
+shanties.  Steve saw a stove-pipe sticking out crookedly through the
+shed roof; noted a thin spear of smoke.  He spurred across the stream
+and to the timber boss's quarters.
+
+Woods heard him and came out into the brightening morning, drawing the
+door closed behind him.  His eyes, like the cook's though to a lesser
+degree, showed indications of a wild night in town.  Steve guessed that
+he hadn't undressed all night; that he was not entirely sober just now
+though he carried himself steadily and spoke well enough.
+
+"I thought you'd show," said Woods quietly, his big hands down in his
+pockets, his shoulders against the wall.
+
+"What is Blenham doing here?" Steve asked.
+
+Woods narrowed his eyes in a speculative frown.
+
+"He's damn' near dead.  He's waitin' for me to get one of the boys to
+hitch up an' haul him to a doctor.  He says you an' two other guys
+gouged his eye out for him."
+
+"He's a liar," announced Packard angrily.  "The thing was an accident.
+It was a fair fight between him and Bill Royce.  Blenham fell on an old
+spur.  I promised you I'd be here this morning, Woods."
+
+"Yes," said Woods.  "I expected you."
+
+"You were square with me last night," went on Packard quietly.  "I
+appreciate the fact.  If ever I can do you a favor, just say so.  So
+much for that part of it.  Next: Maybe you've heard I'm the owner of
+Ranch Number Ten?  And that I'm running it myself?  I've come over to
+tell you this morning that we're knocking off work here.  I don't want
+any more timber down."
+
+There came a little twitching at the corner of Woods's broad mouth.  He
+made no answer.
+
+"Hear me?" snapped Steve.
+
+"Sure I hear you," said Woods insolently.  "So does Blenham; he's right
+inside where he can hear.  I guess it's him you want to talk with.  I'm
+takin' my orders off'n Blenham an' nobody else."
+
+"I've talked already with Blenham.  I've told him not to set his hoofs
+on my ranch again after to-day.  Since he's pretty badly hurt I'll let
+you haul him to the doctor but I don't want him hauled back.  Further,
+I want work stopped here right now.  The men will be having breakfast
+in a few minutes.  After breakfast you can explain to them and let them
+go."
+
+Woods shrugged.
+
+"My orders, hot out'n Blenham's mouth, is to stick on the job here an'
+saw wood," he said colorlessly.  "I'm takin' my pay off'n him an' I'm
+doin' what he says."
+
+There seemed only a careless indifference in his gesture as he partly
+turned his back, staring up-stream; but the slight movement served to
+show Packard that Woods carried a gun on his hip, in plain sight.
+Well, Woods himself had said--"I expected you!"
+
+Last night and for a definite purpose Steve had armed himself; this
+morning, setting out on this errand, he had tossed the revolver into a
+table drawer at the ranch-house.  He had never been a gunman; if
+circumstance dictated that he must go armed, well and good.  But his
+brows contracted angrily at the display of Woods's readiness for
+gun-play.
+
+"Look here, you Joe Woods!" he cried out.  "And listen, too, you
+Blenham!  I'm no trouble-seeker; I know it's a dead easy thing to start
+a row that will see more than one man dead before it's ended, and
+what's the use?  But I mean to have what is mine in spite of you and
+Hell-Fire Packard and the devil!  The right of the whole deal is as
+plain as one and one: This is my outfit, if it is mortgaged; nobody
+excepting me has any business ordering my timber cut.  And I say that
+it's not going to be cut.  If there is any trouble it's up to you
+fellows."
+
+From Blenham in the cabin came no sound; Woods, having glanced swiftly
+at Packard's angry face, again stared up-stream.
+
+For a little Steve Packard gnawed at his lip, caught in an eddy of
+helpless rage.  Never an answer from Blenham, never an answer from
+Woods; angry already, their silences maddened him.  Across the creek he
+saw the cook standing in his kitchen door, listening and smiling in
+sickly fashion; two or three of the men, coming out for their
+breakfasts, were watching him.
+
+They were an ugly, red-eyed bunch, he thought as he swept them with his
+flashing eyes; they'd fight like dogs for the joy of fighting; soon or
+late, if Blenham persisted, he'd have the job on his hands of throwing
+them off his land.  Of course he could go "higher up"; he could appeal
+to his grandfather.
+
+He could, but in his present mood he had no intention of doing any such
+thing.  His grandfather, before now, should have withdrawn these men.
+
+"Don't ask me to hold my hand!" the old man had shouted at him.  "I'm
+goin' after you tooth an' big toe-nail!"
+
+Well, if the old man wanted trouble and range war----
+
+His blood was rushing swift and hot through his veins; his mind working
+feverishly.  One man alone against the crowd of them, he could do
+nothing.  But he could ride back to the ranch, gather up a dozen men,
+put guns into their hands, be back here in the matter of a couple of
+hours.
+
+He saw the timberjacks as one by one they came out into the clearing by
+the cook's shack; counted them as they went in.  The thought of a
+morning cup of coffee was attracting them; among the faces turned
+briefly his way he recognized several he had seen last night in the Ace
+of Diamonds saloon.  He saw two of them hitching up the big wagon,
+evidently the only conveyance in the camp.  They were getting ready to
+take Blenham.
+
+Suddenly a new light flashed into Steve's eyes; he turned his head
+abruptly that Joe Woods should not see.
+
+"How many men have you got here, Woods?" he asked.
+
+Wondering at the question Woods answered it:
+
+"Fourteen; startin' a new camp across the ridge."
+
+Steve had counted nine men go into the cook's shed; with the cook there
+were ten; the two with the horses made twelve.  There should be two
+more.  He waited.  Meanwhile, secretly so that Woods might not guess
+what he was doing or see the busy hand, he loosened his latigo, seeming
+merely to slouch in his saddle; while he made a half-dozen random
+remarks which set Woods wondering still further, he got his cinch
+loose.  Another man had gone into the kitchen.  Thirteen.
+
+"Fourteen counting you?" he asked Woods.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Then they were all accounted for; two with the horses; eleven in the
+shed; Joe Woods in front of him.
+
+"My cinch is loose," said Packard and dismounted, throwing the stirrup
+up across the saddle out of his way, his fingers going to the latigo
+which he had just loosened.
+
+Woods watched him idly.  Then suddenly both men looked toward the
+kitchen.  The door had been slammed shut; there was a fairly hideous
+racket as of all of the cook's pots and pans falling together; after it
+a boom of laughter, and finally the cook's voice lifted querulously.
+Woods grinned.  Unruffled by Packard's presence he said casually:
+
+"Cookie mos' usually has the hell of a head after a night like las'
+night.  The boys knows it an' has a little fun with him!"
+
+The two men harnessing the horses had evidently guessed as did Woods
+what was happening in the cook's domain; at any rate, they hastily tied
+the horses and hurried to see.  Packard, still busied with his latigo,
+saw them and watched them until the door had shut behind them.
+
+His horse stood between him and Woods.  He tickled the animal in the
+flank; it spun about, pulling back, plunging, drawing Woods's eyes.
+And the next thing which Woods clearly understood was that Steve
+Packard was upon him, that one of Packard's hands was at his throat,
+that the other had gone for the gun on Woods's hip and had gotten it.
+
+"Back into your shack!" commanded Packard, jabbing the muzzle of
+Woods's big automatic hard into Woods's ribs.  "Quick!"
+
+To himself just now Steve had said: "One man against the crowd of them,
+he could do nothing!"  Just exactly what Woods would be thinking; what
+Blenham inside would be thinking; just exactly what the rest of the men
+thought since they turned their backs on him and forgot him in their
+sport of badgering the cook.
+
+What he was doing now was what he would term, did he hear of another
+man attempting it, "A fool thing to do!"  And yet he had told himself
+many a time that a man stood a fair chance to get away with the
+unexpected if he hit quick and hard and kept his wits about him.
+
+Woods, taken thoroughly aback, allowed himself to be driven again into
+his cabin.  Packard followed and closed the door.  Within was Blenham,
+lying on Woods's bunk, his head still swathed, a half-empty whiskey
+bottle on the floor at his side.  With one watery eye he looked from
+one to the other of the two men bursting in on him.
+
+"Blenham," cried Packard, standing over him while he was careful not to
+lose sight of Joe Woods's working face, "I want work stopped here and
+this crowd of men off the ranch.  You heard what I said outside, didn't
+you?"
+
+Blenham answered heavily:
+
+"Woods, don't you pay no attention to what this man says.  You keep
+your men on the job.  An' if you got another drop of whiskey----"
+
+"The bottle's where you put it," retorted Woods.  "Under your pillow."
+
+Blenham rolled on his side, slipping his hand under his pillow.  All
+the time his one red eye shone evilly on Steve, who, his wits about
+him, stepped back into the corner whence he might at the same time
+watch Woods and that hand of Blenham's which was making its stupid
+little play of seeking a bottle.
+
+"Take it out by the neck, Blenham," said Steve sternly.  "Take it out
+by the neck and pass it to me, butt end first!  _Sabe_?  I'm guessing
+the kind of drink you'd like to set up."
+
+Blenham's one eye and Steve's two clashed; Woods watched interestedly.
+He even laughed as at last, with an exclamation which was as much a
+groan as a curse, Blenham jerked out his gun and flung it down on his
+quilt.  Steve took it up and shoved it into his pocket.
+
+"There's jus' a han'ful of men over to the cookhouse," said Woods
+humorously.  "Havin' stuck up me an' Blenham you oughtn't to have no
+trouble over there!"
+
+"How many men?" demanded Steve quietly.  "Thirteen, if I counted right,
+eh, Woods?  That's no kind of a number to pin your hopes on!  And now
+listen; I'll cut it short: If there is any trouble this morning, if any
+man gets hurt, remember that this is my land, that you jaspers are
+trespassing, that I am simply defending my property.  In other words,
+you're in wrong.  You'll be skating on pretty thin ice if you just
+plead later on that you were obeying orders from Blenham; follow
+Blenham long enough and you'll get to the pen.  Now, I'm going outside.
+You and Blenham stay in here until I call for you.  I'll shut the door;
+you leave it shut.  Take time to roll yourself a smoke and think things
+over before you start anything, Joe Woods."
+
+Then swiftly he whipped open the door, stepped out, and snapped it shut
+after him.
+
+"I'm taking a chance," he muttered, his eyes hard, his jaw set and
+thrust forward.  "A good long chance.  But that's the way to play the
+game!"
+
+The door of the cook's shed, facing him from across the creek, was
+still closed.  Steve moved a dozen paces down-stream; now he could
+command Woods's cabin with the tail of his eye, look straight into the
+kitchen when the door opened, keep an eye upon the one little square
+window.
+
+"It's all in the cards," he told himself grimly.  "A man can win a jack
+pot on a pair of deuces, if he plays the game right!"
+
+At this point Packard's Creek is narrow; the distance between the spot
+where he stood and the door of the cook-shed was not over forty feet.
+He shifted Woods's gun to his left hand, taking into his right
+Blenham's old-style revolver which was more to his fancy.  Then, to get
+matters under way in as emphatic a manner as he knew how, he sent a
+bullet crashing through the cook's roof.
+
+The murmur of voices died away suddenly; it was intensely still for a
+moment; then there was a scrambling, a scraping of heavy boots and
+dragging benches, and the cook's door snapped back against the outside
+wall, the opening filled with hulking forms, as men crowded to see what
+was happening.  What they saw was the nose of Blenham's gun in Steve's
+hand.
+
+"Back up there," shouted Packard.  "Stand still while you listen to me."
+
+They hesitated, wondering.  A man growled something, his voice
+deep-throated and truculent.  Another man laughed.  The forms filling
+the doorway began a slow bulging outward as other forms behind crowded
+upon them.
+
+Within Woods's cabin there was a little noise.
+
+"You men are leaving to-day," said Steve hastily.  "Just as fast as you
+can pull your freight.  Blenham and Woods are going with you.  All told
+there are above a dozen of you and only one of me.  But I've got
+Woods's gun and Blenham's and I happen to mean business.  This is my
+outfit; if you fellows start anything and there is trouble, why you're
+on the wrong side of the fence.  Besides, you're apt to get hurt.
+Blenham and Woods are quitting cold; so far as I can see you boys would
+be a pack of fools to make more of a stand than they are doing."
+
+The man who had laughed and who now thrust his face forward through his
+companions, grinned widely and announced:
+
+"We mightn't worry none about where Blenham an' Joe get off.  But we
+ain't had our breakfasts yet!"
+
+"You don't get any breakfast on my land!" said Steve sharply, more
+afraid just now of having to do with good nature than with anger.
+
+For if the dozen men there simply laughed and stepped out and
+dispersed, his hands would be tied; he couldn't shoot down a lot of
+joking men and he knew it.  And they would know it.
+
+"You're on your way right now!  You, there!"  This to a big,
+stoop-shouldered young giant in the fore, blue-eyed, straw-haired,
+northern-looking.  "Step out this way, Sandy!  And step lively."
+
+The northerner shrugged and looked belligerent.  Steve moistened his
+lips.
+
+"You can't bluff me--" began the northerner.
+
+And Steve knew that, having gone this far, he could not stop at
+bluffing.  And he knew that he must not seem to hesitate.
+
+"I can shoot as straight as most men," he said smoothly.  "But
+sometimes I miss an inch or two at this distance.  You men who don't
+want to take any unnecessary chances had better give Sandy a little
+more elbow-room!"
+
+The stoop-shouldered man squared himself a little, jerked up his head,
+took on a fresh air of defiance.  Slowly Steve lifted the muzzle of his
+gun--slowly a man drew back from the northerner, a man fell away to the
+right, a man drew a hasty pace back at the left.  He was left standing
+in the middle of the open doorway.  He shifted a little, doubled his
+fists at his sides, twisted his head.
+
+Again a noise from Woods's cabin.  Steve saw that the door had quietly
+opened six inches.  There was a quick movement within; the door was
+flung wide open.  Woods was standing in the opening, a rifle in his
+hands, the barrel trained on Steve's chest.  Steve saw the look in
+Woods's eye, whirled and fired first.  The rifle bullet cut whistling
+high through the air; Woods dropped the rifle and reeled and went down
+under the impact of a leaden missile from a forty-five calibre
+revolver.  The rifle lay just outside now.
+
+The squat young giant with the blue eyes and shock head of hair had not
+stirred.  His mouth was open; his face was stupidly expressionless.
+
+"Throw up your hands and step outside!" Steve called to him roughly.
+
+The man started, looked swiftly about him, stepped forward, lifting his
+big hands.  They were still clenched but opened slowly and loosely as
+they went above his head.
+
+"Turn your back this way," commanded Steve, feeling his mastery of the
+moment and knowing that he must drive his advantage swiftly.  "Belly to
+the wall.  That's it.  Next!"
+
+A man, the man who had twice laughed, stepped forward eagerly.  He
+needed no invitation to lift his hands, nor yet to go to the other's
+side, his face to the wall.  His eyes were bulging a little; they were
+fixed not on Steve Packard but on the body of Joe Woods.  The timber
+boss lay across the threshold, half in, half out, twisting a little
+where he lay.
+
+Now, one after another, speaking in low voices or not at all, the
+timber crew came out into the stillness of the new day.  Steve counted
+them as they appeared, always keeping the tail of his eye on Woods's
+door, always realizing that Blenham was still to be dealt with, always
+watchful of the small square window in the cook's shed.  Once he saw a
+face there; he called out warningly and the face hastily withdrew.
+
+At last they were outside, thirteen men with their backs to him, their
+hands lifted.  Stepping backward Steve went to Woods's cabin.
+
+"Come out, Blenham," he called curtly.
+
+Blenham cursed him but came.  Stepping over Woods's body he said
+threateningly:
+
+"Killed him, have you?  You'll swing for that."
+
+"Stand where you are, Blenham."  He wondered dully if he had killed
+Woods.  He considered the matter almost impersonally just now; the game
+wasn't yet played, cards were out, the mind must be cool, the eye
+quick.  "You two boys on the end come over here and help me with Woods."
+
+Again Woods's big body twisted; it even turned half over now, and Woods
+sat up.  His hand went to his shoulder; Steve saw the hand go red.
+Woods's face was white and drawn with pain.  His eyes went to the rifle
+at his feet.  Steve stepped forward, took the thing up, tossed it back
+into the cabin.  Woods swayed, pitched a little forward, caught
+himself, steadied himself with a hand on the door-jamb, and shakily
+drew himself to his feet.  Steve marvelled at him.
+
+"If you like, Woods," he said quietly, "I'll have you taken over to my
+place and will send for a doctor for you."
+
+"Aw, hell, I ain't hurt bad," said Woods.
+
+Steve saw how his brows contracted as he spoke.  The red hand was laid
+rather hurriedly on the shoulder of one of the two men whom Steve had
+summoned across the creek.
+
+Blenham turned away and went down-stream, toward the big wagon.  Woods
+followed, walking slowly and painfully, leaning now and again on his
+support.
+
+As Steve called to them the men lined up along the wall of the cook's
+shed, turned, and, their hands still lifted, went down-stream.  One
+after another they climbed up into the wagon.  Two or three laughed;
+for the most part there were only black faces and growing anger.  Many
+of them had drunk much and slept little last night; not a man of them
+but missed his coffee.
+
+Packard caught up his horse's reins and swung into the saddle calling
+out:
+
+"I don't know anything you're waiting for.  Climb into the seat,
+somebody.  Get started.  Blenham and Woods both need a doctor.  And you
+needn't come back for anything you left; I'll have all your junk boxed
+and hauled into Red Creek this afternoon."
+
+A man gathered up the four reins and climbed to the high seat.  The
+brake was snapped back, the horses danced, set their necks into their
+collars, and the wheels turned.  Behind them Steve Packard, still
+watchful, rode to escort them to a satisfactory distance beyond the
+border of his property.
+
+
+Terry Temple out in front of the dilapidated Temple home was amusing
+herself with a pair of field-glasses.  Her big wolf-hound had just
+temporarily laid aside his customary dignity and was chasing a rabbit.
+Terry had her binoculars focussed on a distant field, curious as to the
+outcome.
+
+Suddenly she lost this interest.  Far down the road she glimpsed a big
+wagon; it was filled with standing men.  She altered her focus.
+
+"Dad!" she called quickly.  "Oh, dad!  Come here!"
+
+Her father came out on the porch.
+
+"What do you want?" he asked irritably.
+
+Terry came running to him, flushed with her excitement, and shoved the
+glasses up to his eyes.  Temple dodged, fussed with the focussing
+apparatus, lowered the glasses, and blinked down the road.
+
+"It's just a wagon, ain't it?" he demanded.  "Looks like----"
+
+Again she snatched the binoculars.
+
+"A lot of men are standing up," she announced.  "That's the team from
+the Packard logging-camp, There's a man sitting on the front seat with
+the driver and he's got a rag around his head.  There's some sort of a
+bed made in the bottom of the wagon; a man's lying down.  I actually
+believe, Dad Temple----"
+
+She broke off in a strange little gasp.  Behind the wagon a man rode on
+horseback; the sun glinted on a revolver in his hand.  They came closer.
+
+"It's Blenham on the front seat with a bandage around his head!" she
+cried.  "He's hurt!  And--dad, that man back there is Steve Packard!
+And he's driving that crowd off his ranch, as sure as you are Jim
+Temple and I'm Teresa Arriega Temple!"
+
+Temple started.
+
+"What's that?" he demanded with a genuine show of interest.
+
+Together they stared down the road.  On came the wagon and the rider
+behind it.  Slowly the look in Terry's eyes altered.  In a moment they
+were fairly dancing.  And then, causing her father to stare at her
+curiously, she broke out into peal after peal of delicious laughter.
+
+"Steve Packard," she cried out, her exclamation meant for her own ears
+alone and reaching no further than those of her newly imported Japanese
+cook who was peering out of his kitchen window just behind her, "I
+believe you're a white man after all!  And a gentleman and a sport!
+Dad, he's nabbed the whole crowd of them and put them on the run.  By
+glory, it looks to me like a man has turned up!  Maybe he was telling
+me the truth last night."
+
+The wagon came on, drew abreast of the Temple gate, passed by.  Temple
+stared in what looked like consternation.  Steve, following the wagon,
+came abreast of the gate, stopped, watched the four horses draw their
+freight around the next bend in the road, accounted his work done, and
+turned toward the Temples.
+
+"Good morning," he called cheerily, highly content with life just at
+this moment.  "Fine day, isn't it?"
+
+Terry looked at him coolly.  Then she turned her back and went into the
+house.  Iki, the new cook, looked at her wonderingly.
+
+"To me it appears most probable certain," said the astute Oriental
+within his soul, "that inhabitants of these wilderness places have much
+madness within their brains."
+
+Steve swung his horse back into the road and set his face toward his
+own ranch.
+
+"Darn the girl," he muttered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE MAN-BREAKER AT HOME
+
+In a short time the cattle country had come to know a good deal of
+Steve Packard, son of the late Philip Packard, grandson of Old Man
+Packard, variously known.  Red Creek gossiped within its limits and
+sent forth word of a quarrel of some sort with Blenham, a winning game
+of seven-and-a-half, a fight with big Joe Woods.  Red Creek was
+inclined to set the seal of approval on this new Packard, for Red
+Creek, on both sides of its quarrelsome street, stood ready to say that
+a man was a man even when it might go gunning for him.
+
+As the days went by Packard's fame grew.  There were tales that in a
+savage mêlée with Blenham he had eliminated that capable individual's
+right eye; and though there were those who had had it from some of the
+Ranch Number Ten boys that Blenham's loss was the result of an
+accident, still it remained unquestioned that Blenham had suffered
+injury at Packard's ranch and had been driven forth from it.
+
+Then, Packard had followed Blenham to the logging-camp; he had tackled
+the crowd headed by Joe Woods; he had come remarkably close to killing
+Woods; he had broken up the camp and sent the timberjacks on their way.
+He had had a horse killed under him; he had quarrelled with his
+grandfather; he was standing on his own feet.  In brief--
+
+"He's a sure enough, out an' out Packard!" they said of him.
+
+To be sure, while there were men who spoke well of him there were
+others, perhaps as many, who spoke ill.  There were the barkeeper of
+the Ace of Diamonds, Joe Woods, Blenham; they had their friends and
+hangers-on.  On the other hand, offsetting these, there were old
+friends whom Steve had not seen for twelve or more years.
+
+Such was Brocky Lane whose cowboy had loaned Steve a horse which had
+been killed on the Red Creek road.  Young Packard promptly paid for the
+animal and resumed auld lang syne with the hearty, generous Brocky Lane.
+
+What men had to say of him came last of all to Steve.  But some fifty
+miles to the north of Ranch Number Ten, on the far-flung acres of the
+biggest stock-ranch in the State, there was another Packard to whom
+rumors came swiftly.  And this was because the old grandfather went far
+out of his way upon every opportunity to learn of his grandson's
+activities.
+
+"What for a man is he growed up to be, anyhow?" was what Hell-Fire
+Packard was interested in ascertaining.
+
+When the old man wanted to get anywhere he ordered out his car and Guy
+Little.  When he wanted information he sent for Guy Little.  The
+undersized mechanician was gifted with eyes which could see, ears which
+could hear, and a tongue which could set matters clear; he must have
+been unusually keen to have retained his position in the old man's
+household for the matter of five or six years.
+
+To his employer he had come once upon a time, half-starved and weary, a
+look of dread in his eyes which had the way of turning swiftly over his
+shoulder; the old man had had from the beginning the more than
+suspicion that the little fellow was a fugitive from the law and in a
+hurry at that.
+
+He had immediately taken him in and given him succor and comfort.  The
+poor devil fumbled for a name and was so obviously making himself a new
+one that Packard dubbed him Guy Little on the spot, simply because, he
+explained, he was such a little guy.  And thereafter the two grew in
+friendship.
+
+Guy Little's first coming had been opportune.  The old man had only
+recently bought his first touring-car; in haste to be gone somewhere
+his motor failed to respond to his first coaxing and subsequent bursts
+of violent rage.  While he was cursing it, reviling it, shaking his
+fist at it, and vowing he'd set a keg of giant powder under the thing
+and blow it clean to blue blazes, Guy Little ran a loving hand over it,
+stroked its mane, so to speak, whispered in its ear, and set the engine
+purring.  Old Man Packard nodded; they two, big-bodied millionaire and
+dwarfed waif, needed each other.
+
+"Climb on the runnin'-board, Guy Little," he said right then.  "You go
+wherever I go."  And later he came to say of his mechanician, "Him?
+Why, man, he can take four ol' wagon wheels an' a can of gasoline an'
+make the damn' thing go.  He's all automobile brains, that's what Guy
+Little is!"
+
+On the Big Bend ranch, the old man's largest and favorite of several
+kindred holdings, an outfit which flung its twenty thousand acres this
+way and that among the Little Hills and on either side of the upper
+waters of the stream which eventually gave its name to Red Creek, the
+oldest of the name of Packard had summoned Guy Little.
+
+It was some ten days after the stopping of all activity in the Ranch
+Number Ten lumbercamp.  He had been sitting alone in his library,
+smoking a pipe, and staring out of his window and across his fields.
+Suddenly he sprang to his feet, went to his door, and shouted down the
+long hall:
+
+"Ho, there!  Guy Little!"
+
+The house was big; rooms had been added now and then at intervals
+during the last thirty or forty years; the master's library was of
+generous dimensions and could have stabled a herd of fifty horses.
+This chamber was in the southwest corner of the rambling edifice; Guy
+Little's quarters were diagonally across the building.  But Packard
+asked no tinkling electric bell; as usual he was content to stick his
+head out into the hall and yell in that big, booming voice of his:
+
+"Ho, there!  Guy Little, come here!"
+
+Having voiced his command he went back to his deep leather chair and
+refilled his pipe.  It was the time of early dusk; not yet were the
+coal-oil lamps lighted; shadows were lengthening and merging out in the
+rolling fields.  Packard's eyes, withdrawn from the outdoors, wandered
+along his tall and seldom-used book-shelves, fell to the one worn
+volume on the table beside him, went hastily to the door.  Down the
+hall came the sound of quick boot-heels.  He took up the single volume
+and thrust it out of sight under the leather cushion of his chair.  The
+mechanician was in the room before he could get his pipe lighted.
+
+"You called, m'lord?"
+
+Guy Little stood drawn up to make the most of his very inconsiderable
+height, eyes straight ahead, hands at sides, chin elevated and
+stationary.  Nothing was plainer than that he aped the burlesqued
+English butler--unless it be that it was even more obvious that in his
+chosen role he was a ridiculous failure.  There never was the man less
+designed by nature for the part than Guy Little.
+
+And yet he insisted; in the beginning of his relationship with his
+employer, his soul swelling with gratitude, his imagination touched by
+the splendors into which his fate had led him, awed by the dominant
+Packard, he had wanted always upon an occasion like this to demand
+stiffly:
+
+"You rang, your majesty?"
+
+Packard had cursed and threatened and brow-beaten him down to----
+
+"You called, m'lord?"
+
+But not even old Hell-Fire Packard could get him any further.
+
+"Yes, I called," grunted the old man.  "I hollered my head off at you.
+I want to know what you foun' out.  Let's have it."
+
+Guy Little made his little butler-bow.
+
+"Your word is law, m'lord," he said, once more rigid and unbending.
+
+Although Packard knew this very well without being told and had known
+it a good many years before Guy Little had been born, and although Guy
+Little had repeated the phrase time without number, the old man
+accepted it peacefully as a necessary though utterly damnable
+introduction.
+
+"It's like this," continued the mechanician.  "Not knowin' what you
+thought an' not even knowin' what you wanted to think, an' figgerin' to
+play safe, I've picked up the dope all over.  Which is sayin' I bought
+drinks on both sides the street, whiskey at Whitey Wimble's joint an'
+more of the same at Dan Hodges's.  An' I foun' out several things,
+m'lord.  If it is your wish----"
+
+"Spit 'em out, Guy Little!  What for a man is he?"
+
+"Firs'," said Guy Little, shifting his feet the fraction of an inch so
+that his chin bore directly upon Packard, "he's a scrapper.  He beat up
+Joe Woods, a bigger man than him; later he took part in some sort of a
+party durin' which, like is beknown to you, somebody gouged Blenham's
+eye out; after that, single-handed, he cleaned out your lumber-camp,
+fifteen men countin' Blenham.  Tally one, he's a scrapper."
+
+For an instant it seemed that all of the light there was in the swiftly
+darkening room had centred in the blue eyes under the old man's bushy
+white brows.  He drew deeply upon his pipe.
+
+"Go on, Guy Little," he ordered.  "What more?  Spit it out, man."
+
+"Nex'," reported the little man, "he's a born gambler.  If he wasn't he
+wouldn't of tied into a game of buckin' you; he wouldn't of played
+seven-an'-a-half like he did in at the Ace of Diamonds; he wouldn't of
+took them long chances tacklin' Woodsy's timberjacks before breakfas'.
+Scrapper an' gambler.  That's tally one an' two."
+
+The old man frowned heavily, his teeth remaining tight clamped on his
+pipestem as he cried sharply:
+
+"That's it!  You've said it: gambler!  Drat the boy, I knowed he had it
+in his blood.  An' it'll ruin him, ruin him.  Guy Little, as it would
+ruin any man.  We got to get that fool gamblin' spirit out'n him.  A
+man that's always takin' chances never gets anywhere; take a chance an'
+you ain't got a chance!  That's the way of it, Guy Little!  Go on,
+though.  What else about him?"
+
+"He's a good sport," went on the news-gatherer, "an' he don't ask no
+help from nobody.  He stan's on his two feet like a man, m'lord.  When
+he sees a row ahead he don't go to the law with it; no, m'lord; no
+indeed, m'lord.  He says 'Hell with the law!'  Like a man would, like
+me an' you . . . an' he kills his own rats himself."
+
+"That's the Packard of him!  For, by God, Guy Little, he is a Packard
+even if he has got a wrong start!  Rich man's son--silver-spoon
+stuff--why, it would spoil a better man than you ever saw!  Didn't I
+spoil my son Phil that-a-way?  Didn't Phil start out spoilin' his son
+Stephen that same way?  But he's a Packard--an'--an'----"
+
+"An' what, m'lord?"
+
+The old man's fist fell heavily on the arm of his chair.
+
+"An' I'm still hopin' he's goin' to be a damn' good Packard at that!
+But you go on, Guy Little.  What else?"
+
+"Sorta reckless, he is," resumed Guy Little.  "But that's purty near
+the same thing as havin' the gamblin' spirit, ain't it?  Nex' an'
+final, m'lord, he's got what you might call an eye for a good-lookin'
+girl."
+
+"The devil you say, Guy Little!"  The old man, beginning to settle in
+his chair, sat bolt upright.  "Is some female woman tryin' to get her
+hooks in my gran'son already?  Name her to me, sir!"
+
+"Name of Temple," said Little.  "Terry Temple as they call her, an' a
+sure good-lookin' party, if you ask me!  Classy from eyes to ankles an'
+when it comes to----"
+
+"Hold on, Guy Little!" exploded old man Packard, leaping to his feet,
+towering high above the little man, who looked up at him with an
+earnest and placid expression.  "That wench, that she-devil, that
+Jezebel!  Settin' her traps for my boy Stephen, is she?  Why, man
+alive, she ain't fit to scrape the corral-mud off'n his boots.  She's a
+low-down, deceitful jade, that's what she is, sired by a
+sheep-stealin', throat-cuttin', ornery, no-'count, worthless cuss!  The
+whole pack of them Temples, he an' she of 'em, big an' little of 'em,
+ought to be strung up on the firs' tree!  The low-down bunch of little
+prairie dawgs, tryin' to trap a Packard with puttin' a putty-faced fool
+girl in their snare.  I say, Guy Little, I'll make the whole crowd of
+'em hunt their holes!"
+
+And he hurled his pipe from him so that on the hearthstone it broke
+into many pieces.
+
+Now that was a long speech for old man Packard and Guy Little listened
+interestedly.  At the end, when the old man went growling back to his
+chair, the mechanician took up his tale.
+
+"She's purty, though," he maintained.  "Like a picture!"
+
+"Doll-faced," snorted the old man, who had not the least idea what
+Terry Temple looked like, not having laid his eyes on her for the
+matter of years.  "Dumpy, pudgy, squidge-nosed little fool.  I'll run
+both her and her thief of a father out of the country."
+
+"An'," continued Guy Little, "I didn't exac'ly' say, m'lord, as how
+this Terry Temple party was after him.  I said as how he was after her!
+That is, as how, roundin' out what I know about him, he's got a eye for
+a fine-lookin' lady.  Which, against argyment, I maintain that Terry
+Temple girl is."
+
+"Guy Little," cried Packard sharply, "you're a fool!  Maybe you know
+all there is about motor-cars an' gasoline.  When it comes to females
+you're a fool."
+
+"Ah, m'lord, not so!" protested Guy Little, a gleam in his eye like a
+faint flicker from a dead fire.  "There was a time--before I set these
+hoofs of mine into the wanderin' trail--when----"
+
+The rest might best be left entirely to the imagination and there he
+left it.  But the old man was all untouched by his henchman's utterance
+and innuendoed boast for the simple reason that he had heard nothing of
+it.
+
+"Those Temple hounds," he muttered, staring at Guy Little who stared
+butlerishly back, "are leeches, parasites, cursed bloodsuckers and
+hangers-on.  They think I'm goin' to take this boy in an' give him all
+I got; they think they see a chance to marry him into their rotten
+crowd an' slip one over on me this way!  That simperin', gigglin' fool
+of a girl try an' hook my gran'son!  I'll show 'em, Guy Little; I'll
+show the whole cussed pack of 'em!  I'll exterminate 'em, root an'
+branch an' withered leaf!  By the Lord, but I'll go get 'em!"
+
+"He'll do it," nodded Guy Little, addressing the invisible third party
+in order not to directly interrupt his patron's flow of words.
+
+But for a little the old man was silent, running his calloused fingers
+nervously through his beard, frowning into the dusk thickening over the
+world outside.  When he spoke again it was softly, thoughtfully, almost
+tenderly.  And the words were these:
+
+"Break a fool an' make a man, Guy Little!  That's what we're goin' to
+do for Stephen Packard.  He's always had too much money, had life too
+easy.  We'll jus' nacherally bust him all to pieces; we'll learn him
+the big lesson of life; we'll make a man out'n him yet.  An' when
+that's done, Guy Little, when that time comes--  Go send Blenham here,"
+he broke off with sharp abruptness.
+
+Guy Little achieved his stage bow and departed.  The door only half
+closed behind him, he was shouting at the top of his voice:
+
+"Hey, Blenham!  Oh, Blenham!  On the jump.  Packard wants you!"
+
+The door slammed behind him.  His back once turned on "m'lord," Guy
+Little did not wait to get out of earshot to become less butler than
+human sparrow.
+
+Blenham needed but the one summons and that might almost have been
+whispered.  He was fidgeting in his own room, waiting for this moment,
+knowing that he was to receive definite instructions concerning Stephen
+Packard.  Over his right eye was a patch; his face was still a sickly
+pallor; his one good eye burned with a sullen flame which never went
+out.
+
+Guy Little was the one human being in the world with whom the old man
+talked freely, to whom he unburdened himself.  With his chief
+lieutenant Blenham he was, as with other men, short, crisp-worded,
+curt.  Now, seeming to take no stock of Blenham's disfigurement, in a
+dozen snapping sentences he issued his orders.
+
+Their gist was plain.  Blenham was to go the limit to accomplish two
+purposes: the minor one of making the world a dreary place for certain
+scoundrels, name of Temple; the major one of utterly breaking Steve
+Packard.  When Blenham went out and to his own room again the sullen
+fire in his good eye burned more brightly, as though with fresh fuel.
+
+A little later Guy Little returned, lighted the lamps, made a small
+fire in the big fireplace, and ignoring the presence of his master,
+went to stand in front of the high book-shelves.  After a long time he
+got the step-ladder and placed it, climbed to the top, and squatted
+there in front of his favorite section.  Ultimately he drew down a
+volume with many colored illustrations; it was a tale of love, its
+_mise en scène_ the mansions of the lords and ladies whose adventures
+occurred in that atmosphere of romance which had captivated the soul of
+Guy Little.
+
+When he climbed down and sought the big chair in which he would curl up
+to read and chew countless sticks of gum, chewing fast when the action
+hurried, slowly when there was the dramatic pause, stopping often with
+mouth wide open when tense and breathless interest held him, he
+discovered that the old man had gone out.
+
+Guy Little pursed his lips.  Then he went to the recently vacated
+leather chair.  Not to sit in it; merely to draw out the little volume
+from under the cushion.
+
+"'Lyrics from Tennyson,'" he read aloud.  "What the devil are them
+things?"
+
+He turned the pages.
+
+"Pomes!" he grunted in disgust.
+
+Whereupon he carried his own book to his own chair.  But, beginning to
+turn the pages, he stopped and looked up wonderingly.
+
+"Funny ol' duck," he mused.  "Here I've knowed him all these years an'
+I never guessed he read pomes!"
+
+He shook his head, admitted to himself that the "ol' duck" was a keen
+ol' cuss, returned to his book, began stripping the paper from the
+first stick of gum, and knew no more of what went on about him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+AT THE FALLEN LOG
+
+Since the hill ranch operated by the Temples and the Packard Ranch
+Number Ten had over two miles of common border-line, it was unavoidable
+that Steve and Terry should meet frequently.  Truly unavoidable since
+further they were both young, Terry as pretty as the proverbial
+picture, Steve the type to stick somehow in such a girl's mind.  She
+turned up her nose at him; she gave him a fine view of her back; but in
+riding her father's range she let her eyes travel curiously across the
+line.
+
+For his part Steve, seeing where some of his calves had invaded Temple
+property, followed the errant calves himself instead of sending one of
+his men.  And as he rode he was apt to forget his strayed cattle as he
+watched through the trees for a fluttering, gay-hued scarf.
+
+Certainly of girls and women he had known she was the most refreshing;
+certainly she was the prettiest after an undeniably saucy style.  And
+life here of late, with Blenham and Woods gone and unheard from, was a
+quiet, uneventful affair.
+
+Terry, for her part, told herself and any one else who cared to listen,
+that he was a Packard, hence to be distrusted, avoided, considered as
+beneath a white person's notice.  His breed were all crooked.  Sired
+and grandsired by precious scoundrels, he was but what was to be
+expected.  And yet----
+
+For "yets" and "ifs" and "howevers" had already begun to intrude,
+befogging many a consideration hitherto clear as cut glass.  He had not
+lied about a horse being shot under him; he had been party to Blenham's
+departure from the ranch; he had been man enough in Red Creek to whip
+Joe Woods; and, single-handed, he had driven a crew of rough-and-ready
+timberjacks off his property.
+
+Further, it was undeniable that he had a good-natured grin, that his
+eyes though inclined either to be stern or else to laugh at her, were
+frank and steady, that he made a figure that fitted well in the eye of
+a girl like Terry Temple.
+
+"Oh, the Packards are men," said Terry begrudgingly, "even if they are
+pirates!"
+
+This to her father and, it is to be suspected, for her father's sake.
+For, despite the girl's valiantly repeated hope that Temple "would come
+back yet" and be again the man he once was, he seemed in fact to grow
+more shiftless day after day, communing long over his fireplace with
+his drink, passing from one degree to another of untidiness.  He made
+her "feel just like screaming and running around the house breaking
+things" at times.
+
+"You are impatient, my dear," said Temple as one speaking to a very
+young child.  "And there are matters which you don't understand; which
+I cannot even discuss with you.  But," and he winked very slyly, less
+at Terry than just in a general acknowledgment of his own acumen, "you
+just wait a spell!  I've got somethin' up my sleeve--somethin' that----
+Oh, you just wait, my dear!"
+
+Terry sniffed.
+
+"I ought to be pretty good at waiting by now," she told him, little
+impressed.  "And if you have anything up your sleeve besides the flabby
+arm of a do-nothing, then it must be another bottle of whiskey!  You
+can't flim-flam me, dad, and you ought to know it."
+
+She whisked out of the house, her face reddened with vexation, a sudden
+moisture in her eyes.  It took all of the fortitude she could summon
+into her dauntless little bosom to maintain after days like this that
+there was still a "come-back" left in her father.
+
+In an hour made fragrant by the resinous odors of the upland pines and
+the freshly liberated perfumes of the little white evening flowers
+thick in the meadows, Terry on her favorite horse went flashing through
+the long shadows of the late afternoon, riding as Terry always rode
+when her breast was tumultuous and her temper rising.
+
+The recently imported Japanese cook and houseboy peered out after her
+from his kitchen window, his eyes actually losing their Oriental cast
+and growing round; a trick, this, of Iki's whenever Terry came into his
+view.
+
+"Part bird," mused Iki, "part flower, big part wild devil-girl!  Oof!
+Nice to look at, but for wife Japonee girl more better.  Think so."
+
+Little by little as she rode, letting her horse out until she fairly
+raced through the fields and into the woods beyond, the pitiful picture
+of her father faded from her mind.  As the vision dimmed of Temple's
+shoddiness in his worn-out slippers another image formed in Terry's
+mind; an image which was there more than the girl had as yet come to
+realize.
+
+Yes, as types the Packards were all right; how many times had she
+admitted that to herself?  But as individuals . . .  Oh, how she hated
+them!  And to-day, for some reason not clearly defined in Terry's
+consciousness, she found it convenient to assure herself with new
+emphasis that she hated and despised the Packards with a growing
+detestation, and from this point to go on and inform Miss Teresa Temple
+exactly why she looked on those of the Packard blood just as she did.
+
+She summoned a host of reasons, set them in ranks like so many soldiers
+to wage war for her, marshalled and deployed and reviewed and
+dress-paraded them, and found them all eminently satisfactory
+mercenaries.
+
+There was one reason which she thrust into the background, seeking to
+keep it hidden behind the serried ranks of its brothers-in-arms.  And
+yet it insisted in mutinous fashion on pushing to the fore.  Seeking to
+consider the Packards en masse, as a curse rather than as individuals,
+she found that she was remembering Steve Packard rather vividly.
+
+In the outward seeming Steve Packard was a gentleman; he had that vague
+something called culture; he bore himself with the assurance and ease
+of one who knew the world; he had been to college--and Terry knew
+nothing more of school than was to be learned at a country high school.
+Steve's father had "broken" her father financially; had such not been
+the fact Terry herself would have had her own college diploma on her
+wall; Terry would have known something more of the world than she now
+knew; she would have been "a lady."
+
+"Oh, pickles!" cried Terry aloud, bringing her runaway thoughts to a
+sharp halt.  "What difference does it make if he knows Latin and I
+don't?  And a hot specimen of a 'lady' I'd make anyhow!"
+
+Over a ridge she flew, the low sun glistening from her spurs and the
+polished surfaces of her boot-tops, down into the dusk-filled fragrance
+of a woodsy cañon, into the mouth of a silent trail, around a wide
+curve, and to her own favorite spot of all these woods.  A nook of
+haunting charm with its sprawling stream, its big-boled and widely
+scattered trees, its grass and flowers.  "Mossy Dell," she called it,
+having borrowed the name from an old romance read in breathless fashion
+in her room.
+
+Slipping out of her saddle and leaving her horse to browse if such
+pastime suited him, Terry went through the trees and down along the
+flashing creek, humming softly, her voice confused with the gurgle of
+the noisy little stream, her eyes at last growing content.
+
+She was half smiling at some shadowy thought before she had gone twenty
+paces; she tossed off her hat and let it lie, meaning to come back for
+it later; she unfastened the scarf about her neck, baring her white
+throat to the hour's cool invitation, she let her bronze-brown hair
+down in two loose, curling braids across her shoulders, toying with the
+ends as she went.
+
+Coming here at troubled moments altered the girl's mood very much as an
+hour in a quiet cathedral may soothe the soul of the orthodox.
+
+A little further on, lying across the stream and just around another
+bend, was a great fallen cedar, its giant trunk eight or ten feet
+through at the base.  Approximately it marked the border-line between
+the Temple Ranch and Ranch Number Ten; it was quite as though the
+wilderness itself had cast down the big tree across an old trail to
+indicate a line which must not be crossed.
+
+Upon the top of this supine woodland monarch Terry was accustomed to
+sit, her back against one of the big limbs, her heels kicking at the
+mossy sides, while she glanced back and forth from Temple property to
+Packard land and told herself how much finer was her side than the
+other.
+
+Just where the tree had fallen the creek-bed was rocky and uneven; the
+water eddied and whirled and plunged noisily into its pools.  Terry,
+clambering up from her side of the big log, heard only the shouting of
+the brook.  She grasped the dead branches, pulled herself up, slipped a
+little, got a new foothold; Terry's head, her face flushed rosily, her
+eyes never brighter, popped up on one side of the log just in time with
+the tick of her destiny's clock.
+
+[Illustration: Terry's head, her face flushed rosily, her eyes never
+brighter, popped up on one side of the log.]
+
+That is to say just as Steve Packard, climbing up from the other side,
+thrust his head up above the top.  An astonished grunt from Steve who
+in the first start of the encounter came close to falling backward; a
+little choking ejaculation from Terry whose eyes widened
+wonderfully--and the two of them settled silently into their places on
+the cedar and stared at each other.  Some three or four feet only lay
+between the brim of Steve's hat and Terry's upturned nose.
+
+"Well?" demanded Terry stiffly.
+
+"Well?" countered Steve.
+
+He regarded her very gravely.  He had never had a girl materialize this
+way out of space and his own thoughts.  This sudden confronting savored
+of the supernatural; for the moment it set him aback and he was content
+to stare wonderingly into the sweet gray eyes so near his own and to
+take note of the curve of her lips, the redness of them, the dimple
+which, though departed now and, he felt, in hiding, had left a hint of
+itself behind in its hasty flight.
+
+"If there's one thing I hate worse than a potato-bug," said Terry,
+"it's a fresh guy!  Think you're funny, don't you?"
+
+"Fresh?  Funny?"
+
+He lifted his eyebrows.  And then, her suspicion clear to him, his
+gravity departed the way Terry's dimple had gone and he put back his
+head and laughed.  Laughed while the girl with deepening color and
+darkening eyes looked at him indignantly.
+
+"Think I did that on purpose?" he cried in vast good nature.  "That I
+was spying on you?  That I waited until you started to climb up here
+and that then I popped my head up just at the same time?  All on
+purpose?"
+
+"That's just exactly what I do think!" Terry told him hotly.  "You--you
+big smarty!  Everywhere I go, have you got to keep showing up?"
+
+"I'll tell you something," said Steve.  "If I had climbed up here just
+to give you a little surprise party; if I had known you were there and
+that I could have poked my head up just as you did yours--know what I
+would have done?"
+
+"What?" Terry in her curiosity condescended to ask.
+
+"I'd have kissed the prettiest girl I ever saw!" he chuckled.  "Honest
+to grandma!  That's just what I'd have done.  As it was, you half
+scared me out of my wits; I came as close as you please to going over
+backward and breaking my neck."
+
+"Not as close as I please.  And as for kissing me, Long Steve Packard,
+you just try that on sometime when you want your face slapped good and
+hard and a bullet pumped into you besides!"
+
+"Mean it?" grinned Steve.
+
+"I most certainly do," she retorted emphatically.
+
+"Offered merely as information?" he wanted to know.  "Or as a dare?  Or
+an invitation?"
+
+When she did not reply at once but contented herself by putting a deal
+of eloquence into a look--which, by the way, had no visible effect upon
+his rising good humor--he went on to remark:
+
+"If you just slapped my face it would be worth it.  If you just shot me
+through the finger-nail or something like that, it would be worth it
+still."  He examined her critically.  "Even if you plugged me square
+through the thumb----"
+
+"If you don't know it," she informed him aloofly, "you are trespassing
+right now where you are not wanted.  The sooner you trail your big feet
+off Temple land the better I'll like it!"
+
+"Temple land?  Since when was a tree considered as land, Miss Teresa
+Arriega Temple?"
+
+"Think that's funny?" she scoffed.
+
+"And besides," he continued, "the tree is on Packard property.  See
+that old pine stump over yonder?  And that big rock there?  Those
+things mark the boundary-line and you'll notice we're on my side!"
+
+Terry's temper flamed higher in her eyes, flashed hotter in her cheeks.
+
+"We are not!  And you know we are not!  The line runs yonder, just
+beyond that big white rock on the creek-bank.  And you are a good ten
+feet on my side.  Where, if you please, you are not wanted."
+
+"That isn't a pretty enough thought to bear repetition," he offered
+genially.  "Look here, Terry Temple, what's the use----"
+
+"Are you going?  Or do you intend just to squat there like a toad and
+spoil the view for me?"
+
+"Toads are fat animals," he corrected her.  "I'm not.   More like a
+bullfrog, if you like.  What am I going to do?  Why, just squat, I
+guess."
+
+As he leaned back against the limb which offered its support to his
+shoulders Terry noted that he wore in full sight at his side the heavy
+Colt he had bought the other night in Red Creek.  A new habit, with
+Steve Packard.
+
+"Gunman, are you?" she jeered.  "I might have known it.  Gunmen are all
+cowards."
+
+He sighed.
+
+"You can be the most irritating young lady I ever met.  And why?  What
+have I ever done to you--besides save you from drowning?  Since we are
+neighbors, why not be good friends?  By the way, where do you carry
+your gun?"
+
+"It's different with a girl," she said bluntly.  "There's some excuse
+for her.  With the kind that's filling the woods lately she's apt to
+need it."
+
+"And you wouldn't be afraid to use it?"
+
+"I'm not here to chin with you all day," observed Terry coolly.  "And
+you haven't told me what you're doing on my land."
+
+"Your land?" he demanded.
+
+"On my side of the line, then."
+
+He considered the question.
+
+"I'm here to meet some one," he answered finally.
+
+"I like your nerve!  Arranging to meet your friends here!  Steve
+Packard, you are the--the--the----"
+
+"Go on," he prompted.  "You'll need a cuss-word now; any other finish
+will sound flat."
+
+"--the _Packardest_ Packard I ever heard of!" she concluded.  "You and
+your friend----"
+
+"No more my friend than he is yours," he said, interrupting her.  "An
+individual named Blenham.  And I'm not here so much to meet him
+as--let's say to head him off."
+
+Terry set it down that, since it was next to impossible at any time for
+a Packard to speak the truth, he was just lying to her for the sake of
+the devious exercise.  As she was on the point of saying emphatically
+when Steve said "Sh!" and pointed.  She heard a breaking of brush and
+saw the horns of a steer; the animal was coming into the trail from the
+Packard side.
+
+"You just watch," whispered Steve.  "And sit right still.  It won't do
+you any harm to know what's going on."
+
+The big steer broke through into the trail, stopped and sniffed, and
+then came on up the stream.   Behind came another and another, emerging
+from the shadows, passing through the swiftly fading light of the open,
+gone again into the shadows that lay over the wooded Temple acreage.
+In all nine big fat steers.  And behind them, sitting loosely in his
+saddle, came Blenham.
+
+Only when the last steer had crossed the line did Steve rise suddenly,
+standing upright on the great log, his hands on his hips.  Terry
+looking up into his face saw that all of the good humor had gone from
+it and that there was something ominous in the darkening of his eyes.
+
+"Hold on, Blenham!" he called.
+
+Blenham drew a quick rein.
+
+"That you, Packard?" he asked quietly.
+
+"It is," answered Steve briefly.  "On the job, too, Blenham.  All the
+time."
+
+Blenham laughed.
+
+"So it seems," he said, his look like his tone eloquent of an innuendo
+which embraced Terry evilly.  "If you're invitin' me to join your
+little party, I ain't got the time.  Thanks jus' the same."
+
+Since one's consciousness may harbor several clear-cut impressions
+simultaneously, Steve Packard, while he was thinking of other matters,
+felt that never until this moment had he hated Blenham properly; no,
+nor respected him as it would be the part of wisdom to do.
+
+The man's glance running over Terry Temple's girlishness was like the
+crawling of a slug over a wild flower and supplied a new and perhaps
+the key-note to Blenham's ugliness.  It was borne in upon Steve that
+his grandfather's lieutenant was bad, absolutely bad; that, old adages
+to the contrary notwithstanding, here was a character with not a hint
+of redemption in it; after the Packard outright way, this youngest
+Packard was ready to condemn out of hand.
+
+And further, to all of this Steve marked how Blenham had drawn a quick
+rein but had shown no tremor of uneasiness; had considered that though
+the man had been taken completely by surprise he had given no sign of
+being startled, but had answered a sharp summons with a cool, quiet
+voice.  So, summing it up, here was one to be hated and watched.
+
+"What are you doing on my land, Blenham?" asked Steve sharply.  "And
+where are you driving those steers?"
+
+Blenham eased himself in his saddle, drew his broad hat lower over his
+eyes; thus he partly hid the patch which he had worn since he came from
+the doctor's hands.
+
+"I ain't on your land any more," he returned.  "An' as for them
+steers--what's it to you, anyhow?"
+
+Open defiance was one thing Steve had not looked for.
+
+"Looking for more trouble yet, Blenham?" he asked briefly.
+
+Blenham shrugged.
+
+"I'm tendin' to business," he said slowly.  "No, I'm not lookin' for
+trouble--yet.  Since you want to know, I'm hazin' them cow-brutes the
+shortes' way off'n Number Ten an' on to the North Trail.  I'm puttin'
+'em on the trot to the Big Bend ranch where they happen to belong."
+
+Steve lifted his brows, for the moment wondering.  Blenham was not
+waiting for pitch dark to move these steers; he manifested no alarm at
+being discovered; now he calmly admitted that he was driving them to
+old man Packard's ranch where they belonged.  It was possible that he
+was right.
+
+In the few weeks that he had been back Steve had not had the time to
+know every head on his wide-scattered acreage; as the steers had
+trotted through the shadows and into the open his eyes had been less
+for them than for the coming of Blenham and he was not sure of the
+brands.
+
+He felt that Terry's eyes, as Terry sat very still on her log, were
+steadily upon him.
+
+"Blenham," he said curtly, "I don't know whose cattle those are.  But I
+do know this much: If they are mine I am going to have them back; if
+they are not mine I am going to have them back just the same."
+
+"How do you make that out?" demanded Blenham.
+
+"I make out that neither you nor any other man has any business driving
+stock off my range without consulting me first."
+
+"They're Big Bend cows," muttered Blenham.  "The ol' man's orders----"
+
+"Curse the old man's orders!" Steve's voice rang out angrily.  "If he
+can't be decent to me, can't he at least let me alone?  Need he send
+you here to do business with me?  If you want orders, Blenham, you just
+take these from me: Ride back to the old man on Big Bend ranch and tell
+him that what stock is on my ranch I keep here until he can prove it is
+his!  Understand?  If he can prove that these steers belong to him--and
+I don't believe he can and you can tell him that, too--why then, let
+him send me the money to pay for their pasturage and he can have them.
+And in the meantime, Mr. Blenham, get out and be damned to you!"
+
+For the moment Steve lost all thought of Terry sitting very still so
+close to him, his mind filled with his grandfather and his
+grandfather's chosen tool.  So when he thought that he heard the
+suspicion of a stifled giggle, a highly amused and vastly delighted
+little giggle, he was for the instant of the opinion that Blenham was
+laughing at him.
+
+But the intruder was all seriousness.  He sat motionless, his glance
+stony, his thought veiled, his one good eye giving no more hint of his
+purpose than did the patch over the other eye.  In the end he shrugged.
+
+"My orders," he said finally, "was simply to haze them steers back to
+the Big Bend.  The ol' man didn't say nothin' about startin' anything
+if you got unreasonable."  Again he shrugged elaborately.  "I'll come
+again if he says so," he concluded and, jabbing his spurs viciously
+into his horse's flanks, his sole sign of irritation, Blenham rode away
+through the woods.
+
+"He let go too easy," murmured Terry.  "He's got a card in the hole
+yet."
+
+Her eyes followed the departing rider, she pursed her lips after him.
+
+Steve turned and looked down upon her.
+
+"I hope you don't mind if I trespass to the extent of riding after
+those steers?" he offered.  "I want to drive them back and at the same
+time I don't mind making sure that Blenham is still on his way."
+
+Terry regarded him long and searchingly.
+
+"Go ahead," she said at last.  And, as though an explanation were
+necessary, she continued: "There's just one animal I hate worse than I
+do a Packard!  For once the fence is down between you and Temple land,
+Steve Packard."
+
+"Let's keep it down!" he said impulsively.  "You and I----"
+
+"No, thanks!"  Terry rose swiftly to her feet, balancing on her log,
+reminding him oddly of a bright bird about to take flight.  "You just
+remember that there's just one animal I hate _almost_ as much as I do
+Blenham; and that that's a Packard."
+
+And so she jumped down from the log and left him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+TERRY DEFIES BLENHAM
+
+Blenham must have ridden late into the night.  For at a very early hour
+the next morning he was at the Big Bend ranch fifty miles to the north
+and reporting to his employer.  Early as it was, the old man had
+breakfasted, and now the wide black hat far back on his head, the spurs
+on his big boots, bespoke his readiness to be riding.
+
+At times he stood stock-still, his hands on his hips, staring down at
+Blenham's lesser stature; at other times and in a deep, thoughtful
+silence he strode back and forth in the great barn-like library, his
+spurs jingling.
+
+"Why, burn it, man," he exploded once during the fore part of the
+interview, "the boy is a Packard!  I'm proud of him.  We're going to
+make a real man out of Stephen yet.  Haven't I said the words a dozen
+times: 'Break a fool an' make a man!'  I'm tellin' you, the las'
+Packard to be spoiled by havin' too much easy money has lived an' died.
+All we got to do with Stephen is put him on foot; set him down in the
+good ol'-fashioned dirt where he's got to work for what he gets, an'
+he'll come through.  Same as I did.  Yessir!"
+
+Blenham waited for his signal to continue his report, and when he got
+it, a look and a nod, he resumed, face, voice, and eye alike
+expressionless of any personal interest in the matter.
+
+"You know them nine big steers as strayed from here some time ago?  I
+tol' you about 'em two or three weeks ago?  Well, I found 'em like I
+said I would, all nine of 'em, an' on Ranch Number Ten."
+
+"It's quite a way for cattle to stray," said the old man sharply.
+Blenham shrugged carelessly.
+
+"Oh, I dunno," he returned lightly.  "I've knowed 'em to go fu'ther
+than that.  Well, I made a pass to haze 'em on back this way an' young
+Packard blocks my play."
+
+The old man's eye brightened.
+
+"What did he say?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"He said," said Blenham, picking at his hat-band, "as how if the stock
+was yours which he didn't believe he'd hold 'em until you sent over
+enough coin to pay for their feed.  He said as how, if you couldn't be
+decent you better anyhow leave him alone.  He said hell with both of
+us."
+
+"He did?" cried old Packard.  "He said that, Blenham?"
+
+"He did," answered Blenham with a quick, curious, sidewise glance.
+
+Packard's big hand was lifted and came down mightily upon his thigh as,
+suddenly released, the old man's voice boomed out in a great peal of
+laughter.
+
+"Ho!" he cried, shouting out the words to be heard far out across the
+open meadow.  "Say to hell with me, does he?  Holds my stock for
+pasture money, does he?  Defies me to do my worst, him a young,
+penniless whippersnapper, me a millionaire an' a man-breaker!  Why,
+curse it, he's a man already, Blenham!  He's a Packard to his backbone,
+I tell you!  By the Lord, I've a notion to jump into my car and go get
+the boy!"
+
+A troubled shadow came and went swiftly across Blenham's face, not to
+be seen by the old man who was staring out of his window.  All of the
+craft there was in the ranch foreman rose to the surface.
+
+"Yes," he agreed quietly, "he's got the makin's in him.  He ain't
+scared of the devil himself, which is one right good earmark.  He's
+independent, which is another good sign.  Why, when I runs across him
+an' that Temple girl out in the woods----"
+
+"What's that!" snapped the old man, though he had heard well enough.
+"Do you mean to tell me----"
+
+"They was sittin' on top a big log," said Blenham tonelessly.
+"Confidential lookin', you know.  I won't say he was holdin' her hands,
+an' at the same time I won't say he wasn't.  An' I won't say he'd jus'
+kissed her, two seconds before I rode aroun' a bend in the trail."  One
+of his ponderous shrugs and a grimace concluded his meaning.  Then he
+laughed.  "Nor I wouldn't say he hadn't.  But, like I was tellin'
+you----"
+
+"You were tellin' me," growled the old man, "that that scoundrel of a
+Temple's fool of a girl is tryin' her hand at spellbindin' my gran'son
+Stephen!  The dirty little saphead--  Look here, Blenham; you've got
+more gumption than most: tell me how far things have gone an' what
+Temple's game is.  Guy Little has been tellin' me the same sort of
+thing."
+
+"There ain't much to tell," answered Blenham.  "That is, that a man
+couldn't guess without bein' told.  He's your gran'son; even with a
+scrap on between you an' him, still blood is thicker'n water an' some
+day, maybe, you'll pass on to him all you got.  Leastways, there's a
+chance, an' also he oughta fit pretty snug in a girl's eye.  Fu'ther to
+all that, it's jus' the same ol' story.  A feller an' a girl, an' the
+girl with a fine figger an' a fine pair of eyes which, bein' a
+she-girl, she knows how to use.  Seein' as you ask the question, I
+guess I could answer it by jus' sayin' that the Temples are makin' the
+one move they'd be sure to make."
+
+The senior Packard's scowl had known fame as long as fifty years ago;
+never was it blacker than right now.  For a little he stood still
+glaring at the floor.  Blenham watched him covertly, a look of craft in
+the one good eye.
+
+"Better go over an' see Temple right away," said Packard presently.
+"He won't be able to pay up his next instalment.  Tell him I'm goin' to
+foreclose an' drive him out.  While you're at it you can show him the
+plum foolishness of sickin' his idiot girl on Stephen.  How it won't
+bring 'em any good an' will jus' get me out on his trail red-hot.
+He'll understand."  And the stern old mouth set into lines of which
+Blenham read the full and emphatic meaning.  "Go on: anything else to
+report?"
+
+After his fashion in business matters he had pondered deeply but
+briefly upon this interference of Terry, had planned, had instructed
+his agent, and now turned to whatever might next demand his attention
+in connection with his campaign against and for Steve Packard.  And
+Blenham, deeming that he had scored a certain point, moved straight on
+to another.
+
+"He said--an' she watched an' listened an' giggled--as how he was in
+right an' you was in wrong; as how the law was on his side an' he'd
+stick it out; how he could take the whole ruction into court an' beat
+you; how----"
+
+Old Hell-Fire Packard stared at him, mumbling heavily:
+
+"He said that?  Stephen, my gran'son said that?"
+
+"Yes," lied Blenham glibly.  "Them was his words.  An', not knowin' a
+whole lot about law an' such----"
+
+He ended there, knowing that his words went unheeded.  The look upon
+the old man's face changed slowly from one of pure amazement to one of
+pain, grief, disappointment.  Stephen, his gran'son, threatened to go
+to law!  It was unthinkable that any one save a thief and an out-right
+scoundrel, such by the way as were all of his business rivals and the
+men who refused to tote and carry at his bidding, should make a threat
+like that; worse than unthinkable, utterly, depravedly disgraceful that
+one of the house of Packard should resort to such devious and damnable
+practices.  For an instant Blenham thought that tears were actually
+gathering in the weary old eyes.
+
+But the emotion which came first was gone in a scurry before a sudden
+windy rage.  The face which had been graven with humiliation and
+chagrin went fiery red; the big hands clenched and were uplifted; the
+great booming voice trembled to the shouted words:
+
+"Let him; burn him, let him!  I can break the fool quicker that way
+than any other; don't he know it takes money, money without end, for
+the perjurin', trickery, slippery law sharks that'll bleed a man, aye,
+suck out his life-blood an' then spit him out like the pulp of an
+orange?  Infernal young puppy-dawg!  See what it's done for him
+already, this rich-man's-son business.  To think that one of my blood,
+my own gran'son, should go to law!  Why, by high heaven, Blenham, the
+thing's downright disgraceful!"
+
+Swiftly, deftly, employing a remark like a surgeon's lancet, Blenham
+offered:
+
+"I have the hunch that Temple girl put it in his head."
+
+"You're right!"  This new suggestion required no weighing and fine
+balancing.  You could attribute no villainy whatever to one of the old
+man's enemies that he would not admit the extreme likelihood of your
+being right.  "Stephen ain't that sort; she's got him by the nose, hell
+take her!  She's drivin' him to it, an' it's Temple drivin' her.  An'
+it's up to you an' me to drive him clean out'n this corner of the
+universe.  Which we can do without goin' to the law!" he interjected
+scornfully.  "I reckon you understan', don't you, Blenham?"
+
+Blenham nodded and put on his hat.
+
+"I'm to hound him from the start to finish; until we drive him an' her
+out the country.  An' I'm to pound at your gran'son too an' at the same
+time until we bust him wide open.  That right?"
+
+"Right an' go to it!" cried Packard.
+
+Blenham saluted as he might have done were he still a sergeant down on
+the border, wheeled and went out.  Five minutes later he was riding
+again toward the south.  And now the look on his face was one of near
+triumph.  For at last the time had come when the old man had given
+outright the instructions which could make many things possible.
+
+That same day, about noon, Terry Temple, flashing across country in her
+car, met Blenham on the country road.  She was going toward Red Creek,
+her errand urgent as were always the errands of Terry.  Half a mile
+away she knew him, first by the white stocking of his favorite mare,
+second by his big bulk and the way it sat the saddle.
+
+So, quite like the old Packard whom she so heartily detested, she gave
+him the horn and never an inch of the road which was none too wide.
+Blenham, his mouth working, jerked his horse out of the way, down over
+the edge of the slope, and cursed after her as she passed him.
+
+Terry, in Red Creek, went straight to the store and to a shelf in a far
+and dusty corner where were all of the purchasable books of the
+village.  A thumb in her mouth, a frown in her eyes, she regarded them
+long and soberly.
+
+In the end she severed the Gordian knot by taking an even dozen
+volumes.  There were a grammar, an ancient history, some composition
+books, and, most important of all, a treatise upon social usages.
+
+How to write letters, what R. S. V. P. meant, "Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so
+request and so forth," how a lady should greet a gentleman friend--in
+short, an answer to all possible questions of right and wrong ways of
+appearing in polite society.  With her purchases stowed away in a
+cracker-box Terry turned again toward the ranch.
+
+In the ordinary course of events Terry should have returned to her home
+well ahead of Blenham.  But this afternoon she made a wide, circling
+detour to chat briefly with Rod Norton's young wife at the Rancho de
+las Flores, and so came under the Temple oaks after dusk.
+
+As she turned in at the gate she saw Blenham's horse standing tied down
+by the stable.  Terry's eyes opened wonderingly and a little flush came
+into her cheeks.  Plainly Blenham was closeted with her father.  Terry
+bit her lip, gathered her books in her arms, and hastened toward the
+house.
+
+The bawling of a mother cow and a baby calf, separated by a corral
+fence, had quite drowned out the purr of her motor; her step as usual
+was light upon the porch.  The first that Temple and Blenham knew of
+her coming was her form in the doorway, her face turned curiously upon
+them.
+
+And in that instant, while all three stood motionless, Terry saw and
+wondered at a look of understanding which had flashed between her own
+father and the despised representative of a hated race.  Further she
+noted how the glass in Temple's hand was still lifted, as was the glass
+in Blenham's, the whiskey still undrunk, winking at her in the pale
+lamplight.
+
+"Isn't your eternal drinking bad enough without your asking such as
+that to drink with you?" she asked quietly.  Very, very quietly for
+Miss Terry Temple.
+
+Her father shifted a trifle uneasily.  Blenham watched her intently,
+admiringly after a gross fashion and yet a bit contemptuously.  Blenham
+could put a look like that into his eye; to him a girl was a thing that
+might be both sneered at and coveted.
+
+"My dear," said Temple, striving for clear enunciation and in the end
+achieving it heavily, "I am glad you came.  I want you to listen.  We
+must act wisely.  We must not misjudge Mr. Blenham."
+
+While Terry remained silent, looking from one to the other of the two
+men.  Temple drank his whiskey hastily, furtively, snatching the second
+when her gaze had gone to Blenham.
+
+"What's the game?" asked Terry in a moment.
+
+She set her books down upon the table at her side, put out her hand to
+the back of a chair, and like the men remained standing.
+
+Temple looked to Blenham, who merely shrugged his thick shoulders and
+sipped at his whiskey, as though it had been a light wine and very soft
+to an appreciative palate.  In some vague way the act was vastly
+insolent.  Temple appeared uncertain, no uncommon thing with him; then,
+going to set his emptied glass down he put an elbow on the mantel,
+dropped his head, and spoke in a low, mumbling voice:
+
+"The game?  It's what it always was, Terry girl; what it always will
+be.  The game of the ear of corn and the millstones; the game of the
+unfortunate under the iron heel."
+
+"Unfortunate!"  cried Terry in disgust.  "Pooh!"
+
+"Listen to me," commanded her father.  "You ask: What's the game? and
+I'm telling you."  His head was up now; Terry noted a new look in his
+eyes, as he hurried on.  "It's just the game of life, after all.  The
+war of those who have everything against those who have nothing; of men
+like Old Hell-Fire Packard against men like me.  A game to be won more
+often than not through the sheer force of massed money that squeezes
+the life out of the under dog--but to be lost when the moneyed fool,
+curse him, runs up against a team like Blenham and me!"
+
+"Blenham and you?" she repeated.  "You and Blenham?  You mean to tell
+me that you are chipping in with him?"
+
+Blenham turned his whiskey-glass slowly in his great thick fingers.
+His eye shone with its crafty light; his lips were parted a little as
+though they held themselves in readiness for a swift interruption if
+Temple said the wrong thing or went too far.
+
+"You are prejudiced," said Temple.  "You always have been.  Just
+because Blenham here has represented Packard, and Packard----"
+
+"Is an old thief!" she cried passionately.  "And worse!  As Packard's
+_Man Friday_ Blenham doesn't exactly make a hit with me!"
+
+"Come, come," exclaimed Temple.  "Curb your tongue, Teresa, my dear.
+If you will only listen----"
+
+"Shoot then and get it over."
+
+Terry sank into her chair, clasped her gauntleted hands about a pair of
+plump knees which drew Blenham's gaze approvingly, and set her white
+teeth to nibbling impatiently at her under lip as though setting a
+command upon it for silence.
+
+"Let's have it, Dad."
+
+"That's sensible," mumbled Temple.  "You always were a smart girl,
+Teresa, when you cared to be.  Let's see; where had I got?  Oh, yes;
+speaking of Blenham chipping in with us, as you put it."
+
+"With _you_!" corrected Terry briefly.
+
+"We're mortgaged to old man Packard," continued Temple, somewhat hasty
+about it now that he had fairly plunged into the current of what he had
+to say, as though the water were cold and he was anxious to clamber out
+upon the far side.  "Not much in a way; a good deal when you figure on
+how tight money is and how little we've seen of it these last few
+years.  Now, Packard sends Blenham across with a message; he's going to
+foreclose; he is going to drive us out; to ruin us.  That is Packard's
+word."
+
+Terry stiffened in her chair; her chin rose a little in the air; her
+eyes brightened; the color in her cheeks deepened.  That was her only
+answer to Packard's ultimatum as quoted to her father by Blenham and by
+Temple to her.  Knowing that there was still more to come, she sat
+still, her clasped hands tightening about her knees.  Blenham, as still
+as she, was sipping at his whiskey.
+
+"But Blenham is a white man."
+
+Temple attempted to say it with the force of conviction, but Terry
+merely sniffed, and Temple himself failed somewhat to put his heart
+into his words.  He hurried on, repeating:
+
+"Yes, a white man.  And he's got a little money of his own that he's
+been tucking away all these years of working for Packard.  He comes
+over this evening, Teresa, my dear, and makes us a--curse it, a
+generous offer.  You see, as things are, we are bound to lose the whole
+place, lock, stock, and barrel, to Packard; you don't want to do that,
+do you?"
+
+"Go on," said Terry.  Her face was suddenly as white as the hands from
+which she was swiftly, nervously stripping her gauntlets.  "Just what
+is Blenham's generous offer, Dad?"
+
+"It's one of two things."
+
+He hesitated and licked his lips.  Terry's heart sank lower yet; it
+took him so long to set the thing into words!  "You see, as Old Man
+Packard's foreman and agent he comes to tell us that he is ordered to
+foreclose; to break us utterly.  As a friend to us he says----"
+
+"For God's sake!" cried Terry sharply.  "What does he say?"
+
+"He will pay us a thousand dollars to let him take over everything!  He
+will assume the mortgage; he will scrap it out with old Packard; he
+will clear the title; and, if we get where we want the ranch back some
+time, he will let us buy him out for just what he has put in it."
+
+Terry looked at him gravely.
+
+"In words of one syllable," she said quietly, "Blenham plans to give
+you one thousand dollars; then to pay to old Packard the seven thousand
+you owe him; and for this amount of eight thousand to grab an outfit
+that is worth twenty thousand if it's worth a nickel!  That's his
+generous offer, is it?"
+
+"My dear----"
+
+"Don't my dear me!" she snapped impatiently.  "Just go on and get the
+whole idiotic thing out of your system.  What else?"
+
+"That's all.  As I have said already, as things are we are bound to
+lose everything to Packard.  Blenham steps up and offers us a
+thousand----"
+
+"I should think he would step up!  Lively!  Well, I can't stop you, can
+I?  You don't have to have my consent to make a laughing-stock out of
+yourself?  Have you signed up with Blenham already?"
+
+Temple sought to assume an air of dignity which went poorly with his
+ragged slippers and bleary eye.
+
+"Blenham has his money in a safe in Red Creek.  There will be papers to
+be signed.  We are going there now.  I--I am sorry you take it this
+way, Teresa."
+
+Then she sprang to her feet, her two hands clenched, her eyes blazing.
+
+"And I," she cried hotly, "am sorry.  Oh, I am ashamed! that one of the
+name of Temple should sink so low as to hobnob with a cur and a
+scoundrel, a cheat, a liar, and all that Blenham is, and that you and I
+and the whole country know he is!  I'd rather see Old Hell-Fire Packard
+break you and grind you under foot than see you stand there and drink
+with that thing!"
+
+And that there should be no mistake her finger shot out, pointing at
+Blenham.
+
+"Terry!" commanded her father, "be silent.  You don't know what you are
+saying!"
+
+"Don't I, though!  I--I----"
+
+Blenham laughed as she broke off, laughed again as he stood watching
+how she was breathing rapidly.
+
+"Pretty puss," he said impudently, "you need them pink-an'-white nails
+of your'n trimmed."
+
+"Don't you dare say a word to me," she flung at him.  "Not a word."
+
+"Not a single little word, eh?"  He tossed off his whiskey, dropped the
+empty glass to the floor behind him, and came a quick stride toward
+her, an ugly leer twisting at the corner of his mouth, his one eye
+burning.  "I've got your ol' man where I want him; he knows it an' I
+an' you know it.  An' when I like I can have you where I want you, too.
+Understan'?"
+
+He had taken another step toward her.  The sudden thought leaped up in
+her mind that he and her father had had many drinks together before her
+arrival.  She drew back slowly.  Temple, seeing that for the moment all
+attention had been drawn from him, reached out for a bottle on the far
+end of the mantel.
+
+Then suddenly and without another word being spoken Terry was
+galvanized into action.  Blenham was coming on toward her and she saw
+the look in his eye.  She whipped back; her breath caught in her
+throat; the color ran out of her cheeks.  She glanced wildly toward her
+father; his fingers were closing about the neck of a bottle when they
+should have been at the neck of a man.
+
+Terry whipped up a book from the table--it was a volume answering many
+a question about how to act in society but without any mention of such
+a situation as now had arisen--and flung it straight into Blenham's
+hectic face.  Then she slipped through the door behind her, slammed it,
+and ran out, down the porch and into the night.  Behind her she heard
+Blenham's heavy, spurred boots and Blenham's curse.
+
+"If he comes on I will kill him!"
+
+She was at her car; her revolver was in her hand.  She saw Blenham come
+outside.  A moment he seemed to hesitate, his big bulk outlined against
+the door's rectangle of light.  Then she heard him laugh and saw him
+return to the room.  She came back slowly, tiptoe, to stand under the
+window.
+
+"You can drive the girl's car, can't you?" Blenham was asking.  And
+when Temple admitted that he could: "Let's pile in an' be on our way.
+Like I said, you close with me tonight or I won't touch the thing."
+
+Then again Terry ran back to her car.  She sprang in, started her
+engine, opened the throttle as she let in the clutch, and making a wide
+circle shot up the road, out the gate, and away into the darkness.
+
+"I'll take this pot yet, Mr. Cutthroat Blenham!" she was crying within
+herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+AND CALLS ON STEVE
+
+Though a tempest brewed in her soul and her blood grew turbulent with
+it, Terry did not hesitate from the first second.  Just the other day
+upon a certain historic log had she not said:
+
+"I hate Blenham worse than a Packard!"
+
+True, she had gone on to intimate that the youngest of the house of
+Packard was scarcely more to her liking than was the detested foreman.
+But--  Well, if Steve didn't know, at least Terry did, that that remark
+was uttered purely for its rhetorical effect.
+
+"He's been a pretty decent scout from the jump," Terry admitted
+serenely to herself as she threw her car into high and went streaking
+through the pale moonlight.  Then she smiled, the first quick smile to
+come and go since she had hurled a book in Blenham's face.  "A pretty
+decent scout from the jump!"
+
+He had literally jumped into her life, going after her quite as
+though----
+
+"Oh, shucks!" laughed Terry.  "It's the moonlight!"
+
+There came a certain sharp turn in the road where even she must slow
+down.  Here Terry came to a dead stop, not so much in hesitation as
+because she was conscious of a departure from the old trails and felt
+deeply that the act might be filled with significance.  For when she
+had made the turn she would have crossed the old dead line, she would
+have passed the boundary and invaded Packard property.
+
+"Well," thought Terry, "when you are between the devil and the deep sea
+what are you going to do?"
+
+So she let in her clutch, opened her throttle, sounded her horn purely
+by way of defiance, and when next she stopped it was at the very door
+of the old ranch-house where Steve Packard should be found at this
+early hour of the evening.
+
+The men in the bunk-house had heard her coming, and to the last man of
+them pushed to the door to see who it might be.  Their first thought,
+of course, would be that the old mountain-lion, Steve's grandfather,
+had come roaring down from his place in the north.  Terry tossed up her
+head so that they might see and know and marvel and speculate and do
+and say anything which pleased them.  Having crossed her Rubicon, she
+didn't care the snap of her pretty fingers who knew.
+
+"I want Steve Packard," she called to them.  "Where is he?"
+
+It was young Barbee who answered, Barbee of the innocent blue eyes.
+
+"In the ranch-house, Miss Terry," he said.  And he came forward,
+patting his hair into place, hitching at his belt, smiling at her after
+his most successful lady-killing fashion.  "Sure I won't do?"
+
+"You?"  Terry laughed.  "When I'm looking for a man I'm not going to
+stop for a boy, Barbee dear!"
+
+And she jumped down and knocked loudly at Steve's door, while the men
+at the bunk-house laughed joyously and Barbee cursed under his breath.
+
+Steve, supposing that it was one of his own men grown suddenly formal,
+did not take his stockinged feet down from his table or his pipe from
+his lips as he called shortly--
+
+"Come in!"
+
+And Terry asked no second invitation.  In she went, slamming the door
+after her so that those who gawked at the bunk-house entrance might
+gawk in vain.
+
+And now Steve Packard achieved in one flashing second the removal of
+his feet from the table, the shifting of his pipe from his teeth, the
+swift buttoning of his shirt across his chest.  And as he stared at her
+he gasped:
+
+"I'll be----"
+
+"Say it!" laughed Terry.  "Well, I'm here.  Came on business.  There's
+a hole in the toe of your sock," she ended with a flash of malice, as
+she noted how, embarrassed for the first time since she had known him,
+he was trying to hide a pair of man-sized feet behind his table.
+
+[Illustration: "Say it!" laughed Terry.  "Well, I'm here.  Came on
+business."]
+
+Steve grew violently red.  Terry laughed deliciously.
+
+"I--I didn't know----"
+
+"Of course you didn't," she agreed.  "Now, I'm in something of a rush
+of the red streak variety, but in a little book of mine I have read
+that a young gentleman receiving a young lady caller after dark should
+have his hair combed, his shirt buttoned, and at least a pair of
+slippers on.  I'll give you three minutes."
+
+Packard looked at her wonderingly.  Then, without an answer, he strode
+by her and to the window.  The shade he flipped up so that anyone who
+cared to might look into the room.  Next he went to the door and called:
+
+"Bill, oh, Bill Royce.  Come up here.  Here's some one who wants a word
+with you!"
+
+Terry Temple's face went a burning, burning red.  There came the
+impulse to put both arms about this big shirt-sleeved, tousled Packard
+man and squeeze him hard--and at the end of it pinch him harder.  For
+in Terry's soul was understanding, and he both delighted her and shamed
+her.
+
+But when Steve came back and slipped his feet into his boots and sat
+down across the table from her, Terry's face told him nothing.
+
+"You're a funny guy, Steve Packard," she admitted thoughtfully.
+
+"That's nothing," grinned Steve, by now quite himself again.  "So are
+you!"
+
+She had come from the Temple ranch without any hat; her hair had
+tumbled down long ago and now framed her vivacious face most adorably.
+Adorably, that is, to a man's mind; other women are not always agreed
+upon such matters.  At any rate, Steve watched with both admiration and
+regret in his eyes as Terry shook out the loose bronze tresses and
+began to bring neat order out of bewilderingly becoming chaos.  Her
+mouth was full of pins when Bill Royce came in.  But still she could
+whisper tantalizingly--
+
+"If you picked on Bill for a chaperon because he's blind----"
+
+Royce stopped in the doorway.
+
+"That you, Terry Temple?" he asked.  "An' you wanted me?  What's up?"
+
+"I came to have a talk with Steve Packard," answered Terry promptly.
+
+She got up and took Royce's hands between hers and led him to a chair
+before she relinquished them.  And before she went back to her own
+place she had said swiftly:
+
+"I haven't seen you since you licked Blenham.  I--I am glad you got
+your chance, Bill."
+
+"Thank you, Miss Terry," said Royce quietly.  "I sorta evened up things
+with him.  Not quite.  But sorta.  Then you didn't want me?"
+
+"Not this trip, Bill.  It's just a play of Mr. Packard's here.  He
+didn't like to have it known that I had him all alone here; afraid it
+might compromise him, you know."
+
+She giggled.
+
+"Or queer him with his girl, mos' likely!" chuckled Royce.
+
+Whereat Steve glowered and Terry looked startled.
+
+"You're both talking nonsense," said Packard.  He reached out for his
+pipe but dropped it again to the table without lighting it.  "If there
+is anything I can do for you, Miss Temple----"
+
+He saw how the look in her eyes altered.  Nothing less than an errand
+of transcendent importance could have brought her here and he knew it.
+And now, in quick, eager words she told him:
+
+"Blenham has almost put one across on us.  Our outfit is mortgaged to
+your old thief of a grandfather for a miserable seven thousand dollars.
+Old Packard sent Blenham over to tell dad he is going to shove us out.
+Blenham plays foxy and offers dad a thousand dollars for the mortgage.
+Oh, I don't understand just how to say it, but Blenham has a few
+thousand dollars he has saved and stolen here and there, and he means
+to grab the Temple ranch for a total of eight thousand dollars; seven
+thousand to old Packard, one thousand to dad----"
+
+"But surely----"
+
+"Surely nothing!  Dad's half full of whiskey as usual, and a thousand
+dollars looks as big to him as a full moon.  Besides, he's sure of
+losing to old Hell-Fire sooner or later."
+
+"And you want me----"
+
+"If you've got any money or can raise any," said Terry crisply, "I'm
+offering you a good proposition.  The same Blenham is after.  The ranch
+is worth a whole lot better than twenty thousand dollars.  My
+proposition is--  But can you raise eight thousand?"
+
+Steve regarded her a moment speculatively.  Then, quite after the way
+of Steve Packard, he slipped his hand into his shirt and brought out a
+sheaf of banknotes and tossed them to her across the table.
+
+"I'm not a bloodsucker," he said quietly.  "Take what you like; I'll
+stake you to the wad."
+
+Terry looked, counted--and gasped.
+
+"Ten thousand!" she cried.  "Good Lord, Steve Packard!  Ten
+thousand--and you'd lend me----"
+
+"To pay off a mortgage to my grandfather, yes," he answered soberly,
+quite conscious of what he was doing and of its recklessness and,
+perhaps, idiocy.  "And to beat Blenham."
+
+She jumped up and ran around the table to put her two hands on his
+shoulders and shake him.
+
+"You're a God-blessed brick, Steve Packard!" she cried ringingly.  "But
+I'm not a bloodsucker, either.  If you're a dead game sport--  Well,
+that's what I'd rather be than anything else you can put a name to.
+Lace your boots, get into a hat, shove that in your pocket."  And she
+slipped the roll of bills into his hand.  "By now dad and Blenham will
+be on the road to Red Creek; we'll beat them to it, have a lawyer and
+some papers all ready, and when they show up we'll just take dad out of
+Blenham's hands."
+
+"I don't quite get you," said Steve.  "If you won't borrow the
+money----"
+
+"I'll make dad sell out to you for eight thousand; he pockets one
+thousand and with the other seven your money-grabbing, pestiferous old
+granddad is paid off.  Then you and I frame a deal between us----"
+
+"Partners!" ejaculated Bill Royce.  "Glory to be!  Steve Packard an'
+Terry Temple pardners----"
+
+"Don't you see?"  Terry was excitedly tugging at Steve's arm.  "Come
+on; come alive.  We're going to play freeze-out with Hell-Fire Packard
+and his right-hand bower, both.  And we're going to keep dad from doing
+a fool thing.  And we're going to--  Oh, come on, can't you?"
+
+Steve got up and stood looking down at her curiously.  Then he laughed
+and turned away for his coat and hat.
+
+"Lead on; I'm trailing you," he said briefly.
+
+Bill Royce rubbed his hands and chuckled.
+
+"Even if I ain't got eyes," he mused, "there's some things I can see
+real clear."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+"IF HE KNOWS--DOES SHE?"
+
+There seemed no particular need for haste.  And yet Terry ran eagerly
+to her car, and Steve hurried after her with long strides while the men
+down at the bunkhouse surmised and looked to Bill Royce for a measure
+of explanation.  Steve was not beyond the age of enthusiasm; Terry was
+all atingle.  Life was shaping itself to an adventure.
+
+And so, though it appeared that all of the time in the world was theirs
+for loitering--for it should be a simple matter to come to Red Creek
+well in advance of Blenham and his dupe--Terry yielded to her
+excitement, Steve yielded out of hand to the lure of Terry, and, quite
+gay about it, they sped away through the moonlight.   While Terry,
+driver, perforce kept her eyes busied with the road, Steve Packard
+leaned back in his seat and contented himself with the vision of his
+fellow adventurer.
+
+"Terry Temple," he told her emphatically and utterly sincerely, "you
+are absolutely the prettiest thing I ever saw."
+
+"I'm not a thing," said Terry.  "And besides, I know it already.
+And----"
+
+Then it was that they got their first puncture; a worn tire cut through
+by a sharp fragment of rock so that they heard the air gush out
+windily.  Terry jammed on her brakes.  Steve jumped out and made hasty
+examination.
+
+"Looks like a man had gone after it with a hand-ax," he announced
+cheerfully.  "Good thing you've got a spare."
+
+Terry flung down from her seat impatiently.
+
+"I need some new tires," she said, as she from one side and he from the
+other began seeking in the tool-box under the seat for jack and wrench.
+"That spare is soft, too, and half worn through; I'll bet we get more
+than one puncture before the job's done.  But it's mounted, anyway."
+
+Steve went down on his knee and began jacking the car up; Terry
+standing over him was busy with her wrench loosening the lugs at the
+rim.  Then, while he made the exchange and tightened the nuts, she
+strapped the punctured tire in its carrier and slipped back into her
+seat.  As Steve got in beside her he marked how speculatively her eyes
+were busied with the road.
+
+"We've got them behind us, haven't we?" he asked.
+
+Terry nodded quickly.
+
+"Yes.  We've got the head start and they're on horseback.  It's no
+trick to beat them to it.  But--  Oh, I saw a look on Blenham's face
+to-night!  He's bad, Steve Packard; all bad; the kind that stops at
+nothing!  And somehow, somehow he's got a strangle-hold on poor old dad
+and is making him do this.  We've got the head start, we can beat them
+to Red Creek, but----"
+
+"But you don't like the idea of leaving your father alone in Blenham's
+company to-night?" he finished for her.  "Is that it?"
+
+Again she nodded.  He could see her teeth set to nibbling at her lips.
+
+"Then," he suggested, "why go to Red Creek at all?  Why not turn back
+here and stop them?  You can take Mr. Temple back home with you.  I
+imagine that between the two of us we can make Blenham understand he is
+not wanted this time."
+
+"I was thinking of that," said Terry.
+
+And where the Ranch Number Ten road runs into the country road, Terry
+turned to the right, headed again toward her own home.
+
+When, with Steve at her heels, she ran up on the porch it was to be met
+by Iki, the Japanese cook, his eyes shining wildly.
+
+"Where's my father?" she asked, and Iki waving his hands excitedly
+answered:
+
+"Departed with rapid haste and many curse-words from his gentleman
+friend.  The master could not make a stop for one little more drink of
+whiskey.  The other strike and vomit threats and say: 'Most surely will
+I cause that you tarry long time in jail-side.'  Saying likewise: 'I
+got you by the long hair like I want you and yes-by-God, like some day
+soon I get your lovely daughter!'  Only he say the latter with
+unpleasant words of----"
+
+Terry was shaking him by both shoulders.
+
+"Where did they go?" she demanded.  "How long ago?"
+
+"On horses, running swiftly," gibbered Iki.  "Ten minutes,
+maybe--perhaps twenty or thirty.  Who can tell the time when----"
+
+"Why didn't we meet them?" asked Steve of Terry.  "If they are really
+headed for Red Creek?"
+
+"They are taking all of the short-cuts there are," she answered
+promptly.  "They'll take a cow-trail through the ranch, cut across the
+lower end of your place, and come into the old road just beyond.
+Blenham's all fox; he has guessed that I am out to put a spoke in his
+wheel somehow.  He won't be wasting any perfectly good moonlight.  Come
+on!"  And again she was running to the car.  "We'll overhaul them just
+the same.
+
+"I believe you," grunted Steve, once more seated beside her, the engine
+drumming, the wheels spinning.  "You don't know what a speed law is, do
+you?"
+
+"Speed law?" she repeated absently, her eyes on the next dark turn in
+the road.  "What's that?"
+
+He chuckled and settled back in his seat.  His eyes, like the girl's,
+were watchfully bent upon the gloom-filled angle which Terry must
+negotiate before the way straightened out again before her.  Her
+headlights cut through the shadows; Terry's little body stiffened a bit
+and her hands tensed on her wheel; her flying speed was lessened an
+almost negligible trifle; she made the turn and opened the throttle.
+Steve nodded approvingly.
+
+For the greater part they were silent.  He had never seen her in a mood
+like to-night's.  He read in her face, in her eyes, in the carriage of
+her body, one and the same thing; and that was a complex something made
+of the several emotions of determination, sorrow, and fiery anger.
+
+He read her thought readily; it was clear that she made no attempt to
+conceal it: She was going to consummate a certain deal, she was grieved
+and ashamed for her father, she remembered the "look on Blenham's face
+to-night," and again and again her fury shot its red tide into her
+cheeks.
+
+"Blenham put his dirty hands on her," was Steve's thought; "or tried
+to."
+
+And he found that his own pulses drummed the hotter as he let his
+imagination conjure up a picture for him, Blenham's big, knotted hands
+upon the daintiness that was Terry.  In that moment it seemed to him
+that he had been drawn home across the seas to help mete out punishment
+to a man: a man who had stricken old Bill Royce, and who now dared look
+evilly upon Terry Temple.
+
+Then came their second puncture, an ugly gash like the first caused by
+a flinty fragment of rock driven against the worn outer casing.
+
+"I ordered new tires a month ago," said Terry by way of explanation, as
+she and Steve in the road together set about remedying the trouble.
+
+While he was getting the inner-tube out, squatting in front of her car
+so as to work in the glow from her headlights, she was rummaging
+through her repair kit.
+
+"These rocky roads, you know, and the way I drive."
+
+He laughed.  "The way she drove!"  That meant, "Like the devil!" as he
+would put it.  Over rocky roads, racing right up to a turn, jamming on
+her brakes when she must slow down a little; swinging about a sharp
+bend so that her car slid and her tires dragged; in short getting all
+of the speed out of her motor that she could possibly extract from it,
+regardless and coolly contemptuous of skuffed tires and other trifles.
+
+Finding the cut in the inner-tube was simple enough; the moonlight
+alone would have shown it.  He held it up for her to look at and she
+shook her head and sighed.  But making the patch so that it would hold
+was another matter; and pumping up the tire when the job was done was
+still another, and required time and ate up all of Terry's rather
+inconsiderable amount of patience.
+
+"A little more luck like this," she cried as once more they took to the
+road, "and Blenham will put one over on us yet!"
+
+It was borne in upon Steve that Terry's fears might prove to be only
+too well founded.  The time she had taken to drive to him at his ranch,
+the time lost in returning to her home and in changing tires and
+mending a puncture, had been put to better use by Blenham.  True, he
+was on horseback while they motored.  And yet, for a score or so of
+miles, a determined, brutally merciless man upon a horse may render an
+account of himself.
+
+But while they both speculated they sped on.  They came to the spot
+where the "old road" turned into the new; Blenham and Temple were to be
+seen nowhere though here the country was flat and but sparsely
+timbered, and the moon pricked out all objects distinctly.
+
+And so on and on, beginning to wonder at last, asking themselves if
+Blenham and Temple had drawn out of the road somewhere, hiding in the
+shadows, to let them go by?  But finally only when they were climbing
+the last winding grade with Red Creek but a couple of miles away, they
+saw the two horsemen.
+
+Terry's car swung about a curve in the road her headlights for a brief
+instant aiding the moon in garishly illuminating a scene to be
+remembered.  Blenham had turned in his saddle, startled perhaps by the
+sound of the oncoming car or by the gleam of the headlights; his
+uplifted quirt fell heavily upon the sides of his running horse; rose
+and fell again upon the rump of Temple's mount, and the two men, their
+horses leaping under them, were gone over the ridge and down upon the
+far side.
+
+In a few moments, from the crest of the ridge, they made out the two
+running forms on the road below.  Blenham was still frantically beating
+his horse and Temple's.  Terry's horn blared; her car leaped; and
+Blenham, cursing loudly, jerked his horse back on its haunches and well
+out of the road.  With wheels locked, Terry slid to a standstill.
+
+"Pile in, dad," she said coolly, ignoring Blenham.  "Steve Packard and
+I will take you into Red Creek.  Packard is ready to make you a better
+proposition than Blenham's.  Turn your horse loose; he'll go home, and
+pile in with us."
+
+"He'll do nothing of the kind!" shouted Blenham, his voice husky with
+his fury.  "Just you try that on Temple, an'--  He'll do nothing of the
+kind," he concluded heavily, his mien eloquent of threat.
+
+"We know you think you've got some kind of a strangle-hold on him,
+Blenham," cut in Terry crisply.  "But even if you have, dad is a white
+man and--dad!  What is the matter?"
+
+Temple slipped from his saddle and stood shaking visibly, his face dead
+white, his eyes staring.  Even in the moonlight they could all see the
+big drops of sweat on his forehead, glistening as they trickled down.
+He put out his hand to support himself by gripping at his saddle,
+missed blindly, staggered, and began slowly collapsing where he stood
+as though his bones were little by little melting within him.  Blenham
+laughed harshly.
+
+"Drunker'n a boiled owl," he grunted.  "But jus' the same sober enough
+to know----"
+
+"Dad!" cried Terry a second time, out in the road beside him now, her
+arms belting his slacking body.  "It isn't just that.  You----"
+
+"Sick," moaned Temple weakly.  "God knows--he's been hounding me to
+death--I don't know--I wanted to stop, to rest back there but--I'm
+afraid that----"
+
+He broke off panting.  Steve jumped out and slipped his own arms about
+the wilting form.
+
+"Let me get him into the car," he said gently.  And when he had lifted
+Temple and placed him in the seat he added quietly: "You'd better hurry
+on I think.  Get a doctor for him.  I'll follow on his horse."
+
+Terry flashed him a look of gratitude, took her place at the wheel and
+started down grade.  Her father at her side continued to settle in his
+place as long as Steve kept him in sight.
+
+"Well?" growled Blenham, his voice ugly and baffled and throaty with
+his rage.  "You butt in again, do you?"
+
+Steve swung up into the saddle just now vacated by Temple.
+
+"Yes," he retorted coolly.  "And I'm in to stay, too, if you want to
+know, Blenham.  To the finish."
+
+With only the width of a narrow road between them they stared at each
+other.  Then Blenham jeered:
+
+"Oho!  It's the skirt, huh?  Stuck on her yourself, are you?"
+
+Steve frowned, but met his piercing look with level contempt.
+
+"Your language is inelegant, friend Blenham," he said slowly.  "Like
+yourself it is better withdrawn from public notice.  As to your
+meaning--why, by thunder, I half believe you are right!  And I hadn't
+thought of it!"
+
+Blenham caught In one of his rare bursts of heady rage shook his fist
+high above his head and cried out savagely:
+
+"I'll beat you yet, the both of you!  See if I don't.  Yes you an' your
+crowd an' him an' her an'----"
+
+"Don't take on too many all at once," suggested Steve.
+
+Only the tail of his eye was on Blenham; he was looking wonderingly and
+a bit wistfully down the moonlit, empty road.
+
+"I got him where I want him right now," snarled Blenham.  "An'
+her--I'll have her, too, where I want her!  An', inside less time than
+you'd think I'll have----"
+
+But he clamped his big mouth tight shut, glared at Steve a moment and
+then, striking with spur and quirt together, so that his frightened
+horse leaped out frantically, he was gone down the road after Temple
+and Terry.
+
+As Steve followed a smile was in his eyes, a smile slowly parting his
+lips.
+
+"The scoundrel was right!" he mused.  "And I hadn't even thought of it.
+Now how the devil do you suppose he knew?"
+
+And then, before he had gone a dozen yards a curious, puzzled,
+uncertain look come into his face.
+
+"If he knows," was his perplexity, "Does she?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+TERRY CONFRONTS HELL-FIRE PACKARD
+
+"Father's got it in his head he is going to die!" cried Terry.  "He
+sha'n't.  I won't let him!"
+
+Steve Packard, riding into Red Creek, met Terry coming out.  She was
+just starting, her car gathering speed; seeing him she drew down
+abruptly.
+
+"I left him at the store," she added breathlessly.  "He is sick.  They
+are friends there; they'll take care of him.  He knows you are coming;
+he has promised to do business with you and shut Blenham out of the
+running.  You are to hurry before Blenham gets there--he's across the
+street at the saloon already.  After his money, I guess; next thing,
+unless you block his play, he'll be standing over poor old dad's bed,
+bullyragging him.  Come alive, Steve Packard, and beat him to it."
+
+And with the last words she had started her car, after Terry's way of
+starting anything, with a leap.  Steve reined in after her, urging his
+horse to a gallop for the first time, calling out sharply:
+
+"But you--where are you going?  Why----"
+
+"After Doctor Bridges," Terry called back.  "The fool is over at your
+old thief of a grandfather's, playing chess!  The telephone won't----"
+
+He could merely speculate as to just what the telephone would not do.
+Terry was gone, was already at the fork of the roads, turning
+northward, hasting alone on a forty-mile drive over lonely roads and
+into the very lair of the old mountain-lion himself.  Steve whistled
+softly.
+
+"I wish she had invited me to go along," he grunted.
+
+But, instead she had commissioned him otherwise.  So, though his eyes
+were regretful he rode on to the store.  A backward glance showed him a
+diminishing red tail-light disporting itself like some new species of
+firefly gone quite mad; it was twisting this way and that as the road
+invited; it fairly emulated the gyrations of a corkscrew what with the
+added motion necessitated by the deep ruts and chuck-holes over and
+into which the spinning tires were thudding.
+
+Then the shoulder of a hill, a clump of brush, and Terry and her car
+were gone from him, swallowed up in the night and silence.  He looked
+at his watch.  It was twenty minutes after eight.  She had forty miles
+ahead of her, a return of forty miles.
+
+"It will take her two hours each way," he muttered, "unless she means
+to pile her car up in a ditch somewhere.  Four hours for the trip.
+That means I won't see her until well after midnight."
+
+And then he grinned a shade sheepishly; Blenham was right.  He had
+thought of those four hours as though they had been four years.
+
+But for her part Terry had no intention of being four hours driving a
+round trip of any eighty miles that she knew of; she had never done
+such a thing before and could see no cause for beginning to-night.
+True, the roads were none too good at best, downright bad often enough.
+
+Well, that was just the sort of thing she was used to.  And to-night
+there was need for haste.  Great haste, thought the girl anxiously, as
+she remembered the look on her father's face when she and the
+storekeeper's wife had gotten him into bed.
+
+"I'll have the roads all to myself; that's one good thing."
+
+She settled herself in her seat, preparing for a tense hour.  She, too,
+had marked the time; it had been on the verge of twenty minutes after
+eight as she left the store.  "What right has the only doctor in the
+country to play chess, anyway?  And with old Hell-Fire Packard at that?
+Two precious old rascals they are, I'll be bound.  But a rascal of a
+doctor is better than no doctor at all, and--  Ah, a good, open bit of
+road!"
+
+The car leaped to fresh speed under her.  She glanced at her
+speedometer; the needle was wavering between twenty-seven and thirty
+miles.  She narrowed her eyes upon the road; it invited; she shoved the
+throttle on her wheel a little further open; thirty miles,
+thirty-three, thirty-five--forty, forty-five--there she kept it for a
+moment--only a moment it seemed to her breathless impatience.  For next
+came a series of curves where her road, rising, went over the first
+ridge of hills and where on either hand danger lurked.
+
+Beyond the ridge the road straightened out suddenly.  Better time now:
+twenty-five miles, thirty, thirty-five--and then, down in the valley,
+forty-five miles, fifty, fifty-five--her horn blaring, sending far and
+wide its defiant, warning echoes, her headlights flashing across trees,
+fences, patches of brush, and rolling hills--sixty miles.
+
+"If my tires only stick it out--they ought to--this road hasn't a sharp
+rock on it."
+
+But from sixty miles she must pull down sharply.  Far ahead something
+was across the road; perhaps only a shadow, perhaps a tangible barrier;
+she didn't know these roads any too well.
+
+She cut off her power, jammed on foot and emergency brakes, and so came
+to a stop just in time.  Here a fence stretched across the road; the
+tall gate throwing its black shadows on the white moonlit soil was not
+five feet from her hood when she stopped.
+
+She jumped down, threw the gate wide open, propped it back with a stone
+knowing full well how the farmers and cattlemen hereabouts builded
+their gates to shut automatically, drove through in such haste that she
+grazed the gate itself and so jarred it into closing behind her, and
+was again glancing from road to speedometer--twenty-five, thirty-five,
+a turn to negotiate, seen far ahead, dropping back to twenty-five, to
+twenty.  A straight, alluring stretch--twenty-five, thirty-five,
+forty-five, fifty, fifty-five, sixty, sixty-two, sixty-three--the far
+rim of the valley, another line of hills black under the stars--fifty
+again and down to twenty-five, to twenty and horn blowing as she sped
+into the mouth of the first cañon.
+
+And again, when at last she was down in Old Man Packard's valley and
+within hailing distance of his misshapen monster of a house, she set
+her horn to blaring like the martial trumpet of an invading army.
+Cattle and horses along her road awoke from their dozing in the
+moonlight, perhaps leaped to the conclusion that it was old Hell-Fire
+himself in their midst, flung their tails aloft and scampered to right
+and left, and Terry's car stood in front of Packard's door.
+
+Right square in front of the door so that Terry herself could jump from
+her running-board and so that her front wheels were planted firmly in
+the old man's choice bed of roses.  There were two flat tires,
+punctured on the way; two ruined, battered rims; her tank still held
+perhaps a gallon of gasoline.  But she had arrived.
+
+Before she leaped out Terry had glanced at her clock; she had made the
+trip of forty miles in exactly fifty-three minutes.  Considering the
+state of the roads----
+
+"Not bad," admitted Terry.
+
+Then with a final clarion call of her horn she had presented herself at
+Packard's door.  She had got a few of the wildest blown wisps of brown
+hair back where they belonged before the door opened.  She heard
+hurrying feet and prepared herself by a visible stiffening for the
+coming of the arch villain himself.  There was a sense of
+disappointment when she saw that it was only the dwarfed henchman come
+in the master's stead.  Guy Little stared at her in pure surprise.
+
+"Terry Temple, ain't it?" gasped the mechanician.  "For the love of
+Pete!"
+
+"I want Doctor Bridges," said Terry quickly.  "He's here, isn't he?"
+
+Guy Little instead of making a prompt and direct answer presented as
+puzzled a countenance as the girl ever saw.  He was in slippers and
+shirtsleeves; he had a large volume which in his hands appeared little
+less than huge; his hair was as badly tousled as Terry's own;  his eyes
+were frankly bewildered.  Terry spoke again impatiently:
+
+"Answer me and don't gawk at me!  Is the doctor here?"
+
+"For the love of Pete!" was quite all that Guy Little offered in
+response.
+
+She sniffed and pushed by him, standing in the hallway and for the
+first time in her life fairly in the lion's den.  She looked about her
+with lively interest.
+
+"Say," said Little then.  "Hold on a minute."
+
+He came quietly close to her, his slipper-feet falling soundlessly.
+
+"Doc Bridges is in there with the ol' man."  He jerked his head toward
+the big library and living-room whose door stood closed in their faces.
+"They're playin' chess.  Unless your sick man's dyin' I guess you
+better wait until they get through.  Even if he is dyin'----"
+
+"I'll do nothing of the kind!" retorted Terry emphatically.  "When I've
+raced all the way from Red Creek, banging my car all up, risking my
+precious life every jump of the way, doing the trip in fifty-three
+minutes do you think that------"
+
+"Hey?" cried Guy Little.  "How's that?  How many minutes?
+Fifty-three, you said, didn't you?  Fifty-three minutes from Red Crick
+to here?  Hey?"
+
+"Is the man crazy?" demanded Terry.  "Didn't I say I did?  I could have
+done it in less, too, only with a flat tire and----"
+
+"Hey?" repeated Guy Little, over and over.  "You done that?  Hey?  You
+say----"
+
+"I say," cut in Terry starting toward the closed door, "that there is a
+man sick and a doctor wanted."
+
+"Oh, can that part of it!" cried Little, coming after her again in his
+excitement.  "Chuck it!  Forget it!  The thing is that you made the run
+from there to here--an' in the night time--an' with tire trouble
+an'----"
+
+"Doctor Bridges----"
+
+"Is in there.  Like I said.  Playin' chess with the ol' man.  You don't
+know what that means.  I do.  Mos' usually, askin' a lady's pardon for
+the way of sayin' it, it means Hell.  Capital H.  An' to-night the ol'
+man has got the door locked an' he's two games behind an' he's sore as
+a hoot-owl an' he says that anybody as breaks in on his play is--  No,
+I can't say it; not in the presence of a lady.  There's times when the
+ol' man is so awful vi'lent he's purty near vile about it.  Get me?"
+
+"Guy Little, you just stand aside!"  Terry's eyes blazed into his as
+she threw out a hand to thrust his back.  "I came for the doctor and
+I'm going to get him."
+
+Guy Little merely shook his head.
+
+"You don't know the ol' man," he said quietly.  "An' I do.  I'm the
+only man, woman or child livin' as does know him.  You stan' aside."
+
+He stepped quickly by her and rapped at the door.  When only silence
+greeted him he rapped again.  Now suddenly, explosively, came Old Man
+Packard's voice, fairly quivering with rage as the old man shouted:
+
+"If that's you, Guy Little, I'll beat your head off'n your fool body!
+Get out an' go away an' go fast!"
+
+"It's important, your majesty," returned Guy Little's voice
+imperturbably.
+
+He rubbed one slippered toe against his calf and winked at Terry,
+looking vastly innocent and boyish.
+
+"I'm pullin' for you," he whispered.  "There's jus' one way to do it."
+Aloud he repeated.  "It's important, your majesty.  An' there's a lady
+here."
+
+"Lady?" shouted the old man, his voice fairly breaking with the emotion
+that went into it.  "Lady?  In my house?  What do you mean?"  Then,
+without waiting for an answer, "I don't care who she is or what she is
+or what the two of you want.  Get out!  This fool pill-roller in here
+thinks he can beat me playin' chess; you're in league with him to
+distract me, you traitor!"
+
+Guy Little smiled broadly and winked again.
+
+"Ain't he got the manner of a dook?" he whispered admiringly.  And to
+his employer, "Say, Packard, it's the little Temple girl.  Terry
+Temple, you know.  An'----"
+
+Even Terry started and drew back a quick step from the closed door.
+She did not know that a man's voice could pierce to one's soul like
+that.
+
+"An'," went on Guy Little hurriedly, knowing that he must rush his
+words now if he got them out at all, "she's jus' drove all the way from
+Red Crick--in a Boyd-Merrill, Twin Eight car--had tire trouble on the
+road--an' done the trip in fifty-three minutes!"
+
+He got it all out.  A deep silence shut down after his words.  A
+silence during which a man's eyes might have opened and stared, during
+which a man's mouth too might have opened and closed wordlessly, during
+which a man's brain might estimate what this meant, to drive forty
+miles in fifty-three minutes over such roads as lay between the Packard
+ranch and Red Creek.
+
+"It's a lie!" shouted Packard.  "She couldn't do it."
+
+"I want Doctor Bridges----"
+
+"Sh!" Guy Little cut her short.  "I got the ol' boy on the run.  Leave
+it to me."  And aloud once more: "She done it.  She can prove it.
+An'----"
+
+There came a snort of fury from the locked room followed by the noise
+of a chess-board and set of men hurled across the room and by an old
+man's voice shouting fiercely:
+
+"It's a cursed frame-up.  Bridges, you're a scoundrel and I can beat
+you any three games out of five and I'll bet you ten thousan' dollars
+on it, any time!  An' as for that thief of a Temple's squidge-faced
+girl--  Come in.  Damn it all, come in and be done with it!"
+
+And as he unlocked the door with a hand that shook and flung it wide
+open he and Terry Temple confronted each other for the first time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+A GATE AND A RECORD SMASHED
+
+The man never yet lived and knew old man Packard who would have
+suggested that he was not a good and thorough-going hater.  His enemy
+and all of his enemy's household, wife and child, maid-servant and
+man-servant were all as the spawn of Satan.
+
+Now he stood back, his face flushed, his two hands on his hips, his
+beard thrust forward belligerently and fairly seeming to bristle.
+Terry Temple, her heart beating like mad all of a sudden and for no
+reason which she would admit to herself, lifted her head and stepped
+across the threshold defiantly.  For a very tense moment the two of
+them, old man and young girl, stared at each other.
+
+Doctor Bridges still sat at the chess-table, his mouth dropping open,
+his expression one of pure consternation; Guy Little stood in the
+doorway just behind Terry, rubbing a slippered toe against his leg and
+watching interestedly.
+
+"So you're Temple's girl, are you?" snorted the old man.  "Well, I
+might have guessed it!"
+
+And the manner of the statement, rather than the words themselves, was
+very uncomplimentary to Miss Teresa Arriega Temple.
+
+And, as a mere matter of fact--and old man Packard knew it well enough
+down in his soul--he would have guessed nothing of the sort.  So long
+had he held her in withering contempt, just because of her relationship
+to her father, so long had he invested her with all thinkably
+distasteful attributes, so long had he in his out-of-hand way named her
+squidge-nosed, putty-faced, pig-eyed, and so on, that in due course he
+had really formed his own image of her.
+
+And now, suddenly confronted by the most amazingly pretty girl he had
+ever seen, he managed to snort that she was just what he knew she
+was--and in the snorting no one knew better than old man Packard that,
+as he could have put it himself, "He lied like a horse-thief!"
+
+Terry had seen him once when she was a very little girl.  He had been
+pointed out to her by one of her father's cowboys who, for reasons of
+his own, heartily hated and a little feared the old man.  Since then
+the girl's lively imagination had created a most unseemly brute out of
+the enemy of her house, a beetle-browed, ugly-mouthed, facially-hideous
+being little short of a monstrosity.
+
+And now Terry's fine feminine perception begrudgingly was forced to set
+about constructing a new picture.  The old man, black-hearted villain
+that he was, was the most upstanding, heroic figure of a man that she
+had ever seen.
+
+Beside him Doctor Bridges was a spectacle of physical degeneracy while
+Guy Little became a grotesque dwarf.  The grandfather was much like the
+grandson, and--though she vowed to like him the less for it--was in his
+statuesque, leonine way quite the handsomest man she had ever looked on.
+
+Perhaps it was at just the same instant that each realized that rather
+too great an interest had been permitted to go into a long, searching
+look.  For Terry suddenly affected a look of supreme contempt while the
+old man jerked his eyes away, transferring his regard to the serene Guy
+Little.
+
+"You said, Guy Little----"
+
+"Yes, sir, I said it!"  Guy Little nodded vigorously.  "Them forty
+miles in fifty-three minutes.  In the dark.  An' with tire trouble.
+It's a record.  The best you ever done it in was fifty-seven minutes.
+She beat you four minutes.  Her!"
+
+He indicated Terry.
+
+"Doctor Bridges--" began Terry.
+
+"It's a lie!" cried the old man, smashing the table top with a clenched
+fist.  "I don't care who says it; she couldn't do it!  No girl could;
+no Temple could.  It ain't so!"
+
+"Call me a liar?" cried Terry, a sudden flaming, surging, hot current
+in her cheeks, her eyes blazing.  "You are a horrid old man.  I always
+knew you were a horrid old man and you are a lot horrider than I
+thought you were.  And--you just call me a liar again, Hell-Fire
+Packard, and I'll slap your face for you!"
+
+For a moment, gripped by his ever-ready rage, the old man stood
+towering over her, looking down with blazing eyes into eyes which
+blazed back, a little tremor visibly shaking him as though he were
+tempted almost beyond resistance to lay his hands on her and punish her
+impudence.  A bright, almost eager, fearlessness shone in her eyes.
+
+"I dare you," said Terry.  "Old man that you are, I'll slap you so that
+you'd know who it is you're insulting.  Pirate!" she flung at him.
+"And land-hog--  Oh!
+
+"Doctor Bridges, you are to come with me right now."  She had flung
+about giving her shoulder to Packard's inspection.  "We must hurry back
+to Red Creek."
+
+"Say, Packard," chimed in Guy Little.  "Her car's all shot to pieces.
+An' her gas is all gone.  An' her ol' man is awful sick in Red Creek
+an' needin' a doc in a hurry--or not any.  You understan'----"
+
+"What's it got to do with me?" boomed Hell-Fire Packard.  "What do I
+care whether her old thief of a father dies to-night or next week?
+What do I----"
+
+"Aw, rats," grunted Guy Little.  "What's eatin' you, Packard?  Listen
+to me: She says how she done it in fifty-three minutes an' you can't do
+it any better'n fifty-seven; how you ain't no dead-game sport noways;
+how she's short of change but would bet a man fifty dollars you
+couldn't an' wouldn't."
+
+"She said them things?" roared the old man.
+
+"I--" began Terry.
+
+"She did!" answered Guy Little hastily and loudly.  "She did!"
+
+"Bridges," snapped old Packard, "grab your hat an' black poison bag an'
+be ready in two minutes."  Packard was on his way to the door.  "Guy
+Little, you get my car at the front door--quick!  An' as for you--"  He
+was at the door and half turned to stare angrily into Terry's
+eyes--"You can do what you please.  I'm goin' to take the only
+pill-slinger in the country to the worst ol' thief I ever heard a man
+tell about."
+
+"I'm going back with you," said Terry briefly.
+
+Old man Packard shrugged.  Then he laughed.
+
+"If you ain't scared," he grunted, "to ride alongside a man as swears,
+so help him God, in spite of smash-bang-an'-be-damn', is goin' to make
+that little run back to Red Creek--in less'n fifty minutes!"
+
+"Mind you," said old man Packard at the front door, his eye stony as it
+marked how Terry's car stood among his choice roses, "I ain't doin'
+this because I got any use for a Temple, he or she.  Especially she.
+You jus' get that in your head, young lady.  An' before we start let me
+tell you one more thing: You keep your two han's off'n my gran'son!"
+
+"What!" gasped Terry.
+
+"I said it," he fairly snorted.  "Come on there, Guy Little, with that
+car.  Ready there, Bridges, you ol' fool?  Pile in."
+
+He took his seat at the wheel, his old black hat pushed far back on his
+head, his eye already on the clock in the dash.  Terry slipped ahead of
+Doctor Bridges and took her seat at the old man's side.
+
+"You said--just what?" she demanded icily.
+
+"I said," he cried savagely, "as I know how you been chasin' my fool of
+a gran'son Stephen, an' as how you got to stop it.  I won't have you
+makin' a bigger fool out'n him than he already is."
+
+Terry sat rigid, speechless, grown suddenly cold.  For once in her life
+no ready answer sprang to her lips.
+
+Then Hell-Fire Packard had started his engine, sounded his horn, and
+they were on their way.  And Terry, because no words would come, put
+her head back and laughed in a way that, as she knew perfectly well,
+would madden him.
+
+The drive from Hell-Fire Packard's front door to the store in Red Creek
+was made in some few negligible seconds over forty-eight minutes.  The
+three occupants of the car reached town alive.  Never in her life after
+that night would Terry Temple doubt that there was a Providence which
+at critical times took into its hands the destinies of men.
+
+There had been never a word spoken until they had come to the gate
+which had closed behind Terry on the way out.  Old man Packard had
+looked at speedometer, clock and obstruction.  Terry had seen his hands
+tighten on his wheel.
+
+"Set tight an' hang on," he had commanded sharply.
+
+The big front tires and bumper struck the gate; there was a wild flying
+of splinters and at sixty miles an hour they went through and on to Red
+Creek.
+
+"The old devil!" whispered Terry within herself.  "The old devil!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+PACKARD WRATH AND TEMPLE RAGE
+
+No far-sighted, inspired prophet's services were needed to predict a
+rather stormy scene upon the arrival of old Hell-Fire Packard and Miss
+Terry Temple at the place of the storekeeper of Red Creek.  It was to
+be expected that Steve Packard would be on hand; that he would be
+impatiently awaiting the drum of a racing motor; that he would be on
+the sidewalk to greet Temple's daughter.
+
+"Terry!" he called.  "So soon?"
+
+He couldn't have made a worse beginning had he pondered the matter long
+and diabolically.  Blenham had been right and Steve had had ample time
+to admit the fact utterly and completely; now there was a ringing note
+in his voice, the effect of which, falling upon his grandfather's ears,
+might be likened with no great stretch of imagination to that of a
+spark in a keg of gunpowder.
+
+The old man's brakes, applied emphatically, brought his car to a
+standstill.
+
+"Look at that clock!" was his first remark, at once apprising Steve of
+his relative's presence and hinting, by means of its no uncertain tone,
+at an unpleasant situation on hand or about to burst upon them.  "Made
+it in fifty-three minutes, did you?  Well, I done it in less'n
+forty-nine!  What have you got to say about that?"
+
+But Terry ignored him and jumped down, her hand impulsively laid on
+Steve's arm.  Thus she, in her turn, may be said to have added another
+spark to young Packard's in the powder keg.
+
+"How's dad?" she asked quickly.
+
+Steve patted the hand on his arm and either Terry did not notice the
+act or did not mind.  Old man Packard both noted and minded.  His grunt
+was to be heard above Doctor Bridges's devout "Thank God, we're here!"
+as the physician stepped stiffly to the sidewalk.
+
+"Better," said Steve.  "I think he's going to be all right after all.
+I hope so.  He----"
+
+"Blenham?" she asked insistently.  "He didn't put one over on you?  The
+mortgage----"
+
+Steve tapped his breast pocket.
+
+"The papers have been signed; we got a notary; everything is shipshape.
+Go in; I'll tell you all about it later."
+
+He turned toward the car and the stiffened figure of the man gripping
+the wheel with tense, hard hands.
+
+"Grandy----"
+
+"Grandy, your foot!" boomed old Packard suddenly, one hand jerked away
+to be clenched into a lifted fist.  "An' _Terry_!  My God!"
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Steve.  "I don't understand."
+
+"I mean," shouted Packard senior, his voice shaking with emotion, "that
+no mouth in the world is big enough to hold them two words the same
+night!  If you want to chum with any Temple livin', he-Temple or
+she-Temple, if, sir, you intend to go 'round slobberin' over the
+low-down enemies of your own father an' father's father, why, sir, then
+I'm Mr. Packard to you and the likes of you!"
+
+Still was Steve mystified.
+
+"I thought," he muttered, "that since you two came together, since you
+yourself have driven her in----"
+
+"If I, sir," thundered his grandfather, "have chosen to bring that
+petticoated wildcat there an' that ol' pill-slinger from my place to
+Red Creek in a shake less'n forty-nine minutes--jus' to show her that
+anything on God's earth done by a Temple can be better done by a
+Packard--you got to go to thinkin' things, have you?  Why, sir, so help
+me, sir, I've a notion to jump down right now an' give you the
+horsewhippin' of your life!"
+
+Steve, in spite of himself, chuckled.  Terry, reassured about her
+father, giggled.  Both sounds were audible; the two, mingled, were
+entirely too much to be borne.
+
+"You--you disgrace to an honorable name," the old man called bitterly
+and wrathfully.  "You----"
+
+He broke off, hesitated, glared from Steve at the car's side to Terry
+already on the steps of the store, and concluded something more quietly
+though not a whit less furiously for all that: "You speak of papers
+signed.  You don't mean you're actually havin' any kind of business
+dealin's, frien'ly dealin's, with the Temples?"
+
+"Blenham brought word you were foreclosing on Temple; he had some sort
+of a crooked scheme to cheat Temple out of his land.  I have just
+framed a deal whereby I put up the money to pay you your mortgage
+and----"
+
+"You?  _You_, Stephen Packard?"
+
+"Yes," said Steve, wondering whether the old man were the more moved
+because of the shock of finding his nephew able to pay off so large a
+sum or because of the "frien'ly dealin's with the Temples."
+
+There was a brief silence.  Doctor Bridges mounted the steps; he and
+Terry were going in.  Then again Hell-Fire Packard's voice burst out
+violently and Terry stopped short, her hands going suddenly to her
+breast.  Her face, could they have noted in the pale light, was flaming
+scarlet.
+
+"That hussy, that jade, that Jezebel!" came the ringing denunciation.
+"The tricky, shameless, penurious, graspin' unprincipled little
+she-devil!  She's after you, my boy, after you hard.  An', you poor
+miserable blind worm of a fool, you ain't got the sense to see it!
+Everybody knows it; the whole country's talkin' about it; how Temple's
+baitin' his trap with her an' she's baitin' her trap with herself
+an'----"
+
+"Grandfather!" cried Steve, his own face flushing under the scathing
+torrent.  "You don't know what you are saying!"
+
+"I know what he's saying."
+
+Terry, her hands still tight pressed to her breast, came slowly down
+the steps.  Though but a moment had passed her face was now dead white
+in the moonlight.
+
+"You are saying," and her eyes shone straight up into the old man's,
+"that I am setting a trap for your grandson?  That I, Teresa Arriega
+Temple, would for an instant consider a Packard, the son and the
+grandson of a Packard, as worthy of shining my boots for me?  Why, I
+spit upon the two of you!"
+
+She whirled and was gone into the house.  Steve instead of watching her
+going kept his eyes hard upon his grandfather's face.  Now that the
+door closed he said quietly:
+
+"Grandfather, we have seen rather little, of each other.  I think we
+had better see even less from now on.  You have insulted that girl in a
+way that makes me want to climb into your car and drag you down--and
+beat you half to death!"
+
+His restraint was melting under the fire of his passion; his voice grew
+less quiet and began to tremble.
+
+"I am going to make that girl the next Mrs. Packard or know the reason
+why!"
+
+"Defy me, do you?  Defy me an' go an' run with a pack of thieves
+an'----"
+
+"That's enough!" shouted Steve.  "I am going right straight and ask
+her----"
+
+"Ask her an' hell swallow you!" came the vociferous permission from the
+infuriated old man.  "But remember one thing: Blenham has slipped up
+to-night, maybe, an' let you an' her an' her lyin', thievin',
+scoundrelly father steal a march on me.  But it's the last one; mark
+that!  Blenham gets his orders straight from me to-night; he goes after
+you to break you, smash you, literally pull you to pieces root an'
+branch--an' with me an' Blenham workin' on the job night an' day,
+stoppin' at nothin'.  Hear me?  I mean it!"  His two fists were now
+lifted high above his head.  "Stoppin' at nothin' I'll step on you an'
+your Temple frien's like you was a nest of caterpillars.  You hear me,
+Stephen!"
+
+But Stephen, his lips tight pressed as he fought with himself to keep
+his hands off his own father's father, turned and went the way Terry
+had gone.
+
+"You hear me, Stephen.  There's nothin' I'll stop at to smash you!"
+
+So his grandfather's voice followed him mightily.  But young Packard
+had already set his thought upon another matter.  Before him in the
+tiny living-room of the ramshackle store building a kerosene lamp was
+burning palely and lying upon an old sofa, face down, shaken with sobs
+was Terry.
+
+"Terry!" he called softly.  "Your father isn't----"
+
+He thought that she had not heard.  He came closer and laid his hand
+gently--there was a deep tenderness even in the action--upon her
+shoulder.  But Terry had heard and now flung his hand violently aside
+and sprang to her feet, her eyes blazing angrily into his.
+
+"My father is asleep.  Doctor Bridges rather thinks there is nothing
+very much the matter with him," she remarked crisply.  "I am sorry I
+troubled you in any way, Mr. Packard.  You say you arranged matters
+with dad?  Well, I want you to tear up the papers; I'll see that your
+money is returned to you."
+
+"Terry!" he muttered.
+
+Then she flared out hotly, her two small hands clenched at her sides,
+her chin lifted, her voice a new voice in his ears, bitter and hostile.
+
+"Don't you Terry me, Steve Packard!  Now or ever again.  I am sorry
+that I ever saw you; I am ashamed that I ever spoke to you.  I had
+rather be dead or--yes, I'd rather be in Blenham's arms than have you
+look at me!"
+
+"Good Lord!" ejaculated Steve, utterly at sea.  "I don't understand."
+
+"You don't have to," snapped Terry.  "All you've got to know is that I
+won't have anything further in any way whatever to do with you.  I
+won't have you helping us with our mortgage; I won't have you advancing
+money to us; I won't stand one little minute for any of your--your
+wretched interference with our affairs!  If you think you can--can butt
+in on our side of any fight in the world----"
+
+She ended abruptly, beginning to flounder, panting so that the swift
+rise and fall of her breast was an outward token of inward emotion.
+Steve Packard stared and flushed hotly and began to feel his own anger
+mount quickly.
+
+"Butt in on your affairs!" he snorted after a fashion more than vaguely
+reminiscent of his grandfather.  "I like that!  As if I'd have come a
+step without your invitation."
+
+And so he blurted out the one thing he should have left unsaid, the
+thing which already rankled in Terry's proud heart.  She had asked him
+to come; she had in a way suggested a--a sort of partnership.
+
+"Oh! how I hate you!" cried Terry.  "You--you Packard!"
+
+"If there's some crime, some string of crimes that I have committed----"
+
+"Will you tear up those papers?  I'll get you back your money.  Will
+you tear up those papers?"
+
+"Will you explain what's gone wrong?"
+
+"I will not."
+
+He shrugged exasperatingly.
+
+"I'll keep the papers," he returned stonily.  "I put over rather a good
+deal to-night, come to think of it."
+
+He put on his hat, jamming it down tight, and half turned to go.
+
+"When you want to talk ranch matters over with me--come to my
+ranch-house, little pardner!"
+
+"Oh!" cried Terry.  "Oh!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE HAND OF BLENHAM
+
+"Each man's life is what he shapes it for himself."
+
+"A stupid, bare-faced, platitudinous lie!"
+
+Steve Packard, grown irritable here of late, flung the offending book
+through an open window and got to his feet.
+
+"A man's life is what the evil little gods of chance make it, curse
+them.  Or what a fool of a girl tangles and twists it into."
+
+He shook himself viciously and went to his door, staring out across the
+hills vaguely moulded under the stars.
+
+Life was just a very unsatisfactory sort of a proposition.  It was a
+game that wasn't worth the players' serious attention, a game all of
+chance and not in the least of skill, and not even interesting!  So, in
+the sombre depths of his soul Steve Packard admitted freely.  And,
+until a certain night only some six months ago, he had never divined
+this great truth.
+
+That night Blenham had sneered, "Stuck on her yourself, are you?" and
+Steve had recognized a vital fact inelegantly expressed; that night
+Terry Temple had appeared to him more than just a "good little sport";
+that night he had somewhat brusquely considered the sweet femininity of
+her under her assumed surface of _diablerie_ and had found her
+infinitely desirable; that same night Terry, for no reason in the world
+that Steve Packard could discover, had suddenly congealed into a thing
+of ice that had never since thawed save only briefly before burning
+fits of wrath.
+
+Two hours after he had admitted to himself that he loved her she
+informed him with all of the emphasis she could summon for the occasion
+that she hated him.  And life hadn't been what he had made it at all.
+
+The papers which Temple had signed were still in existence, safely
+deposited in a bank in San Juan.  Steve had paid off the Temple
+mortgage to his grandfather; he had paid Temple a thousand dollars in
+cash; thereby he had acquired a half interest in the Temple ranch.
+That had all been quite in accordance with Terry's suggestions and
+entirely satisfactory.
+
+Not being a thief, Steve counted upon relinquishing his right to his
+half at any time that Temple paid back just what had been advanced.
+But it became evident very soon that Temple would never pay back
+anything.  Though Doctor Bridges found nothing very much the matter
+with him, nevertheless Temple died less than two weeks later.
+
+During those two weeks Steve had not seen Terry.  With word of the
+girl's bereavement, however, he had gone immediately to her.  She
+looked at him curiously, saying quietly that the boys were doing all
+that was necessary and had asked him to go.
+
+Then, after another two weeks, he had ridden again to the Temple ranch.
+He found it deserted, doors and windows shut, dead leaves thick in the
+path.  His heart sank and thereafter knocked hard at his ribs; Terry
+was gone and had said nothing to him.  He turned and went home, bitter
+and angry and hurt.
+
+Where had she gone?  He didn't know; he told himself he didn't care;
+certainly he would bite his tongue out before he would ask any of her
+friends.  But he knew within himself that he did care as he had cared
+about nothing else in the world; and he asked himself a thousand times:
+
+"Where has Terry gone?"
+
+For the world was not right without her; the sunlight was thin; the
+season of bursting buds was but a pale, lack-lustre imitation of
+spring.  And as the long, hot days dragged by and the verdure died on
+hill and plain and dusty mountainside, he asked himself "When will she
+come back to us?"
+
+Long after every one else had heard and forgotten the story, or at
+least had given over all thinking upon it, Steve heard how Terry had
+drawn against the last of the inconsiderable legacy left her long ago
+by her Spanish mother, and had gone to San Juan.
+
+She had friends there; the banker's wife, Mrs. Engle and her
+fluffy-haired daughter, Florrie, had opened their arms to her and made
+her tarry with them until the family made their annual trip East.  Then
+Terry had gone with them.
+
+And never a word to Steve Packard.  He cursed himself, tried to curse
+her, and found that he couldn't quite make a go of it, and settled down
+to good, hard work and the job of forgetting what a pair of gray eyes
+looked like and how two certain red lips smiled and the tinkly notes of
+a laughing voice.
+
+In the good, hard work of stock ranching he succeeded more than well;
+in the other task he set himself he failed utterly.  Never, when alone
+out on the range a shadow fell across, did he fail to look up quickly
+with his lips half forming to the word, "Terry!"  And, after all this
+time, still no word from her, no word of her.
+
+Eight thousand dollars he had paid to Temple.  The remaining two
+thousand of his father's heritage he had turned over promptly to his
+grandfather to apply on his own indebtedness.  He had consulted with
+Bill Royce and Barbee and had cut down his crew of men, thereby
+curtailing expenses.
+
+He had sold a few head of beef cattle and banked the money for the
+men's wages and current expenses.  By the same means he had managed to
+keep abreast of his interest payments to old man Packard and had even
+paid off a little more of the principal.  Then, catching the market
+right "going and coming," he had bought a lot of young cattle from an
+overstocked ranch adjoining, and had made a second profitable sale a
+month later.
+
+Finally, to indicate that he was still in the game and playing it to
+win, consequently overlooking never a bet, he had cashed in pretty
+fortunately on a section of his timber-land.
+
+The Rollston mills were just opening upon the other side of the
+mountains; he showed the firm's buyer a stretch of his big timber and
+closed the deal to their common satisfaction.  And with every deal of
+this sort old man Packard felt his grip being pried loose from Ranch
+Number Ten.
+
+From the beginning Steve had been puzzled to know what to do with the
+Temple outfit.  Terry had paid off the men and had let them go; the
+stock on the place she had left, and without a word, to Steve's care.
+Since the place was well stocked, chiefly with young cattle, there was
+enough here to demand the attention which so busy a man as Steve
+Packard could not give.
+
+He talked matters over with Bill Royce and in the end sent both Bill
+and Barbee to the Temple place, riding over once or twice a week
+himself to see how matters went.
+
+And so the months dragged by.  Twice, swearing to himself that he was
+doing so only because the management of the business made it absolutely
+necessary, Steve wrote to Terry.  He got no answer.  He did not even
+know if she had received his notes.  The first he had signed, by the
+way, "Yours very truly, Steve."  The second ended "Respectfully, S.
+Packard."
+
+
+"Terry's havin' the time of her life," Bill Royce startled him by
+announcing one day out of a clear sky.
+
+"How do you know?" asked Steve sharply.
+
+"Oh, she writes letters to her frien's," said Royce.  "One of the boys
+brought word from the Norton place.  Terry wrote her an' wrote some
+folks in Red Creek an' wrote the Lanes an'----"
+
+"Appears to be quite a letter-writer," remarked Steve stiffly.  "And
+she's having the time of her life, is she?"
+
+"Sure," said Royce innocently.  "Why not?  The boys are bettin' she's
+dead gone on some young down-East jasper an' that maybe she'll be
+married in no time.  What do you think, huh, Steve?"
+
+"Where is she?" demanded Steve, very brusque about it.
+
+"Blessed if I know," admitted Royce.  "Chicago, I think.  Or New York.
+Or Pennsylvany.  One of them towns.  Shucks.  She'd ought to come on
+home where she belongs."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Steve.
+
+But in Royce's ears the voice didn't ring quite true.  It was meant to
+be careless in the extreme and--no, it didn't ring quite true.
+
+Hot, cloudless skies as the season dragged on, dry, burning fields
+under a blazing sun, the cattle seeking shade wherever it was to be
+had, crowding at the water-holes, browsing early and late and
+frequenting the cooler cañons during the heat of the days.  And nights
+of stars and a vast silence and emptiness.
+
+A girl had come, had for a little posed laughing outlined against the
+window of a man's soul, had flashed her unforgettable gray eyes at him
+and had gone.  And so, and just because of her, the blistering hills
+seemed but ugly, lonely miles, the nights under a full moon were just
+the more silent and empty.
+
+But Steve Packard held on, grown grim and determined.  He had entered
+the game, lightly enough he had demanded his stack of chips, now he
+would stay for the show-down.  Either he would clear his ranch of its
+mortgage and thus make clear to his meddlesome old grandparent that he
+was a man grown and no mere boy to be disciplined and badgered
+willy-nilly, or else his meddlesome old grandparent would in truth
+"smash" him.
+
+In either case there would be the end soon.  For, win or lose, Steve,
+tired of the game, would draw out and set his back to Ranch Number Ten
+and the country about it and go back to the old rudderless life of
+vagabondage.  Just because a girl had come, had tarried, and then had
+gone.
+
+So, though the game had long ago lost its zest, Steve Packard like any
+other thoroughbred played on for a finish.  Now and then, but seldom,
+he saw Blenham.  Often, in little, annoying, mean ways Blenham made
+himself felt.  Early in the season Steve's riders had found three of
+his steers dead on the outskirts of the range; a rifle bullet had done
+for each one of them.
+
+Since old man Packard had promised to stop at nothing, since Blenham
+was full of venom, Steve never for a moment doubted whose hand had
+fired the three shots.  But he merely called his cowboys together, told
+them what had happened, ordered them to keep their eyes open and their
+guns oiled, and hoped and longed for the time when he himself could
+come upon Blenham busied with some act like this.
+
+There were other episodes which he attributed to Blenham though he must
+admit in each case that anything in the vaguest way approaching a proof
+was lacking.  Just before he closed the deal with the lumber company
+that had taken over his timber tract a forest fire had broken out.
+Luck and a fortuitous shifting of the wind had saved him from a heavy
+loss.
+
+Incidents, these and others of their kind, to fill Steve Packard with
+rage; but Blenham's supreme blows--Blenham's and old man
+Packard's--were reserved for late in the dry season when they fell
+hardest.
+
+A growing shortage of feed and the necessity for cash for the
+forthcoming substantial sum to be paid on the mortgage held by his
+grandfather, combined with the fact that his lean acres were
+overstocked, drove Steve in search of a market late in the summer.
+Bill Royce shook his head and raised his objections.
+
+"Everybody else is doin' the same thing an' at the same time," he said
+lugubriously.  "Which'll mean the market all glutted up so's you won't
+get no kind of figger.  If you could only hold on till next spring."
+
+But Steve merely said--
+
+"Oh, well, Bill, it's all in a lifetime," and shaped his plans for a
+sale.
+
+And within ten days there came an offer which startled him.  It was
+from the big buyers, Doan, Rockwell, and Haight, who, their
+communication said, knew his line of stock thoroughly and were prepared
+to pay the top prices for all he had.  He estimated swiftly and sent a
+man hurrying into town with a message to go by wire; he would round up
+between a hundred and fifty and two hundred head and would have them in
+San Juan when desired.
+
+"Old Doan's a sport and a wise boy, both," announced Steve triumphantly
+when he made the news known to Bill Royce.  "He knows high-grade stuff
+and he's willing to pay the price."  He narrowed his eyes
+speculatively.  "We'll scare up close to two hundred head, William.
+And they'll bring us just about twenty thousand.  Maybe a thousand or
+so above that.  And, Bill, did you ever know the time when twenty
+thousand dollars would look more like twenty thousand full moons just
+showing up over the skyline?"
+
+Bill's grin reflected Steve's lively satisfaction.  Now there would be
+the money for old Hell-Fire Packard's next payment, there would be a
+long respite from him, there would be ample feed for the rest of the
+cattle.  Steve might even spend a part of the money for a herd of
+calves to be had dirt-cheap just now from the Biddle Morris dairy
+outfit, down near San Juan.
+
+The prospect was exceedingly bright; just as though in truth a string
+of full moons were shining down upon them.  And still there was the
+shadow, even at this time, the shadow cast by Terry's absence and
+silence.  If she were only here to rejoice with them.
+
+Steve snorted his disgust with himself, got on a horse and went
+streaking across the fields, riding hard as was a habit here of late,
+yelling an order to Barbee as he went.  Barbee's innocent blue eyes
+followed him thoughtfully: then Barbee shrugged and spat and thereafter
+called to his men to "get busy."  The round-up began immediately.
+
+Then came a handful of long, hot, feverishly busy days.  Strayed steers
+carrying the Number Ten brand were hazed back to the big fenced-in
+meadows from the mountain slopes, were counted and held, in an
+ever-swelling herd.  There was little rest for the men, who, shifted
+from one sweating horse to another, rode late and early.
+
+Word came from Doan setting the date for the delivery in San Juan.
+Steve wired his satisfaction with the arrangement, undertaking to have
+the cattle in the stock pens just out of the town two or three days
+before Doan's coming.  And no one knew better than did Steve Packard
+the true size of the job he had on his hands at this time of year and
+with a herd of close to two hundred wild steers.
+
+The drive began one morning in the dark long before the dawn.  Steve
+estimated that he could make the Rio Frio the first night and had
+arranged beforehand with the Talbot boys for the night's pasturage.
+The second day would find them on the edge of the bad lands; his wagons
+hauling baled hay were to push on ahead and be waiting at the only
+sufficient water-holes to be found within a number of miles.  San Juan
+in four days was the schedule.
+
+"We'll lose weight all along the road," he conceded.  "But it can't be
+helped.  And a couple of day's rest and lots of feed and water in San
+Juan before Doan shows up will put back a part of the lost weight."
+
+He had made allowances for a hard drive.  Nevertheless the actuality
+was a sterner matter than he had foreseen.  All along the way the feed
+was scant.  Water was low in the holes, Rio Frio for the first time in
+years was a mere series of shallow pools.  The blazing heat was such
+that men and horses and steers all suffered terribly.
+
+At the end of the second day he ordered a full dozen of the less hardy
+of his beasts cut out from the herd and turned into a neighboring
+range; it was questionable if they would have been able to drag on the
+two remaining days and even had they done so they would have brought no
+top price from the buyer.
+
+The drive was made on schedule time.  Circumstances not only permitted
+but insisted.  There were no places for loitering, there were only the
+major water-holes upon which Steve had counted, the distances between
+them regulating each day's progress.  And so the stock was in San Juan
+a full two days before the time for Doan's coming.
+
+For Steve the two days dragged heavily.  He camped with his herd on the
+edge of the settlement, allowing the boys to disport themselves as they
+saw fit a large part of the time, himself having little desire for the
+bad whiskey and crooked gaming of La Casa Blanca.
+
+Tuesday morning Doan was to arrive.  Steve met the stage and one glance
+showed him that Doan was not on it.  He asked the driver if he knew
+anything of Doan and the man shook his head.  Steve supposed that he
+was coming up from the railroad by auto and so idled about the town all
+forenoon, waiting.
+
+By midday, when Doan still failed to put in an appearance, Steve had
+grown impatient.  By the middle of the afternoon his impatience gave
+place to anger.  He had kept his appointment bringing his herds over a
+hard trail, and Doan with nothing to do but travel luxuriously, had
+failed him.
+
+But it was not until the stage came in Wednesday morning and again
+brought no Doan and no word of Doan that Steve telephoned a message to
+the nearest Western Union office at Bidwell demanding to know what the
+trouble was.  Not only was he on heavy expenses; his mood never had
+been one to take kindly to the long waiting game.  And yet he was
+forced to wait all that day and all the next day with no word from Doan.
+
+He telegraphed again Wednesday night, a third time Thursday morning.
+No answers came.  But a little before noon, Thursday, Doan came.  Came
+by automobile from the railroad, a man with him.  Steve saw them as
+they drove into town; he noted Doan's thin face and his tall form in
+the gray linen duster; then he marked the man with him.  The man was
+Blenham.
+
+Steve, raw-nerved through these long hours of inaction and uncertainty,
+pushed straightway to Doan bent upon demanding an explanation.  He got
+an inkling of one from an unexpected quarter, Blenham's lips.
+
+"We sure appreciate this, Mr. Doan," Blenham said, getting down and
+offering his hand to the cattle-buyer.  "Count on me an' ol' man
+Packard doin' you a favor any time.  So long."
+
+And casting to Steve a look of blended triumph and venom he hurried
+down to the stable and his horse.
+
+"Mr. Doan," said Steve bluntly, "what in hell's name do you mean by
+treating me this way?"
+
+Doan turned his thin impassive face with the hawk-eyes toward young
+Packard.
+
+"Who do you happen to be?" he asked coolly.
+
+"I'm Steve Packard from Ranch Number Ten.  And I've got a herd of
+steers out here that's been waiting for you some time now."
+
+"Oh, yes," said Doan, still very cool.  "Got my wire, didn't you,
+saying that I was unavoidably detained?"
+
+"I did not!" snapped Steve.  "Detained by what?  Blenham?"
+
+"Strange," murmured Doan.
+
+He got down from his car and stretched his long legs.
+
+"I've had a new secretary, Mr. Packard.  I found out that he drank.  He
+has been discharged.  Hem.  Let me see: you've got about fifty steers,
+haven't you?"
+
+"I've got a hundred and eighty-six," Steve said sharply, staring at
+Doan's inscrutable face and wondering just what was up.
+
+"A hundred and eighty-six!" Doan shook his head.  "I couldn't take that
+many on just now; I've made other plans.  Unless, of course, you are in
+a position to tempt me to buy by making me a very attractive figure!"
+
+Steve came a sudden step nearer, his eyes blazing, his two fists
+clenched.
+
+"What's this game of yours?" he demanded.  "Out with it.  What are you
+up to?  You wired me an offer of ten to twelve cents, twelve and a half
+for the fancy."
+
+"What!" cried Doan.  "Why, my dear fellow, you must have lost your
+senses!  With the market the way it is now I don't have to pay more
+than seven and eight cents."
+
+Steve waited for no more.  His days of waiting were past.  He drew
+back, swung from the shoulder and struck with all of his might.  His
+fist against Doan's chin hurled the lean body of the cattle-buyer half
+across the street.
+
+"Barbee," said Steve quietly, "round up the boys.  We start our herd
+back in ten minutes."
+
+And Barbee, taking stock of Steve's white face, went hastily on his
+errand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+STEVE RIDES BY THE TEMPLE PLACE
+
+"Dear me, Mr. Man!  How savage you do look!"
+
+Steve started and whirled.  No; this time he was not dreaming.  It was
+Terry.
+
+Terry laughed lightly, deliciously.  She had grown prettier.  She had
+learned a new way to smile.  No, it was just the old way, after all.
+But she had discovered a new way to do her hair, an amazingly charming
+way.  Her lips were redder than ever before; her eyes were gayer and
+grayer and softer and sweeter.  Her voice tinkled with new, thrilling
+music.  She was just exactly perfect in Steve Packard's eyes.
+
+"You're super," said Steve.  "You're superlative.  You haven't done a
+thing all these long, weary months except grow more devilishly
+attractive."
+
+"Are you as savage as you looked?" she asked swiftly.
+
+For a brief instant he turned his eyes away from her and gazed after a
+herd that was moving slowly toward the north, Barbee and the other boys
+heading again toward the home range.  But, no matter what rage and
+sullen chagrin lay in his heart, his eyes, returning to Terry, showed
+that already her coming had worked its change.  He appeared almost
+content.
+
+"Are you going to shake hands?" he asked.
+
+"Shall I?" she asked.  "We are to be good friends after all?"
+
+"Or, are you going to kiss me?"
+
+Terry arched her brows at him.  But there was a live fire in her eyes
+and a crimsoning tide under her lovely skin.
+
+"Smarty!" cried the old Terry.  "Just try getting fresh with me and
+you'll get your face slapped!"
+
+Whereupon Steve's laughter boomed out joyously.
+
+"It's Terry come home again!" he announced to the open meadow about
+them.  "Terry herself."
+
+Was it Terry herself?  She seemed strangely embarrassed all of a
+sudden.  Just why?  Terry didn't know.
+
+"We are going out in my car," she said hurriedly.  It seemed that she
+must hasten to make some safe remark each time that his eyes, busied
+with her, rested upon her eyes.  "We'll be at the ranch long before you
+get your cows home.  You may come to see me--if you please to."
+
+"Who is we?" he asked.
+
+"Oh," said Terry, "that means Mrs. Randall who is going to be cook and
+chaperon."
+
+San Juan dozed in the late afternoon heat.  The corrals were between
+them and the quiet street.  He threw out his arms, caught Terry in them
+and kissed her.  And Terry, whipping back, slapped his face.
+
+"You--you----" she panted, her face scarlet.
+
+He touched tenderly with his finger-tips the place where her hand had
+struck him.
+
+"I'll be over to call on you and Mrs. Randall," he said.  "Real soon."
+
+
+Now as Steve Packard rode slowly after his cowboys and a diminishing
+herd, the dust-filled air, dry and hot as it was, seemed sweet and
+caressing to his temples, his eyes mused happily.  Blenham had just
+worsted him, Blenham had tricked him, had put him to the heavy expense
+of the long drive, had knocked his steers up for him, had laughed at
+him.
+
+Very well; tally for Blenham.  A matter to be considered in due time.
+A body blow, perhaps, but then what in God's good world is a strong
+body for if not to buffet and be buffeted?  He and Blenham would come
+to grips again, soon or late, and in some way still hidden by the
+future matters would finally adjust themselves.
+
+All considerations with which only some dim future was concerned.  Just
+now, in the living, breathing, quivering present there was room for but
+the one thought: Terry had come back to him.
+
+Yes.  Terry had come back to him.  And he had kissed her.  And she had
+slapped him.  He smiled and again his finger-tips went their way
+tenderly to his cheek.  He had kissed her because he loved her, meaning
+her no harm, offering her no insult.  She had slapped him because she
+was Terry, and because she couldn't very well help it.  Not because she
+did not love him!
+
+Somewhere in the world, off in some misty distance, there was a man
+named Blenham, a trickery, treacherous, cruel hound of a man.  He would
+require attention presently.  Just now----
+
+"You've come back to me!" whispered Steve Packard.
+
+And he sighed and shook himself and wished longingly that the return
+drive were over and that he had a bath and a shave and were just
+calling at the Temple ranch.
+
+Though presently he overhauled his men Steve rode all that day pretty
+well apart, maintaining a thoughtful silence which Barbee and the
+others supposed had to do solely with the failure of his plans for a
+good market.  His men knew that he had banked pretty heavily on this
+deal; and that now again he would be confronted by the old problem of
+finding sufficient feed to pull his herds through.
+
+Hay was scarce and high and would need to be hauled far, making its
+final cost virtually prohibitive.  The herders, grumbling among
+themselves, were for the most part of the opinion that he should have
+accepted his defeat at Blenham's hands and sold to Doan at a sacrifice
+figure.
+
+That night they camped at the Bitter Springs, making but a brief stop
+to water and feed and rest the road-weary cattle.  Then in the night
+and moving slowly they pushed on planning to get to the next
+water-holes before the heat of another day.  And now Steve, giving his
+orders to Barbee, left them and struck out ahead.
+
+There was small need of accommodating his impatience to the sluggish
+progress of the leg-dragging brutes and there were matters to be
+arranged.  Further, it was his intention to have a talk with Terry
+Temple just as soon as might be.
+
+That day Terry's automobile with shrieking horn swept on by him.  He
+caught a glimpse of two veils, a brown and a black; the car's top was
+up.  Terry appeared not to see him.
+
+"She hasn't lost a speck of her impudence!"
+
+He frowned after her departing car, praying in his heart for a puncture
+or a stalled engine.  She deserved as much for the way in which she
+tooted her infernal horn.  But his prayer went unanswered and his
+displeasure vanished presently as he pushed on steadily in her wake,
+eager to come to the end of his ride.
+
+But he must never entirely forget the panting herd straggling on far
+behind him, choking and coughing in its own dust.  He must arrange
+somewhere, somehow for pasturage.  So he made a detour and looked in on
+Brocky Lane first, then on Rod Norton.  Both old friends were glad to
+see him and gave him hard brown hands in grips that were good to feel.
+
+But they merely shook their heads when he mentioned his errand.  Lane
+had sold a few head last week; Norton was afraid that he would have to
+make a sacrifice sale himself.  They would do anything that they could
+but it was only too clear that they could not give him that which they
+themselves did not have and could not get.
+
+"Old man Packard," offered Norton bluntly, "is the only man I can think
+of who has pasture to rent.  Drop Off Valley, just up in the mountains
+back of your place."
+
+Steve laughed shortly and swung up into his saddle.
+
+"So long, Nort," he said colorlessly  "The old man would burn his grass
+off before he'd let me have it."
+
+And he rode on, two problems in his mind, both growing more difficult
+as he drew nearer the home ranch.  Problem One: Just what was Terry
+going to say?  Problem Two: How was he going to pull his stock through?
+
+As though he did not already have enough on his hands, Bill Royce
+greeted him at the home ranch-house with the significant word--
+
+"Trouble!"
+
+"I know it," grunted Packard, swinging down stiffly from his saddle.
+"What kind this time, Bill?"
+
+"Blenham-brand, I'd reckon," said Bill angrily.  Steve noted that both
+of the old hand's cheeks were flushed hotly.  "Barbee telephoned in
+about four hours ago.  Seven steers dead, some more sick.  An'," the
+explanation coming quickly, "Barbee's got the hunch Blenham had rode on
+ahead an' had poisoned the water-holes an'----"
+
+"Damn him!" cried Steve, a sudden fury seeming to leap out upon him and
+take him by the throat.  "Am I to stand everything from that man and
+from my old fiend of a grandfather?  It's this and that and any other
+thing they want to turn loose and here I stick like a cursed
+toad-stool, doing nothing for want of proof!  Proof," he snorted
+disgustedly.  "Bill Royce, let's quit waiting for anything but just go
+get the trouble-seeking outfit!"
+
+"Which sounds good to me," retorted Royce eagerly.
+
+And yet when his rage cooled a bit Steve ground his teeth in his
+impotence.  He must wait until Barbee came with what God chose to leave
+him of his steers, he must hear the foreman's account and decide
+whether Blenham were really at the bottom of this or if it were just
+his way and his men's to blame all things upon Blenham.
+
+"The first thing, Bill," he said when he had turned his tired horse
+loose in the pasture, "is to decide what we are going to do with what
+cattle Blenham hasn't poisoned for us.  We are fed off pretty short
+down at this end.  I'll ride over to the Temple place and see if we
+can't arrange with Miss Terry to run a few head there."
+
+"Yes," said Royce dryly.  "I'd hurry if I was you, Steve.  But, say!"
+He slapped his leg and jerked up his head.  "How about the old Indian
+Valley, Drop Off Valley, as they call it now?"
+
+"Gone crazy, Bill?  When did my grandfather ever show any inclination
+to help out?"
+
+Then Royce, thoroughly excited, explained.  Andy Sprague from beyond
+the ridge had ridden by only yesterday afternoon.  If Royce had only
+known at that time that Steve was bringing back the cattle from San
+Juan he would have arranged with Andy.  For the man had said that he
+had just bought Drop Off Valley from old Packard; that he wouldn't want
+the range this year as he had only recently sold close.  He would rent
+and reasonably.
+
+"There's close on a couple of thousan' acres in there; there's plenty
+water an' enough good grass to run two or three hundred head easy until
+your feed comes in again down this way.  Nail him, Steve; for the love
+of Mike, nail Andy Sprague quick before the crooked little cuss finds
+out jus' how bad you need the pasture an' sticks you accordin'.  Go
+nail him, Steve."
+
+And Steve, seeing hope like a brightening flush of a new day, hurried
+to the corrals and a fresh horse.  He was going straight after Andy
+Sprague.  But----
+
+"Guess I'll ride by the Temple place," he said carelessly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+DOWN FROM THE SKY!
+
+Drop Off Valley, its name won to it by its salient feature, was but a
+long, narrow, and very high plateau in the mountains lying to the east
+of Ranch Number Ten.  It was well watered from springs at the upper end
+which wandered the entire length of the tract and spilled down the
+cliffs which cut in abrupt fashion across the lower end, making a
+natural and fearsome boundary.
+
+From this portion of the "valley" one might kick a stone a sheer and
+dizzy distance down into the head-waters of Indian Creek, which
+indicated the beginning of the narrow pass which led through the
+mountains and to the misty blue hills of Old Mexico.
+
+Here in the abundant, rich, dry feed wandered upward of two hundred
+head of Ranch Number Ten and Temple Ranch cattle, mingling freely, the
+herds of one outfit carrying their brands in and out of the herds of
+the other.  A sign and a token that at last a certain dead-line had
+ceased to exist.
+
+Steve had found Andy Sprague, as crooked a little man as he looked to
+be according to Bill Royce and others who should know, and had arranged
+with him for the leasing of the mountain pasturage.  Less than a week
+later Sprague was back saying that he had seen Hell-Fire Packard and
+that that old mountain-lion had roared at him terribly, had threatened
+him with utter ruin if ever again he helped out Steve Packard and had
+bade him carry a message.
+
+"Tell that smart young fool of a gran'son of mine," was the word
+Sprague gave Steve, "that right now I'm gettin' ready to polish him off
+final.  Tell him what I done to him, blockin' his sale in San Juan,
+wasn't a patch on what I can do; tell him he'll lose more steers than
+he ever los' before.  Tell him if he don't want to get hisself all
+mussed up in this deal he'd better come over to my place an' throw up
+his han's.  I'm gettin' mad!"
+
+Before having these words from Andy Sprague's twisted mouth Steve
+Packard had been puzzled to explain two matters: According to count, on
+one hand there were too few cattle by perhaps a score while on another
+hand there were too many by at least a half dozen.  And, though Terry
+Temple was directly concerned, he had said nothing to her.
+
+The first mystifying suggestion that some strange juggling of stock had
+been going on came to him just before he had driven the hundred and
+eighty-six steers to San Juan.  Rounding up his own stock and cutting
+it out from Temple stock, he had had the opportunity to check up
+carefully in Terry's interests.
+
+Calves, cows, steers, and horses, he knew to the head just what Terry
+numbered them.  And in the round-up, going over his figures carefully,
+he had found that wearing the Temple brand there were six steers more
+than there should be.  A matter of some five or six hundred dollars.
+
+Were it only the financial end of it Steve would have thought little of
+the matter.  But, going over the herd animal by animal, he made a
+discovery which shocked him.  He found six big steers in the lot which
+wore fairly recently burned Temple brands--crudely scrawled over the
+brands of the Big Bend ranch, old man Packard's favorite outfit in the
+north.
+
+It was impossible to know just how long ago a searing-hot iron had
+altered the range indication of ownership; Steve could merely stare and
+wonder and finally hazard a guess.  Temple had been hard-driven; he had
+succumbed to temptation and opportunity as he had to whiskey and many
+other things.  Seeing life obliquely he had no doubt told himself that
+he was squaring accounts.  So, in the end, Steve was inclined to
+believe.
+
+Just what to do he did not know.  It seemed best to him to bide his
+time, to keep his eyes open, to hope for the way out of an embarrassing
+situation.  He would willingly have made restitution himself, to save
+Terry from knowing and to save her name from the smudge which old man
+Packard would eagerly put upon it were he offered the opportunity.  And
+right here was the trouble; he did not care to let his grandfather know
+what had happened.
+
+While striving with this matter the other was brought to his attention.
+Also at the time of the round-up Barbee reported a black-and-white
+steer missing, the prize of the beef herd, said Barbee.  Strayed into
+some far out-of-the-way cañon, perhaps.  But as the days went by other
+cattle, finally totalling a score, were reported missing.  And Steve
+remembered how one evening he and Terry from a log had watched Blenham
+driving off a string of steers.
+
+"My beloved grandfather has no love for the courts of law," mused Steve
+many a time.  "And he knows that in that I am like him.  So to his way
+of thinking it's just Packard eat Packard and the rest of the world
+'Hands Off.'  And so he is going the limit.  Well, I guess that's as
+good a way as any other."
+
+The day came when Steve put his cattle into Drop Off Valley.  The
+herds, his and Terry's, were counted twice, once as they filed through
+the gate of the round-up corrals, again as they were turned into the
+upland range.  Two hundred and thirty-four head.
+
+"Two hundred and thirty-four head where I defy Blenham or the devil
+himself to steal a single one of them," said Steve positively.
+
+For though there were no fences here nature had raised sufficient
+barriers in the way of the sheer Drop Off Chasm cutting across the
+southern end of the plateau and in rocky, uninviting and all but
+impassable mountain peaks on north and east and a section of the
+western boundary.
+
+It seemed the simplest matter in the world here with but ordinary
+diligence and vigilance on the part of his cowboys to make good Steve's
+vow.  Therefore, with Barbee in charge of the men here and under
+instructions to keep the eyes of trusted night riders always open,
+Steve thought to have heard the last of cattle losses.
+
+The steers were to be counted every day if Barbee thought necessary; so
+much Steve had said coolly, merely for the emphasis of the words.
+Barbee had looked at him curiously, making no rejoinder and going about
+his business with a puzzled look on his face.
+
+A week later Barbee reported to Steve down at Ranch Number Ten.
+
+"Five steers gone," he said succinctly, his eyes hard and expectant,
+challenging his employer's.
+
+"Gone?" repeated Steve.  "Where?  And when?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Barbee.  "I missed 'em four days ago.  I
+wouldn't believe they'd gone for good.  I didn't see how they could of
+gone.  I've looked for 'em ever since; I've rode into an' out of every
+cañon an' pass; I've been everywhere they could go.  But--they're gone.
+Five big steers."
+
+For a moment their eyes, Steve's as hard as Barbee's, held steady and
+unwinking in a deeply probing gaze.
+
+"Barbee," said Steve after a little, "remember the night Blenham tried
+to bribe you with a thousand-dollar bill?"
+
+Barbee flushed and nodded.
+
+"I get you," he said quietly.  "Think he's bought me up, maybe?"
+
+"I don't know what to think.  But this much is clear; If you are on the
+level it's up to you to see that I don't lose any more stock.  And it's
+also up to you to find where those five steers went.  And get them
+back.  Every single hoof of them."
+
+That night Steve himself spent in Drop Off Valley, a rifle over his
+arm.  He had ordered his men to carry guns, and if Blenham or another
+man were detected driving off his cattle, to shoot and to shoot to kill.
+
+But the next day he returned to the home ranch.  He trusted his
+cowboys--all but Barbee, and in Barbee's case he was not sure what to
+think--and it was only too clear to him that there were enough men
+there to cope with the situation without his interference.  Two days
+later Barbee reported to him again.
+
+The boy's face was haggard and drawn, his eyes burned sullenly.
+
+"Six head more gone!" he announced defiantly.  His look said plainly:
+"What are you going to say about it?  They're gone."
+
+"So you've turned cattle-thief, have you, Barbee?" was what Steve said.
+
+A sickly flush stained Barbee's hollow cheeks.
+
+"No!" he snapped hotly.  "I ain't.  But----"
+
+He swung on his heel and started to the door.  Steve called him back.
+
+"What are you going to do, Barbee?"
+
+"I'm goin' an' get Blenham," said Barbee between his teeth.  "I been
+wantin' him a long time.  Now this is his work an' he makes it look
+like it's mine.  I'm goin' an' get him."
+
+"If it is Blenham," Steve offered coldly, "and if you are playing
+square with me, how does it happen that he can get away with a thing
+like this?  Right under your nose--and you not know?  It sounds--  You
+know how it sounds, Barbee."
+
+"I don't know how he does it," growled Barbee.  "I don't know how a man
+could run off a string of cows like that in them mountains an' not
+leave no tracks.  Why, there ain't half-a-dozen places where they could
+be drove out'n the valley an' through the cliffs, an' I been watchin'
+every one of them places myself all night an' keepin' the other boys
+ridin' until they're saddle-weary.  An'--an' six head more gone----"
+
+"You're either a clever little actor, Mr. Barbee," muttered Steve
+sharply, "or you are straight, and I'm hanged if I know which.  Just
+leave Blenham alone for a while; go back to your job."
+
+Barbee, his spurs dragging disconsolately, went out.  Steve saw how the
+boy's shoulders slumped and again asked himself if Barbee were acting
+or if Blenham were simply too sharp for him?  In the end he decided
+that he had better move his headquarters to Drop Off Valley.
+
+That same day there came a cowboy riding from the Big Bend ranch
+bringing a brief note from Steve's grandfather.  It ran:
+
+
+DEAR STEPHEN: Better not go too far, my boy.  Eye for an eye is
+first-class gospel.  And there ain't no game yet I ever been bluffed
+out on.  Guess you understand.
+
+PACKARD.
+
+
+Steve didn't altogether understand but the messenger could add nothing
+save that the old man was chuckling with Blenham when he gave the
+message.  Steve, in no mood to hear of his grandfather's high good
+humor, tore the letter to bits, distributed them upon the afternoon
+wind and told the lean cowboy that he could tell Grandfather Packard
+and Blenham to go straight to everlasting blazes.  The cowboy laughed
+and rode away.
+
+
+Steve, riding slowly through the lengthening shadows falling through
+the pines of the mountain slopes before one comes to Drop Off Valley,
+was overtaken by Terry Temple riding furiously.  Terry's horse was
+dripping with sweat; Terry's face was troubled; there was a look almost
+of terror in her eyes.
+
+"Steve Packard," she cried out as she came abreast of him and they
+stared into each other's eyes in the dusk under the big trees.  "Tell
+me everything you know about those stolen steers!  Everything."
+
+So she knew, too?  Yet he had cautioned Barbee not to talk and to
+instruct the other boys to keep their mouths shut until such time as
+they could understand this hand being played in the dark.
+
+"Who told you?" he asked quickly.
+
+"I saw them!" she told him, her spirit shining like fire in her eyes.
+"The whole six of them.  I knew they were not our cattle.  I saw how
+the brands had been worked, clumsily worked.  Oh, my God, Steve
+Packard, what does it mean?"
+
+Now it flashed upon him.  Terry was not speaking of the cattle lost
+from the upland valley; she referred to those half-dozen big steers
+roaming on the Temple ranch whose brands had been crudely altered from
+the sign of the Big Bend outfit to the sign of her father's.  Slowly
+the red blood of shame, shame for her, crept up into his cheeks, dusky
+under his tan.
+
+"Terry," he began lamely.
+
+But she halted him with the word, her ear catching the subtle note of
+sympathy, her hand upflung, her temper flaring out that he, of all men,
+should think shame of her blood.
+
+"My father was never a thief!" she cried hotly, her voice ringing clear
+and certain.  "Not that, Steve Packard.  Don't you dare say that!  And
+yet--  You saw them, you knew, and you didn't say a word to me, to
+anybody?"
+
+"I didn't know what to say or what to do,", he explained gently.  "I
+thought it best just to wait, to hope for the sense of all this
+infernal jumble.  I hoped----"
+
+"You big fool!" she called him with all due emphasis.  "Just like all
+of the rest of your blundering sex.  If the good Lord had stopped with
+the job of making Adam, his whole creation wouldn't have been worth the
+snap of my thumb and finger."
+
+"It isn't, anyway," said Steve.  "I wouldn't swap your little finger
+for a king's gold crown----"
+
+"Moonshine," cut in Terry.  "Listen to me, Steve Packard: You saw those
+swapped brands and you kept your mouth shut."
+
+"It is generally considered----"
+
+"I said to listen to me!  You didn't say a word to me because you
+believed my dad was a cattle-thief!"
+
+Steve, despite himself, shifted uneasily in his saddle and finally
+dropped his eyes.  Terry sat there staring at him fixedly, her own eyes
+wide open and again harboring that look that was almost fear.
+
+"You--you--Oh, Steve Packard!  This is contemptible of you!"
+
+Then he lifted his eyes and looked at her solely enough.
+
+"Terry Temple," he said very gently, "I pray God that you are right and
+that I am wrong.  I did not know, I only saw what I saw, and wondered
+and kept my mouth shut.  But--listen to me now, Terry Temple.  You are
+not the one to dodge an issue, no matter how hard it is to face it.
+Tell me: If your father did not shift those brands, then who did?  And
+why?  Don't you see that is what it amounts to, that is what we've got
+to answer?"
+
+"Blenham!" she told him swiftly, hardly waiting for him to finish.
+"Blenham, under orders.  Orders from your precious old thief of a
+grandfather!"
+
+He smiled back at her, hoping to coax an answering smile to her lips
+and into her troubled eyes.  But she only shook her head and went on
+steadily.
+
+"Recrimination of a sort----"
+
+"Recrimination is quite some word, no matter what it means," sniffed
+Terry.  "But we can leave it out.  In words of one syllable, your old
+thief of a grandfather ordered his pet dog and sub-thief to go tie
+something on poor old dad.  And you fell for it!  You ought to go to a
+school for the simple-minded."
+
+"Just what," demanded Steve equably, "do you suppose a play like that
+would win for anybody?  Any time my old thief of a grandfather, as you
+call him, hands an enemy of his several hundred dollars in beef cattle,
+why, just please wake me up."
+
+"A play like that is just what old Hell-Fire would be up to right about
+now," she told him positively.  "You have been proving something too
+much for him to swallow whole and boots on; your chipping in with us
+that time you took the mortgage over made him hungrier than ever to
+gobble up the crowd of us.  So he plays the dirty trick of making it
+appear my father is a cattle-thief."
+
+"Blenham might do a trick like that.  My grandfather wouldn't.  That
+is, I don't think he would."
+
+"Better hedge!  Wouldn't he, though!  He's always been as mean as
+gar-broth; the older he gets the meaner and nastier he is.  He'd do
+anything to double-cross a Temple and you know it.  It's one crooked
+play; there'll be more like it.  Just you see, Steve Packard.  And the
+next one--at least if it concerns me--you see that you let me know
+about it instead of going around like a dumb man."
+
+Then he blurted out word of the recent losses from Drop Off Valley.
+For her herds mingled there with his and a part of the losses were to
+be borne by her.
+
+"I'm on my way there now," he concluded.  "I've an idea----"
+
+"You haven't!" she interrupted.  "Steve Packard, I don't believe you
+ever had an idea in your life.  Don't you know--don't you know what's
+going with those steers up there?"
+
+"Do you?"
+
+"You just bet your life I do!  It's that crook of a Yellow Barbee, in
+cahoots with that crook of a Blenham who's taking orders from that
+crook of an old Hell-Fire Packard!  Can't you see their play?"
+
+"I rather think I can.  But I don't happen to be as positive about the
+unknown as you do."
+
+"You're just a man," said Terry.  "That's why.  And now you are on your
+way to the feeding-grounds up there, to come in and say, 'Here I am,
+Barbee, come to watch you and see that you don't steal any more stock
+for me to-night.'  That the idea?"
+
+Steve laughed.
+
+"Not exactly.  I had intended leaving my horse before I got to the rim
+of the valley and going on on foot, not telling everybody what I was
+about."
+
+"And you'd come to the rim of the valley either by Hell Gate pass or
+through the old Indian Trail, wouldn't you?  And Barbee or Blenham
+would see that both ways were watched."
+
+"You seem to know the trails rather well," he began, but she merely
+broke in:
+
+"That's not all I know about this neck of the woods, either, Steve
+Packard.  Maybe it's lucky for you and for me too that you told me all
+this.  I'll take you into Drop Off Valley to-night, and Blenham and
+Yellow Barbee can watch all they please and never guess we're there.
+For there's a way up that not even Blenham knows and where they will
+never look for us.  Come on, Steve Packard; use a spur."
+
+She shot by him, leading the way.
+
+So Steve and Terry rode through the forests, passing from the dull
+fringe of the day into the calm glory of the night, feeling the air
+grow cooler and sweeter against their faces, sensing the shutting-in
+about them of the gentle serenity of the wilderness.  They followed
+little-travelled trails where she rode ahead and he, following close at
+her horse's heels, was glad each time that an open space beyond or a
+ridge crested showed him her form pricked clearly against the sky.
+
+They spoke less and less as they went on.  Deeper grew the silences
+into which they made their way, with only the gush of a mountain brook
+or the fluttering of a startled bird or the rustle of dead leaves under
+some alert little wild thing, just these sounds occasionally and ever
+the soft thud of shod hoofs on leaf mould and loose soil.
+
+The stars multiplied swiftly, grew in brilliancy.  But down here close
+to the face of the earth where the shadows were, the dark was
+impenetrable.
+
+For many a mile Terry led the way through the forests.  Steve was on
+the verge of suggesting that she had lost her way, when she turned off
+to the right and down a long slope in so decided a fashion that he
+closed his lips to his suspicion.
+
+She knew where she was going; as he once again saw her body against a
+patch of sky--she had gone down the slope and climbed a ridge
+ahead--and as he noted her carriage and the poise of a chin for the
+instant clearly outlined, he knew that she was sure of herself.  Well,
+she was that sort of a girl; she might have confidence in herself and a
+man might place his confidence with hers.
+
+So at last Terry brought him down into a creek-bed and the bottom on a
+steep-sided cañon.  He merely said, "I'll take your word for it!" when
+she told him that this was the deep-cleft ravine which lay like a gash
+at the base of the sheer Drop Off Cliffs.
+
+Yonder, perhaps a mile ahead and yet prominently asserting itself to
+their view because of a certain widening and straightening of the cañon
+here, a bold head of cliffs stood out like a monster carving in ebony.
+Up there, at the top of these cliffs, was the southern end of Drop Off
+Valley.
+
+"And it is up those cliffs that we are going," Terry announced when,
+having drawn nearer, they stopped again to gaze upward.  "There's a
+trail climbing straight up from the bed of the pass; a trail to go
+hand-and-foot style.  Once on top we'll be among Barbee's herds, Barbee
+guessing nothing of our coming since he'll be busy watching the other
+ways in.  And--  Look!"
+
+They were close together and she gripped his arm in her sudden
+amazement while she threw out one hand pointing.  He heard her little
+gasp; he looked upward; an astonished ejaculation broke from his own
+lips.  A breathless moment and already the thing, appearing from the
+black nothingness, silhouetted but a moment against the sky, was gone
+and he vaguely saw Terry's face turned toward him while they sought to
+find each other's eyes and know if each had seen what the other had
+glimpsed.
+
+"It's impossible!" he muttered.  "We are imagining things."
+
+"Wait!" said Terry.  "Maybe after all----"
+
+They waited impatiently, their blood atingle.  And in a very few
+moments there was, seeming absurd and impossible, a repetition of the
+vision which had so startled them: a black form at the head of the
+cliffs, the field of star-strewn sky back of it limning it into vivid
+distinctness--the ebon bulk of a steer moving straight out from the top
+of the precipice, straight out a half-dozen feet into nothingness of
+empty space, then slowly descending through the air, gone silently in
+the deeper shadows of the cañon below!
+
+"Block and tackle!" muttered Steve abruptly.  "A small steel cable.
+Two or three men up there; a man on horseback down below.  And while
+Barbee and the boys guard the other end----"
+
+"Blenham puts one across on us down here!" Terry finished it for him.
+
+"Only here's where we put one over on Blenham," rejoined Steve hotly.
+He threw a cartridge into his rifle-barrel and spurred ahead of her.
+"You stay here, Terry.  I----"
+
+"Will I?" Terry retorted with animation.  "Not on your life, Steve
+Packard!  If this is the beginning of Blenham's finish--  Well, I'm in
+on it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE STAMPEDE
+
+Terry had sensed something of the truth.  In its way here was the
+beginning of the end of many things.  Before she and Steve Packard,
+making what haste was possible in the thick dark and with what silence
+was allowed them, had gone a score of paces deeper into the cañon, the
+crack of a rifle shouted its reverberating message of menace back and
+forth in the rocky ravine, a spurt of flame showed where the rifleman
+stood upon a pinnacle of rock almost directly above their heads and
+there came the further sounds of men's startled voices and the
+scampering of horses' hoofs, fleeing southward through the pass.
+
+"They had lookouts all along!" cried Steve over his shoulder,
+discarding caution and secrecy and throwing his rifle to his shoulder.
+"Better hold back, Terry!"
+
+He fired, accepted the precarious chances offered him by an uneven and
+unknown trail in the dark and raced on deeper and deeper into the long
+chasm.  It seemed to him that he had glimpsed something moving at the
+top of the cliffs just about the place whence Blenham's men had lowered
+the steers.  He asked no question but threw up his gun-barrel and fired
+again.
+
+From straight in front of him there came back to his ears the clang and
+thud of iron horseshoes upon granite, the rattle of rocks along the
+trail; now and again he saw a spark struck out underfoot.  Then, far
+ahead as the cañon widened suddenly and a little thinning of the
+darkness resulted, he made out dim, running forms, and again he fired
+from his own leaping horse.
+
+A flying bullet might find a target and it might not; at any rate the
+sound of the shots volleyed and boomed echoingly between the stone
+wails imprisoning them, and Barbee or one of Barbee's men should hear.
+Steve was estimating hopefully as he dashed on after the fugitives and
+as Terry dashed on after him, that the men at the top of the cliffs
+would not try to come down now, not knowing who or how many the
+attackers were, but would seek escape above.
+
+Then, if his cowboys heard and rode toward the cliffs, it was all in
+the cards that they might intercept at least a couple of Blenham's
+tools.
+
+A running form almost at his side drew his attention briefly, and all
+but drew hot, questing lead after it.  Then he made out that it was but
+one of the stolen steers, abandoned now; he pressed by, firing time
+after time into the cañon ahead of him.  And behind him he heard
+Terry's voice, eager and fearless, crying out:
+
+"Good boy, Steve Packard!  We'll get 'em yet!"
+
+A spurt of flame from far ahead and close to the wall of the cañon, the
+crack of another rifle, long drawn out, and the whine of a bullet
+singing its vicious way overhead, and again Steve fired, answering shot
+with shot.  He heard a man shout and fired in the direction of the
+voice.  And then the only sounds rising from the narrow gorge were
+those of running horses and the accompanying noises of rattling stones.
+
+Now the way was again tortuous, pitch-black, boulder-strewn.  Steve
+slowed down rather than break his horse's legs or his own neck, not
+knowing whether to turn to right or left.  In a moment of uncertainty
+he felt and heard Terry push ahead of him.  He heard her hurrying on
+and followed, shouting to her to come back.  Ten minutes later, out of
+the pass now and upon a low-lying ridge whence he could look across the
+hills billowing away darkly toward the southland, he came up with her
+again.
+
+"They got off that way."  She pointed south.  "Saw one figure and maybe
+two going down the slope.  There's no use following.  The way is too
+open and it's too dark.  They've got away after all."
+
+"For to-night," said Steve.  "But maybe the fellows at the top of the
+cliffs----"
+
+"I'll show you the way up," said Terry.
+
+So without delaying they turned back and came presently under Drop Off
+Cliffs again.  Here they left their horses and, Terry showing the way,
+found the old path up the precipice.  Along many a narrow shelf of rock
+they went, over many a gigantic granite splinter where foothold was
+precarious enough, up many a steep climb.  But in their present mood
+they would have achieved even a more difficult and more hazardous task
+with eagerness and assurance.  Twenty minutes brought them to the top.
+
+"Who's that?" shouted a sudden voice as Steve's hat came up out of the
+void.  "Hands up!"
+
+"That you, Barbee?" grunted Steve.  "Hands up?  I'd drop a clean
+hundred feet if I did a fool trick like that.  Did they get away?  The
+men up here?"
+
+He wriggled up to the top, lay on his stomach and gave a hand to Terry,
+drew her to lie a moment breathless at his side and then again turned
+to Barbee.  There was another man with him and both were looking
+wonderingly at Steve and Terry.
+
+"I never heard a man say," muttered the astounded Barbee, "that there
+was stair-steps up here!  For a man an' girl to come up----"
+
+"And for our cows to go down!" cried Steve, on his feet now and coming
+to Barbee's side.  "You heard everything, Barbee?  You know what has
+happened?"
+
+"Yes," said Barbee.  "A hundred yards over that way--" he pointed along
+the cliff's edge--"where a twisted cedar-tree stands in a little
+washout, not hardly to be noticed unless you're on the lookout for it,
+they had their pulleys hitched an' a long steel cable.  It was easy
+shootin', come to think of it.  Jus' rope a cow, cinch her up tight
+with two big straps they had all ready, slip a hook through the
+belly-band, an' lower away!  Pretty smooth, huh?"
+
+"And they all got away?"
+
+"No, they didn't," said Barbee queerly.  "I got one of 'em!"
+
+"You did?" Steve swung back toward him eagerly.  "Who is he, Barbee?
+And where is he?  I want a talk with him."
+
+Barbee shook his head and reached for his tobacco and papers.  He was
+young after all, was Barbee, and this was his first man.
+
+"Andy Sprague, it was," said Barbee.  "He's dead now."
+
+There fell a heavy, breathless silence upon the three standing there
+under the stars.  Terry shivered as though with cold and drew a step
+closer to Steve; he felt her hand on his arm.  Barbee lighted his
+cigarette, his hands steady, but his face looking terribly serious in
+the brief-lived light shed upon it.
+
+"I heard you shootin'," said Barbee.  "I rode this way, on the jump.  I
+was only about a mile up the valley; maybe a shade less.  He had his
+horse close an' was on him an' poundin' leather lively to get out.  We
+come pretty close to runnin' into each other.  I hollered at him to
+hold on an' he jus' rode on his spurs an' I shot.  Emptied my gun.  Got
+him twice, bein' that lucky, an' him that unlucky.  He slid off his
+cayuse an' clawed aroun' an'--an' he's dead now," ended Barbee briefly.
+
+"Did he tell you anything?  Did he say anything that would implicate
+anybody?"
+
+"Meanin'," said Barbee steadily, "did he squeal on his pals?"
+
+"Just that.  Did he mention any names?"
+
+"No," replied Barbee thoughtfully.  "He jus' cusses me an' dies game.
+But this here was in his pocket."
+
+He passed it to his employer.  It was a bit of note-paper.  Steve and
+Terry read it together as Steve struck one match after another.  Then
+they looked into each other's faces, grown very tense, while Barbee
+smoked in silence.  The few words were:
+
+
+BLENHAM: This here Mex don't seem to know what I mean.  Next time send
+a man as can talk English.  Anyway I am coming to-night.  I don't want
+no killing if it ain't necessary, but there ain't going to be a hide or
+hoof left in Drop Off by morning.
+
+
+And the signature, cramped and stiff, was that of Steve's grandfather.
+
+"So," muttered Steve heavily.  "The old man has gone the limit, has he?
+He meant it when he said he'd stop at nothing to smash me.  And yet I
+can't believe----"
+
+"Let me see it again," Terry commanded.
+
+She took the paper from his fingers and with it his block of sulphur
+matches.  For even Terry, to whom old man Packard was as relentless and
+unscrupulous as Satan himself, hesitated to believe that he was hand in
+glove with Blenham in this.
+
+There might be a way to read between the lines, to come to some other
+understanding of the baffling situation.  Evidently the old man had
+given the note to the "Mex" who did not know enough of the English
+language to carry word of mouth; the Mex had passed it to Sprague.
+
+Steve and Barbee and the man with Barbee--an old Ranch Number Ten hand
+named Bandy Oliver--had stepped aside quietly.  Terry stood with the
+note in her hand, forgetting it for the moment.  So, at the last,
+matters had come to this: There lay a man over yonder, dead, with
+Barbee's lead in him.
+
+And old man Packard was coming to-night, now of all times when Steve's
+heart was hard, when his brain was hot with his fury, when he had just
+come upon men stealing his stock and had learned that his own
+grandfather, the old mountain-lion from the north, was one of them.
+
+"If they meet to-night," said Terry, "those two Packards, there are
+going to be other men killed.  Good men and bad men.  And, as likely as
+not, Blenham won't be one of them."
+
+"There was another jasper with Sprague.  He got away.  That way, I
+think.  Couldn't say, but there might have been more; what with the
+dark an' the cattle scared an' churnin' aroun'."
+
+Steve with Barbee and Bandy Oliver had moved slowly away and toward the
+upper end of the plateau.  Detached words, fragments of their speech,
+floated back to her more and more indistinctly on the night wind that
+never sleeps upon these uplands.
+
+Terry turned from them and stood for a little looking down into the
+black void of the cañon into which the stolen cattle had been lowered,
+from which she and Steve had just climbed.  She fancied that the
+darkness down there was thinning.  The dawn was coming up almost
+imperceptibly over the mountain-tops, filtering wanly into the depths
+of the cañons.  The night had rushed by; it would soon be day.
+
+And old man Packard had not come.  Thank God for that.  Down in her
+heart Terry was conscious of a leaping gladness.  She knew, admitted
+now, that she had been afraid.  A man lay dead over yonder; if Packard
+met Packard to-night there would be other men dead.  Terry shivered and
+drew back from the edge of the precipice.
+
+"It's always colder just before day," she told herself.
+
+"Sunrise already?"
+
+Steve's voice, borne to her ears with startling distinctness.  He had
+not come nearer; maybe the dawn wind was stiffening, thus bearing his
+words to her more clearly.  Or it might be that Steve had lifted his
+voice suddenly.
+
+Why should a man be startled by a new sunrise?  True, the night had
+gone quickly, but----
+
+"The sun never rose there!" Steve's voice again, thrilling through her
+with its portent.  "It's fire--range fire--in a dozen places!"
+
+A bright glow lay across the far, upper end of Drop Off Valley.  At
+first one might have done as Steve Packard did and wondered what had
+happened to the sun.  The sky had merely brightened warmly, slowly,
+gradually, showing a hint of pink.  And then, as the bone-dry grass
+here and there had caught, vivid streaks of flame and a veritable
+devil's dance of a myriad sparks shot high skyward.  And, as Steve had
+cried out, not in one place only, but in a dozen spots had the fires
+been lighted.
+
+"To herald the wrathful coming of Hell-Fire Packard!"
+
+Such was the thought springing full-fledged into Terry's brain, into
+Steve's, into Yellow Barbee's.  A chain of fires had been started
+across the whole width of the feeding grounds.  Now the rising wind
+made of it a sudden burning barrier that extended from side to side of
+Drop Off Valley, came rushing toward the lower end, threatening to
+leave but a black charred devastation of the precious pasturage.
+
+Barbee had run and thrown himself upon his horse.  Steve had grasped
+the dragging reins of Andy Sprague's mount.  Terry saw him and his two
+cowboys swing about toward the upper end.
+
+"Terry!" he shouted over his shoulder.  "Down the cliffs again; quick!
+The fire is coming this way; the herds will stampede!"
+
+There was only the sound of thudding hoofs as the three men rode
+furiously to meet the menace the dawn had brought and seek to grapple
+with it.  Then that sound had gone and its place, for a little taken by
+heavy silence, gradually gave way to new sounds.  The crack of rifles,
+faintly heard--thin voices of men shouting a long way off--a sound like
+that of a distant sea, moving restlessly--grown to suggest the coming
+of a storm that ever swelled in violence--and then a deep and deepening
+rumble, like thunder.
+
+The herd had stampeded.
+
+To Terry there came then, for the first time in her life, the sense of
+utter helplessness and hopelessness.  At least the others were doing
+something, no matter how fruitless it might prove, while she was doing
+nothing.  Steve was riding full-tilt to meet the herd.  She saw him and
+his men, strange figures in the uncertain light, looming big against
+the dawn sky and the fires' glow.  They were shouting, waving their
+arms.  Then, going down over a swell of earth they were lost to her.
+
+Again and again there came to her the sound of shots and men's voices
+shouting, cursing, yelling wild commands, a rising clamor meant to
+divert the blind rush of frightened beasts, to turn them to right and
+left so that they might scramble out of the valley before they came to
+the lower end where Terry stood--where was the yawning chasm down into
+which many a great, terror-filled body was doomed to plunge to
+annihilation unless the way were found to swing the flood of fear aside
+in time.
+
+Barbee and Bandy Oliver and the other boys were obeying Steve's
+commands, doing all that they could, seeking frantically to split the
+herd and divert it and so save it.  But all of the time the wind
+strengthened, the fires rose higher and higher against the sky, the
+sparks soared to rarer altitudes, were flung further out, new fires
+were catching everywhere.
+
+The tall, dry grass was burning in a hundred places.  The herd,
+sweeping on, was snorting its terror, yielding absolutely to the blind
+instinct of flight.  And steadily the thunderous murmuring sound from
+the hoof-smitten earth rose and swelled.  Closer and closer they came.
+Terry could distinguish Steve's voice.
+
+In her hand were the matches he had given her in order that she might
+read again his grandfather's letter.  A little gasp broke from her
+lips.  The letter fluttered from her hand, no longer of the slightest
+importance and on the wings of the wind went outward and then down into
+the chasm.  She ran forward swiftly, a hundred yards from the
+precipice's edge.  She struck a match, stopped briefly, set it to the
+grass.
+
+The flame caught, leaping up avidly, licking hungrily for more fuel, a
+demon for desire, newly born, yearning to rage a giant of destruction.
+The girl snatched a handful of the burning grass and ran with it; a
+little further forward, then to the side, scattering burning wisps as
+she went.
+
+Everywhere that a spark fell it made of itself a blaze.  Already, in
+twenty seconds, she had created a broad belt of flame that rose swiftly
+and spread to right and left.
+
+About her everywhere the air grew stifling, hot, filled with smoke and
+ash and cinder so that as she ran her lungs began to hurt her.  But she
+kept on.  Nearer were the herds coming; Steve and his men had not been
+able to stem the mad torrent; not yet had they succeeded in turning it.
+
+And in another handful of minutes the black, tight-jammed mass of big
+panting bodies would be hurtling out into space.  Unless she made her
+fire extend from side to side in a wall of leaping, roaring, swirling
+menace that would do what no men and horses could accomplish.
+
+Terry was racing as never had Terry run before, her breath coming in
+choking sobs, her eyes shining wildly, her body shaken with the effort
+she put upon it.  She had her burning barrier across the more dangerous
+end of the valley, where the cliffs dropped sheerest, she had but
+another few yards to go and there would be hope that she would succeed.
+But she must not stop yet, not yet.
+
+She ran on toward the nearer rim of the valley, scattering burning
+wisps of grass as she went, her heart beating wildly, seeming ready to
+burst through her side.  She fell, rose, ran on.  She stood still a
+moment, turning her back to the fires of her own building, looking
+toward the upper end whence came the steady roar.
+
+For an instant she stood fascinated.  It looked as though the ground
+itself, in many a low-lying swell, were racing on to meet her.  Then
+she saw the hundreds of horns glistening dully in the new light.  That
+black mass, surging forward, was the herd and she was still in its path.
+
+She cried out and threw down her last torch and ran just as the
+frightened steers were running, fear in her heart, racing away from
+death, just running for her life.  She saw a form ahead of the others,
+breaking away from them, sweeping down upon her.  She cried out in
+terror; then she knew and cried out again and threw up her arms and
+turned toward the rider who had remembered her and feared for her and
+come for her.  And Steve, bending from his saddle, equal to the need of
+the moment, swept her up and caught her tight in his arm and rode out
+of the way of herd and fire.
+
+From a little crag-crested knoll, standing hand in hand, their forms
+blended in silhouette against the dawn, they watched breathlessly the
+end of the stampede.  The maddened brutes rushed on, straight toward
+Terry's barrier of flame.  Then those in the van sought suddenly to
+alter their headlong courses.
+
+Steve's face was white with anger as he saw the result.  A full
+half-dozen, perhaps ten, big bodies at the fore passed through the far
+end of the flaming line, swept on, sought to swerve only at the last
+frantic moment with their fellows crowding them to the brink, and,
+struggling wildly, went over and down and out of sight.  Terry
+shuddered.
+
+The herd, however, broke, divided, swung to right and left and passed
+about the burning danger-signal and to the outer rims of the valley,
+achieving safety somewhere in the night, scattering, tossing their
+gleaming fronts, snorting, and beginning to bellow their rage.
+
+"If it hadn't been for you, Terry Temple--" Steve began, his voice a
+little hoarse.
+
+"If it hadn't been for you, Steve Packard,"' laughed Terry a trifle
+unsteadily but quite happily, "where would I have been?"
+
+And then, quite as though their destiny wished it made plain that not
+yet had the time come for them to devote exclusively to themselves,
+Barbee rode down toward them, spurring through the last of the fleeing
+herd, shouting:
+
+"There's a dozen men ridin' this way an' ridin' like----!  An' the
+firelight's shinin' on their guns; every man's totin' one.  An' it's
+ol' Hell-Fire Packard ridin' at their head."
+
+"I'm glad he has come," muttered Steve heavily.
+
+And then, as though he were uncertain of his return to her, he kissed
+Terry's lips that were lifted toward his.  In a dull stupor, so much
+had she experienced these last few minutes, she watched him swing again
+to the back of a horse and ride to meet those who came.  The very way
+he carried his rifle in front of him bespoke with rare eloquence his
+readiness for anything.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+YELLOW BARBEE KEEPS A PROMISE
+
+Terry started, shook off her apathy with a sudden effort and called out:
+
+"Steve!  Steve!  Come back!"
+
+He had gone but a half-dozen paces.  He swung about and returned to
+her.  It was not light enough yet for her to see his eyes; they seemed
+just unfathomable, sombre pools in the shadow of his hat-brim.  As he
+turned his head a little, harking to the distant sounds of men's voices
+earning on, the rigid profile was harsh and implacable.
+
+"Terry," he said sternly, "you mustn't ask me to come back again.  I am
+just standing on my own rights this time, as a man must now and then.
+Old man Packard is over there.  He is coming on.  He wants trouble.  He
+doesn't want the law courts.  He always preferred to play the game man
+to man.  He has cost me a number of cattle; when I can figure just how
+many I am going over and collect from him--if we are both left alive,
+which is to be doubted.  And now, if he wants fight----"
+
+Again he glanced over his shoulder.  Still she could not read what lay
+in his eyes.  But a new, almost eager note, boyishly eager Terry
+thought in dismay, had burst into his voice:
+
+"If he wants fight--by God, Terry Temple, I'm as much Packard as he is!"
+
+She watched him wheel again and go.  This time she did not call to him.
+Her little figure stiffened, her hands were down at her sides and
+clenched, her chin was lifted a little.  The whole attitude was
+soldierlike.
+
+"They are two of a kind," said Terry within herself.  "They are men.
+They are Packards.  I am proud and--and afraid--and--  Oh, dear God!
+Dear God!  Bring him back to me!"
+
+She could hear Steve giving his brief orders crisply.  Other figures
+loomed about him, coming out of the night and the shadows.  There was
+young Yellow Barbee and Bandy Oliver; there was the Number Ten cowboy
+whom she knew only as "Spotty"; in a moment these and two or three
+other men were with Steve.  Six or seven; possibly eight of them all
+told.  And Barbee had said that there were about a dozen men with old
+man Packard.
+
+"This is my fight, boys," Steve was saying.  "Mine and my
+grandfather's.  I want you fellows to keep out of it unless the boys
+with old man Packard mix in.  If they do----"
+
+"We're with you," said Yellow Barbee.  "Huh, boys?"
+
+And a little nervously and hurriedly they answered--
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then," concluded Steve, "keep your eyes open.  Hang back, now."
+
+She saw him lean forward in the saddle, noted how the horse leaped
+under him, took anxious stock of the manner in which he carried his
+rifle.  Then suddenly there came back into Terry's cheeks the good hot
+blood, into her eyes the sparkle and shine, into her heart something
+akin to the sheer joy of battle.  Had she a horse she would not have
+hung back for want of a rifle, but would have ridden after him, with
+him.  As it was she cried out ringingly:
+
+"God go with you, Steve Packard!  I'm proud of you!"
+
+She might not ride with him; at least she would not crouch and cringe
+and hide her eyes.  She would watch him as he rode, watch him as he
+fought, watch him to the end even though he slipped from the saddle.
+
+So she made her way hastily to a point of vantage, running the brief
+distance lying between the slight knoll on which she stood and the
+eastern edge of the valley where the rugged peaks rose abruptly.  She
+scrambled up the first bit of slope, her heart beating wildly,
+expecting each second to hear the snap and crackle of rifle-fire.  She
+turned and looked back; the floor of the valley was too uneven for her
+to have a sweeping view.
+
+She began climbing again.  Great boulders rose in her path; somehow she
+got on them and over them.  Broken slabs of granite strewed the way;
+she made of them steps on which to mount higher and higher.  Still no
+sound of a shot and at last, upon a narrow shelf of rock offering
+sufficient foothold, she stopped.
+
+Here, with her back tight pressed to a rock, her hands gripping at
+irregularities on each side of her to steady her, she sent her questing
+gaze down into Drop Off Valley.
+
+Now she understood why there had as yet been no rifle-fire.  The day,
+coming on slowly, still offered more gloom than radiance, but she could
+pick out two figures clearly.  One was that of Steve.  He had ridden on
+ahead of his men, perhaps a hundred feet ahead, and was upon a bit of
+higher ground.
+
+The other form, bulking big in the thin light, was indisputably that of
+old man Packard.  Like Steve, he had ridden on in advance of his men.
+She could just make out a dull mass yonder behind him which might have
+been but a group of boulders had not the impatient stirring showed
+where his horsemen were waiting.
+
+It was very still there on the uplands in the dim dawning.  In
+breathless watchfulness a few men behind Steve watched; a few men
+behind old man Packard watched; a girl upon a granite peak watched.
+Down toward the lower end of the valley where the floor of the plateau
+dropped precipitously into the steep-walled cañon the fire Terry had
+set was still burning fiercely.  But the wind carried its fury away
+from them, so that it was only an evil whisper.
+
+Here and there, elsewhere in the valley, the fires still burned on.
+There were wide stretches across which the flames had already swept so
+that now they were ink-black, burnt-out, smoking a little.  Upon such
+an open space, still hot under their horses' hoofs, the two Packards,
+grandfather and grandson, came face to face.  And they were stern,
+ominously set faces confronting each other.
+
+At last they had pulled rein, both of them, looking grotesquely like
+clockwork mechanisms, being actuated by the same impulse at the same
+time.  Some ten feet only were between their horses' tossing heads.
+They were almost opposite Terry's lookout and at no great distance.  In
+the quiet pervading the valley their voices came to her.  Not each
+word, but a word now and then, lifted above its fellows, and always the
+purport.  For there was no mistaking the quality of the two voices.
+
+Rage in old Packard was welcomed by wrath in young Packard.  Heat and
+anger and explosive denunciation, these were to be looked for now.
+Never had it been the Packard way to temporize; always had it been the
+Packard way to leap in and strike.  Few-worded always was the old man;
+as few-worded was the young man now.
+
+"You are a damn' scoundrel, sir!"
+
+"You will draw your men off.  You will pay for the damage Blenham has
+done."
+
+"By God, sir!"
+
+There was little more said.  That thunderous "By God, sir!" from the
+old man's lips carried to Terry where she stood tight pressed against
+her rock.  And then all unexpectedly and from an unexpected quarter,
+came the first rifle-shot.
+
+The first shot and the second, close together.  The bullets passed
+between grandfather and grandson, kicking up little puffs of dust
+beyond them.  Neither looked to see whence the shots came.  The thought
+was in each mind:
+
+"Is this a Packard I am dealing with?  Setting one of his hired
+assassins to shooting from a blind?"
+
+The old man's rifle was thrown up before him; Steve's rose with it.
+Over yonder old Packard's men squared themselves in their saddles and
+made ready for grim work.  Yellow Barbee gave a signal all unneeded to
+his men; his own rifle in his eager hands, was ready, the trigger
+yielding to his calloused forefinger.
+
+And then from the flinty spire of a peak rising between them and a sun
+that was slowly wheeling into the clear sky, came scream after scream
+that echoed and billowed across the open lands as Terry Temple, seeing
+something of the truth, cried out in terrified desperation and warning.
+
+A girl's voice screaming--Old man Packard turned sharply and stared in
+wonderment.  Terry's voice--Steve swung about, his anger suddenly
+quenched in alarm, his eyes seeking everywhere for her.
+
+It was Barbee who saw her first.  Barbee called out, a strange note in
+his voice, and clapped his spurs to his horse's sides and went racing
+across the undulating lands toward her.  Then Steve saw and old man
+Packard and the rest.  Saw but at first could not understand: the sun
+was just behind her, winking into their eyes.  There was some one with
+her, struggling with her.
+
+"Blenham!" shouted Steve.
+
+And he was racing wildly along after Barbee, yearning to shoot to kill
+and yet not daring to shoot at all.  Blenham and Terry struggling upon
+the iron side of the mountain, Terry striking and striking at him
+frantically, Blenham with his arms about her, dragging her back toward
+a wide fissure in the rocks, the sun bright above them.
+
+To Terry it seemed that the universe had come crashing down about her
+ears.  A moment ago, tense and rigid and breathless, she had stood
+watching two men face each other threateningly.  Then there had been
+the crack of the unexpected, unseen rifle; the dust struck up between
+them; the second shot.  And the smoking rifle-barrel was not three feet
+from where Terry stood, Blenham's convulsed face laid against the
+stock, Blenham's one evil eye lining the sights.
+
+Almost on the instant she guessed something of the truth.  Blenham in
+this light was not sure of hitting; he would be a fool to shoot and
+miss.  Unless--and it was then that she screamed out her warning, then
+before he had so much as put out his hand toward her.
+
+Unless Blenham, with all of the guile of him uppermost, knew that that
+shot fired between the two would send them flying at each other's
+throats, ending all parley and bringing about unthinkable tragedy.
+Blenham had his own reasons for what he did; certainly it would fit in
+with Blenham's plans to see the hand of a Packard set against a Packard.
+
+But she had not thought to have him seize her.  Now his great,
+calloused, soiled, hairy hands shut down upon her, gripping her
+shoulders, jerking her from her place into the crevice from which his
+face had emerged.  She fought, seeking to get the revolver in her
+blouse.
+
+Blenham must have known that she kept it there.  He snatched it and
+threw it behind him and cursed her as he dragged her with him.  As
+Barbee came on and Steve came just behind him, the figures of Blenham
+and Terry were both gone as though the mountain-side had split for them
+and closed after them.
+
+"They've got in a hole," called out Barbee.  "Them mountains is full of
+caves.  They can't get away far."
+
+As they went up the steep slope Barbee was still in the lead.  He
+mounted to the shelf of rock on which Terry had been standing.  He
+stepped into the crevice through which Blenham had dragged Terry.
+
+"There's a split in the rocks here," called Barbee.  "He went this way."
+
+"Watch out for him!" warned Steve, now on the ledge close to the boy.
+"Let me go ahead!"
+
+Barbee laughed.
+
+"Long ago I told him I'd get him!"
+
+But Blenham was waiting in a little rock-rimmed hollow.  He shot from
+the hip, using a heavy revolver.  Barbee stood a moment looking
+foolishly at the sky as he slowly leaned back against the rock.  Then
+he lurched and fell, twisting, spinning so that he lay half in the
+fissure, his rifle clattering to the ledge outside, his body falling so
+that his head and shoulders were across the rifle.
+
+Steve stepped over Barbee's twitching body, alert, every nerve taut,
+his finger crooked to the trigger of his rifle.  But again Blenham had
+withdrawn.  In the little rudely circular hollow from which Blenham had
+fired point-blank at Yellow Barbee was Terry's hat, trodden underfoot.
+Again it was as though the mountain had swallowed the man and the girl
+he had taken with him.
+
+But a moment later Steve saw and understood.  Not ten steps from where
+he stood was the mouth of a cave.  Into it Blenham had retreated.  In
+there was Blenham now; Blenham and Terry with him.  And the way, for
+the moment at least, was securely blocked.  Evidently here was a
+hangout known before, previously employed.  It had a door made of heavy
+cedar slabs.  The door was shut, and, of course, barred from within.
+
+"Terry!" called Steve.
+
+Terry sought to answer; he heard her voice in inarticulate terror,
+little more than a gasp, choked back in her throat.  Steve went dead
+white.  He visualized Blenham's hands upon her.
+
+He came on to the door, his rifle clubbed.  There was but the one thing
+to do; smash down the door and so come at Blenham the shortest,
+quickest, only way.
+
+Then Blenham called to him for the first time.
+
+"Fool, are you, Steve Packard?  Look at that door.  Don't you know
+before you can batter it down I can pick you off!  An' I can do more'n
+that!"
+
+As though he had cruelly drawn it from her, there came again Terry's
+scream.  Steve sprang forward and struck at the heavy cedar planks.
+And Blenham called out again:
+
+"Maybe you can break your way in; there's enough of you.  But you'll
+find her dead when the door falls!"
+
+Steve had again lifted his rifle.  Now he let it sink slowly so that
+the butt came to rest gently upon the rock at his feet.  Blenham held
+the high hand; Blenham was unthinkably vile; Blenham was desperate.
+And Terry, his little Terry on whom Blenham had always looked with the
+eye of a brute and a beast, was in there, just beyond three inches of
+solid seasoned cedar planking.
+
+"If you harm her in the least--"  It was Steve's voice though certainly
+at first neither Blenham nor even Terry could have recognized it.  "If
+you harm her in the least, Blenham, I'll kill you.  Not all at
+once--just by inches!"
+
+Blenham answered him coolly.
+
+"I know when I've lost a trick, Steve Packard.  This ain't the firs'
+one an' it ain't goin' to be the last.  I've played 'em high an' I
+always knowed I took chances.  But I'm playin' safe!  Get me?  Safe!"
+
+"Go ahead; what do you mean?"
+
+"Ol' man Packard is down there.  This girl's yellin' spoiled my play.
+By now he has learned a thing or two.  All right; that's jus' the run
+of luck, rotten luck!"
+
+Under the words the restraint was gone and his rage flared out briefly.
+But it was patent that Blenham's shrewdness was still with him.  He
+continued almost calmly:
+
+"You an' him can have two words together.  Then come back here an' give
+me your promises, both of you, to let me go.  Then I'll let her go.
+Otherwise, I'm as good as dead--an' so's she.  I'll jam a gun to her
+head the las' thing an' blow her brains out.  An', what's more, I'll
+get one or two of you besides before you drop me."
+
+Into their parley, interrupting it, his eyes flaming, his face hot with
+anger, mounted old man Packard.
+
+"Stephen," he said sternly, his eyes hard on his grandson's face, "tell
+me an' tell me the down-right truth, so help you God: Did you rent this
+pasture from Andy Sprague, thinkin' he owned it?"
+
+Though he wondered, Steve answered briefly, to have this done with so
+that he could again turn to Blenham--
+
+"Yes."
+
+"An' the boys says you have been losin' stock an' blamin' it to me?
+An' that you've had stock poisoned an' shot?  An' blamed it to me?"
+
+"Yes," said Steve.
+
+"So've I," said the old man heavily.  "An' I've always blamed it to
+you.  An' I never sold to Andy Sprague.  Him an' Blenham--Blenham has
+played us both ways for suckers, has stole enough cows from one an'
+another----"
+
+His voice was swept up into the roar of rage which had given him his
+name of the old mountain-lion of the north.  He came stepping over poor
+Barbee's body, thrusting by Steve, towering over the door of the cave.
+
+"Hold back," commanded Steve queerly.  "He's in there.  But he's got it
+on us.  We've got to promise to let him go!"
+
+"Let him go!" shouted the old man, his big bulk seeming actually to
+quiver with rage.  "After all he's done, let him go?  By the Lord,
+Stephen Packard, if you're that sort of a man----"
+
+"She is in there with him," said Steve heavily.  "Terry is in there.
+Don't you see?"
+
+"Terry?  That Temple girl?  What have we to do----"
+
+"In the first place," cried Steve sharply, "she's a girl and he's a
+brute.  In the second place, she is the next Mrs. Packard and I won't
+have Blenham pawing over her!"
+
+His grandfather stared at him, long and keenly.  Then he turned away
+and called out commandingly--
+
+"Blenham, come out of that!"
+
+Blenham jeered at him.
+
+"And be shot down like a dog?  There's a girl in here, Packard.  Young
+Packard is gone on her; he wants to marry her.  An' unless you an' him
+give your word to let me go, I'm goin' to jam a gun at her head an'
+blow her brains out.  An' I'll get him as I come out; an' I'll get you."
+
+"Let him go!" called Terry faintly.  "Let him go, Steve!  Oh, dear
+God--if you love me----"
+
+"Come out, Blenham!" shouted Steve.  "I give you my word, so help me
+God, to let you go scot-free.  Come out!"
+
+"Not so fast," mocked Blenham, lingering over his high card.  "You've
+got to promise for your men; you've got to send 'em across the valley.
+You've got to have a horse handy for me to ride.  You've got to back
+down the valley yourse'f.  An' ol' man Packard has got to do the same."
+
+Old man Packard roared out his curses, but in the end, seeing nothing
+else to do, he went grumbling down the rocky slope, back to his horse
+and to his men.  But first he had known perhaps the supreme humiliation
+of his life.  He had said:
+
+"Blenham, on my word of honor as a Packard an' a gentleman, I'll let
+you go.  An' I'll make my men let you go."
+
+And there were actually tears hanging to his lashes as he swung again
+into his saddle.
+
+"He has not hurt you, Terry?" asked Steve before he too would go down
+the slope.
+
+"No," cried Terry.  "No, no!  But, oh, hurry, hurry, Steve.  I feel
+that I'll smother, I'll die!"
+
+From down in the valley they watched, close to a score of hard-eyed,
+wrath-filled men, as Blenham stepped out of the crevice and on to the
+ledge.  They saw how he jeered as he stepped over the body of the man
+he had shot.
+
+"A fool was Barbee," he called.  "A fool the Packards, ol' an' young!"
+
+They saw him come down the slope, carrying himself with a swaggering
+air of braggadocio, but plainly watchful and suspicious.  Terry had
+come out upon the ledge and she too watched him.  He came down swiftly
+and swung up into the saddle of the horse they had left for him.
+
+And now at last his suspicion was past.  His triumph broke out like a
+streak of evil light.
+
+"I was ready to go," he called, "any time!"
+
+He swung his arm out toward the blue hills of Old Mexico.
+
+"Down there-----"
+
+Barbee whom they had thought dead stirred a little where he lay.  The
+rifle under him he thrust forward six inches.
+
+"Blenham!" he called weakly.
+
+Blenham swung about and fired, again from the hip.  But he had fired
+hastily.  Barbee's rifle, resting upon the rock, was steady.  Between
+its muzzle and Blenham's broad chest there was but the brief distance
+of some fifty feet.  The report of Barbee's rifle, the thin upcurling
+smoke under the new sun--these were the chief matters in all the world
+for their little fragment of time.
+
+Then Blenham threw out his arms and pitched forward.  His foot caught
+in the stirrup.  The frightened horse was plunging, running, dragging a
+man whose body was whipped this way and that.
+
+"I promised--a long time ago," whispered Barbee, "that I'd get you,
+Blenham."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+IN HONOR OF THE FAIRY QUEEN!
+
+"Guy Little!"
+
+The old man's voice boomed out mightily as the old man himself strode
+back and forth impatiently in the big barn-like library of his ranch
+home.  Guy Little appeared with a promptness savoring either of magic
+or prepared expectancy.
+
+"You rang, your majesty?"
+
+"Rang, your foot!" shouted old Packard.  "I hollered my ol' head off.
+What's the day of the week, Guy Little?"
+
+"It's Wednesday, your----"
+
+"An' what's the day of the month?"
+
+"It's the nineteenth, your----"
+
+"Then tell me, sir," and the old man's tone was angry and challenging
+to a remarkable degree, "why in the name of the devil my gran'son,
+Stephen, ain't showed up yet!"
+
+Guy Little might have remarked that it was rather early to expect any
+one to show up.  It was not yet six o'clock of a morning which promised
+to be one of the very finest mornings ever known.  The old man had, as
+Guy Little expressed it, "been prancin' an' pawin' aroun'," for an hour.
+
+Guy Little grinned like any cherub.
+
+"He has showed up," he chuckled, though he had meant to hold back the
+tidings teasingly.  "He come in late las' night.  You was asleep an'
+sleepin' soun', so----"
+
+"He did, did he?" bellowed the old man.  "Crept in like a damn' thief
+in the night, did he?  Well, where is he now?  Sleepin' yet, I'll be
+bound.  When he ought to be up an'--  Why, when I was a young devil his
+age----"
+
+"He's outside somewhere," said Guy Little.  "He has been down to the
+crick for a mornin' dip, I'd guess, your majesty."
+
+"Why would you guess that?"
+
+"Because pretty near all he had on was a towel an' a--a sort of
+a----immodes' britch-cloth," explained Guy Little confidentially.
+
+"An'," continued old man Packard, "where's--she?"
+
+"Meanin' the Fairy Queen, your majesty?"  Guy Little's voice was now a
+whisper.
+
+"Meanin' her--the Fairy Queen," said the old man gently.  "Sleepin',
+Guy Little?  I won't have her woke!"
+
+"Woke, your eyebrow!" chuckled Guy Little.  "I'd say she's gone for
+a--a dip, too, your majesty.  An'--an', between just the two of us ol'
+fellers, hers is purty near as immodes' as his!  Fact, an' I don't care
+whose granddaughter she is.  Blue, you know; an' not very much of it.
+An' a red cap.  An'--I couldn't see very well through the curtains an'
+I dasn't let 'em know I was lookin'.  Only don't you let her know we
+know; why, bless her little simple heart, she ain't got the least idea
+how pretty an'--an'----immodes'----"
+
+Old man Packard fixed him with a knowing eye.
+
+"Ain't she?" he demanded.  "Ain't she, Guy Little?  Why, if there's one
+thing in this world worth knowin' that my granddaughter don't know--
+Go order breakfas' ready in two shakes, Guy Little."
+
+"I did," said Guy Little.  "It's ready already.  There they come.
+Happy-lookin', ain't they?  Like a couple kids."
+
+"An' see that them two new saddle-horses is ready right after breakfas'
+for 'em, Guy Little."
+
+"They're ready now," chuckled Guy Little.  "I remembered."
+
+"An--an' she likes----"
+
+"Flowers on the table?  An' her grapefruit stacked high with sugar?
+An' the coffee with hot milk?  Don't I know nothin' a-tall, Packard?"
+
+Steve and Terry, dripping and laughing, breaking into a run as they
+came on across the meadow, spied the big man and the little at the
+window and shouted a joyous good morning and Terry threw them a kiss
+apiece.  And old man Packard, his hands on his hips, a look of
+absolute, ineffable content in his eyes, said softly:
+
+"I've made a mistake or two in my life, Guy Little.  But ain't I lived
+long enough to squeeze in a blunder or so here an' there?  An' I've
+made a mistake a time or two on a man."
+
+"Blenham did fool you pretty slick," suggested Guy Little.
+
+"But," went on the old man hurriedly, "I know a real, upstandin',
+thoroughbred----"
+
+"Fairy Queen of a woman."
+
+"Fairy Queen of a woman when I see her.  An' that little thing out
+there, her eyes shinin' like I ain't seen a pair of eyes shine for
+more'n fifty year, Guy Little--why, sir, she's what I call a--  Why,
+she's a Packard, man!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Man to Man, by Jackson Gregory
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Man to Man, by Jackson Gregory
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Man to Man
+
+Author: Jackson Gregory
+
+Release Date: July 29, 2006 [EBook #18933]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN TO MAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<A NAME="img-front"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-front.jpg" ALT="The blazing heat was such that men and horses and steers suffered terribly." BORDER="2" WIDTH="383" HEIGHT="571">
+<H3>
+[Frontispiece: The blazing heat was such that men <BR>
+and horses and steers suffered terribly.]
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+MAN TO MAN
+</H1>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+BY
+</H3>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+JACKSON GREGORY
+</H2>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+AUTHOR OF
+<BR>
+JUDITH OF BLUE LAKE RANCH, <BR>
+THE BELLS OF SAN JUAN, <BR>
+SIX FEET FOUR, ETC.
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+ILLUSTRATED BY
+<BR>
+J. G. SHEPHERD
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP
+<BR>
+PUBLISHERS &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash; NEW YORK
+</H4>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H5 ALIGN="center">
+COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
+<BR>
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+<BR><BR>
+Published October, 1920
+</H5>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CONTENTS
+</H2>
+
+<BR>
+
+<CENTER>
+
+<TABLE WIDTH="90%">
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">CHAPTER</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">&nbsp;</TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">I.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap01">STEVE DIVES INTO DEEP WATERS</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">II.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap02">MISS BLUE CLOAK KNOWS WHEN SHE'S BEAT</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">III.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap03">NEWS OF A LEGACY</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap04">TERRY BEFORE BREAKFAST</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">V.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap05">HOW STEVE PACKARD CAME HOME</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap06">BANK NOTES AND A BLIND MAN</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap07">THE OLD MOUNTAIN LION COMES DOWN FROM THE NORTH</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap08">IN RED CREEK TOWN</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap09">"IT'S MY FIGHT AND HIS.  LET HIM GO!"</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">X.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap10">A RIDE WITH TERRY</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap11">THE TEMPTING OF YELLOW BARBEE</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap12">IN A DARK ROOM</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap13">AT THE LUMBER CAMP</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap14">THE MAN-BREAKER AT HOME</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap15">AT THE FALLEN LOG</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap16">TERRY DEFIES BLENHAM</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap17">AND CALLS ON STEVE</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap18">"IF HE KNOWS--DOES SHE?"</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap19">TERRY CONFRONTS HELL-FIRE PACKARD</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap20">A GATE AND A RECORD SMASHED</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap21">PACKARD WRATH AND TEMPLE RAGE</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap22">THE HAND OF BLENHAM</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap23">STEVE RIDES BY THE TEMPLE PLACE</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXIV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap24">DOWN FROM THE SKY!</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap25">THE STAMPEDE</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXVI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap26">YELLOW BARBEE KEEPS A PROMISE</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXVII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap27">IN HONOR OF THE FAIRY QUEEN!</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+</TABLE>
+
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+</H2>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-front">
+The blazing heat was such that men and horses and steers <BR>
+suffered terribly&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. <I>Frontispiece</I>
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-116">
+The men about him and Packard withdrew this way and that <BR>
+leaving empty floor space.
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-208">
+Terry's head, her face flushed rosily, her eyes never brighter, <BR>
+popped up on one side of the log.
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-240">
+"Say it!" laughed Terry.  "Well, I'm here. Came on business."
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap01"></A>
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+MAN TO MAN
+</H1>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER I
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+STEVE DIVES INTO DEEP WATERS
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Steve Packard's pulses quickened and a bright eagerness came into his
+eyes as he rode deeper into the pine-timbered mountains.  To-day he was
+on the last lap of a delectable journey.  Three days ago he had ridden
+out of the sun-baked town of San Juan; three months had passed since he
+had sailed out of a South Sea port.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Far down there, foregathering with sailor men in a dirty water-front
+boarding-house, he had grown suddenly and even tenderly reminiscent of
+a cleaner land which he had roamed as a boy.  He stared back across the
+departed years as many a man has looked from just some such resort as
+Black Jack's boarding-house, a little wistfully withal.  Abruptly
+throwing down his unplayed hand and forfeiting his ante in a card game,
+he had gotten up and taken ship back across the Pacific.  The house of
+Packard might have spelled its name with the seven letters of the word
+"impulse."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Late to-night or early to-morrow he would go down the trail into
+Packard's Grab, the valley which had been his grandfather's and,
+because of a burst of reckless generosity on the part of the old man,
+Steve's father's also.  But never Steve's, pondered the man on the
+horse; word of his father's death had come to him five months ago and
+with it word of Phil Packard's speculations and sweeping losses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But never had money's coming and money's going been a serious concern
+of Steve Packard; and now his anticipation was sufficiently keen.  The
+world was his; he had no need of a legal paper to state that the small
+fragment of the world known as Ranch Number Ten belonged to him.  He
+could ride upon it again, perhaps find one like old Bill Royce, the
+foreman, left.  And then he could go on until he came to the other
+Packard ranch where his grandfather had lived and still might be living.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After all of this&mdash;Well, there were many sunny beaches here and there
+along the seven seas where he had still to lie and sun himself.  Now it
+was a pure joy to note how the boles of pine and cedar pointed straight
+toward the clear, cloudless blue; how the little streams trickled
+through their worn courses; how the quail scurried to their brushy
+retreats; how the sunlight splashed warm and golden through the
+branches; how valleys widened and narrowed and the thickly timbered
+ravines made a delightful and tempting coolness upon the mountainsides.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was an adventure with its own thrill to ride around a bend in the
+narrow trail and be greeted by an old, well-remembered landmark: a
+flat-topped boulder where he had lain when a boy, looking up at the sky
+and thrilling to the whispered promises of life; or a pool where he had
+fished or swum; or a tree he had climbed or from whose branches he had
+shot a gray squirrel.  A wagon-road which he might have taken he
+abandoned for a trail which better suited his present fancy since it
+led with closer intimacy into the woods.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was late afternoon when he came to the gentle rise which gave first
+glint of the little lake so like a blue jewel set in the dusty green of
+the wooded slopes.  As he rose in his stirrups to gaze down a vista
+through the tree-trunks, he saw the bright, vivid blue of a cloak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, there's a woman," thought Packard without enthusiasm.  "The woods
+were quite well enough alone without her.  As I suppose Eden was.  But
+along she comes just the same.  And of course she must pick out the one
+dangerous spot on the whole lake shore to display herself on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For he knew how, just yonder where the blue cloak caught the sunlight,
+there was a sheer bank and how the lapping water had cut into it,
+gouging it out year after year so that the loose soil above was always
+ready to crumble and spill into the lake.  The wearer of the bright
+garment stirred and stood up, her back still toward him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Young girl, most likely," he hazarded an opinion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Though she was too far from him to be at all certain, he had sensed
+something of youth's own in the very quality of her gesture.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then suddenly he clapped his spurs to his horse's sides and went racing
+down the slope toward the spot where an instant ago she had made such a
+gay contrast to dull verdure and gray boulders.  For he had glimpsed
+the quick flash of an up-thrown arm, had heard a low cry, had guessed
+rather than seen through the low underbrush her young body falling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he threw himself from his horse's back, his spur caught in the blue
+cloak which had dropped from her shoulders; he kicked at it savagely.
+He jerked off his boots, poised a moment looking down upon the
+disturbed surface of the water which had closed over her head, made out
+the sweep of an arm under the widening circles, and dived straight down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so deep down under water they met for the first time, Steve Packard
+with a sense of annoyance that was almost outright irritation, the girl
+struggling frantically as his right arm closed tight about her.  A
+quick suspicion came to him that she had not fallen but had thrown
+herself downward in some passionate quarrel with life; that she wanted
+to die and would give him scant thanks for the rescue.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This thought was followed by the other that in her access of terror she
+was doing what the drowning person always does&mdash;losing her head,
+threatening to bind his arms with her own and drag him down with her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Struggling half blindly and all silently they rose a little toward the
+surface.  Packard tightened his grip about her body, managed to
+imprison one of her arms against her side, beat at the water with his
+free hand, and so, just as his lungs seemed ready to burst, he brought
+his nostrils into the air.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drew in a great breath and struck out mightily for the shore,
+seeking a less precipitous bank at the head of a little cove.  As he
+did so, he noted how her struggles had suddenly given over, how she
+floated quietly with him, her free arm even aiding in their progress.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A little later he crawled out of the clear, cold water to a pebbly
+beach, drawing her after him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now he understood that his destiny and his own headlong nature had
+again made a consummate fool of him.  The same knowledge was offered
+him freely in a pair of gray eyes which fairly blazed at him.  No
+gratitude there of a maiden heroically succored in the hour of her
+supreme distress; just the leaping anger of a girl with a temper like
+hot fire who had been rudely handled by a stranger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her scanty little bathing-suit, bright blue like the discarded cloak,
+the red rubber cap binding the bronze hair&mdash;she must have donned the
+ridiculous thing with incredible swiftness while he batted an
+eye&mdash;might have been utterly becoming in other eyes than those of Steve
+Packard.  Now that they merely told him that he was a blundering ass,
+he was conscious solely of a desire to pick her up and shake her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gee!" she panted at him with an angry scornfulness which made him
+wince.  "You're about the freshest proposition I ever came across!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Later, perhaps, he would admit that she was undeniably and most
+amazingly pretty; that the curves of her little white body were
+delightfully perfect; that she had made an armful that at another time
+would have put sheer delirium into a man's blood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Just now he knew only that in his moment of nothing less than stupidity
+he had angered her and that his own anger though more unreasonable was
+scarcely less heated; that he had made and still made but a sorry
+spectacle; that he was sopping wet and cold and would be shivering in a
+moment like a freezing dog.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why did you want to yell like a Comanche Indian when you went in?" he
+demanded rudely, offering the only defense he could put mind or tongue
+to.  "A man would naturally suppose that you were falling."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You didn't suppose any such thing!" she retorted sharply.  "You saw me
+dive; if you had the brains of a scared rabbit, you'd know that when a
+girl had gone to the trouble to climb into a bathing-suit and then
+jumped into the water she wanted a swim.  And to be left alone," she
+added scathingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard felt the afternoon breeze through the wet garments which stuck
+so close to him, and shivered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you think," he said, as sharply as she had spoken, "that I just
+jumped into that infernal ice-pond, clothes and all, for the pure joy
+of making your charming acquaintance in some ten feet of water, all I
+can say is that you are by no means lacking a full appreciation of your
+own attractiveness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She opened her eyes widely at him, lying at his feet where he had
+deposited her.  She had not offered to rise.  But now she sat up,
+drawing her knees into the circle of her clasped arms, tilting her head
+back as she stared up at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You've got your nerve, Mr. Man," she informed him coolly.  "Any time
+that you think I'll stand for a fool man jumping in and spoiling my fun
+for me and then scolding me on top of it, you've got another good-sized
+think coming.  And take it from me, you'll last a good deal longer in
+this neck of the woods if you 'tend to your own business after this and
+keep your paws off other folks' affairs.  Get me that time?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I get you all right," grunted Packard.  "And I find your gratitude to
+a man who has just risked his life for you quite touching."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gratitude?  Bah!" she told him, leaping suddenly to her feet.  "Risked
+your life for me, did you?"  She laughed jeeringly at that.  "Why, you
+big lummox, I could have yanked you out as easy as turn a somersault if
+you started to drown.  And now suppose you hammer the trail while it's
+open."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He bestowed upon her a glance whose purpose was to wither her.  It
+failed miserably, partly because she was patently not the sort to be
+withered by a look from a mere man, and partly because a violent and
+inopportune shiver shook him from head to foot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Until now there had been only bright anger in the girl's eyes.
+Suddenly the light there changed; what had begun as a sniff at him
+altered without warning into a highly amused giggle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Golly, Mr. Man," she taunted him.  "You're sure some swell picture as
+you stand there, hand on hip and popping your eyes out at me!  Like a
+king in a story-book, only he'd just got a ducking and was trying to
+stare the other fellow down.  Which is one thing you can't do with me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her eyes had the adorable trick of seeming to crinkle to a mirth which
+would have been an extremely pleasant phenomenon to witness had she
+been laughing with him instead of at him.  As matters stood, Packard
+was quite prepared to dislike her heartily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd add to your kind information that the trail is open at both ends,"
+he told her significantly.  "I'm going to find a sunny spot and dry my
+clothes.  No objection, I suppose?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He clambered up the bank and made his way to the spot whence he had
+dived after her, bent on retrieving his boots and spurs.  Her eyes
+followed him interestedly.  He ignored her and set about extricating a
+spur rowel from the fabric of the bright blue cloak.  Her voice floated
+up to him then, demanding:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What in the world are you up to now?  Not going to swipe my clothes,
+are you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd have the right," he called back over his shoulder, "if I happened
+to need a makeshift dressing-gown.  As it is, however, I am trying to
+get my spur out of the thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You great big brute!" she wailed at him, and here she came running
+along the bank.  "You just dare to tear my cloak and I'll hound you out
+of the country for it!  I drove forty miles to get it and this is the
+first time I ever wore it.  Stupid!"  And she jerked both the garment
+and the spur from him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lining was silken, of a deep, rich, golden hue.  And already it was
+torn, although but the tiniest bit in the world, by one of the sharp
+spikes.  Her temper, however, ever ready it seemed, flared out again;
+the crinkling merriment went from her eyes, leaving no trace; the color
+warmed in her cheeks as she cried:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're just like all of the rest of your breed, big and awkward,
+crowding in where you don't belong, messing up the face of the earth,
+spoiling things right and left.  I wonder if the good Lord Himself
+knows what he made men for, anyway!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The offending spur, detached by her quick fingers, described a bright
+arc in the late sunlight, flew far out, dipped in a little leaping
+spurt of spray, and went down quietly in the lake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go jump in and get that, if you are so keen on saving things," she
+mocked him.  "There's only, about fifteen feet of water to dig through."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You little devil!" he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For the spur with its companion had cost him twenty dollars down on the
+Mexican border ten days ago and he had set much store by it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Little devil, am I?" she retorted readily.  "You'll know it if you
+don't keep on your side of the road.  Look at that tear!  Just look at
+it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had stepped quite close to him, holding out the cloak, her eyes
+lifted defiantly to his.  He put out a sudden hand and laid it on her
+wet shoulder.  She opened her eyes widely again at the new look in his.
+But even so her regard was utterly fearless.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Young lady," he said sternly, "so help me God, I've got the biggest
+notion in the world to take you across my knee and give you the
+spanking of your life.  If I did crowd in where I don't belong, as you
+so sweetly put it, it was at least to do you a kindness.  Another time
+I'd know better; I'd sooner do a favor for a wildcat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take your dirty paws off of me," she cried, wrenching away from him.
+"And&mdash;spank me, would you?"  The fire leaped higher in her eyes, the
+red in her cheeks gave place to an angrier white.  "If you ever so much
+as dare touch me again&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She broke off, panting.  Packard laughed at her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'd try to scratch me, I suppose," he jeered; "and then, after the
+fashion of your own sweet sex when you don't have the strength to put a
+thing across, you'd most likely cry!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd blow your ugly head off your shoulders with a shot-gun," she
+concluded briefly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And despite the extravagance of the words it was borne in upon
+Packard's understanding that she meant just exactly what she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was getting colder all the time and knew that in a moment his teeth
+would chatter.  So a second time he turned his back on her, gathered up
+his horse's reins, and moved away, seeking a spot in the woods where he
+could get dry and sun his clothes.  And since Packard rage comes
+swiftly and more often than not goes the same way, within five minutes
+over a comforting cigarette he was grinning widely, seeing in a flash
+all of the humor of the situation which had successfully concealed
+itself from him until now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I don't blame her so much, after all," he chuckled.  "Taking a
+nice, lonely dive, to have a fool of a man grab her all of a sudden
+when she was enjoying herself half a dozen feet under water!  It's
+enough to stir up a good healthy temper.  Which, by the Lord, she has!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap02"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER II
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+MISS BLUE CLOAK KNOWS WHEN SHE'S BEAT
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+Half an hour later, his clothing wrung out and sun-dried after a
+fashion, Packard dressed, swung up into the saddle, and turned back
+into the trail.  And through the trees, where their rugged trunks made
+an open vista, he saw not two hundred yards away the gay spot of color
+made by the blue cloak.  So she was still here, lingering down the road
+that wound about the lake's shores, when already he had fancied her far
+on her way.  He wondered for the first time where that way led?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drew rein among the pines, waiting in his turn for her to go on.
+The blue cloak did not move.  He leaned to one side to see better,
+peering around a low-flung cedar bough.  His trail here led to the
+road; he must pass her unless she went on soon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Beside the vivid hue of her cloak the sunlight streaming through the
+forest showed him another bright, gay color, a streak of red which
+through the underbrush he was at first at a loss to account for.  He
+would have said that she was seated in a low-bodied, red wagon, were it
+not that if such had been the case he must have seen the horses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An automobile!" he guessed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He rode on a score of steps and stopped again.  Sure enough, there she
+sat at the steering-wheel of a long, rakish touring-car, the slump of
+her shoulders vaguely hinting at despair and perhaps a stalled engine.
+His grin widened joyously.  He touched his horse with his one spur,
+assumed an expression of vast indifference, and rode on.  She jerked up
+her head, looked about at him swiftly, gave him her shoulder again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He rode into the road and came on with tantalizing slowness, knowing
+that she would want to turn again and guessing that she would conquer
+the impulse.  A few paces behind her he stopped again, rolling a fresh
+cigarette and seeming, as he had been before the meeting, the most
+leisurely man in the world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saw her lean forward, busied with ignition and starter; he fancied
+that the little breeze brought to him the faintest of guarded
+exclamations.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The blamed old thing won't go," chuckled Packard with vast
+satisfaction.  "Some car, too.  Boyd-Merril Twin Eight, latest model.
+And dollars to doughnuts I know just what's wrong&mdash;and she doesn't!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She ignored him with such a perfect unconsciousness of his presence in
+the same world with her that he was moved to a keen admiration.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll bet her face is as red as a beet, just the same," was his
+cheerful thought.  "And right here, Steve Packard, is where you don't
+'crowd in' until you're called on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She straightened up, sitting very erect, her two hands tense upon the
+useless wheel.  He noted the poise of her head and found in it
+something almost queenly.  For a moment they were both very still, he
+watching and feeling his sense pervaded by the glowing sensation that
+all was right with the world, she holding her face averted and keeping
+her thoughts to herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently she got out and lifted the hood, looking in upon the engine,
+despairing.  But did not glance toward him.  Then she closed the hood
+and returned to her seat, once more attempting to get some sort of
+response from the starting system.  Packard felt himself fairly beaming
+all over.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I may be a low-lived dog and a deep-dyed villain besides," he was
+frank to admit to himself.  "But right now I'm having the time of my
+life.  And I wouldn't bet two bits which way she's going to jump next,
+either&mdash;never having met just her type before."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well?" she said abruptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She hadn't moved, hadn't so much as turned her head to look at him.  If
+she had done so just then perhaps Packard's extremely good-humored
+smile, a contented, eminently satisfied smile, would not have warmed
+her to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Speak to me?" he asked innocently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did.  Simply because there's nobody else to speak to.  Don't happen
+to know anything about motor-cars, do you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was all very icily enunciated, but had no noticeably freezing effect
+upon the man's mood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I sure do," he told her cheerfully.  "Know 'em from front bumper to
+tail-lamp.  Yours is a Boyd-Merril, Twin Eight, this year's model.
+Fox-Whiting starting and lighting system.  Great little car, too, if
+you ask me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What I was going to ask you," came the cool little voice, more
+haughtily than ever, "was not what you think of the car but if you&mdash;if
+you happened to know how to make the miserable thing go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure," he replied to the back of her head, with all of his former
+pleasant manner.  "Pull out the ignition button; push down the starter
+pedal with your right foot; throw out the clutch with your left; put
+her into low; let in your clutch slowly; give her a little&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smarty!"  He had counted upon some such interruption, and chuckled
+when it came.  "I know all that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then why don't you do it?" he queried innocently.  "You're right
+square in my way, the road's narrow, and I've got to be moving on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't do it," she informed that portion of the world which lay
+immediately in front of her slightly elevated nose, "because it won't
+work.  I pulled out the ignition button and&mdash;and nothing happened.
+Then I tried to force down the starter pedal and the crazy thing won't
+go down."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see," said Packard interestedly.  "Don't know a whole lot about
+cars, do you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The world wasn't made overnight," she said tartly.  "I've had this
+pesky thing a month.  Do you know what's the matter?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took his time in replying.  He was so long about it, in fact, that
+Miss Blue Cloak stirred uneasily and finally shot him a questioning
+look over her shoulder, just to make sure, he suspected, that he hadn't
+slipped away and left her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well?" she asked again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Speak to me?" he repeated himself, pretending to start from a deep
+abstraction.  "Oh, do I know what's the matter?  Sure!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She waited a reasonable length of time for him to go on.  He, secure in
+the sense of his own mastery of the situation, waited for her.  Between
+them they allowed it to grow very quiet there in the wood by the lake
+shore.  He saw her glance furtively at the lowering sun.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you do know," she said finally and somewhat faintly, but as
+frigidly as ever, "will you tell me or won't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why," he said, as though he had not thought of it, "I don't know.  If
+I were really sure that I was needed.  You know it's mighty hard
+telling these days when you stumble upon a damsel in distress whether a
+stranger's aid is welcome or not.  If there's one thing I won't do it's
+shove myself forward when I'm not wanted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're a nasty animal!" she cried hotly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For all I know," he resumed in an untroubled tone, "the end of your
+journey may be just around the bend, about a hundred yards off.  And if
+I plunged in to be of assistance I might be suspected of being a fresh
+guy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's half a dozen miles to the ranch-house," she condescended to tell
+him.  "And it's going to get dark in no time.  And if you want to know,
+Mr. Smarty, that's as close as I've ever come or ever will come to
+asking anything of any man that ever lived."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He could have sat there until dark just for the sheer joy of teasing
+her, making her pay a little for her recent treatment of him.  But
+there was a note of finality in her voice which did not escape him; in
+another moment she would jump down and go on on foot and he knew it.
+So at last he rode up to the car, dismounted, and lifted the hood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ignition," he ordered her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She pulled out the little button again.  His eyes upon hers, his grin
+frank and unconcealed, he took a stone from the road and with it tapped
+gently upon the shaft running from the pump.  Immediately there came
+that little hissing sound she had waited for.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Starter," he commanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now her foot upon the pedal achieved the desired results; the
+engine responded, humming pleasantly.  He closed the hood and stood
+back eying her with a mingling of amusement and triumph.  Her face
+reddened slowly.  And then, startling him with its unheralded
+unexpectedness, a gay peal of laughter from her made quite another girl
+of her, a dimpling, radiant, altogether adorable and desirable creature.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I know when I'm beat!" she cried frankly.  "You've put one across
+on me to-day, Mr. Man.  And since you meant well all along and were
+just simply the blunderheaded man God made you, I guess I have been a
+little cat.  Good luck to you and a worth-while trail to ride."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She blew him a friendly kiss from her brown finger-tips, bent over her
+wheel, and took the first turn in the road at a swiftly acquired speed
+which left Steve Packard behind in dust and growing wonderment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And she's been driving only a month," was his softly whistled comment.
+"Reckless little devil!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, in his turn cocking a speculative eye at the sun in the west, he
+rode on, following in the track made by the spinning automobile tires.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap03"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER III
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+NEWS OF A LEGACY
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+When Packard came to a forking of the roads he stopped and hesitated.
+The automobile tracks led to the left; he was tempted to follow them.
+And it was his way in the matter of such impulses to yield to
+temptation.  But in this case he finally decided that common sense if
+not downright wisdom pointed in the other direction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So, albeit a bit reluctantly, he swerved to the right.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We'll see you some other time, though, Miss Blue Cloak," he pondered.
+"For I have a notion it would be good sport knowing you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An hour later he made out a lighted window, seen and lost through the
+trees.  Conscious of a man's-sized appetite he galloped up the long
+lane, turned in at a gate sagging wearily upon its hinges, and rode to
+the door of the lighted house.  The first glance showed him that it was
+a long, low, rambling affair resembling in dejectedness the drooping
+gate.  An untidy sort of man in shirt-sleeves and smoking a pipe came
+to the door, kicking into silence his half-dozen dogs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the chance of something to eat and a place to sleep in the
+barn?" asked Packard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The rancher waved his pipe widely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Help yourself, stranger," he answered, in a voice meant to be
+hospitable but which through long habit had acquired an unpleasantly
+sullen tone.  "You'll find the sleeping all right, but when it comes to
+something to eat you can take it from me you'll find damn' poor
+picking.  Get down, feed your horse, and come in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he entered the house Packard was conscious of an oddly bare and
+cheerless atmosphere which at first he was at a loss to explain.  For
+the room was large, amply furnished, cheerfully lighted by a crackling
+fire of dry sticks in the big rock fireplace, and a lamp swung from the
+ceiling.  What the matter was dawned on him gradually: time was when
+this chamber had been richly, even exquisitely, furnished and
+appointed.  Now it presented rather a dejected spectacle of faded
+splendor, not entirely unlike a fine gentleman of the old school fallen
+among bad companions and into tattered ill repute.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The untidy host, more untidy than ever here in the full light, dragged
+his slippered feet across the threadbare carpet to a corner cupboard,
+from which he took a bottle and two glasses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We can have a drink anyhow," he said in that dubious tone which so
+harmonized both with himself and his sitting-room.  "After which we'll
+see what's to eat.  Terry fired the cook last week and there's been
+small feasting since."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard accepted a moderate drink, the rancher filled his own glass
+generously, and they drank standing.  This ceremony briefly performed
+and chairs dragged comfortably up to the fireplace, Packard's host
+called out loudly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hi, Terry!  There's a man here wants something to eat.  Anything left?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If he's hungry," came the cool answer from a room somewhere toward the
+other end of the long house, "why can't he forage for himself?  Wants
+me to bring his rations in there and feed it to him, I suppose!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard lifted his eyebrows humorously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is that Terry?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's Terry," grumbled the rancher.  "She's in the kitchen now.  And
+if I was you, pardner, and had a real hankering for grub I'd mosey
+right along in there while there's something left."  His eye roved to
+the bottle on the chimneypiece and dropped to the fire.  "I'll trail
+you in a minute."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here was invitation sufficient, and Packard rose swiftly, went out
+through the door at the end of the room, passed through an untidy
+chamber which no doubt had been intended originally as a dining-room,
+and so came into lamplight again and the presence of Miss Blue Cloak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He made her a bow and smiled in upon her cheerfully.  She, perched on
+an oilcloth-covered table, her booted feet swinging, a thick sandwich
+in one hand and a steaming cup of coffee in the other, took time to
+look him up and down seriously and to swallow before she answered his
+bow with a quick, bird-like nod.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't mind me," she said briefly, having swallowed again.  "Dig in and
+help yourself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the table beside her were bread, butter, a very dry and
+black-looking roast, and a blacker but more tempting coffee-pot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't follow you on purpose," said Packard.  "Back there where the
+roads forked I saw that you had turned to the left, so I turned to the
+right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All roads lead to Rome," she said around the corner of the big
+sandwich.  "Anyway, it's all right.  I guess I owe you a square meal
+and a night's lodging for being on the job when my car stalled."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not to mention for diving into the lake after you," amended Packard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I <I>wouldn't</I> mention it if I were you," she retorted.  "Seeing that
+you just made a fool of yourself that time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She openly sniffed the air as he stepped by her reaching out for
+butcher-knife and roast.  "So you are dad's kind, are you?  Hitting the
+booze every show you get.  The Lord deliver me from his chief blunder.
+Meaning a man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He probably will," grinned Packard genially.  "And as for turning up
+your nose at a fellow for taking a drop o' kindness with a hospitable
+host, why, that's all nonsense, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry kicked her high heels impudently and vouchsafed him no further
+answer beyond that easy gesture.  Packard made his own sandwich, found
+the salt, poured a tin cup of coffee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The sugar's over there."  She jerked her head toward a shelf on which,
+after some searching among a lot of empty and nearly empty cans,
+Packard found it.  "That's all there is and precious little left; help
+yourself but don't forget breakfast comes in the morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is the old Slade place, isn't it?" Packard asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was, about the time the big wall was building in China.  Where've
+you been the last couple of hundred years?  It's the Temple place now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you're Miss Temple?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Teresa Arriega for my mother, Temple for my dad," she told him in the
+quick, bright way which already he found characteristic of her.  "Terry
+for myself, if you say it quick."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had suspected from the beginning that there was Southern blood of
+some strain in her.  Now he studied her frankly, and, just to try her
+out, said carelessly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you weren't so tanned you'd be quite fair; your eyes are gray too.
+Blue-gray when you smile, dark gray when you are angry; and yet you say
+your mother was Mexican&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mexican, your foot!" she flared out at him, her trim little body
+stiffening perceptibly, her chin proudly lifted.  "The Arriegas were
+pure-blooded Castilian, I'd have you understand.  There's no mongrel
+about me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drowned his satisfied chuckle with a draft of coffee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm looking for a job," he said abruptly.  "Happen to know of any of
+the cattle outfits around here that are short-handed?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Men are scarce right now," she answered.  "A good cattle-hand is as
+hard to locate as a dodo bird.  You could get a job anywhere if you're
+worth your salt."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was thinking," said Packard, "of moseying on to Ranch Number Ten.
+There's a man I used to know&mdash;Bill Royce, his name is.  Foreman, isn't
+he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So you know Bill Royce?" countered Terry.  "Well, that's something in
+your favor.  He's a good scout."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then he is still foreman?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't say so!  No, he isn't.  And I guess he'll never be foreman of
+that outfit or any other again.  He's blind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Old Bill Royce blind!  Here was a shock, and Packard sat back and
+stared at her speechlessly.  Somehow this was incredible, unthinkable,
+nothing short.  The old cattle-man who had been the hero of his
+boyhood, who had taught him to shoot and ride and swim, who had been so
+vital and so quick and keen of eye&mdash;blind?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What happened to him?" asked Packard presently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Suppose you ask him," she retorted.  "If you know him so well.  He is
+still with the outfit.  A man named Blenham is the foreman now.  He's
+old Packard's right-hand bower, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But Phil Packard is dead.  And&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And old 'Hell-Fire' Packard, Phil Packard's father, never will die.
+He's just naturally too low-down mean; the devil himself wouldn't have
+him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Terry!" came the voice of the untidy man, meant to be remonstrative
+but chiefly noteworthy for a newly acquired thickness of utterance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry's eyes sparkled and a hot flush came into her cheeks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Leave me alone, will you, pa?" she cried sharply.  "I don't owe old
+Packard anything; no, nor Blenham either.  You can walk easy all you
+like, but I'm blamed if I've got to.  If you'd smash your cursed old
+bottle on their heads and take a brace we'd come alive yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Remember we have a guest with us," grumbled Temple from his place by
+the sitting-room fire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, shoot!" exclaimed the girl impatiently.  Reaching out for a second
+sandwich she stabbed the kitchen-knife viciously into the roast.  "I've
+a notion to pack up and clear out and let the cut-throat crowd clean
+you to the last copper and pick your bones into the bargain.  When did
+you ever get anywhere by taking your hat off and side-stepping for a
+Packard?  If you're so all-fired strong for remembering, why don't you
+try to remember how it feels to stand on two feet like a man instead of
+crawling on your belly like a worm!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear!" expostulated Temple.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry sniffed and paid no further attention to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dad was all man once," she said without lowering her voice, making
+clearer than ever that Miss Terry Temple had a way of speaking straight
+out what lay in her mind, caring not at all who heard.  "I'm hoping
+that some day he'll come back.  A real man was dad, a man's man.  But
+that was before the Packards broke him and stepped on him and kicked
+him out of the trail.  And, believe me, the Packards, though they ought
+to be hung to the first tree, are men just the same!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So I have heard," admitted the youngest of the defamed house.  "You
+group them altogether?  They're all the same then?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Phil Packard's dead," she retorted.  "So we'll let him go at that.
+Old Hell-Fire Packard, his father, is the biggest lawbreaker out of
+jail.  He's the only one left, and from the looks of things he'll keep
+on living and making trouble another hundred years."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was another Packard, wasn't there?" he insisted.  "Phil
+Packard's son, the old man's grandson?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never knew him," said Terry.  "A scamp and a scalawag and a tomfool,
+though, if you want to know.  If he wasn't, he'd have stuck on the job
+instead of messing around in the dirty ports of the seven seas while
+his old thief of a grandfather stole his heritage from him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How's that?" he asked sharply.  "How do you mean 'stole' it from him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The same way he gobbles up everything else he wants.  Ranch Number Ten
+ought to belong to the fool boy now, oughtn't it?  And here's old
+Packard's pet dog Blenham running the outfit in old Packard's interests
+just the same as if it was his already.  Set a thief to rob a thief,"
+she concluded briefly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve Packard sat bolt upright in his chair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wouldn't mind getting the straight of this," he told her quietly.
+"I thought that Philip Packard had sold the outfit to his father before
+his death."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He didn't sell it to anybody.  He mortgaged it right up to the hilt to
+the old man.  Then he up and died.  Of course everything he left,
+amounting mostly to a pile of debts, went to his good-for-nothing son."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A light which she could not understand, eager and bright, shone in
+young Packard's eyes.  If what she told him were true, then the old
+home ranch, while commonly looked upon as belonging already to his
+grandfather, was the property legally of Steve Packard.  And
+Blenham&mdash;yes, and old Bill Royce&mdash;were taking his pay.  Suddenly
+infinite possibilities stretched out before him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come alive!" laughed Terry.  "We were talking about your finding a
+job.  There's one open here for you; first to teach me all you know
+about the insides of my car; second&mdash;  What's the matter?  Gone to
+sleep?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He started.  He had been thinking about Blenham and Bill Royce.  As
+Terry continued to stare wonderingly at him he smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you don't mind," he said non-committally, "we'll forget about the
+job for a spell.  I left some stuff back at the Packard ranch that
+belongs to me.  I'm going back for it in the morning.  Maybe I'll go to
+work there after all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She shrugged distastefully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a free country," she said curtly.  "Only I can't see your play.
+That is, if you're a square guy and not a crook, Number Ten size.
+You've got a chance to go to work here with a white crowd; if you want
+to tie up with that ornery bunch it's up to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll look them over," he said thoughtfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right; go to it!" she cried with sudden heat.  "I said it was a
+free country, didn't I?  Only you can burn this in your next
+wheat-straw: once you go to riding herd with that gang you needn't come
+around here again.  And you can take Blenham a message for me: Phil
+Packard knifed dad and double-crossed him and made him pretty nearly
+what he is now; old Hell-Fire Packard finished the job.  But just the
+same, the Temple Ranch is still on the map and Terry Temple had rather
+scrap a scoundrel to the finish than shake hands with one.  And one of
+these days dad's going to come alive yet; you'll see."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I believe," he said as much to himself as to her, "that I'll have to
+have a word with old man Packard."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stared at him incredulously.  Then she put her head back and
+laughed in high amusement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nobody'd miss guessing that you had your nerve with you, Mr. Lanky
+Stranger," she cried mirthfully.  "But when it comes to tackling
+Hell-Fire Packard with a mouthful of fool questions&mdash;  Look here; who
+are you anyway?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nobody much," he answered quietly and just a trifle bitterly.  "Tom
+Fool you named me a while ago.  Or, if you prefer, Steve Packard."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She flipped from her place on the table to stand erect, twin spots of
+red leaping into her cheeks, startling him with the manner in which all
+mirth fled from her eyes, which narrowed and grew hard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That would mean old Hell-Fire's grandson?" she asked sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He merely nodded, watching her speculatively.  Her head went still
+higher.  Packard heard her father rise hurriedly and shuffle across the
+floor toward the kitchen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're a worthy chip off the old stump," Terry was saying
+contemptuously.  "You're a darned sneak!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Terry!" admonished Temple warningly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her stiff little figure remained motionless a moment, never an eyelid
+stirring.  Then she whirled and went out of the room, banging a door
+after her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's high-strung, Mr. Packard," said Temple, slow and heavy and a bit
+uncertain in his articulation.  "High-strung, like her mother.  And at
+times apt to be unreasonable.  Come in with me and have a drink, and
+we'll talk things over."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard hesitated.  Then he turned and followed his host back to the
+fireplace.  Suddenly he found himself without further enthusiasm for
+conversation.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap04"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER IV
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+TERRY BEFORE BREAKFAST
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+A gay young voice singing somewhere through the dawn awoke Steve
+Packard and informed him that Terry was up and about.  He lay still a
+moment, listening.  He remembered the song, which, by the way, he had
+not heard for a good many years, the ballad of a cowboy sick and lonely
+in a big city, yearning for the open country.  At times when Terry's
+humming was smothered by the walls of the house, Packard's memory
+strove for the words which his ears failed to catch.  And more often
+than not the words, retrieved from oblivion, were less than worth the
+effort; no poet had builded the chant, which, rather, grown to goodly
+proportions of perhaps a hundred verses, had resulted from a natural
+evolution like a modern Odyssey, or some sprawling vine which was what
+it was because of its environment.  But while lines were faulty and
+rhymes were bad, and the composition never rose above the commonplace,
+and often enough sank below it, the ballad was sincere and meant much
+to those who sang it.  Its pictures were homely.  Steve, catching
+certain fragments and seeking others, got such phrases as:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"My bed on dry pine-needles, my camp-fire blazin' bright,<BR>
+The smell of dead leaves burnin' through the big wide-open night,"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+and with moving but silent lips joined Terry in the triumphant refrain:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"I'm lonesome-sick for the stars through the pines<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;An' the bawlin' of herds&#8230; an' the noise<BR>
+Of rocks rattlin' down from a mountain trail&#8230;<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;An' the hills&#8230; an' my horse&#8230; an' the boys.<BR>
+An' I'd rather hear a kiote howl<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Than be the King of Rome!<BR>
+An' when day comes--if day does come--<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By cripes, I'm goin' home!<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&#8230;  Back home!  Hear me comin', boys?<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;_Yeee_!  I said it: 'Comin' home!'"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+He sat up in bed.  The fragrance of boiling coffee and frying bacon
+assailed his nostrils pleasurably.  Terry's voice had grown silent.
+Perhaps she was having her breakfast by now?  With rather greater haste
+than the mere call of his morning meal would seem to warrant, he
+dressed, ran his fingers through his hair by way of completing his
+toilet, and, going down a hallway, thrust his head in through the
+kitchen doorway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good morning," he called pleasantly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry was not yet breakfasting.  Down on one knee, poking viciously
+into the fire-box of an extremely old and dilapidated stove, she was
+seeking, after the time-honored way of her sex, to make the fire burn
+better.  Her face was rosy, flushed prettily with the glow from the
+blazing oak wood.  Packard's eyes brightened as he looked at her,
+making a comprehensive survey of the trim little form from the top of
+her bronze hair to the heels of her spick-and-span boots.  About her
+throat, knotted loosely, was a flaming-red silken scarf.  The thought
+struck him that the Temple fortunes, the Temple ranch, the Temple
+master, all were falling or had already fallen into varying states of
+decay, and that alone in the wreckage Terry Temple made a gay spot of
+color, that alone Terry Temple was determined to keep her place in the
+sun.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry, having poked a goodly part of the fire out, made a face at what
+remained and got to her feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've been thinking about you," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fine!" said Packard.  "You can tell me while we have our coffee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he did not fail to mark that she had given him no ready smile by
+way of welcome, that now she regarded him coolly and critically.  In
+her morning attitude there was little to lead him to hope for a
+free-and-easy chat across a breakfast-table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You strike me," said Terry abruptly and emphatically, "as a pretty
+slick proposition."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why so?" asked Packard interestedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because," said Terry.  For a moment he thought that she was going to
+stop there.  But after a thoughtful pause, during which she looked
+straight at him with eyes which were meant to be merely clear and
+judicial but which were just faintly troubled, she went on: "Because
+you're a Packard, to begin with."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look here," protested young Packard equably, "I didn't think that of
+you; honestly, I didn't.  How are you and I ever going to get anywhere&#8230;
+in the way of being friends, I mean&nbsp;&#8230; if you start out by
+blaming me for what my disreputable old scamp of a grandfather does?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry sniffed openly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Forget that friendship gag before you think of it, will you?" she said
+quickly.  "Talking nice isn't going to get you anywhere with me and you
+might as well remember that.  It won't buy you anything to start in
+telling me that I've got pretty eyes or a dimple, and I won't stand one
+little minute for your pulling any of that girlie-stuff on me.&#8230;  I
+said, to begin with, you're a Packard.  That ought to be enough, the
+Lord knows!  But it's not all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"First thing," he suggested cheerfully, "are you going to ask me to
+have breakfast with you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," she answered briefly.  "Since you are here and since dad had you
+stay all night.  If you were the devil himself, I'd give you something
+to eat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Being merely the devil's grandson," grinned Packard, "suppose I tuck
+in and help?  I'll set the table while you do the cooking."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't bother setting any table," said Terry as tartly as she knew
+how.  "Besides, the coffee and bacon are both done and that's all the
+cooking there is.  You know where the bread and butter and sugar are.
+Help yourself.  There isn't any milk."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She poured her own coffee, made a sandwich of bacon and bread, and went
+to sit as he had found her last night, on the table, her feet swinging.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve Packard had gone to sleep filled with high hopes last night, and
+had awakened with a fresh, new zest in life this morning.  Like the
+cowboy in the ballad, he had wanted nothing in the world save to be
+back on the range, and he had his wish, or would have it fully in a few
+hours, when he had ridden to Ranch Number Ten.  Fully appreciating
+Terry's prejudices, he had meant to remember that she was "just a kid
+of a girl, you know," and to banter her out of them.  Now he was ready
+to acknowledge that he had failed to give Terry her due; with a sudden
+access of irritation it was borne in upon him that if she was fully
+minded to be stand-offish and unpleasant, he had something more than
+just a kid of a girl to deal with.  Frowning, he sought his tobacco and
+papers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Going to eat?" asked Terry carelessly.  "Or not?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know&nbsp;&#8230; yet," he returned, lifting his eyes from his
+cigarette.  "Most certainly not if you don't want me to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ho!" taunted Terry, the bright light of battle in her eyes.  "Climbing
+on your high horse, are you?  Well, then, stay there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard lighted his cigarette and returned her look steadily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Kid of a girl, nothing!" he told himself.  And going back to his
+epithet of yesterday, "Little wildcat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then," continued the girl evenly, taking up the conversation where it
+had broken down some time ago, "I'll say what I've got to say.  First,
+because you're a Packard.  Next, because it was pretty slick work, that
+stunt of yours, diving into the lake for me, pretending you didn't know
+who I was, and grabbing the first chance to get acquainted.  Much good
+it'll do you!  Maybe I haven't been through high school and you have
+fussed around at college; just the same, Mr. Steve Packard, Terry
+Temple's not your fool or any other man's!  And, on top of all of your
+other nerve, to try and make me think you didn't know you owned your
+own ranch!  And trying to pump me and corkscrewing away at dad when he
+was full of whiskey.&#8230;  Pah!  Your kind of he-animal makes me sick."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You think," he offered stiffly, "that I'm hand and glove with Blenham?
+And, perhaps, that I'm taking orders from my grandfather, trying to put
+one over on you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thinking's not the right word," she corrected sharply.  "I know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He shrugged.  As he did so it struck him that there was nothing else
+for him to do.  She had the trick of utter finality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And," she called after him as he turned abruptly to leave the room,
+"you can tell old Hell Fire for me that maybe he's got the big bulge on
+the situation right now but that it's bad luck to count your chips
+until the game is over.  There's a come-back left in dad yet, and&nbsp;&#8230;
+and if you or your hell-roaring old granddad think you can swallow the
+Temple outfit whole, like you've done a lot of other outfits&nbsp;&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard went out and slammed the door after him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Damn the girl!" he muttered angrily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry, sitting on the table, grew very still, ceased the swinging of
+her feet, and turned to peek cautiously out at him from the kitchen
+window.  Her look was utterly joyous.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Men are always horrid creatures before they've had their breakfasts,"
+she informed the stillness about her complacently.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap05"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER V
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+HOW STEVE PACKARD CAME HOME
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+Had Steve Packard ridden straightway back to Ranch Number Ten he would
+have arrived at the ranch headquarters long before noon.  But, once out
+in the still dawn, he rode slowly.  His mind, when he could detach it
+from that irritating Terry Pert, was given over to a searching
+consideration of those conditions which were beginning to dawn on him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was clear that his destiny was offering him a new trail to blaze,
+one which drew him on with its lure, tempting him with its vague
+promises.  There was nothing to cause surprise in the fact that the
+ranch was his to have and to hold if he had the skill and the will for
+the job; nor yet in the other fact that the outfit was mortgaged to his
+grandfather; nor, again, was it to be wondered at that the old man was
+already acting as actual owner.  For never had the oldest Packard had
+any use for the subtleties and niceties and confusing technicalities of
+the law.  It was his way to see clearly what he wanted, to make up his
+mind definitely as to a desired result, and then to go after it the
+shortest way.  And that way had never led yet through the law-courts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+These matters were clear.  But as he dwelt upon them they were made
+complex by other considerations hingeing upon him.  Most of all he had
+to take stock of what lay in his own mind and soul, of all that dwelt
+behind his present purpose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Riding back to Ranch Number Ten, saying, "It is mine and I mean to have
+it," was simple enough.  But for him actually to commit himself to the
+line of action which this step would entail would very obviously
+connote a distinct departure from the familiar, aimless,
+responsibility-free career of Steve Packard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If he once sat into the game he'd want to stick for a showdown; if he
+started out now bucking old man Packard, he would perhaps wind up in
+the scrap-heap.  It was just as well to think things over before he
+plunged in&mdash;which set him musing upon Terry again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Swerving from yesterday's path, he followed a new trail leading about
+the edge of the Temple ranch and into the southeastern borders of Ranch
+Number Ten.  At a logging-camp well up on the slope of the mountains
+just after he had forded the upper waters of Packard's Creek, he
+breakfasted on warmed-over coffee and greasy hot cakes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He opened his eyes interestedly as he watched a gang of timberjacks
+cutting into a forest of his pines.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Old man Packard's crowd?" he asked the camp cook.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure thing," was the cook's careless answer.  Steve Packard rode on,
+grown more thoughtful than before.  But he directed his course this way
+and that on a speculative tour of investigation, seeking to see the
+greater part of the big, sprawling ranch, to note just what had been
+done, just what was being done, before having his talk with Blenham.
+And so the first stars were out before he came once more to the home
+corrals.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+While Steve was turning down into Packard's Grab from the foot-hills
+the men working for Ranch Number Ten, having eaten their supper, were
+celebrating the end of a hard day's work with tobacco smoke and
+desultory talk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were a dozen of them, clear-eyed, iron-muscled, quick-footed to
+the last man of them.  For wherever Packard pay was taken it went into
+the pockets of just such as these, purposeful, self-reliant, men's men
+who could be counted on in a pinch and who, that they might be held in
+the service which required such as they, were paid a better wage than
+other ranches offered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Young, most of them, too, boisterous when upon occasion their hands
+were idle, devil-may-care scalawags who had earned in many a little
+cattle town up and down the country their title as "that wild gang of
+Packard's," prone to headlong ways and yet dependable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There are such men; Packard knew it and sought them out and held them
+to him.  The oldest man there, saving Bill Royce only, was Blenham the
+foreman, and Blenham had yet to see his thirty-fifth birthday.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ten years ago, that is to say before he came into the cattle country
+and found work for Packard, Blenham had been a sergeant in the regular
+army, had seen something of service on the border.  Now, in his
+dealings with the men under him, he brought here all that he had
+learned from a military life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He held himself aloof, was seldom to be found in the bunk-house, making
+his quarters in the old ranch-house.  He was crisp and final in his
+orders and successful in exacting swift attention when he spoke and
+immediate obedience when he ordered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Few of his men liked him; he knew this as well as another and cared not
+the snap of his big, blunt fingers.  There was remarkably little of the
+sentimental about Blenham.  He was a capable lieutenant for such as the
+master of the Packard millions, he earned and received his increase in
+wages every year, he got results.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This evening, however, the man's heavy, studied indifference to all
+about him was ruffled.  During the afternoon something had gone wrong
+and no one yet, save "Cookie" Wilson, had an inkling of what had
+plunged the foreman into one of his ill-tempered fits.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To-morrow it would be a ranch topic when Cookie could have had ample
+time to embroider the thin fabric of his surmise; for it had fallen to
+the cook's lot to answer the bunk-house telephone when there had been a
+long-distance message for Blenham&mdash;and Wilson recognized old man
+Packard's voice in a fit of rage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No doubt the foreman of Ranch Number Ten had "slipped up" somewhere,
+and his chief, in a very few words and those of a brand not to be
+misunderstood, had taken him to task.  At any rate Cookie was swelling
+with eager conjecture and Blenham was in an evil mood.  All evening his
+spleen had been rising in his throat, near choking him; now suddenly he
+spewed it upon Bill Royce.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Royce!" he burst out abruptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The blind man was lying upon the edge of his bunk at the far end of the
+room, smoking his pipe.  He stirred uneasily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well?" he asked.  "What is it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cool old cucumber, ain't you?" jeered Blenham.  "Layin' there like a
+bag of mush while you listen to me.  Damn you, when I talk to you,
+stand up!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Royce's form stiffened perceptibly and his lips tightened about the
+stem of his pipe.  But before he could shape his rejoinder there came
+an unexpected voice from one of the four men just beginning a game of
+pedro under the swinging lamp, a young voice, impudent, clear-toned,
+almost musical.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell him to go to hell, Bill," was the freely proffered counsel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham swung about on his heel, his eyes narrowing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That you, Barbee?" he demanded sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure it's me," rejoined Barbee with the same cool impudence.  And to
+the man across the table from him, "Deal 'em up, Spots; you an' me is
+goin' to pry these two bum gamblers loose from their four-bit pieces
+real <I>pronto</I> by the good ol' road of high, low, jack, an' the game.
+Come ahead, Spots-ol'-Spotty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham stared a moment, obviously surprised by this attitude taken by
+young Barbee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll attend to you when I got nothin' else to do, Barbee," he said
+shortly.  And, giving the whole of his attention again to the man on
+the bunk, "Royce, I said when I talk to you to stand up!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To the last man of them, even to young Barbee, who had made his
+youthful pretense at an all-embracing interest in the cards, they
+turned to watch Bill Royce and see what he would do.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They saw that Royce lay a moment as he was, stiff and rigid to his
+hands and feet, that his face had gone a fiery red which threw the
+white of the long scar across his nose into bloodless contrast, that
+the most obvious thing in the world was that for the moment his mind
+was torn two ways, dual-purposed, perfectly balanced, so that in the
+grip of his contending passions he was powerless to stir, a picture of
+impotence, like a man paralyzed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham," he said presently without moving, his voice uncertain and
+thick and ugly, "Blenham&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I said it once," cried Blenham sharply, "an' I said it twice.  Which
+ought to be enough, Bill Royce!  Hear me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They all watched interestedly.  Bill Royce moistened his lips and
+presented his pitiful spectacle of a once-strong man on the verge of
+yielding to his master, to the man he hated most on earth.  A smile
+came into Blenham's expectant eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The brief silence was perfect until the youthful Barbee broke it, not
+by speech but by whistling softly, musically, impudently.  And the air
+which Barbee selected at this juncture, though not drawn from the
+classics, served its purpose adequately; the song was a favorite in the
+range-lands, the refrain simple, profane, and sincere.  Translated into
+words Barbee's merry notes were:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Oh, I don't give a damn for no damn man that don't give a damn for me!"
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Blenham understood and scowled at him; Bill Royce's hesitant soul may
+have drawn comfort and strength from a sympathy wordlessly expressed.
+At any rate his reply came suddenly now:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've took a good deal off'n you, Blenham," he said quietly.  "I'd be
+glad to take all I could.  But a man can't stand everything, no, not
+even for a absent pal.  Like Barbee said, you know where you can go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cookie Wilson gasped, his the sole audible comment upon an entirely
+novel situation.  Barbee smiled delightedly.  Blenham continued to
+frown, his scowl subtly altered from fierceness to wonder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'll obey orders," he snapped shortly, "or&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know," replied Royce heavily.  "Go to it.  All you got to do is fire
+me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now the pure wonder of the moment was that Blenham did not
+discharge Royce in three words.  It was his turn for hesitation, for
+which there was no explanation forthcoming.  Then, gripped by a rage
+which made him inarticulate,&mdash;he whirled upon Barbee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yellow-haired Barbee at the table promptly stood up, awaiting no second
+invitation to that look of Blenham's.  Were one staging a morality play
+and in search of the personification of impertinence, he need look no
+farther than this cocksure youth.  He was just at that age when one is
+determined that there shall be no mistake about his status in the
+matters of age and worldly experience; in short, something over
+twenty-one, when the male of the species takes it as the insult of
+insults to be misjudged a boy.  His hair was short&mdash;Barbee always kept
+it close cropped&mdash;but for all that it persisted in curling, seeking to
+express itself in tight little rings everywhere; his eyes were very
+blue and very innocent, like a young girl's&mdash;and he was, all in all,
+just about as good-for-nothing a young rogue as you could find in a ten
+days' ride.  Which is saying rather a good deal when it be understood
+that that ten days' ride may be through the cattle country back of San
+Juan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Goin' to eat me alive?" demanded Barbee lightly, "Or roast me first?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For two cents," said Blenham slowly, "I'd forget you're just a kid an'
+slap your face!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barbee swept one of the fifty-cent pieces from the table and tossed it
+to the foreman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can keep the change out'n that," he said contemptuously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was nothing new in the experience of Blenham, could be nothing
+unforeseen for any ranch foreman, to have his authority called into
+question, to have a rebellious spirit defy him.  If he sought to remain
+master, the foreman's answer must be always the same.  And promptly
+given.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Royce," said Blenham, his hesitation passed, "you're fired.  Barbee,
+I'll take you on right now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Few-worded was Blenham, a trick learned from his master.  Across the
+room Bill Royce had floundered at last to his feet, crying out mightily:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hi!  None o' that, Blenham.  It's my fight, yours an' mine, with
+Barbee jus' buttin' in where he ain't asked.  If you want trouble, take
+a man your size, full-grown.  Blind as I am&mdash;and you know the how an'
+the why of it&mdash;I'm ready for you.  Yes, ready an' anxious."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here was diversion and the men in the bunkhouse, drawing back against
+the walls, taking their chairs with them that there might be room for
+whatever went forward, gave their interest unstintedly.  So completely
+that they did not hear Steve Packard singing far out in the night as he
+rode slowly toward the ranch-house:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"An' I'd rather hear a kiote howl<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Than be the King of Rome!<BR>
+An' when day comes--if day does come--<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By cripes, I'm goin' home!<BR>
+Back home!  Hear me comin', boys?<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yeee!  I said it.  Comin' home!"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+But in very brief time Steve Packard's loitering pace was exchanged for
+red-hot haste as the sounds winging outward from the bunk-house met
+him, stilled his singing, and informed him that men were battling in a
+fury which must have something of sheer blood-thirst in it.  He raced
+to the closed door, swung down from the saddle, and threw the door open.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saw Bill Royce being held by two men, fighting at them while he
+reviled a man whom Steve guessed to be Blenham; he saw Blenham and a
+curly-haired, blue-eyed boy struggling up and down, striking the savage
+blows of rage.  He came just in time to see Blenham drive a big, brutal
+fist into the boy's face and to mark how Barbee fell heavily and for a
+little lay still.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The moment was charged with various emotions, as though with contending
+electrical currents.  Bill Royce, championed by a man he had never so
+much as seen, had given fully of his gratitude and&mdash;they meant the same
+thing to Bill Royce&mdash;of his love; after to-night he'd go to hell for
+"yellow" Barbee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barbee, previsioning defeat at Blenham's hard hand, suffering in his
+youthful pride, had given birth, deep within him, to an undying hatred.
+And Blenham, for his own reasons and after his own fashion, was
+bursting with rage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Get up, Barbee," he yelled.  "Get up an', so help me&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm goin' to kill you, Blenham," said Barbee faintly, lifting himself
+a little, his blue eyes swimming.  "With my hands or with a knife or
+with a gun or anyway; now or to-morrow or some time I'm goin' to kill
+you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They all heard you," Blenham spat out furiously.  "You're a fool,
+Barbee.  Goin' to get up?  Ever goin' to get up?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Turn me loose, boys," muttered Bill Royce.  "I've waited long enough;
+I've stood enough.  I been like an ol' woman.  Jus' let me an' Blenham
+finish this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They had, none of them, so much as noted Steve Packard's entrance.
+Now, however, he forced them to take stock of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bill Royce," he said sharply, "keep your shirt on.  Barbee, you do the
+same.  Blenham, you talk with me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You?" jeered Blenham.  "You?  Who are you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm the man on the job right now," answered Packard crisply.  "And
+from now on, I'm running the Ranch Number Ten, if you want to know.  If
+you want to know anything else, why then you don't happen to be foreman
+any longer.  You're fired!  As for foreman under me&mdash;my old pardner,
+Bill Royce, blind or not blind, has his old job back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bill Royce grew rigid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You ain't&mdash;you ain't Stevie come back?" he whispered.  "You ain't
+Stevie!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With three strides Packard reached him, finding Bill Royce's hand with
+his.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Right you are, Bill Royce," he cried warmly as at last his and Royce's
+hands locked hard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm fired, you say!" Blenham was storming, his eyes wide.  "Fired?
+Who says so, I want to know?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say so," returned Packard shortly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You?" shouted Blenham.  "If you mean ol' man Packard has sent you to
+take my place just because&mdash;  It's a lie; I don't believe it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This outfit doesn't happen to belong to old man Packard&mdash;yet," said
+Steve coolly.  "Does it, Royce?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not by a jugful!" answered the blind man joyously.  "An' it never will
+now, Steve!  Not now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham looked mystified.  Rubbing his skinned knuckles he glared from
+Steve to Royce, then to the other faces, no less puzzled than his own.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nobody can fire me but ol' man Packard," he muttered heavily, though
+his tone was troubled.  "Without you got an order from him, all signed
+an' ready for me to read&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What I have," cut in Steve crisply, "is the bulge on the situation,
+Blenham.  Ranch Number Ten doesn't belong to the old man; it is the
+property of his grandson, whose name is Steve Packard.  Which also
+happens to be my name."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham sneered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't believe it," he snapped.  "Expect me to pull my freight at the
+say-so of the first stranger that blows in an' invites me to hand him
+my job?"  He laughed into the newcomer's face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard studied him a moment curiously, instinctively aware that the
+time might come when it would be well to have taken stock correctly of
+his grandfather's lieutenant.  Then, before replying, he looked at the
+faces of the other men.  When he spoke it was to them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Boys," he said quietly, "this outfit belongs to me.  I am Steve
+Packard, the son of Philip Packard, who owned Number Ten Ranch and who
+mortgaged it but did not sell it to his father&mdash;my grandfather.  I've
+just got back home; I mean to have what is mine; I am going to pay the
+mortgage somehow.  I haven't jumped in with my sleeves rolled up for
+trouble either; had Blenham been a white man instead of a brute and a
+bully he might have kept his job under me.  But I guess you all know
+the sort of life he has been handing Royce here.  Bill taught me how to
+ride and shoot and fight and swim; pretty well everything I know that's
+worth knowing.  Since I was a kid he's been the best friend I ever had.
+Anything else you boys would like to know?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barbee had risen slowly from the floor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Packard's son or the devil's," he said quickly, his eyes never leaving
+Blenham, "I'm with you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man whom, over the card-table, Barbee had addressed as Spotty and
+whose nickname had obviously been gained for him by the peculiar tufts
+of white hair in a young, tousled head of very dark brown, cleared his
+throat and so drew all eyes to himself at his side of the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bill Royce bein' blind, if you could only prove somehow who you are&mdash;"
+he suggested, tone and expression plainly indicating his willingness,
+even eagerness, to be convinced.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Even if I can't see him," said Royce, his own voice eager, "I know!
+An' I can prove it for my part by a couple of little questions&mdash;if you
+boys will take my word for it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shoot," said Spotty.  "No man's called you liar yet, Bill."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then, Stevie," said Royce, just a shade of anxiety in his look as his
+sightless eyes roved here and there, "answer me this: What was the
+first horse you ever rode?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A mare," said Steve.  "Black Molly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Right!" and Royce's voice rang triumphantly.  "Next: Who nailed the
+board over the door?  The ol' cedar board?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did.  Just before I went away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An'," continued Royce, his voice lowered a trifle, "an' what did you
+say about it, Stevie?  I was to know&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Coach him up!  Tell him what to say, why don't you?" jeered Blenham.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't think I need to," replied Royce quietly.  "Do I, Steve?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was pretty much of a kid then, Bill," said Packard, a half-smile
+coming into his eyes for the first time, a smile oddly gentle.  "I had
+been reading one of the Arabian Nights tales; that's what put it into
+my head."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go ahead, Steve; go ahead!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I said that I was going to seek my fortune up and down the world; that
+the board above the door would be a sign if all went well with me.
+That as long as I lived it would be there; if I died it would fall."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a little, breathless silence.  It was broken by Bill Royce's
+joyous laughter as Bill Royce's big hand smote his thigh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Right again, Steve!  An' the ol' board's still there.  Go look at it;
+it's still there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again all eyes sought Blenham.  For a moment he stood uncertain,
+looking about him.  Then abruptly he swept up his hat and went out.
+And Barbee's laughter, like an evil echo of Royce's, followed him.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap06"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VI
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+BANK NOTES AND A BLIND MAN
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+"He'd as soon set fire to the hay-barns as not," said Royce.  "Better
+watch him, Steve."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so Steve, stepping outside, watched Blenham, who had gone swiftly
+toward the ranch-house and who now swung about sharply and stopped dead
+in his tracks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's up to something, Bill," conceded Packard.  And called quietly to
+Blenham: "Every step you take on this ranch, I'm right along with you,
+Blenham."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whereupon Blenham, his hesitation over, turned abruptly and went down
+to the corral, saddled, and rode away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the heels of the irate foreman's wordless departure Steve Packard
+and Bill Royce went together to the old ranch-house, where, settled
+comfortably in two big arm-chairs, they talked far into the night.  A
+sharp glance about him as he lighted a lamp on the table showed Packard
+dust and disuse everywhere excepting the few untidy signs of Blenham's
+recent occupancy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An old saddle sprawled loosely upon the living-room floor, littered
+about with bits of leather and buckles; from a nail hung a rusty,
+long-rowelled Mexican spur; on the hearth-stone were many cigarette
+stumps and an occasional cigar-end.  An open door showed a tumbled bed,
+the covers trailing to the floor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd give a year off my life for a good look at you, Steve," said Royce
+a trifle wistfully.  "Let's see&mdash;thirty-five now, ain't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Right," answered Packard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An' big?" asked Royce.   "Six foot or better?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A shade better.  About an inch and a half."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not heavy, though?  Kind of lean an' long, like Phil Packard before
+you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard nodded; then, with Royce's sightless eyes upon him, he said
+hastily:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Right again, Bill; kind of lean and long.  You'd know me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure, I would!" cried Royce eagerly.  "A man don't change so all-fired
+much in a dozen years; don't I remember just how you looked when you
+cut loose to see the world!  Ain't made your pile, have you, Steve?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard laughed carelessly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm lord and master of a good horse, saddle, bridle, and seventy-odd
+bucks," he said lightly.  "Not much of a pile, Bill."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An' Number Ten Ranch," added Royce quickly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And Number Ten Ranch," Packard agreed.  "If we can get away with it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Meaning what?  How get away with it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's mortgaged to the hilt, it seems.  I don't know for how much yet.
+The mortgage and a lot of accrued interest has to be paid off.  Just
+how big a job we've got to find out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Seen your grandfather yet?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No.  I should have looked him up, I suppose, before I fired Blenham.
+But, being made of flesh and blood&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know, I know."  And Royce filled his lungs with a big sigh.  "Bein'
+a Packard, you didn't wait all year to get where you was goin'.  But
+there'll be plenty of red tape that can't be cut through; that'll have
+to be all untangled an' untied.  Unless your grandfather'll do the
+right thing by you an' call all ol' bets off an' give you a free hand
+an' a fresh start?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All of which you rather doubt, eh, Bill?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Royce nodded gloomily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I guess we've gone at things sort of back-end-to," he said
+regretfully.  "You'd ought to have seen him first, hadn't you?  An'
+then you kicked his pet dawg in the slats when you canned Blenham.  The
+old man's right apt to be sore, Steve."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shouldn't be surprised," agreed Steve.  "Who are the Temples, Bill?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who tol' you about the Temples?" came the quick counter-question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nobody.  I stayed at their place last night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Royce grunted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Didn't take you all year to find her, did it?" he offered bluntly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who?" asked Packard in futile innocence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Terry Temple.  The finest girl this side the pearly gates an' the
+pretties'.  What kind of a man have you growned to be with the women,
+Steve?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No ladies' man, if that's what's worrying you, old pardner.  I don't
+know a dozen girls in the world.  I just asked to know about these
+people because they're right next-door to us and because they're
+newcomers since my time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again Royce grunted, choosing his own explanation of Packard's
+interest.  But, answering the question put to him, he replied briefly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That little Terry-girl can have anything I got; her mother was some
+class, too, they tell me.  I dope it up she just died of shame when she
+come to know what sort she'd picked for a runnin' mate.  An' as for
+him, he's a twisty-minded jelly-fish.  He's absolutely no good.  An',
+if I ain't mistaken some considerable, you'll come to know him real
+well before long.  Watch him, Steve."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said Packard as Royce broke off, sensing that this was not all
+to be said of Temple; "let's have it.  What else about him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Royce shook his head slowly, while his big, thick fingers filled
+his pipe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We ain't got all night to jus' squat here an' gossip about our
+neighbors," he said presently.  "There's other things to be said before
+things can be done.  First rattle, an' to get goin', I'm much obliged
+for that little bluff you threw Blenham's way about me being your
+foreman.  What you need an' what you got to have is a man with both
+eyes wide open.  Oh, I know, Steve," as Packard started to speak.
+"You'd offer me the job if both my legs an' arms was gone, too.  But it
+don't go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm going to need a man right away," argued Steve.  "I'll have to do a
+lot of running around, I suppose, looking up the law, arranging for
+belated payments, and so forth.  I don't want to leave the ranch
+without a head.  You know the men, you know the outfit."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Royce, though his lips twitched, was firm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know the men any too well either," he said.  "They're all your
+grandfather's hirin'.  But they're all live an' they all know the game.
+I won't swear as to how far you can trust any one of 'em; but you'll
+have to find that out for yourself as we go on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Name one of them for me," was Packard's quiet way of accepting his old
+foreman's ultimatum.  "I'll put him on at least temporarily."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's Yellow Barbee," suggested Royce.  "Somethin' of a kid, maybe
+kind of wild an' harum-scarum, maybe not worth much.  But he ain't a
+Blenham man an' he did me a good turn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Already Packard was on his feet, going to the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Barbee!" he shouted.  "Oh, Barbee!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The bunk-house door opened, emitting its stream of light.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Call me?" came Barbee's cool young voice, impudent now as always.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, come here a minute, will you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barbee came, his wide hat far back upon his tight little curls, his
+swagger pronounced, his sweet blue eyes shining softly&mdash;his lips
+battered and bruised and already swelling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come in and shut the door," said Packard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barbee entered and stepped across the room to lounge with his elbow on
+the chimney-piece, looking curiously from Packard to Royce.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm here to run this outfit myself, Barbee," Packard told him while
+returning the youth's regard steadily.  "But I need a foreman to keep
+things going when I'm obliged to be away.  I gave the job to Royce.  He
+won't have it.  He suggests you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barbee opened his eyes a trifle wider.  Also the quick flush running up
+into his brown cheeks made him look more boyish than ever, giving him
+almost a cherubic air.  But for all that he managed to appear tolerably
+unmoved, quite as though this were not the first time he had been
+offered such a position.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How much is in it?" was what Barbee said, with vast indifference.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve hesitated.  Then he frowned.  And finally he laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You've got me there," he admitted frankly.  "All the money I've got in
+the world to-night is right here."  He spilled the contents of his
+pocket upon a table.  "There's about seventy-five bucks.  Unless I can
+turn a trick somewhere before pay-day all you boys will have to take
+your pro rata out of that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bill Royce shifted nervously in his chair, opened his mouth, then
+closed it wordlessly.  Barbee shrugged elaborately.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll take a chance," he said.  "It would be worth it if I lost; jus'
+to put one across on Blenham."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right," and still Packard eyed young Barbee keenly, wondering just
+how much ability lay hidden under that somewhat unsatisfactory
+exterior.  "You can go back to the boys now and tell them that you're
+boss when I'm not on hand.  Before they go to work in the morning you
+show up here again and we'll talk a lot of things over."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barbee ducked his head in token of acquiescence and perhaps to hide the
+glitter in his eyes, and walked on his heels to the door.  Packard's
+voice arrested him there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just one thing, Barbee: I don't want any trouble started.  Not with
+Blenham or with any of old man Packard's men.  I know how you feel, but
+if you work for me you'll have to let me be the one who starts things.
+Understand?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The new foreman paused irresolutely.  Then, without turning so that
+Packard might see his face, and with no spoken reply, he ducked his
+head again and went out, slamming the door after him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I ain't sure he's the right man for the job, Steve," began Royce a
+trifle anxiously.  "An' I ain't sure whether he's square or crooked.
+But I don't know the rest of the men any better an'&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll watch him, Bill.  And, as I've said already, I'm here to do most
+of the foreman act myself.  We'll give Barbee his chance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He came back to the table from whose top there winked up at him the few
+gold and silver coins which spelled his working capital, and stood
+looking at them quizzically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I got a yarn to spin, Stevie," came thoughtfully from Royce with a
+great puff of smoke.  "You better listen in on it now&mdash;while we're
+alone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard returned to his chair, made his own smoke, and said quietly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go to it, Bill.  I'm listening."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Barbee's gone, ain't he?  An' the door shut?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then pull up close so's I won't have to talk loud an' I'll get it out
+of my system: Before your father died he wasn't makin' much money, not
+as much as he was spendin'.  He'd tied into some minin'-stock game that
+he didn't savvy any too well, an' for a long time all I'd been clearin'
+here he'd been droppin' outside.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An' the deeper he got in the hole the wilder he played the game: there
+was times when I didn't believe he cared a tinker's damn what happened.
+Whenever he needed any cash all he had to do was soak another plaster
+on the ranch, borrow again from his father.  An' ol' Number Ten is
+plastered thick now, Steve; right square up to the hilt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, when Phil Packard died he did it like he'd done everything else,
+like he had lived, makin' a man think he was in a hurry to get a job
+over an' done with.  Ridin' horseback one week an' the nex' week
+sendin' for me in there."  He jerked his head toward a remote room of
+the big house.  "An' he talked to me then about you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard waited for him to go on, offering no comment.  Royce, hunched
+over in his chair, straightened up a little, shook himself, and
+continued:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He had drawed some money out'n the bank, all he had left.  I dunno
+what for, but anyways he had it under his pillow alongside his ol'
+Colt.  An' he give it to me, sayin' he was caught sudden an' unexpected
+by his death, an' for me to take care of it an' see that you got it
+when you come back.  It was in greenbacks, a little roll no bigger'n
+your thumb, an' when I counted 'em I near dropped dead.  Ten little
+slips of paper, Steve, an' each good for one thousan' bucks!  Ten
+thousan' dollars did Phil Packard slip me that night not a half-hour
+before he went over.  For you.  An' I got 'em for you, Steve; I got 'em
+safe for you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His big shoulders rose and fell in a deep sigh; he ran a toil-hardened
+hand across his forehead.  Packard opened his lips as though to speak,
+but was silent as Royce continued:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I took the money, Steve, an' went outside for a smoke, an' my hands
+was shakin' like I was cold!  Ten thousan' bucks in my tail pocket!  It
+was a dark night an' I didn't lose nineteen secon's hidin' the wad in a
+good safe place.  Which," slowly, "was the las' time I ever saw it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought you said&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I got it safe?  I have.  But I ain't ever seen anything since that
+night, Steve.  The night your dad died, the night I hid the money, was
+the night I went blind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You haven't told me about that yet, Bill," said Packard gently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; but I'm goin' to now.  It's part of the yarn I got to spin
+to-night.  Like I said I took the wad&mdash;your father had slipped it back
+in a flat sort of pocketbook&mdash;an' went outside.  It was night already
+an' dark.  Ten thousan' bucks for me to keep safe for you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again he ran his hand across his forehead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I knew where there was a rock in the corner foundation of the house
+that I could work loose; where if I put the greenbacks they wouldn't
+spoil if it rained or even if the house burned down.  I stuck 'em in
+there, got the rock back like it was before, made sure nobody saw me,
+an' went off by myself for a smoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Cause why did I take that chance?  I didn't take no chances at all, I
+tell you, Steve!  How did I know, your father gettin' delirious at the
+finish which came downright quick, but he'd give the game away?  An' on
+the ranch then there was men that would do mos' anything for ten
+thousan', give 'em the show.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your gran'father had come over an' he had brought Blenham with him an'
+his mechanic, Guy Little; an' there was a couple of new men in the
+outfit I'd picked up myself that I knew was tough gents.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!  I didn't take no chances, seein' the money was yours an' not mine
+to fool with.  I stuck it in the wall an' I sneaked off an' for three
+hours I squatted there in the dark with my gun in my hand, waitin' an'
+watchin'.  Which was playing as safe as a man could, wasn't it, Steve?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard got up and came to Royce's side, putting his hand gently on the
+foreman's shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It strikes me you've done rather a good deal for me, Bill," he said
+quite simply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe," said Royce thoughtfully.  "But no more'n one pardner ought to
+do for another; no more'n you'd do for me, Stevie.  Don't I know you?
+Give you the chance you'd do as much for me; eh, boy?  Well, here's the
+rest of the story: Your dad was dead: ol' Hell-Fire was blowin' his
+nose so you'd hear it a mile an' I was feelin' weak an' sick-like,
+knowin' all of a sudden that Phil Packard had been damn' good to me an'
+wantin' to tell him so now it was too late.  Late an' dark as it was I
+went down to the bunk-house, tol' the boys to stick aroun' for orders
+in the mornin', saddled my horse and beat it for a quiet place where I
+could think.  I never wanted to think so much in my life, Steve.
+Remember the ol' cabin by the big timber over on the east side?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The old McKittrick place?  Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I went there to make a fire in the ol' fireplace an' sit an'
+think things over.  But I got to tell you about a feller name of Johnny
+Mills.  You didn't know him; he's workin' for the Brocky Lane outfit
+now.  Well, Johnny was as good a cow-man as you want, but you always
+had to watch him that he didn't slip off to go quail-huntin'.  With a
+shot-gun he was the best wing-shot I ever heard a man tell about.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He used to sneak for the McKittrick cabin where he kep' an ol'
+muzzle-loadin' shot-gun, an' shot quail aroun' them springs up there
+when he'd ought to be workin'.  Then he'd come in an' brag, tellin' how
+he'd never missed a shot.  The boys, jus' to tease Johnny, had gone to
+the cabin that very day an' drawed his shot out, jus' leavin' the
+powder alone so Johnny would think he'd missed when he pulled the
+trigger an' no birdies dropped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"See what I'm drivin' at?  I tied my horse an' started along the little
+trail through the wild-holly bushes to the cabin.  Somebody was waitin'
+for me an' give me both barrels square in the face.  That's when an'
+how my lights went out, Steve."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It came as a shock, and Packard paled; Royce had been so long making
+his explanations and then put the actual catastrophe so baldly that for
+a moment his hearer sat speechless.  Presently&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Know who did it, Bill?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I knew&mdash;for sure&mdash;I'd go get him!  But I don't know; not for sure."
+His big hands clenched until they fairly trembled with their own
+tenseness.  "It's tough to go blind, Steve!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His hands relaxed; he sat still, staring into that black nothingness
+which always engulfed him.  When he spoke again it was drearily,
+hopelessly, like a man communing with his own sorrow, oblivious of a
+listener:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, it's fair hell to be blind.  If there's anything worse I'd like
+to know what it might be.  To be walkin' along in the dark, always in
+the dark&mdash;to stumble an' fall an' hear a man laugh&mdash;to pitch head firs'
+over a box that had been slipped quiet in your way&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham did that sort of thing?" demanded Packard sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It would have done Bill Royce good to see the look in his eyes then.
+Royce nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham did whatever he could think of," he muttered colorlessly.
+"An' he could think of a good many things.  Just the same&mdash;maybe some
+day&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And yet you stayed on, Bill?" when Royce's voice stopped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd promised your dad I'd be here&mdash;with the coin&mdash;when you come back.
+He knew an' I knew you might blow in an' blow out an' never get word
+unless I was right here all the time.  An' ol' man Packard, after I was
+blind I went to him an' he promised I could stick as long as I just
+obeyed orders.  Which, I've done, no matter what they was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But the end's come now; ain't it, Steve, ol' pardner?  But to get this
+tale tol' an' the money in your hands: I didn't know who'd tried to do
+for me, but I guessed it must have been some one who'd found out
+somehow about the ten thousan' an' thought I had it on me.  When I come
+to at the cabin an' firs' thing tried to get a chaw of tobacco I foun'
+my pockets all turned wrong side out.  It might have been Johnny Mills
+himself; he didn't know about the gun bein' fooled with; it might have
+been Blenham; it might have been Guy Little; it might have been
+somebody else.  But I've thought all along an' I pray God I was right
+an' that some day I'll know, that it was Blenham."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He rose suddenly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come ahead, Steve," he said, his voice matter of fact as of old.
+"It's up to you to ride herd on your own simoleons now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You've left it in the same place?  In the rock foundation-wall?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  I couldn't find a safer place."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you haven't been back to it all these months?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not until las' Saturday night.  It was jus' six months then.  I
+figgered it out I'd make sure once every six months.  I went in the
+middle of the night an' made sure nobody followed me, Steve.  Come
+ahead."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard slipped his arm through Royce's and they went side by side.
+The night was filled with stars; there was no moon.  The wall, as they
+came around the corner of the house, shone palely here and there where
+a white surface glinted vaguely through the shadows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nobody aroun', is there, Steve?" whispered Royce.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nobody," Packard assured him.  "Where is it, Bill?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Royce's hands, groping with the wall, rested at last upon a knob of
+stone near the base of the foundation.  He tugged; the stone, rudely
+squared, came away, leaving a gaping hole.  Royce thrust his hand in,
+searched briefly, and in a moment brought out a flat wallet clutched
+tightly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yours, Steve!" he said then, a quick, palpitating note of pure joy in
+his cry.  "Blind as I was, I put it over for you!  Here's ten thousan',
+Steve.  An' the chance to get ol' Number Ten back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard was taking the wallet proffered him.  Suddenly Royce jerked it
+back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me make sure again," he said hastily.  "Let me be dead sure I've
+made good."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He fumbled with the wallet, opened the flap, drew out the contents, a
+neat pack of folded bank-notes.  He counted slowly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ten of 'em," he announced triumphantly as he gave the wallet over to
+its proper owner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard took them and they went back to the house.  The rays of the
+lamp met them; through the open door, back to the living-room, they
+walked side by side.  The table between them, they sat down.  Packard
+put the wallet down, spread out the ten bank-notes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bill," he said, and there was a queer note in his voice, "Bill, you've
+gone through hell for me.  Don't I know it?  And you say I'd do as much
+for you?  Are you sure of it, Bill?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Royce laughed and rubbed his hands together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dead sure, Stevie," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard's eyes dropped to the table.  Before him were the ten crisp
+bank-notes.  Each was for one dollar.  Ten dollars in all.  His
+heritage, saved to him by Bill Royce.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bill, old man," he said slowly, "you've taught me how to play the
+game.  Pray God I can be as white with a pardner as you have been."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And, crumpling the notes with a sudden gesture, he thrust them into his
+pocket.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap07"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VII
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE OLD MOUNTAIN LION COMES DOWN FROM THE NORTH
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+It was perhaps eight o'clock, the morning blue, cloudless, and still.
+Packard had conferred briefly with Barbee; the Ranch Number Ten men had
+gone about their work.  Steve and Bill Royce, riding side by side, had
+mounted one of the flat, treeless hills in the upper valley and were
+now sitting silent while Royce fumbled with his pipe and Steve sent a
+long, eager look down across the open meadow-lands dotted with grazing
+cattle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly their two horses and the other horses browsing in a lower
+field, jerked up their heads, all ears pricked forward.  And yet Steve
+had heard no sound to mar the perfect serenity of the young day.  He
+turned his head a little, listening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, from some remote distance there floated to him a sound strangely
+incongruous here in the early stillness, a subdued screech or scream, a
+wild, clamorous, shrieking noise which for the life of him he could not
+catalogue.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was faint because it came across so great a distance and yet it was
+clear; it was not the throbbing cry of a mountain lion, not the scream
+of a horse stricken with its death, nothing that he had ever heard, and
+yet it suggested both of these sounds.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bill!" he began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I heard it," Royce muttered.  "An' I've heard it before!  In a
+minute&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Royce broke off.  The sound, stilled a second, came again, seeming
+already much closer and more hideous.  Steve's horse snorted and
+plunged; some of the colts in the pasture flung up their heels and fled
+with streaming manes and tails.  Royce calmly filled and lighted his
+pipe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Stillness again for perhaps ten or twenty seconds.  Steve, about to
+demand an explanation from his companion, stared as once more came the
+shrieking noise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can hear the blame thing ten miles," grunted Royce.  "It's only
+about half that far away now.  Keep your eye glued on the road across
+the valley where it comes out'n Blue Bird Cañon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then Steve understood.  Into the clear air across the valley rose a
+growing cloud of dust; through it, out of the cañon's shadows and into
+the sunlight, shot a glistening automobile, hardly more than a bright
+streak as it sped along the curving down-grade.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Terry Temple?" gasped young Packard.  Royce merely grunted again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jus' you watch," was all he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And, needing no invitation, Packard watched.  The motor-car's siren&mdash;he
+had never heard another like it, knew that such a thing would not be
+tolerated in any of the world's traffic centres&mdash;sounded again a long,
+wailing note which went across the valley in billowing echoes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then it grew silent as, with the last of the dangerous curves behind
+it, the long-bodied roadster swung into the valley.  Packard, an
+experienced driver himself, with his own share of reckless blood,
+opened his mouth and stared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was hard to believe that the big, spinning wheels were on the ground
+at all; the machine seemed more like an aeroplane content with skimming
+the earth but hungry for speed.  Only the way in which it plunged and
+lurched and swerved and plunged again testified to highly inflated
+tires battling with ruts and chuck-holes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The fool!" he cried as the car negotiated a turn on two wheels with
+never a sign of lessened speed.  "He'll turn turtle.  He's doing sixty
+miles an hour right now.  And on these roads&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"More likely doin' seventy-five," grunted Royce.  "Can do ten better'n
+that.  Out on the highway he's done a clean hundred.  That car, my
+boy&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's going into the ditch!" exclaimed Steve excitedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The car, racing on, was already near enough for Steve to make out its
+two passengers, a man bent over the steering-wheel, another man, or
+boy, for the figure was small, clinging wildly to his place on the
+running-board, seeming always in imminent danger of being thrown off.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's drunk!" snapped Packard angrily.  "Of all blind idiots!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Another strident blast from the horn, that sent staid old cows
+scurrying this way and that to get out of the way, and the car swerved
+from the road and took to the open field, headed straight toward the
+hill where the two horsemen were.  Jerking his horse about, Steve rode
+down to meet the new arrivals.  And then&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My God!  It's my grandfather!  He's gone mad, Bill Royce!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No madder'n usual," said Royce.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The car came to a sudden stop.  The man on the running-board&mdash;he had a
+man's face, keen and sharp-eyed and eager, and the body of a slight
+boy&mdash;jumped down from his place and in a flash disappeared under the
+engine.  The man at the wheel straightened up and got down, stretching
+his legs.  Steve, swinging down from his saddle, and coming forward,
+measured him with wondering eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he was a man for men to look at, was old man Packard.  Full of
+years, he was no less full of vigor, hale and stalwart and breathing
+power.  A great white beard, cut square, fell across his full chest;
+his white mustache was curled upward now as fiercely as fifty years ago
+when he had been a man for women to look at, too.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was dressed as Steve had always seen him, in black corduroy
+breeches, high black boots, broad black hat&mdash;a man standing upward of
+six feet, carrying himself as straight as a ramrod, his chest as
+powerful as a blacksmith's bellows, the calf of his leg as thick as
+many a man's thigh; big, hard hands, the fingers twisted by toil; the
+face weatherbeaten like an old sea captain's, with eyes like the frozen
+blue of a clear winter sky.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His voice when he spoke boomed out suddenly, deep and rich and hearty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stephen?" he demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve said "Yes" and put out his hand, his eyes shining, the surprising
+realization upon him that he was tremendously glad to see his father's
+father once more.  The old man took the proffered hand into a
+hard-locked grip and for a moment held it, while, the other hand on his
+grandson's shoulder, he looked steadily into Steve's eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What sort of a man have they made of you, boy?" he asked bluntly.
+"There's the makings of fool, crook an' white man in all of us.  What
+for a man are you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve flushed a little under the direct, piercing look, but said
+steadily&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not a crook, I hope."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's something, if it ain't everything," snorted the old man as,
+withdrawing his hand, he found and lighted a long stogie.  "Blenham
+tells me you fired him las' night?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Young Packard nodded, watching his grandfather's face for the first
+sign of opposition.  But just now the old man's face told nothing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thinking of runnin' the outfit yourself, Stephen?" came the next
+question quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  I had intended looking in on you in a day or so to talk matters
+over.  I understand that my father left everything to me and that it is
+pretty heavily mortgaged to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Uhuh.  I let Phil have a right smart bit of money on Number Ten firs'
+an' las', my boy.  Don't want to pay it off this mornin', do you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm broke, Grandy," he said lightly, unconsciously adopting the old
+title for the man who had made him love him and hate him a score of
+times.  "My working capital, estimated last night, runs about
+seventy-five dollars.  That wouldn't quite turn the trick, would it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man's eyes narrowed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean that seventy-five dollars is all you've got to show for
+twelve years?" he asked sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again, hardly understanding why, Steve flushed.  Was a man to be
+ashamed that he had not amassed wealth, especially when there had never
+been in him the sustained desire for gold?  He owed no man a cent, he
+made his own way, he asked no favors&mdash;and yet there was a glint of
+defiance in his eye, a hint of defiance in his tone, when he replied
+briefly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's all.  I haven't measured life in dollars and cents."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you've missed a damn' good measure for it, my son!  I ain't
+sayin' it's the only one, but it'll do firs' class.  But you needn't
+get scared I've gone into the preaching business.&#8230;  An' with that
+seventy-five dollars you're startin' out to run a big cow outfit like
+this, are you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a gleam of mockery in the clear blue eyes which Steve gave no
+sign of seeing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've got a big job on my hands and I know it," he said quietly.  "But
+I'm going to see it through."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's no question about the size of the job!  It's life-size, man's
+size&mdash;Number Ten size, if you want to put it that way.  It wants a real
+man to shove it across.  Know just how much you're mortgaged for?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No.  I was going to ask you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Close to fifty thousan' dollars, countin' back interest, unpaid.
+More'n you ever saw in a day, I reckon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve shrugged.  This to hide his first inclination to whistle.  Fifty
+thousand&mdash;why, he didn't know Number Ten ranch was worth that much
+money.  But it must be worth a good deal more if his grandfather had
+advanced so much on it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is a nice little pile," he admitted carelessly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man grunted, thrust his hands into his pockets, and drew deeply
+at his stogie.  Steve rolled a cigarette.  In the silence falling upon
+them they could hear the sound of the mechanician's wrench.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Anything wrong with the car?" asked Steve for the sake of breaking
+unpleasant silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not that I know of.  He's jus' takin' a peek to make sure, I guess.
+That's what he's for.  He knows I got to get back to my place in a
+couple of shakes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve smiled; by wagon road his grandfather's ranch home was fifty
+miles to the northward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You won't think of going back before noon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Won't I?  But I will, though, son; Blenham's sticking aroun', waitin'
+for my say-so what he'll do nex'."  He snapped open a big watch and
+stared at it a moment with pursed lips.  "I'll be back home in jus' one
+hour an' a half.  All I got is fifteen minutes to talk with you this
+mornin'."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean that you can drive those fifty miles in an hour and a
+quarter!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have done it in less; if I was in a hurry I'd do it in an hour flat.
+But allowin' for time out I want fifteen minutes more'n that.  And now,
+if we're goin' to get anywhere&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stopped suddenly and stood toying with his big watch passing it back
+and forth through the loop he made of its heavy chain, his gaze steady
+and earnest and searching upon his grandson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stephen," he said abruptly, "I ain't playin' any favorites in my ol'
+age.  An' I ain't givin' away big chunks of money hit or miss.  You
+wasn't countin' on anything like that, was you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I wasn't," announced Steve quickly.  "I remember your old theory;
+that a man should make his own way unaided, that&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That whatever he got he's got to get with his one head an' one set of
+han's.  Now, the things I got to say I'll spit out one at the time:
+Firs', I'd like to have you come visit me for a spell at my place.
+Will you do it?  To-day, to-morrow, any time you feel like it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; I'll be glad to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's good.  Nex', not even if you was the right man for the job you
+can't save this ranch now; it's too late, there's to much to dig up in
+too short a time.  I've got my hooks in deep an' whenever that happens
+I don't let go.  I want you to quit before you get started."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve looked his surprise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Surely," he said wonderingly, "you don't want me to give you the ranch
+just because you happen to hold the mortgages on it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Business is business, Stephen," said the old man sternly.  "Sometimes,
+between Packards, business is hell.  It'd be that for you.  I've
+started out to get this outfit an' I'd get it.  An' doin' it I'd be
+wastin' my time besides breakin' you all to smithereens.  Better drop
+it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve had hardly expected this.  But he answered calmly, even lightly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I'd like a try at holding it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's two things," old man Packard said crisply.  "Number three is
+this here: Blenham tells, me you've put Royce in as foreman under you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I offered him the place.  He could have it yet if he wanted it.  But
+he refused.  I've passed the job on to a man named Barbee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Barbee!" cried the old man.  "Barbee!  That yellow canary-bird?
+Meaning him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," retorted Steve a trifle stiffly.  "Anything wrong with him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't roll them fifty miles to talk about jay-birds an'
+canary-birds an' such," growled his grandfather.  "But here's one thing
+I've got to say: This ranch is goin' to be mine real soon; that's in
+the cards, face up.  It's as good as mine now.  I've been runnin' it
+myself for six months.  I want it right, hear me?  What do you know
+about running a big outfit?  What does a kid without whiskers like
+Barbee know about it?  Think I want it all run down in the heel when it
+comes to me?  No, sir!  I don't.  Blenham knows the lay of the land,
+Blenham knows my ways, Blenham knows how to run things.  I want you to
+put Blenham back on the job!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve bit his lip, holding back a hot reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Grandfather," he said slowly, "suppose we take a little more time in
+getting squared around?  I want to do what's right; I know that you
+want to do what's fair and square.  I am willing to consult you about
+ranch matters; I'll come to you for advice, if you'll let me; I'll try
+to keep the ranch up to time and"&mdash;with a smile&mdash;"in my hands and out
+of yours.  That's a good sporting proposition.  But as for Blenham&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Put him back as foreman and I'll talk fair with you.  I want Blenham
+back here, Stephen.  Understand that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And," cried Steve a trifle heatedly at last, "I tell you that I am
+going to run the ranch myself.  And that I don't like Blenham."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Damn it," cried the old man violently, "hear the boy!  Don't like
+Blenham, huh?  Goin' to run the ranch yourself, huh?  Why, I tell you
+it's as good as mine right now!  How are you goin' to pay your men, how
+are you goin' to buy grub for 'em, where are you goin' to find
+runnin'-expense money?  Go an' tell folks you're mortgaged to me for
+fifty thousan' dollars an' see how much they'll stake you for on top of
+that.  Or come over my way an' try to borrow some more, if you think
+I'm an easy guy.  Why, Steve Packard, you&mdash;you're a tomfool!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thanks," said Steve dryly.  "I've heard that before."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An' you'll hear it again, by the Lord!  In ten languages if you'll
+find men talkin' that many lingos.  Here I come chasin' all this way to
+be decent to you, to see if there ain't some way to help you out&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Help me out of my property," amended Steve.  "I can't remember
+anything else you offered to do for me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I said it once," shouted his grandfather, his two big fists suddenly
+clinched and lifted threateningly; "you're a howlin' young ass!  That's
+what for a man you've turned out to be, Stephen Packard.  Come here
+empty-handed an' try to buck me, would you?  Me who has busted better
+men than you all my life, me who has got my hooks in you deep already,
+me who ain't no pulin' ol' dodderin' softy to turn over to a lazy,
+shiftless vagabond all I've piled up year after year.  Buck me, would
+you?  Tuck in an' fire my men, butt on my affairs&mdash;  Why, you impudent
+young puppy-dog, you: I'll make you stick your tail between your legs
+an' howl like a kiote before I'm done with you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve looked at him hopelessly; he might have expected this all along
+though he had hoped for amity at least.  If there were to be a conflict
+of purpose he could have wished that it be conducted in friendly
+fashion.  But when did Hell-Fire Packard ever clasp hands with the man
+he opposed in anything, when did he ever see a business rival without
+cloven hoof, horns, and spiked tail?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am sorry you look at it that way, Grandy.  It is only natural that I
+should seek to hold what is mine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then hold your tongue, you young fool!" blazed out the old man.  "But
+don't ask me to hold my hand!  I'm goin' after you tooth and big
+toe-nail!  If Ranch Number Ten ain't mine in all partic'lars before
+you're a year older I want to know why!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think," said the grandson, fighting with himself for calmness and
+quiet speech, "that any further business I can take up with your
+lawyer.  Past due interest&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lawyer?" thundered Packard senior.  "Since when did I ever have call
+for law an' lawyers in my play?  Think I'm a crook, sir?  Mean to
+insinuate I'm a crook?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean nothing of the kind.  A mortgage is a legal matter, the payment
+of interest and principal&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Guy Little!" called the old man.  "Guy Little!  Goin' to stay under
+that car all day?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The mechanician promptly appeared, hands and face greasy and black and
+took his place on the running-board.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All ready, sir," he announced imperturbably.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With half-a-dozen strides his master reached the car; in as many
+seconds the powerful engine was throbbing.  The screaming horn gave
+warning, the quiet herds in the valley heeded, lifted their heads and
+stood at attention, ready to scamper this way or that as need arose.
+The wheels turned, the car jolted over the inequalities presented by
+the field, swerved sharply, turned, gathered speed and whizzed away
+toward the valley road.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Three times before they shot back into the mouth of Blue Bird Cañon the
+mechanician fancied that his employer had spoken; each time listening,
+he failed to catch any other sound than that made by the engine and
+speeding wheels.  Once he said, "Sir?" and got only silence for an
+answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He shook his head and wondered; it was not Packard's way to mumble to
+himself.  And again, ready to jump for his life as the big car took a
+dangerous turn, his eyes glued to the sheer bank a few inches from the
+singing tires, he caught a sound through the blast of the sparton which
+surely must have come from the driver's lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What say?" yelled Guy Little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No answer.  He caught a fleeting glimpse of a farmer at the head of his
+two plunging horses where the man had hurriedly got them out of the way
+and up the flank of the mountain.  They raced on.  And again, surely
+Packard had said something.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Talkin' to me?" called Little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, for just a wee fraction of a second, Packard drew his eyes from
+the road and his look met the mechanician's.  The old man's eyes were
+shining strangely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Damn it, Guy Little," he boomed out boisterously, "can't a man laugh
+when he feels that-away?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And it suddenly dawned upon Guy Little that ever since they had left
+Ranch Number Ten the old man had been chuckling delightedly.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap08"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VIII
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IN RED CREEK TOWN
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+The little town of Red Creek had an individuality all its own.  It
+might have prided itself, had it any civic sense whatever, upon its
+aloofness.  It stood apart from the rest of the world, at a safe
+distance from any of its rival settlements, even drawn apart as though
+distrustfully from its own railroad station which baked and blistered
+in the sun a good half-mile to the west.  Grown up here haphazardly
+long before the "Gap" had been won through by the "iron trail," it
+ignored the beckoning of the glistening rails and refused to extend
+itself toward the traffic artery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+More than all this, Red Creek gave the impression, not in the least
+incorrect, of falling apart into two watchful sections which eyed each
+other suspiciously, being cynically and unsociably inclined.  Its main
+street was as wide as Van Ness Avenue and down the middle of it, like a
+border line between two hostile camps, sprawled a stream which shared
+its name with the town.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The banks here and there were the brick-red of a soil whose chief
+mineral was iron; here and there were screened by willows.  There were
+two insecure-looking bridges across which men went infrequently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For the spirit which had brooded over the birth of Red Creek when a
+sheepman from the north and a cow-man from the south had set their
+shacks opposite each other, lived on now; long after the old feuds were
+dead and the whole of the grazing lands had been won over to the cattle
+raisers, a new basis for quarrels had offered itself at Red Creek's
+need.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Much of this Steve Packard knew, since it was so in his time, before he
+had gone wandering; much he had learned from Barbee in a long talk with
+him before riding the twenty-five miles into the village.  Old Man
+Packard had drawn to himself a host of retainers since his interests
+were big, his hired-men many, his wages generous.  And, throughout the
+countryside across which he cast his shadow, he had cultivated and
+grown a goodly crop of enemies, men with whom he had contended, men
+whom he had branded sweepingly as liars and thieves and cutthroats, men
+whose mortgages he had taken, men whom, in the big game which he
+played, he had broken.  The northern half of Red Creek was usually and
+significantly known as Packard's Town; the southern half sold liquor
+and merchandise, offered food and lodging, to men who harbored few
+friendly feelings for Packard's "crowd."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hence, in Red Creek were two saloons, confronting each other across the
+red scar of the creek; two stores, two lunch-counters, two blacksmith
+shops, each eying its rival jealously.  At this time the post-office
+had been secured by the Packard faction; the opposition snorted
+contempt and called attention to the fact that the constable resided
+with them.  Thus honors were even.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Steve Packard rode into town in the late afternoon, his motive
+clear-cut, his need urgent.  If Blenham had stolen his ten thousand
+dollars for which he had so imperative a call now, then Blenham had
+been the one who had replaced the large bank-notes with the small;
+there was the chance that Blenham, just a week ago to-night, had gotten
+the dollar bills in Red Creek.  If such were the case Packard meant to
+know it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There are things, Barbee," he had said bluntly, "which I can't tell
+you yet; I don't know you well enough.  But this I can say: I am out to
+get Blenham's tag."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So'm I," said Barbee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's one reason you've got the job you're holding down right now.
+Here's one point though, which it's up to you to know; I very much
+suspect that for reasons of his own Blenham hasn't set foot for the
+last time on Ranch Number Ten.  He'll come back; he'll come snooping
+around at night; he'll perhaps have a way of knowing the first night
+I'm away and come then.  There's something he left there that he wants.
+At least that is the way I'm stringing my bet.  And while I am away
+you're foreman, Barbee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A flickering light danced in Barbee's blue eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Orders from you, if Blenham shows up at night&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To throw a gun on him and run him out!  The quickest way.  To-night I
+want you to squat out under a tree and keep awake&mdash;all night.  For
+which you can have two days off if you want."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I thought he'd show," and the boy's voice was little more than an
+eager whisper, "I couldn't sleep if I tried!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Packard had spoken a little about Red Creek, asking his few
+questions and had learned that Blenham had his friends in "Packard's
+Town" where Dan Hodges of the Ace of Diamonds saloon was an old pal,
+that "Whitey" Wimble of the Old Trusty saloon across the street hated
+both Hodges and Blenham like poison.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Us boys," added Barbee, "always hung out at the Ace of Diamonds, bein'
+Packard's men.  After now, when I go on a rampage, I'm goin' to make
+frien's across the street.  Friends sometimes comes in handy in Red
+Creek," he added smilingly.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The road, as one comes into Red Creek from the east, divides at the
+first bridge, one fork becoming the northern half of the intersected
+street, the other the southern half.  Steve Packard, filling his eyes
+with the two rows of similar shacks, hesitated briefly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Until now he had always gone to the Packard side; when a boy he had
+regarded the rival section with high contempt, looking upon it as
+inferior, sneering at it as a thoroughbred might lift lip at an
+unworthy mongrel.  The prejudice was old and deep-rooted; he felt a
+subtle sense of shame as though the eyes of the world were upon him,
+watching to see him turn toward the "low-down skunks an' varmints"
+which his grandfather had named these denizens of the defamed section.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The hesitation was brief; he reined his horse impatiently to the left,
+riding straight toward the flaunting sign upon the lofty false front of
+the Old Trusty saloon.  But short as was his indecision it had not
+ended before he had glimpsed at the far end of the street the
+incongruous lines of an automobile&mdash;red racing type.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Boyd-Merril.  Twin Eight," thought Packard.  "So we'll meet on the
+same side after all, Miss Terry Pert!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were seeds of content in the thought.  If it were to be range war
+between him and his grandfather, then since obviously the Temples had
+already been drawn into contention with the old man Packard, it was
+just as well the fates decreed that he and Terry should be on the same
+side of the fence, the same side of the fight, the same side of Red
+Creek.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He tickled his horse with a light spur; despite the manner of their
+last encounter he could look forward with something akin to eagerness
+to another meeting.  For, he told himself carelessly, she amused him
+vastly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the meeting was not just yet.  He saw Terry, jauntily, even saucily
+dressed, as she came out of the store and jumped into her car, marked
+how the bright sunlight winked from her high boots, how it flamed upon
+her gay red scarf, how it glinted from a burnished steel buckle in her
+hat band.  As bright as a sunbeam herself, loving gay colors about her,
+across the distance she fairly shone and twinkled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a faint shadow of regret in his eyes as she let in the clutch
+and whizzed away.  She was headed down the street, her back to him,
+driving toward the remote railroad station.  Off to the north he saw a
+growing plume of black smoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Going away?" he wondered.  "Or just meeting some one?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he had come into Red Creek on a business in no way connected with
+Terry Temple.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had figured it out that Blenham, if it had been Blenham who had
+chanced on Bill Royce's secret and no longer ago than last Saturday
+night, would have wasted no time in acquiring the one-dollar bills for
+his trick of substitution; that if he had come for them to Red Creek
+that same night, after post-office and stores were closed, he would
+have sought them at one of the two saloons; that, since currency is at
+all times scarce in cattle towns in the West, he might have had to go
+to both saloons for them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard began investigations at the Old Trusty saloon whose doors stood
+invitingly open to the faint afternoon breeze.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the long room half-a-dozen idle men looked up at him with mild
+interest, withdrawing their eyes briefly from solitaire or newspaper or
+cribbage game or whatever had been holding their careless attention as
+he entered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A glance at them showed him no familiar face.  He turned to the bar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Behind it a man was polishing glasses with quick, skilful hands.  Steve
+knew him at once for Whitey Wimble.  He was a pronounced albino,
+unhealthy-looking, with overlarge, thin ears, small pale eyes, and
+teeth that looked like chalk.  Steve nodded to him and spun a dollar on
+the bar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have something," he suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Wimble returned his nod, left off his polishing to shove forward a
+couple of the glistening glasses, and produced a bottle from behind him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Regards," he said apathetically, taking his whiskey with the
+enthusiasm and expression of a man observing his doctor's orders.
+"Stranger in Red Creek?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I haven't been here," Steve answered, "for several years.  I never saw
+the town any quieter.  Used to be a rather gay little place, didn't it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's early yet," said Whitey, going back to his interrupted task.
+"Bein' Saturday, the boys from the ranches will be showin' up before
+long.  Then it ain't always so quiet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard made his cigarette, lighted it, and then said casually: "How
+are you fixed for dollar bills in your strong-box?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nary," returned Whitey Wimble without troubling himself to look into
+his till.  "We don't see overmuch rag money in Red Creek."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Guess that's so," admitted Steve.  "They do come in handy, though,
+sometimes; when you want to send a dollar in a letter or something of
+that kind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's a fac', too; never thought of that."  Which, since he never
+wrote or received letters, was no doubt true.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Men around here don't have much use for paper money, do they?"
+continued Packard carelessly, his interest seeming to centre in his
+cigarette smoke.  "I'd bet a man the drinks nobody else has asked you
+for a dollar bill for the last six months."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'd lose," said Whitey.  "I had three of 'em in the drawer for a
+coon's age; feller asked me for 'em jus' the other night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes?"  He masked his eagerness as he thrust a quarter forward.  "The
+drink's on me then.  Let me have a cigar."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whitey also took a cigar, indicating friendliwise the better box.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who was it asked you for the paper money?" Steve went on.  "He might
+have one he doesn't need."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was Stumpy Collins.  The bootblack across the street."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll look him up; yesterday he had them, you say?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Wimble shook his head, gave the matter his thought a moment, and said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was las' Saturday night; I remember 'cause there was a right smart
+crowd in an' I was busy an' Stumpy kep' pesterin' me until I 'tended to
+him.  He won't have nothin' lef by this, though; it ain't Stumpy's way
+to save his money long.  Firs' time I ever knowed him to have three
+dollars all at once."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the Old Trusty Steve went across the street, leaving his horse in
+front of Wimble's door where there was a big poplar and a grateful
+shade.  Crossing the second of the two bridges he turned his eyes
+toward the railroad station; the red touring-car stood forth
+brilliantly in the sunshine, a freight train was just pulling in, Terry
+was not to be seen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She'll eat before she starts back home," he thought, hastening his
+stride on to Hodges's place, the Ace of Diamonds.  "I'll see her at the
+lunch-counter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tucked in beside the Ace of Diamonds was a bootblack stand, a crazy,
+home-made affair with dusty seat.  The wielder of the brush and polish
+was nowhere in evidence.   Steve passed and turned in at the saloon
+door, wishing to come to Hodges, Blenham's pal.  For it required little
+imagination to suspect that it had been Hodges at Blenham's behest, or
+Blenham himself, who had sent Stumpy across the street to the Old
+Trusty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here, as in Wimble's place, a few men loitered idly; here as there the
+proprietor stood behind his own bar.  Hodges, a short, squat man with a
+prize-fighter's throat, chest, and shoulders and a wide, thin-lipped
+mouth, leaned forward in dirty shirt-sleeves, chewing at a moist
+cigar-stump.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hello, stranger," he offered offhandedly.  "What's the word?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Know Blenham, don't you?" asked Steve quietly.  "Works for old man
+Packard."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure, I know him.  What about him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Seen him lately?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ten minutes ago.  Why?  Want him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard had not counted on this, having no idea that Blenham was in
+town.  He hesitated, then said quickly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hasn't left yet, has he?  Where is he now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Down to the depot.  Trailin' a skirt.  An' some skirt, too, take it
+from me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve wanted suddenly to slap the broad, ugly face.  Since, however, he
+could formulate no logically sufficient reason for the act, he said
+instead:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe I'll see him before I pull out.  If I don't, ask him if he lost
+a wad like this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fleetingly he flashed the little roll of banknotes before Hodges's eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Greenbacks?" asked Hodges.  "How much?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not so all-fired much," he said lightly.  "But enough to buy a hat!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If hats are sellin' ten dollars or under?" ventured Hodges.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard affected to look surprised.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you know about how much is in this roll?" he demanded
+innocently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One-dollar bills?" said Hodges.  "Ten of 'em?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't look like a mind-reader."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you're right about the wad bein' Blenham's.  Leave it with me,
+if you want.  I'll see he gets it.  There ain't enough there for a man
+to steal," he added reassuringly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How do you know it's Blenham's?  If he told you that he had lost it
+he'd have told you where.  What's the answer; where did I pick this up?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham didn't say he los' nothin'.  But I know it's his because he
+got most of them bills from me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me when," and Packard held the roll in a tight-shut hand, "and
+I'll leave them with you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Las' Saturday night," said Hodges, after a brief moment of reflection.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard tossed the little roll to the bar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's the money.  Tell Blenham I thought it was his!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned to the door, his blood suddenly stirred with certainty:
+Blenham had stolen the ten thousand dollars, and the theft had been
+committed no longer ago than last Saturday night.  Just a week&mdash;there
+was the chance&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hey, there," called Hodges.  "Who'll I say lef this?  What name,
+stranger?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve turned and regarded him coolly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell him Steve Packard called.  Steve Packard, boss of Ranch Number
+Ten."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Dan Hodges, dull wit that he was, felt that something was wrong.
+The look in the stranger's eyes had altered swiftly, the eyes had grown
+hard.  Steve went out.  As he reached the sidewalk he glimpsed a red
+automobile racing townward from the station.  Behind it, riding in its
+dust, came Blenham.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap09"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER IX
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+"IT'S MY FIGHT AND HIS.  LET HIM GO!"
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+Steve Packard, walking swiftly, reached the west bridge just before the
+front tires of Terry's car thudded on the heavy planks.  He glimpsed
+Blenham jogging along behind her and knew that Blenham had seen him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But his eyes were for Terry now.  She, too, had recognized him with but
+a few yards separating them.  She gave him a blast of her horn
+warningly, and, slowing down no more than was necessary for the sharp
+turn, came on across the bridge.  He read it in her eye that it would
+be an abiding joy for Miss Terry if she could send him scampering out
+of her way; the horn as much as said: "You step aside or I'll run you
+down!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With no intention of going under the wheels, Steve waited until the
+last moment and then jumped.  But not to the side as Terry had
+anticipated.  Obeying his impulse and taking his chance, he sprang up
+to her running-board as she whizzed over the bouncing planks of the
+bridge, grasping the door of her car to steady himself.  The feat
+safely accomplished, he grinned up into Terry's startled eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We meet again," he laughed sociably.  "Howdy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her lips tight-pressed, she gave her attention for a moment to her
+wheel and the rutty road in front of her.  Her cheeks were red and grew
+redder.  Perhaps a dozen men, here and there upon the street, had seen.
+She had meant them to see; it would have tickled her no little to have
+had them note Steve Packard flying wildly to the side of the road while
+she shot by.  She had not counted upon him doing anything else.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smarty!" she cried hotly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smart enough to climb out from under when an automobile driven by a
+manslaughter artist comes along," he chuckled, sensing an advantage and
+drawing a deep enjoyment from it.  "Don't you know, young lady, you've
+got to be careful sometimes?  Now, if you had run over me&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Serve you right," sniffed Terry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, but think!  Running over a man who hasn't had time to take his
+spurs off yet, why you stood all kinds of chances getting a puncture!
+You don't want to forget things like that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry bit her lip, stepped on the throttle, swung across the street,
+made a reckless turn, and brought up in front of the lunch-counter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know," remarked Packard lightly, ignoring the fact that she had
+answered him with only the contempt of her silence, "you remind me of
+my grandfather.  Fact!  You two have the same little trick of driving.
+Wonder what would happen if you and he met on a narrow road?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At least," said Terry, eying him belligerently, "he is a man, if he is
+a scoundrel.  Not just a hobo!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I didn't mean to call you a scoundrel!  Nor yet to say that you
+struck me as mannish.  Of course&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you make me sick!" cried Terry.  And she flashed away from him,
+going into the lunch-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He followed her with speculative eyes.  Then he glanced across the
+street.  Blenham had dismounted in front of the Ace of Diamonds and was
+watching.  As Packard turned Blenham went into Hodges's saloon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wonder what he'll have to say when Hodges hands him his roll?" mused
+Packard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, he had accomplished his purpose.  He had done all that he had
+hoped to do in Red Creek this afternoon, had assured himself that his
+suspicions against Blenham were justified by the fact and that the
+theft was only a week old.  He went back slowly to his horse in front
+of the Old Trusty.  But his eyes were frowning thoughtfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What would be Blenham's next move?  What would Blenham do, what would
+he say when Hodges gave him Packard's message?  Might he, in an
+unguarded moment, give a hint toward the answer of that other question
+which now had become the only consideration: "Were the larger banknotes
+still hidden at Ranch Number Ten or had Blenham already removed them?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Instead of mounting to ride away, Packard hung his spurs upon his
+saddlehorn and turned again into Whitey Wimble's place.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The late afternoon faded into dusk, the first stars came out, Whitey
+Wimble lighted his lamps.  Steve, advised of the fact by the purr of a
+motor, knew when Terry left the lunch-room and drove to the store for a
+visit with the storekeeper's wife.  Was she going to remain in town
+overnight?  It began to look as though she were.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Across the street Hodges came out and lighted the big lamps at each
+side of his doorway.  A cowboy swung down from his horse and went in,
+his spurs winking in the lamplight as though there were jewels upon
+them.  A buckboard pulled up and two other men went in after him.  A
+voice in sudden laughter boomed out.  Saturday night had come.  As
+Whitey Wimble had predicted, the boys were showing up and Red Creek
+stood ready to lose something of its brooding afternoon quiet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Once again Packard crossed the bridge and made his way along the
+echoing wooden sidewalk to the Ace of Diamonds.  A dozen saddle-horses
+were tied at the hitching-rail.  Among them was Blenham's white-footed
+bay.  Up and down the street glowing cigarette ends like fireflies came
+and went.  In front of the saloon a number of men made a good-natured,
+tongue-free crowd, most of whom had had their first drinks and were
+beginning to liven up as in duty bound on a Saturday night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A four-horse wagon came rattling into town from the east to pour out
+its contents, big, husky men, at Hodges's door.  Among them Packard
+recognized one man.  He was the lumber-camp cook from whom he had
+gotten coffee and hotcakes the other day, that morning after he had
+refused to accept Terry's cool invitation to breakfast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll have to look in on those fellows tomorrow," he thought as they
+shouldered past, boisterous and eager.  "Grandy's sure had his nerve
+cutting my timber with never so much as a by-your-leave."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Their foreman was with them; one glance singled him out.  He was of
+that type chosen always by old man Packard to head any one of the
+Packard units, a sort of confident mastery in his very stride, the
+biggest man of them, unkempt and heavy, with a brutal face and hard
+eyes.  Joe Woods, his name.  Packard had already heard of him, a rowdy
+and a rough-neck but a capable timberjack to the calloused fingers of
+him.  He followed the men into the saloon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At his place behind the long bar was Hodges, busy filling imperative
+orders, taking in the money which he counted as good as his once it
+left the paymaster's pocket.  But it struck Packard that the bartender
+did not appear happy; his face was flushed and hot, his eyes looked
+troubled.  Now and then he flashed a quick look at Blenham who stood
+leaning against the bar at the far end, twisting an empty whiskey-glass
+slowly in his big hand, staring frowningly at nothing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hodges is a fool and he has just been told so!" was Steve's answer to
+the situation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hi, Blenham!" called big Joe Woods.  "Have a drink."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," growled Blenham, deep down in his throat.  "I don't want it.
+I&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His eyes, lifted to the lumber-camp boss, passed on and rested on Steve
+Packard.  He broke off abruptly, his look changing, probing, seeming
+full of question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Get the money I gave Hodges for you?" asked Packard, coming into the
+room.  "The ten one-dollar bills that you left behind you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They wasn't mine," said Blenham quickly, his hand hard about the
+whiskey glass, his manner vaguely nervous.  "I tol' Dan to give 'em
+back to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Funny," he said carelessly.  "Hodges said&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I made a mistake," called Hodges sharply.  "I got Blenham mixed up
+with some other guy.  I don't know nothin' about this here."  He
+slammed the little roll down on the bar.  "Come get it, if you want
+it."  Packard promptly stepped forward, taking the money.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I figured there was a chance to make ten dollars, easy money, if I
+just walked across the street for it," he said, looking pleasantly from
+Hodges to Blenham.  "Sure, I want it.  It's luck-money; didn't you
+know?  You see, when a man loses anything he loses some of his luck
+with it; when another man gets it, he gets the luck along with it.
+Thanks, Blenham."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham made no answer.  His eyes were bright with anger and yet
+troubled with uncertainty.  The uncertainty was there to be recognized
+by him who looked keenly for it.  Blenham did not know just which way
+to jump.  From that fact Steve drew a deep satisfaction.  For there
+would have been no reason for indecision if Blenham knew that he had
+those other, bigger bank-notes, safe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the rear of the long room a man was dealing cards for
+seven-and-a-half.  As though to demonstrate the truth of his boast
+about "luck-money" Steve stepped to the table, the roll of bills in his
+hand.  He was dealt a card.  Without turning it up to look at it he
+shoved it under the ten banknotes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Standing?" said the dealer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Playing my luck," he answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dealer turned lack-lustre eyes upon Steve's card, then upon his own
+which he turned up.  It was the four of clubs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've the hunch that will beat you, pardner," he said listlessly.  "But
+I'll come again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned another card, a deuce.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That'll about beat you," he suggested.  He leaned forward for Steve's
+card.  "Unless you've got a seven in the hole."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And a seven it was; the bright red seven of hearts.  The dealer paid,
+ten dollars to Steve's ten.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come again?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not to-night," returned Packard.  "I took just the one flutter to show
+Blenham."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned and saw that Blenham had already slipped quietly out of the
+room.  Dan Hodges, his face a fiery red, was just coming back from the
+card-room.  With him was the big timber boss.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tin-horn!" shouted Joe Woods at Packard.  "Quitter!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A quick joy spurted up in Steve Packard's heart; he was right about
+Blenham.  Blenham, filled with anxiety, had gone already, would be
+rushing back to Ranch Number Ten to make sure if the ten thousand
+dollars were safe or had been discovered already by the rightful owner.
+He had slipped away hurriedly but, after the fashion of a careful,
+practical man, had taken time to confer with Dan Hodges and had
+commissioned Joe Woods to hold Packard here.  And so, though he could
+not remember of having ever run away from a fight before, Steve Packard
+was strongly of that mind right now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Joe Woods, I believe?" he said coolly, his mind busy with the new
+problem of a new situation.  "Boss of the timber crew on the east side
+of Number Ten?  I was planning on riding out to-morrow for a word with
+you, Woods."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So?" cried Woods.  "What's the matter with havin' that word to-night?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Haven't time," was the simple rejoinder.  "I'm about due across the
+street now; at Whitey Wimble's place."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Which is where you belong," growled Woods, his under jaw thrust
+forward, his whole attitude charged with quarrelsome intent.  "Over at
+the White Rat's with the rest of the Willies!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The ever-ready Packard temper was getting into Steve's head, beating in
+his temples, pounding along his pulses.  He had never had a man bait
+him like that before.  But he strove to remember Blenham only, to take
+stock of the fact that this was a bit of Blenham's game, and that any
+trouble with another than Blenham was to be avoided at this juncture.
+So, though the color was rising into his face and a little flicker of
+fire came into his eyes, he said briefly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then I'd better go across, hadn't I?  See you in the morning, Woods."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But there is always the word to whip the hot blood into the coolest
+head, to snare a man's caution out of him and inject fury in its stead,
+and Joe Woods, a downright man and never a subtle, put his tongue to
+it.  On the instant Packard gave over thought of such side issues as a
+man named Blenham and hidden bank-notes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He cried out inarticulately and leaped forward and struck.  Joe Woods
+reeled under the first blow full in the face, staggered under the
+second, and was borne back into the tight-jammed crowd of his followers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The men about him and Packard withdrew this way and that, leaving empty
+floor space to accommodate the two pairs of shuffling boots.  Joe Woods
+wiped his lips with the back of a big, hairy hand, saw traces of blood,
+and charged.  The sound of blows given and taken and of little grunts
+and of scraping feet were for a space the only sounds heard in Hodges's
+saloon.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-116"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-116.jpg" ALT="The men about him and Packard withdrew
+this way and that, leaving empty floor space." BORDER="2" WIDTH="387" HEIGHT="568">
+<H3>
+[Illustration: The men about him and Packard withdrew<BR>
+this way and that, leaving empty floor space.]
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Packard's attack had been swift and sure and not without a certain
+skill; against it Woods opposed all he had, ponderous strength,
+slow-moving, brutal force, broad-backed, deep-chested endurance.  But
+from the first it was clear to all who watched and was suspected by
+Woods himself that he had chosen the wrong man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve was taller, had the longer reach, was gifted by the gods with a
+supple strength no whit less than the bearish power of the timber boss.
+With ten blows struck, with both men rocking dizzily, it was patently
+Steve Packard's fight.  But a dull, dogged persistence was in Joe
+Woods's eyes as again he shook his head and charged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve struck for the stomach and landed&mdash;hard.  Woods doubled up; the
+sweat came in drops upon his forehead; his face went suddenly a sick
+white.  But the light in his eyes, as again he lifted his head, was
+unaltered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He can lick me&mdash;I know it!  He can lick me&mdash;I know it!" he muttered
+and kept muttering.  "But, by God, he's got to do it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Steve did it and men looked on queerly, appraising him anew.  He
+took Woods's blows when he must and felt the pain go stabbing through
+his body; but he stood up and struck back and forced the fight
+steadily, crowding his adversary relentlessly, seeming always to strike
+swifter and harder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a bleeding fist driven into Joe Woods's throbbing throat,
+followed by the other fist, going piston-like, at Joe Woods's stomach,
+that ended the fight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The bigger man crumpled and went down slowly like one of his own trees
+just toppling, and lay staring up into Packard's face with dull eyes.
+Steve stepped over him, going to the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll see you in the morning, Woods," he panted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But again boots were shuffling on the floor and already several men,
+Dan Hodges among them, were between him and the door.  It dawned upon
+him that Blenham must have given emphatic orders and that Blenham had
+the trick of exacting obedience.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hold him here," shouted Hodges, and being a man of little spirit he
+withdrew hastily under Steve's eyes, thrusting another man in front of
+him.  "Keep him for the sheriff.  Startin' a fight in my place&mdash;it's
+disturbin' the peace, that's what it is!  I won't stand it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard drew back two or three paces, his eyes narrowing.  At that
+instant he was sure of what he saw in the faces of at least three of
+the men confronting him; they were going to rush him together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But now Joe Woods was on his feet again.  Packard drew still further
+back, getting the wall behind him.  And then came a diversion.  It was
+Joe Woods speaking heavily:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I fought him fair an' he licked me.  Think I'm the kind of a she-man
+as stands for you guys buttin' in on my fight?  Stand back an' let him
+go!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham said&mdash;" screamed Hodges.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Damn Blenham an' you, too," growled Woods.  "It's my fight an' his.
+Let him go!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They let him go, drawing apart slowly.  With watchful eyes Steve passed
+down the little lane they made.  At the door he turned, saying briefly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll see you in the morning, Woods!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he went out.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap10"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER X
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+A RIDE WITH TERRY
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+Returning at once to the Old Trusty, on the way passing Terry's car
+which still stood in front of the store, Steve Packard asked for the
+use of a telephone.  Whitey nodded toward the office, a little room
+thinly partitioned off from the larger.  A moment later Barbee's voice
+was answering from Ranch Number Ten.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's on the way, Barbee," said Steve quickly.  "Left Red Creek just a
+few minutes ago.  I'll trail him.  Give him the chance to prowl around
+a little; try and find what he's after.  But don't let him get away
+with it!  Understand?  Shoot the legs out from under him if you have
+to.  I'll give you a month's pay for the night's work if you nail him
+with the goods on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clicking up the receiver he went out on the street again, giving no
+heed to the many glances which followed him.  They knew who he was;
+they were speculating on him.  "Ol' man Packard's gran'son," he heard
+one man say.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the thick darkness lying under the poplar tree it was several
+minutes before he was certain that his horse was gone.  He had tethered
+the animal himself; there was no dangling bit of rope to indicate a
+broken tie-rope.  Blenham, the practical, had simply taken thought of
+detail.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not missing a single bet, is Blenham," he thought savagely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He swung about and reentered the saloon.  A buzz of talk up and down
+the long room promptly died away as again the eyes of many men
+travelled his way.  It struck him that they had all been talking of
+him; he knew that they must have marked those signs which Joe Woods's
+fists had left on his face; he stood a moment looking in on them,
+conscious for the first time of his rapidly swelling right eye, seeking
+to estimate what these men made of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed to him that the one emotion he glimpsed on all hands and in
+varying degrees, was distrust.  Little cause for surprise there: he was
+a Packard and this was not the Packard side of Red Creek.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Somebody's put me on foot," he announced crisply.  "I left my horse
+outside, tied.  It's gone now.  Know anything about it, any of you
+boys?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They looked their interest.  Hereabouts one man did not trifle with
+another man's horse.  But there was no answer to his direct question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've got to be riding," he went on quietly.  "Who can lend me a
+saddle-horse for the night?  I'll pay double what it's worth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whitey Wimble gave his bar a long swipe with his wet towel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you're askin' favors, seems to me you're on the wrong side the
+street, ain't you, stranger?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Meaning I am a Packard?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You got me the firs' time.  That's Packard's Town over yonder.  Your
+crowd&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look at my eye!" then said Steve quickly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A big man with a thin little voice at the far end of the room giggled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I seen it already," said Wimble.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Know Joe Woods?  Well, he's got another just like it.  Know Blenham?
+Blenham sicked him on me!  Know old man Packard?  He's sicking Blenham
+on me.  Want to know what I want a horse for?  Blenham's got a head
+start and I want to overhaul him!  To tell him he's a crook and a
+thief.  Now is this side of Red Creek open to me or is it shut?  What's
+the answer, Whitey Wimble?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Wimble appeared both impressed and yet hesitant.  Here was a Packard to
+deal with and Whitey Wimble when taking over the destiny of the Old
+Trusty had been set clear in the matter that he had a ripe, old feud to
+maintain; and still, looking at it the other way, here was a man who
+carried the sign of Joe Woods's fist upon his bruised face, who
+announced that he was out to get Blenham, that there was open trouble
+between him and old man Packard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whitey Wimble, beginning by looking puzzled, wound up by turning a
+distressed face toward Steve.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's kind of a fine point," he suggested finally.  "Now, come right
+down to it, it sort of looks to me&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fine point!" cried Steve hotly, a sudden anger growing within him as
+he thought how Blenham had played the game all along the line, how
+Blenham might well prove too shrewd for a boy like Barbee, how a set of
+prejudiced fools here in the Old Trusty by denying him the loan of a
+horse might seriously be aiding Blenham whom none of them had any love
+for.  "Why, damn it, man, haven't I told you that Blenham has just put
+a raw deal across on me, that he's coming close to getting away with
+it, that all I ask is a horse to run him down?  Who's going to let me
+have one?  I'm in a hurry!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Never until now did he realize how strong a factor in the life of the
+community was the prejudice against his blood.  On every hand he saw
+doubt, clouded eyes, distrust.  Plainly many a man there held him for a
+liar; would even go so far, it was possible, as to suggest later that
+Steve Packard had meant to steal the horse he asked for.  Steve stared
+about him a moment, his back stiffening.  Then, with a little grunt of
+disgust, he strode across the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At least," he flung over his shoulder at Whitey Wimble, "I am going to
+use your telephone again!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without waiting for an answer and caring not the snap of his fingers
+what that answer might be, he went to the telephone, jerking down the
+receiver, saying brusquely to the operator:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ranch Number Ten, please.  In a hurry."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He waited impatiently and, it seemed to him, an inexcusably long time.
+Finally the operator said after the aloof manner of telephone girls:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am ringing them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And again&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am ringing them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They do not answer."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And at last, and then only when Steve made emphatic that there must be
+some one at the Number Ten bunk-house at this hour, the girl said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait a minute."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And after that:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There seems to be something the matter with the line.  I can't raise
+any of the ranch-houses out that way.  We'll send a man out in the
+morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So he couldn't even warn Barbee that Blenham had made good his
+head-start; that Blenham was plainly of one mind to-night; that it was
+up to young Barbee to keep his eyes open and his gun cocked.  He began
+to understand why his grandfather had made Blenham one of his
+right-hand men; he had the cool mind and the way of acting quickly
+which makes for success.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I got a horse for you, pardner," said a slow voice as Packard came out
+of the office.  "A cayuse as can't be beat for legs an' lungs.  Come
+ahead."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve looked at him eagerly.  He was a little fellow, leather-cheeked,
+keen-eyed, leisurely; a stranger, obviously a cowboy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I work for Brocky Lane," offered the stranger as they went out
+together.  "Know him, don't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did a dozen years ago," answered Steve absently.  "Where's your
+horse?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're Steve Packard, ain't you?  You done Brocky a favor when you was
+a kid, didn't you?  Brocky told me.  Brocky's done me a favor.  I'm
+doin' you a favor.  That squares us up all 'round.  Like a circle, all
+in a ring, sort of; get me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," agreed Steve, feeling vaguely that the cowman had unknowingly
+touched upon a problem in higher mathematics.  He slipped a hand into
+his pocket.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the friend whom an old, long-forgotten kindness raised now for him
+at his need, shook his head, would have none of Packard's money, and
+led the way to a shed behind the saloon.  Out of the darkness he
+brought a tall, wall-eyed roan, quickly saddled and bridled and handed
+over to Steve.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Heeled?" came solicitously from the little man as Steve swung up into
+the saddle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, Blenham is.  He goes that way all the time.  An' he's a right
+good shot, the boys say.  If there's some real sour blood stirred up
+between him an' you there's no use bein' a plumb fool, is there?  The
+store's apt to be open yet; there's a firs'-class double-barrel
+shot-gun, secon'-hand but as good as new, in the window.  Only seven
+dollars an' a half."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll send the horse over to Brocky's to-morrow," called Steve.  "And
+as for being square&mdash;call on me at any time for the next favor.  So
+long."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So long," responded the slow-voiced man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve swung out toward the east, curbing his mount's eagerness,
+settling himself in the saddle for a couple of hours of hard riding.
+Slowly he would warm up the big roan, letting him out gradually,
+steadily.  Already he sensed that in truth here was "a cayuse hard to
+beat for legs an' lungs."  And Blenham's head-start was but a matter of
+minutes, half an hour at most.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But before he had ridden fifty yards Steve whirled his horse and rode
+back, going straight to the store.  After all, since Blenham was
+playing a game in which the stakes were no less than ten thousand
+dollars, since Blenham was without doubt the man who had sought to kill
+Bill Royce six months ago for the very same money, since Blenham always
+"went heeled and was a right good shot," why then, as Brocky Lane's
+cowboy put it, "there was no use bein' a plumb fool."  And to ride a
+hundred yards or so and buy a Colt .45 and a box of cartridges required
+but a moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the store the long shelves upon one side held dry-goods, while upon
+the opposite shelves a miscellany of groceries was displayed; toward
+the rear was the storekeeper's assortment of hardware near a counter
+piled high with sweaters, boots, chaparejos, all jumbled hopelessly.
+At the flank of this confusion was a show-case containing a rather fair
+line of side-arms.  Steve, his eye finding what it sought, went
+straight to the back of the house.  And then, looking through an open
+door which gave entrance to the living-room of the storekeeper's
+family, his glance met Terry's.  She was rising to her feet, drawing on
+her gauntlets.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's your train now," a woman's voice was saying.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard heard the whistling of a distant engine.  He lifted his hat,
+she promptly whirled about, giving him her back to look at.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here's what I want," said Steve as the storekeeper came to his side.
+"That .45, and a box of cartridges."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry turned again quickly and he surprised a little look of interest
+in her slightly widened eyes.  A man doesn't buy a gun and a box of
+cartridges at this time of night unless he has a use for them.  Packard
+took up his new purchases, went out, swung again into the saddle, and
+clattered down the street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The night was bright with stars, clear and sweet.  Presently, with only
+a handful of miles behind him, the moon rose above the distant ridge,
+at the full, glorious and generous of light.  He loosened his reins a
+little, gave the big roan his head, and swept on through the
+ghostly-lighted country.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now and then, remarking some old remembered landmark, he glanced from
+it to his watch; more than once, having slipped his watch again into
+his pocket, he leaned forward and patted the horse's neck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then&mdash;he had done a little more than half the distance and was riding
+through the thick shadows of Laurel Cañon, which marks the beginning of
+the long grade&mdash;the unforeseen occurred; the unlooked-for which, he
+knew now, he would have fully expected, had he not counted always upon
+Blenham playing a lone hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the middle of the inky blotch made by the laurels standing up
+against the moon there was a spot through which the moon-rays found
+their way, making a pool of light.  As Packard rode into this bright
+area he heard a rifle-shot, startlingly loud; saw the spit of flame
+from just yonder, perhaps ten feet, certainly not more than twenty feet
+away; felt the big roan plunge under him, race on unsteadily, and sink.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He slipped out of the saddle as the horse crashed down in the bushes at
+the side of the road, and as he did so emptied his revolver into the
+shadows whence had come the rifle-shot.  But he knew that he was a fool
+to hope to hit; the man had had time to select his spot, to screen his
+own body with a boulder or fallen log, to leave open behind him a way
+to safety and darkness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not Blenham himself but one of his crowd did that," muttered Packard
+as he turned back to the fallen horse.  "Just to set me on foot again.
+He isn't up to murder when he sees another way.  And for ten dollars he
+could hire one of his hangers-on to kill a horse."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, it was just another trick for Blenham.  On foot now he must make
+what time he could to the Pinchot farm, some three or four miles
+further on, demand a horse there, and pray that Barbee was equal to his
+task.  But first he must not leave the big roan to suffer needlessly
+and hopelessly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He struck a match and made a flaring torch of a little wisp of dry
+grass.  Loving a good horse as he did, he felt a sudden and utterly new
+sort of hatred of Blenham go rushing along his blood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was with a deep sigh of relief that he straightened up when he saw
+that either chance or a remarkable skill with a rifle had saved Brocky
+Lane's roan from any protracted pain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard pushed on, seeking to make what time he could, breaking into a
+jog-trot time and again upon a down-slope, conserving wind and strength
+for the up-hill climbs, keeping in the shadows for the most part but
+taking his chance over and over in the moonlit open.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yet it was being borne in upon him that it was useless to hurry now;
+that Blenham had made of his advantage a safe lead; that he might as
+well slow down, make a cigarette, take his time.  And still, being the
+sort of man he was, he kept doggedly on, telling himself that a race is
+anybody's race until the tape is broken; that Blenham might be having
+his own troubles somewhere ahead; that quitting did no good and that it
+is not good to be a "quitter."  But he had little enough hope of coming
+up again with Blenham that night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then, when he had been on foot not more than twenty minutes, a
+faint, even, drumming sound swelling steadily through the night
+somewhere behind him put a new, quick stir in his blood.  He stopped,
+stood almost breathless a moment, listening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The smooth drumming grew louder; suddenly topping a rise the two
+headlights of an automobile flashed into his eyes.  Terry Temple, her
+errand done in Red Creek, was racing homeward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I'll beat Blenham to it yet!" cried Steve.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Where the moonlight streamed brightest and whitest across the road he
+sprang out so that she could not fail to see him, tossing up both arms
+in signal to her to stop.  Her headlights blinded him one moment; he
+heard the warning blast of her horn; he entertained briefly the
+suspicion that she was going to refuse to stop.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Incredible&mdash;and yet he had not thought of her own likely emotions.  To
+have a man leap out into the road in front of her, all unexpectedly,
+waving his arms and calling on her to stop&mdash;  Why, she'd think herself
+fallen into the hands of a highwayman!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was coming on, straight on, her horn emitting one long, sustained
+shriek of menace.  Packard ground his teeth; either she did not
+recognize him and was bound upon getting by him, or she did recognize
+him and was accepting her opportunity to emphasize her attitude toward
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In any case she was going by, she in whom lay his sole hope to come to
+grips with Blenham.  If he let her evade he might as well quit, quit in
+utter disgust with the world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With the world?  Disgust with himself, that he had let Blenham beat
+him, that he wasn't much of a man, that his old grandfather was right
+about him.  Her car was rushing down upon him; if he let it pass, why,
+he'd be letting, not only a girl laugh at him, but he'd be letting his
+chance rush by him.  His chance that loomed up bigger than the oncoming
+machine and more real; his chance not for to-night alone but for ever
+after.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For if Blenham beat him to-night and his grandfather beat him again
+later on, he knew that he would pass away from the country about Ranch
+Number Ten, that he would give over all sustained effort to make
+something of his life, that he would go back to drifting, rounding out
+his days after the fashion of the last twelve years.  It was while
+Terry's car was speeding toward him that all of this ran through his
+mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was the possibility that, knowing who he was, Terry would try to
+bluff him out of the road, counting confidently upon his leaping to
+safety at the last moment; there was the other possibility that she
+mistook his motives and would run him down in a sort of panic of
+self-defense.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard, with his rather clear-cut conception of the girl's character
+to steer by, saw the one way to master the situation.  Whirling about,
+his back to her now, he broke into a run, speeding along the road in
+front of her.  As he ran the hard lines about his mouth softened into a
+rare grin: he'd have her guessing for a minute, anyway.  And by the
+time she got through guessing&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had duplicated his feat of the afternoon at the bridge in Red Creek.
+Terry, in her first astonishment that the man should turn and run
+straight on in front of her, slowed down, hesitation in her mind.  What
+was he up to?  Then there came sudden shadows in a narrow part of the
+road, a sharp turn, the absolute necessity of slowing down just a
+trifle more, and then&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's all right; go ahead!" called Packard lightly.  He was standing on
+her running-board.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had thrown off her hat to the cool of the evening.  As they passed
+out from the shadows he could see her eyes.  He pushed back his own hat
+and Terry saw his eyes.  For a moment, while the car sped on, neither
+spoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Looking at her he had glimpsed wonder, an annoyance that was swiftly
+growing into anger, and a certain assurance that Miss Terry Temple
+fully intended to remember this day and to square accounts with Stephen
+Packard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Returning his look, Terry had seen but one emotion in his eyes: pure
+triumph.  She could not know how the man of him, having but just now
+succeeded in this first task he had set himself, felt a sudden
+confidence of the future.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I had let you go by," said Packard quietly, "I should have felt
+that I had let my destiny pass me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you start in getting fresh just because it's moonlight!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve looked puzzled, understood, put back his head and laughed
+joyously.  Then, his face suddenly serious again, he considered her
+speculatively.  Now for the first time he became aware that Terry was
+already carrying a passenger.  A small man, Japanese, immaculate, and
+frightened so that his teeth were chattering.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was Iki, who had come into Red Creek this evening by train and due
+to cook for the Temple ranch.  Just now he was screwed up in his place,
+ready to jump if Steve moved his way, his purse clutched in his plump
+hand, half offered already.  Steve beamed upon him, then turned his
+eyes, still speculative, upon Terry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you care to tell me," said Terry tartly, "why you're always getting
+in my way?  Think you're smart, climbing aboard like a monkey?  You've
+done the trick twice; do I have to look out for you every time I take
+the car out?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I just happen to be in a hurry," said Packard.  "And going your way.
+Somebody shot my horse back there for me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her eyes grew actually round; Iki shivered audibly.  But in the girl's
+case the emotion aroused by Packard's words was short-lived.  Why
+should a man shoot the horse under Steve Packard?  Disbelief reshaped
+her eyes; she cried out at him as her foot went down on the accelerator:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Think I'm the kind to believe all the yarns you can tell?  If you want
+to know what I think, Steve Packard&mdash;you're a liar!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He laughed, well content with the moment and the situation, well
+content with his unwilling companion just as she was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And do you know that what I told you this afternoon was true?" he
+countered cheerfully.  "You're just like my blazing old Grandy!
+Instead of being my grandfather he ought to be yours.  By golly, Miss
+Terry Pert," teasing the blood higher into her cheeks with his
+laughter, "that might be arranged, too!  Mightn't it?  You and I&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!" cried Terry, and he had no doubts about her meaning what she
+said.  "Oh, I hate you!  Yes, worse than I hate old Hell-Fire: he keeps
+out of my trail, anyway.  And you, you big bully, you woman-fighter,
+you&mdash;you&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Just in time he guessed her purpose and threw out his hand across her
+steering-wheel and grasped her right hand.  The car swerved dangerously
+a moment, then came back to its steady course as Steve's other hand
+closed over Terry's left.  Slowly, putting his greater strength gently
+against hers, he took her automatic from her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thirty-eight calibre?"  he  said  coolly.  "There's nothing little
+about your way of doing things, is there?  And you meant to drill a
+hole through me, I'm bound!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry's face gleamed white in the pale light; and he knew from the look
+in her eyes as they seemed fairly to clash with his, that it was the
+white of sheer rage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd just as lief blow your head off as shoot a rattlesnake," she
+announced crisply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I believe you," he grunted.  "Just the same, if you'd only&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, shut up!" she cried, shaking his hand free from hers on the wheel
+and driving on recklessly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I would like to mention," came an uncertain voice from a very pale
+Japanese, "that I must walk on my feet.  I am most regretful&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, shut up!" cried Terry.  "Shut up!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And for the rest of the ride both Iki and Steve Packard were silent.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap11"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XI
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE TEMPTING OF YELLOW BARBEE
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+"Here's where I get down," said Steve after a very long silence during
+which he watched Terry's pretty, puckered face while Terry, gripping
+her wheel, recklessly assumed the responsibilities of their three
+lives, hurling the car on through the moonlit night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Iki, breathing every now and then a long quivering sigh and forgetting
+to breathe betweenwhiles, held on tightly with both hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here's where I get down," said Steve again.  Here the road followed
+the line of his north fence; less than a mile to the southward he could
+see a light like a fallen star, gleaming cheerfully through the trees.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He sensed rather than saw a quick stiffening of Terry's already tense
+little body; fancied that the car was steadily taking on greater speed,
+read Terry's purpose in a flash.  If he forced her to carry him, why
+then she would take him as far out of his way as possible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Terry Temple!" he cried sharply, leaning in a little toward her.
+"What's the matter with you anyway?  What if we're not friends exactly?
+I never did you any harm, did I?  Why, good Lord, girl, when a man
+tells you his horse has been shot under him; when he is trying to
+overhaul the crook at the bottom of the whole mess whom you hate as
+well as I do&mdash;  Oh, I mean Blenham and you know it&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Liar!" cried Terry, flashing her eyes at him, and back to the road
+alternately white with the moon and black with shadows.  "Liar on two
+counts!  Didn't I see your horse this afternoon?  Tied in front of
+Wimble's whiskey joint?  Oh, it's where I'd expect him!  Well&mdash;and you
+needn't think I looked to see or cared, either&mdash;when I came by just
+now, leaving town, I saw your horse standing there yet.  So you
+needn't&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That couldn't be," muttered Steve.  "And yet&mdash;  Anyhow, I've got to
+get off here.  Will you stop, please?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I won't stop please!  Nobody asked you to ride that I know of.
+Get off the same way you got on!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard realized two things very clearly then:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If he jumped with the car going at its present speed he would probably
+break his neck; if he gave any considerable time to arguing the matter
+with her he would be carried as far in five minutes as he could walk in
+an hour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean business to-night," he told her bluntly.  "If you don't slow
+down before I count ten I am going to lean out a little&mdash;like this&mdash;and
+shoot a hole in your tire.  Then, if you keep on, I'll shoot a hole in
+the other tire.  Understand?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry laughed mockingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You wouldn't dare!" she told him serenely.  "That would be some kind
+of a crime; they could put you in jail for it.  You'd be scared to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One, two, three, four, five," he counted briskly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I would seek to interrupt to advise, oh, Miss Lady!" chattered Iki.
+"His voice has the sound of bloodthirstiness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Six, seven, eight, nine&mdash;ten," counted Packard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry sniffed.  He leaned out, she saw the glint of the moon upon his
+revolver.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She threw out her clutch and jammed down both brakes, hard.  Steve
+swung out and down to the ground.  The car, as though it had gained
+fresh power from the fact of being freed of his weight, shot forward,
+stopped again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not exactly friends?" cried Terry, and he marked a new trembling in
+her voice.  "I should say not.  You&mdash;you darned snake, you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And she was gone, spinning along into the night, hidden from him by the
+first hill around whose base the road curved.  He stared after her a
+moment, shrugged, turned his back, and strode rapidly toward the Ranch
+Number Ten corrals.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had planned correctly; he had correctly measured Blenham's impulses
+and desires.  Further, he had come in time, just in time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The light was in the ranch-house.  Though but little after eleven
+o'clock it was dark within the bunk-house, the men long ago asleep.
+But Barbee was awake, his wits about him; his voice and Blenham's, both
+quiet, met Steve's ears as he slipped about the corner of the house,
+coming under the window where the light was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham was talking now.  He sat loosely in a chair, his hands one upon
+the other, idle in his lap.  Barbee, his eyes narrowed and watchful,
+stood at the far side of the room.  On the floor, near his feet, was a
+revolver; from its position Steve guessed that Barbee had just kicked
+it safely out of Blenham's reach.  Barbee's own gun was in the boy's
+hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're a pretty foxy kid, Barbee," Blenham was saying tonelessly.
+"You got the drop on me; you're the firs' man as ever did that little
+trick.  Yes; you're a pretty foxy kid!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barbee shrugged and spat and answered Blenham with a curse and a
+grunted:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nobody's askin' your opinion, Blenham."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Steve saw and Blenham must have seen the gleam of triumph in
+Barbee's eye.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you goin' to do with me?" asked Blenham presently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothin'," replied Barbee.  "Jus' keep you where I got you until Steve
+Packard comes back.  Which ought to be mos' any time now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He'll be late," said Blenham.  "He won't be here for two or three
+hours.  Suppose while we wait, let's me an' you talk!" he said sharply,
+sitting forward in his chair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well?" said Barbee.  "Talk an' be damned to you, Blenham.  Only you
+don't talk yourself out'n the hole you're in right now.  An', I promise
+you, you make a quick jump for a get-away, an' I'll shoot you dead."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know," Blenham nodded.  "You'd do it.  But I ain't goin' to try any
+fool thing like that.  I'm jus' goin'&mdash;  Like I said to you, let's
+talk.  What's Packard payin' you for this night's work?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's no tightwad, if that's what you're drivin' at.  I'd of done
+to-night's job an' glad of the chance an' you know it, Blenham, an'
+never asked pay for it.  But I'm drawin' down a whole month's pay
+extra, if I've got you like you are when he comes in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham laughed softly.  Then he moved the hands resting in his lap.
+Packard saw that they were folded loosely about an old leather wallet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's sure payin' you generous, Barbee," jeered Blenham.  "You know it!
+Why, look here: This is yours an' more to trail it if you jus' pocket
+your gun an' let me go!  I ain't askin' much an' I'm payin' my way.
+Look it over, kid!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard saw how he stripped a bank-note from a thin sheaf of its
+fellows; how he tossed it toward Barbee.  It fell to the floor; a
+little draft set it drifting; Blenham set his foot upon it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look at it!" he snapped, for the first time giving sign of the strain
+he was laboring under.  "It's yours&mdash;if you ain't a fool."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barbee, not to be tricked were this some ruse to snare his attention,
+said crisply:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Put you' han's up while I get it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham obeyed; Barbee stooped swiftly, all the while with eyes riveted
+on his prisoner.  Then, the muzzle of his gun raised another inch, he
+looked at what he held.  When he looked back at Blenham his eyes were
+round, his mouth stood a little open.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My God!" he gasped.  "It's a thousan' dollars!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Blenham quietly.  "It's a thousan' dollars.  That's quite a
+little wad, Barbee; it's more, anyhow, than an extra month's wages,
+ain't it?  An' it's yours if you want it!  Think of the times you can
+go on, think of the way you could make Red Creek open its eyes!  An'
+there's more to come if you take that an' let me go an' jus' watch my
+play an' take a chance with me when I say so.  What's the word, Barbee?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard, having held back thus long, remained motionless, glimpsing
+unexpectedly something of Barbee's soul; watching a little human drama,
+become spectator to the battle royal of the two contending factions
+which made up a man's self.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed to him that young Barbee was pale and grew paler; that a
+shiver ran through him; that he was, for the moment, like one drugged.
+And, side by side, two emotions, both primal and unmistakable, peered
+out of his eyes: a savage hatred of Blenham, a leaping greed of gold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus for a little forgetting his own interest in this scene, Packard
+watched, wondering what the outcome would be.  Blenham tempted.  Barbee
+hesitated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Right here in my hand," Blenham was saying coldly, "are nine more like
+that, Barbee.  Ten thousan' dollars in all.  One thousan' to go to you
+for jus' keepin' out of my way.  I said once you're a foxy kid.  Now
+let's see if you are.  Tie to a man like me that's out to make a pile,
+a damn big pile, Barbee&mdash;or hang to a fool like Steve Packard an' take
+his pay in dribbles an' let him be the one that gathers in all the big
+kale.  Him an' me when I get things goin' right; him an' me with you
+jus' gettin' the scraps.  Which is it?  Eh, kid?  Which way're you
+goin'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barbee held the bank-note in his left hand; slowly his calloused
+fingers closed tightly about it, crumpling it, clutching it as though
+they would never release it.  And then slowly the fingers opened so
+that the wrinkled bit of paper lay in his palm under his eyes.  Barbee
+ran his tongue back and forth between his dry lips.  Steve, staring in
+at him through the window, saw in his eyes the two lights, that of
+hate, that of covetousness; they burned side by side as a yellow candle
+and a red might have done.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Which way would Barbee go?  Did Barbee know?  Blenham did not; Steve
+did not.  Suddenly, seeing how the two fires flickered in Barbee's
+eyes, Steve cried out within himself:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's unfair!  It's asking too much of Barbee!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And aloud, shoving the nose of a Colt .45 through the window-pane which
+splintered noisily:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hands up there, Blenham!  Good boy, Barbee.  You've got him, all
+right!  Watch him while I slip in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham jumped to his feet, threw out his arms, and cursed savagely.
+Then, grown abruptly quiet, he dropped back into his chair, his two big
+hands loose about the wallet hidden under them.  Steve threw a leg over
+the window-sill and came in, his gun ready, his eyes taking stock of
+Barbee while they appeared to be for Blenham only.  And Barbee, white
+now as he had never been until now, shivered, filled his lungs with a
+long sigh, and fell back a couple of paces, staring at Steve, at
+Blenham, but most of all at the thing in his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You put it across, Barbee!" cried Steve heartily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He reached forward and snatched the wallet from Blenham's knee.
+Blenham's big hands, clenching slowly, fell to his sides; Blenham's
+eyes, sullen and evil, clung steadily to Packard's.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You've saved me my inheritance to-night; you've helped save me my
+ranch.  You've helped me square the game with a dirty dog named
+Blenham!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Like a dog Blenham showed his teeth.  His drawn face was stamped in the
+image of fury.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're a sweet picture of a dead game sport," he growled, shifting
+nervously in his chair.  "I ain't got a gun; you an' Barbee have; go
+ahead an' call me all the names you like!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve counted the bank-notes in the wallet.  Blenham had spoken truly;
+there were nine one-thousand-dollar bills.  He put out his hand to
+Barbee for the tenth.  Barbee, staring strangely like one rudely
+awakened from sleep and not yet certain of his surroundings, let the
+bank-note go.  His eyes, leaving it at last to rest steadily on
+Blenham, looked red and ugly.  Packard slipped the wallet into his
+shirt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Barbee," he said quietly, while he busied his eyes with Blenham's
+slightest movement, "this money was left to me by my father.  He gave
+it to Bill Royce to keep for me.  You know all that Bill has stood from
+Blenham; now you know why.  There's quite a load of scoundrelism dumped
+off at Blenham's door.  And, thanks to you, we've got the dead wood on
+him at last!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you goin' to do with him?"  Barbee, speaking for the first
+time since Steve's entrance, was husky-voiced.  Blenham shifted again
+in his chair; now there was only cold hatred in the boy's look.  "We'd
+ought to be able to put him in the pen for a good long time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham laughed jeeringly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Try it!" he blustered.  "See what you can prove, actually prove to a
+jury an' a judge!  Try it!  You go to the law an' see&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To hell with the law!" cut in Steve, and though his voice was not
+lifted for the imprecation Blenham shot a quick, startled look at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And both Blenham and Barbee, listening wonderingly, understood that
+here was a Packard talking; that in the shoes of the grandson, even
+now, there might be standing the big bulk of the uncompromising
+grandfather.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do I want with the law now?  Blenham would wriggle out, I
+suppose; or he would get a light sentence and trim that down to nothing
+with good behavior.  No, Blenham, if you ever go to jail it will be
+somebody's else doing; not mine.  Is it just jail for the man who shot
+down my old pardner in cold blood, just for the sake of a handful of
+money?  Is it to be just jail for the man who has made Bill Royce's
+life a hell for six months?  Just jail for the brute who had a horse
+shot under me to-night?  Why, damn you&mdash;" and at last his voice broke
+through the ice of restraint and rang out angrily, full of menace&mdash;"do
+you think I'm going to let you go out of my hands into the hands of
+judge and jury after all you've done?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham sprang up, drawing back.  The muzzle of Steve's .45 followed
+him threateningly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Barbee," said Packard, his voice once more under control, "go to the
+bunk-house and send Bill Royce here.  Don't wake the other boys.  Then
+you come back here with him.  And bring a whip with you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A whip?" repeated Barbee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; a whip.  Any kind you can lay your hands to in a hurry; quirt or
+buggy-whip or bull-whip!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham watched Barbee go.  Then, drawn back into a corner of the room,
+sullen and vigilant, he stood biting nervously at a big, clenched,
+hairy fist.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap12"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XII
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IN A DARK ROOM
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+Bill Royce, hastily and but half dressed, came promptly to the house,
+stumbling along at Barbee's heels.  Blenham, his silence and
+watchfulness unbroken, still chewed at his fist.  Barbee brought a
+heavy blacksnake in his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Barbee says you want me, Steve?" said Royce from the threshold.  "An'
+that Blenham's here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, Bill," Steve answered.  And to Barbee, "Close the door behind
+you.  Lock it.  Give me the key.  Now fasten the shutters across both
+windows."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barbee obeyed silently.  Blenham's eyes followed him, seeming
+fascinated by the whip in Barbee's hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Listen a minute, Bill," said Steve when Barbee had done.  "I want to
+tell you something."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And, as briefly as might be, he told Royce of the ten dollar bills
+substituted for the real legacy, of the results of his evening in Red
+Creek, of Barbee's trapping Blenham, of the recovery of the ten
+thousand dollars, of a horse shot dead on the Red Creek road.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then," said Royce at the end of it, his mind catching eagerly one
+outstanding fact, "I was right, Steve?  An' it was Blenham as gave me
+both barrels of Johnny Mills's shot-gun?  It was Blenham for sure,
+wasn't it, Steve?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, Bill.  It was Blenham."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An'&mdash;an' Blenham's right across there now?  It's him I can hear
+breathin', Steve?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, Bill."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An'&mdash;an' what for did you sen' for me, Steve?  What are you goin' to
+do to him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard beckoned to Barbee.  The boy came quickly to his side, giving
+him the blacksnake.  Steve laid it across Bill Royce's hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm going to give him a taste of that, Bill," he said.  "And I wanted
+you here.  You can't see it; but before I am through with him, you can
+hear it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Goin' to tie him up an' whip him, Steve?  That it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pack of low-bred mongrel pups!" cried Blenham wrathfully, for the
+first time breaking his silence.  "Sneakin', low-lived curs an'
+cowards!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That it, Steve?" persisted Royce.  "Goin' to tie him up an' give him a
+whippin' with a blacksnake?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am going to whip him&mdash;for your sake, Bill," answered Steve sternly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He threw off his coat, tossing it behind him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Get the chairs and table out of the way, Barbee!  No, I am not going
+to tie him up; that isn't necessary, Bill.  I can handle him with my
+hands without tying him; I am going to do it.  And then I am going to
+take the whip and lay it across him until his hide is in strips&mdash;or
+until he begs to be let go.  Ready, Blenham?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mean that?" snarled Blenham, a new look in his eye.  "Mean you're
+goin' to give me an even break?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Bill Royce, fairly trembling with an eagerness strange to him, had
+clutched at Steve's arm, had found it, was holding him back, crying out
+excitedly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're a good pal, Stevie; you're the best pal as ever was an' I know
+it!  Didn't I always know you'd be like this?  But can't you see,
+Stevie, can't you see it ain't enough another man should lick him, even
+when that man's my pardner, even when it's Stevie himself doin' it!
+Ain't I been waitin' an' waitin' to get my hands on him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham, a little comforted by Steve's words, jeered openly now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come on, Blind Billy," he taunted.  "An' when I've throwed you into
+the junk pile I'll take on your friends!  One at the time&mdash;you know how
+the sayin' goes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve was shaking Royce's hand from his arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me do this for you, Bill," he said firmly.  "It's only fair.  If
+you could see, it would be different."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Royce clung on desperately, crying out insistently:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blind as I am I can lick him!  I know I can lick him!  Ain't I done it
+in my sleep a dozen times, a dozen ways?  Ain't I always promised
+myself sometime I'd get him in my two hands, I'd feel him wriggle an'
+squirm?  This is my fight, Steve, an'&mdash;Blenham, where are you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here!" cried Blenham.  "An' gettin' tired of waitin'!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Royce plunged toward him.  But Steve Packard caught his old friend
+about the body, holding him back a moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Easy, Bill," he said gently.  "Easy.  I was wrong, you are right.
+It's your fight.  But take your time.  Get your coat off.  Barbee,
+stand by that window there; if Blenham tries to get out stop him.  I'll
+stand here.  All ready, Bill?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ready!" cried Royce, his voice a roar of eagerness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All ready, Blenham?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ain't I said it?" jeered Blenham.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then&mdash;" and suddenly Steve had snatched up the lamp, blowing down the
+chimney and plunging the room into thick darkness&mdash;"go to it!  The
+light is out, Bill!  The room is pitch-black.  You're as well off as he
+is.  And now, old pardner.  Now!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was suddenly very still in the room; the thick, impenetrable
+darkness seemed almost a palpable curtain screening what went forward;
+the silence was for a little literally breathless.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then there came the first faint, tell-tale sound, the slow, tortured
+creaking of a board as a man put his weight upon it.  Through the
+darkness, across the room, Bill Royce was going slowly, questing the
+man who, surprised by the action of Steve's which had reduced his
+advantage over a blind man, held to his corner.  And then, stranger
+sound still through that tense silence, came Bill Royce's low laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good boy, Steve," he said softly.  "I'd never thought of that!  In the
+dark Blenham's as blind as me!  How do you like it, Blenham?  How'd you
+like to have it this way all the time?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham's only answer lay in his leaping forward, out from his corner,
+and striking; Royce's answer to that was another quiet laugh.  He had
+slipped aside; Blenham had flailed at the thin air; Royce, grown still
+again, knew one of the moments of sheer joy which had been his during
+these last weary months.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard and Barbee, frowning unavailingly toward each little noise,
+could only guess at what went forward so few inches from them.  A
+scraping foot might be either Royce's or Blenham's; a long, deep sigh
+or quick breathing now here, now there, might emanate from either man.
+The strange thing, thought both Barbee and Packard, was that even ten
+seconds could pass without these two men at each other's throats.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But, a supreme moment his at last, Bill Royce found himself grown
+miserly in its expenditure; he would dribble the golden seconds through
+his fingers, he would draw out the experience, tasting its joy fully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For the moment his blindness was no greater than Blenham's; for a
+little Blenham would grope and wonder and hesitate and grow tense after
+the fashion the blind man knew so well.  And then at the end, when an
+end could no longer be delayed, Bill Royce would mete out the
+long-delayed punishment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But, since the natures of both men were downright, since their hatreds
+were outright, since there was little of finesse in either and a great
+impatience stirring both, Royce's playing with Blenham was short.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There came a sudden shuffling of feet&mdash;and Royce's laugh; a blow
+landing heavily&mdash;and Royce's laugh; another blow, a grunt, and a panted
+curse from Blenham&mdash;and Royce's laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then only a scraping of feet up and down, back and forth along the
+bare floor, the thudding of heavy shoulders into an unexpected wall,
+the impact of fist against body.  In the utter darkness the two men
+gripped each other, struck, swayed together, staggered apart, only to
+come together again to strike harder, more merciless blows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard and Barbee now held their breaths while the others panted
+freely; both Packard and Barbee, stepping quickly now this way and now
+that as the battling forms swayed up and down, sought to gauge what was
+happening by the sounds which came to their ears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Muttered imprecations, scuffling feet in a rude dance of rage, another
+heavy, thudding blow, a coughing curse.  Whose?  Blenham's, since after
+it came Bill Royce's laugh.  Another blow, fresh pounding and scraping
+of boots&mdash;blow on top of blow, curse on top of curse&mdash;a man falling
+heavily&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Who was down?  Royce of Blenham?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bill!" called Packard.  "Bill!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No answer save that of two big bodies rolling together on the floor.
+Both were down, Royce and Blenham.  Both were fighting, wordless and
+infuriated.  Who was on top?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No man on top long, no man under the other more than a second.  The
+rolling bodies struck against Packard's leg and he drew back, giving
+them room.  The dust puffing up from the floor filled his nostrils.
+The room was becoming unendurably close, sickeningly close.  The sweat
+must be streaming from both men by now.  Packard sniffed, fancying the
+acrid smell of fresh blood.  The big bulks rolled and threshed and
+whipped here and there&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hell!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a cry of mingled rage and pain; it came bursting explosively
+from Blenham's lips.  Royce's laugh followed it; Packard shivered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bill!" he cried.  "Bill!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Royce did not answer; perhaps for the very good reason that he did not
+hear.  There were other matters now engaging his attention solely and
+exclusively.  The fighting fury, the hate frenzy was riding him and he
+in turn was riding his enemy.  Cool sanity and hot blood-lust do not
+find places side by side in the same brain.  A second time came the
+horrible cry from Blenham.  Packard struck a match hastily and lighted
+the lamp.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard and Barbee together dragged Royce away, letting Blenham lie
+there.  Both men were naked to their waists, their shirts and
+undershirts in rags and strips hanging grotesquely about their hips;
+Royce looked like some hideously painted burlesque of a ballet-dancer
+in a comic skirt.  Only there was nothing of burlesque or comedy in his
+face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard, glancing from him down to the tortured body of Blenham that
+breathed jerkily, noisily, turned with a sudden revulsion of feeling
+and hurled the heavy blacksnake away from him.  He had not fancied the
+sharp smell of fresh blood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I got him!" said Royce shakily.  "With my two hands, I got him!
+Didn't I, Stevie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Better than you know, Bill!" muttered Packard.  "Better than you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The thing had been an accident, at least in so far as Bill Royce's
+intent was concerned.  Packard knew that; he knew that his old pardner
+fought hard, fought mercilessly, but fought fair.  But in a larger
+sense was it an accident?  Or rather a mere retributive punishment
+decreed by an eternal justice?  There in the pitch dark, for no man to
+see the how of it, this is perhaps what had happened:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There had been the old, long-rowelled Mexican spur hanging on the wall;
+Royce's shoulder or Blenham's had knocked it down; their feet had
+pushed it out to the middle of the floor.  They had fallen, together,
+heavily; they had rolled.  Blenham had gone over on his face, Royce's
+hands worrying him.  The spur&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But it mattered little how it had come about.  The result was the
+thing.  Blenham would never see with his right eye again.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap13"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIII
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+AT THE LUMBER CAMP
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+They did what they could for Blenham&mdash;which was but little&mdash;and let him
+go when he was ready.  Before daylight he had ridden away, dead white,
+sick-looking, and wordless save for his parting words in a strangely
+quiet voice&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll get all three of you for this, s'elp me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They had bound his head up in a strip torn from an old sheet; the last
+they saw of him in the uncertain light was this bandage, rising and
+falling slowly as his horse bore him away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham gone, Barbee and Bill Royce went down to the bunk-house again,
+slipping in quietly.  Steve Packard, alone in the ranch-house, sat
+smoking his pipe for half an hour.  Then he went to bed, the bank-notes
+still in his shirt, his gun under his pillow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Twice last night he had said to Joe Woods, the lumber-camp boss, "I'll
+see you in the morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Morning come, Steve breakfasted early, saddled his horse, and turned
+out across the fields to meet the rising sun.  And it seemed to his
+fancies, set a-tingle in the early dawn freshness, that the rising sun,
+ancient symbol of youth and vigor and hope with triumph's wings, was
+coming to meet him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At this period of the day, especially when he rides and is alone and
+the forests thicken all about him, man is prone to confidence.  It had
+been a simple matter, so he looked upon it now, to have discovered the
+truth of the substituted bills last night; as simple a matter had been
+his winning at seven-and-a-half or his whipping big Joe Woods or his
+recovery of the lost legacy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham, or rather an agent of Blenham, had killed his horse; what
+then?  His destiny had stepped forward; Terry had come; he had whizzed
+back to the ranch in her car and on time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What if the ranch were mortgaged and to the hardest man in seven
+counties?  What though his grandfather had obviously fallen supine
+before the old man's tempting sin, which is avarice, and was bound to
+break him?  Was fate not playing him for her favorite?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To Steve Packard, riding to meet the sun and to keep his promise to the
+lumber boss, the world just now was an exceedingly bright and lovely
+place; in this hour of a leaping optimism he could even picture Terry
+Temple in a companionably laughing mood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So early did he take to saddle that the fag end of the dawn was still
+sweet in the air when he passed under the great limbs of the stragglers
+of the forests clothing his eastern hill-slopes.  He noted how between
+the widely separated boles the grass was thick and rich and untrampled;
+reserved against the time of need.  There was no stock here yet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He passed on, swung into the little-used trail which brought him first
+to the McKittrick cabin where a double-barrelled shot-gun six months
+ago had brought Bill Royce his blindness; then to the lumber-camp a
+mile further on.  Both were on the bank of Packard's Creek; the flume
+constructed by Joe Woods's men followed the line of the stream.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The new sun in his eyes, Steve drew his hat low down on his forehead
+and looked curiously about him.  The timberjacks had come only
+recently; so much was obvious.  They had come to stay; that was as
+plainly to be seen.  Rough slabs of green timber, still drying and
+twisting and splitting as it did so, had been knocked together rudely
+to make a long, low building where cook and cookstove and a two-plank
+table indicated both kitchen and dining-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A half-dozen other shacks and lean-tos, seen here and there through the
+trees, completed the camp.  Great fallen trees&mdash;they were taking only
+the full-grown timber&mdash;looking helpless and hopeless, lay this way and
+that like broken giants, majestically resigned to the conqueror's axe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here in the peace and quiet of the pinking day this inroad of
+commercialism struck Steve suddenly both as slaughter and sacrilege;
+among the stalwart standing patriarchs and their bowed brethren he sat
+his horse staring frowningly at the little ugly clutter of buildings
+housing the invaders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My beloved old granddad had his nerve with him," he grunted as he rode
+on into the tiny settlement.  "As usual!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The cook, yawning, bleary-eyed, unthinkably tousled, was just
+bestirring himself.  Steve saw his back and a trailing suspender as he
+went into the cook-shed carrying some kindling-wood in one hand and a
+bucket of water in the other.  It was only when Packard, having ridden
+to his door and looked in, startled the cook into swinging about, that
+the dull-eyed signs of a night of dissipation showed in the other's
+face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Up late last night, I'll bet," laughed Steve, easing himself in the
+saddle.  The cook made a face unmistakably eloquent of a bad taste in
+his mouth and went down on his knees before his stove, settling slowly
+like a man with stiff, rheumatic joints or else a head which he did not
+intend to jar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Drunk las' night," he growled, settling back on his haunches as his
+fire caught.  "A man that'll get drunk is a damn' fool.  I'm t'rough
+wid it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where's Woods?" asked Steve.  "Up yet?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, rot him, he's up.  He's always up.  He's&mdash;holy smoke, I got a
+head!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is he?" demanded Packard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The cook rose gently and for a moment clasped his head with both hands.
+Then he immersed it gradually in his bucket of icy water.  After which,
+drying himself with a dirty towel and setting the bucket of water on
+his stove, he turned red-rimmed eyes upon Steve.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're the guy I fed the other mornin', ain't you?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"More'n which," continued the cook, "you're the guy as licked Woodsy
+las' night in Red Crick?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again Steve nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An' again you're claimin' to run the ranch here?  An' to own it?  An'
+to be ol' Hell-Fire's gran'son?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I asked you where Woods was," Packard reminded him sharply.  The cook
+threw up his hand as though to ward off a blow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whatcha yellin' in my ear for?" he moaned dismally.  "Want to split my
+head off?  Woodsy's over yonder; talkin' with a man name of Blenham.
+Ever hear of him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Over yonder" plainly meant just across the creek where there was a
+little flat open space among the trees in which stood one of the larger
+shanties.  Steve saw a stove-pipe sticking out crookedly through the
+shed roof; noted a thin spear of smoke.  He spurred across the stream
+and to the timber boss's quarters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Woods heard him and came out into the brightening morning, drawing the
+door closed behind him.  His eyes, like the cook's though to a lesser
+degree, showed indications of a wild night in town.  Steve guessed that
+he hadn't undressed all night; that he was not entirely sober just now
+though he carried himself steadily and spoke well enough.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought you'd show," said Woods quietly, his big hands down in his
+pockets, his shoulders against the wall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is Blenham doing here?" Steve asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Woods narrowed his eyes in a speculative frown.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's damn' near dead.  He's waitin' for me to get one of the boys to
+hitch up an' haul him to a doctor.  He says you an' two other guys
+gouged his eye out for him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's a liar," announced Packard angrily.  "The thing was an accident.
+It was a fair fight between him and Bill Royce.  Blenham fell on an old
+spur.  I promised you I'd be here this morning, Woods."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Woods.  "I expected you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You were square with me last night," went on Packard quietly.  "I
+appreciate the fact.  If ever I can do you a favor, just say so.  So
+much for that part of it.  Next: Maybe you've heard I'm the owner of
+Ranch Number Ten?  And that I'm running it myself?  I've come over to
+tell you this morning that we're knocking off work here.  I don't want
+any more timber down."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There came a little twitching at the corner of Woods's broad mouth.  He
+made no answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hear me?" snapped Steve.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure I hear you," said Woods insolently.  "So does Blenham; he's right
+inside where he can hear.  I guess it's him you want to talk with.  I'm
+takin' my orders off'n Blenham an' nobody else."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've talked already with Blenham.  I've told him not to set his hoofs
+on my ranch again after to-day.  Since he's pretty badly hurt I'll let
+you haul him to the doctor but I don't want him hauled back.  Further,
+I want work stopped here right now.  The men will be having breakfast
+in a few minutes.  After breakfast you can explain to them and let them
+go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Woods shrugged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My orders, hot out'n Blenham's mouth, is to stick on the job here an'
+saw wood," he said colorlessly.  "I'm takin' my pay off'n him an' I'm
+doin' what he says."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There seemed only a careless indifference in his gesture as he partly
+turned his back, staring up-stream; but the slight movement served to
+show Packard that Woods carried a gun on his hip, in plain sight.
+Well, Woods himself had said&mdash;"I expected you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Last night and for a definite purpose Steve had armed himself; this
+morning, setting out on this errand, he had tossed the revolver into a
+table drawer at the ranch-house.  He had never been a gunman; if
+circumstance dictated that he must go armed, well and good.  But his
+brows contracted angrily at the display of Woods's readiness for
+gun-play.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look here, you Joe Woods!" he cried out.  "And listen, too, you
+Blenham!  I'm no trouble-seeker; I know it's a dead easy thing to start
+a row that will see more than one man dead before it's ended, and
+what's the use?  But I mean to have what is mine in spite of you and
+Hell-Fire Packard and the devil!  The right of the whole deal is as
+plain as one and one: This is my outfit, if it is mortgaged; nobody
+excepting me has any business ordering my timber cut.  And I say that
+it's not going to be cut.  If there is any trouble it's up to you
+fellows."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From Blenham in the cabin came no sound; Woods, having glanced swiftly
+at Packard's angry face, again stared up-stream.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a little Steve Packard gnawed at his lip, caught in an eddy of
+helpless rage.  Never an answer from Blenham, never an answer from
+Woods; angry already, their silences maddened him.  Across the creek he
+saw the cook standing in his kitchen door, listening and smiling in
+sickly fashion; two or three of the men, coming out for their
+breakfasts, were watching him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were an ugly, red-eyed bunch, he thought as he swept them with his
+flashing eyes; they'd fight like dogs for the joy of fighting; soon or
+late, if Blenham persisted, he'd have the job on his hands of throwing
+them off his land.  Of course he could go "higher up"; he could appeal
+to his grandfather.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He could, but in his present mood he had no intention of doing any such
+thing.  His grandfather, before now, should have withdrawn these men.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't ask me to hold my hand!" the old man had shouted at him.  "I'm
+goin' after you tooth an' big toe-nail!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, if the old man wanted trouble and range war&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His blood was rushing swift and hot through his veins; his mind working
+feverishly.  One man alone against the crowd of them, he could do
+nothing.  But he could ride back to the ranch, gather up a dozen men,
+put guns into their hands, be back here in the matter of a couple of
+hours.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saw the timberjacks as one by one they came out into the clearing by
+the cook's shack; counted them as they went in.  The thought of a
+morning cup of coffee was attracting them; among the faces turned
+briefly his way he recognized several he had seen last night in the Ace
+of Diamonds saloon.  He saw two of them hitching up the big wagon,
+evidently the only conveyance in the camp.  They were getting ready to
+take Blenham.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly a new light flashed into Steve's eyes; he turned his head
+abruptly that Joe Woods should not see.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How many men have you got here, Woods?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Wondering at the question Woods answered it:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fourteen; startin' a new camp across the ridge."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve had counted nine men go into the cook's shed; with the cook there
+were ten; the two with the horses made twelve.  There should be two
+more.  He waited.  Meanwhile, secretly so that Woods might not guess
+what he was doing or see the busy hand, he loosened his latigo, seeming
+merely to slouch in his saddle; while he made a half-dozen random
+remarks which set Woods wondering still further, he got his cinch
+loose.  Another man had gone into the kitchen.  Thirteen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fourteen counting you?" he asked Woods.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then they were all accounted for; two with the horses; eleven in the
+shed; Joe Woods in front of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My cinch is loose," said Packard and dismounted, throwing the stirrup
+up across the saddle out of his way, his fingers going to the latigo
+which he had just loosened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Woods watched him idly.  Then suddenly both men looked toward the
+kitchen.  The door had been slammed shut; there was a fairly hideous
+racket as of all of the cook's pots and pans falling together; after it
+a boom of laughter, and finally the cook's voice lifted querulously.
+Woods grinned.  Unruffled by Packard's presence he said casually:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cookie mos' usually has the hell of a head after a night like las'
+night.  The boys knows it an' has a little fun with him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two men harnessing the horses had evidently guessed as did Woods
+what was happening in the cook's domain; at any rate, they hastily tied
+the horses and hurried to see.  Packard, still busied with his latigo,
+saw them and watched them until the door had shut behind them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His horse stood between him and Woods.  He tickled the animal in the
+flank; it spun about, pulling back, plunging, drawing Woods's eyes.
+And the next thing which Woods clearly understood was that Steve
+Packard was upon him, that one of Packard's hands was at his throat,
+that the other had gone for the gun on Woods's hip and had gotten it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Back into your shack!" commanded Packard, jabbing the muzzle of
+Woods's big automatic hard into Woods's ribs.  "Quick!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To himself just now Steve had said: "One man against the crowd of them,
+he could do nothing!"  Just exactly what Woods would be thinking; what
+Blenham inside would be thinking; just exactly what the rest of the men
+thought since they turned their backs on him and forgot him in their
+sport of badgering the cook.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What he was doing now was what he would term, did he hear of another
+man attempting it, "A fool thing to do!"  And yet he had told himself
+many a time that a man stood a fair chance to get away with the
+unexpected if he hit quick and hard and kept his wits about him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Woods, taken thoroughly aback, allowed himself to be driven again into
+his cabin.  Packard followed and closed the door.  Within was Blenham,
+lying on Woods's bunk, his head still swathed, a half-empty whiskey
+bottle on the floor at his side.  With one watery eye he looked from
+one to the other of the two men bursting in on him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham," cried Packard, standing over him while he was careful not to
+lose sight of Joe Woods's working face, "I want work stopped here and
+this crowd of men off the ranch.  You heard what I said outside, didn't
+you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham answered heavily:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Woods, don't you pay no attention to what this man says.  You keep
+your men on the job.  An' if you got another drop of whiskey&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The bottle's where you put it," retorted Woods.  "Under your pillow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham rolled on his side, slipping his hand under his pillow.  All
+the time his one red eye shone evilly on Steve, who, his wits about
+him, stepped back into the corner whence he might at the same time
+watch Woods and that hand of Blenham's which was making its stupid
+little play of seeking a bottle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take it out by the neck, Blenham," said Steve sternly.  "Take it out
+by the neck and pass it to me, butt end first!  <I>Sabe</I>?  I'm guessing
+the kind of drink you'd like to set up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham's one eye and Steve's two clashed; Woods watched interestedly.
+He even laughed as at last, with an exclamation which was as much a
+groan as a curse, Blenham jerked out his gun and flung it down on his
+quilt.  Steve took it up and shoved it into his pocket.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's jus' a han'ful of men over to the cookhouse," said Woods
+humorously.  "Havin' stuck up me an' Blenham you oughtn't to have no
+trouble over there!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How many men?" demanded Steve quietly.  "Thirteen, if I counted right,
+eh, Woods?  That's no kind of a number to pin your hopes on!  And now
+listen; I'll cut it short: If there is any trouble this morning, if any
+man gets hurt, remember that this is my land, that you jaspers are
+trespassing, that I am simply defending my property.  In other words,
+you're in wrong.  You'll be skating on pretty thin ice if you just
+plead later on that you were obeying orders from Blenham; follow
+Blenham long enough and you'll get to the pen.  Now, I'm going outside.
+You and Blenham stay in here until I call for you.  I'll shut the door;
+you leave it shut.  Take time to roll yourself a smoke and think things
+over before you start anything, Joe Woods."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then swiftly he whipped open the door, stepped out, and snapped it shut
+after him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm taking a chance," he muttered, his eyes hard, his jaw set and
+thrust forward.  "A good long chance.  But that's the way to play the
+game!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The door of the cook's shed, facing him from across the creek, was
+still closed.  Steve moved a dozen paces down-stream; now he could
+command Woods's cabin with the tail of his eye, look straight into the
+kitchen when the door opened, keep an eye upon the one little square
+window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's all in the cards," he told himself grimly.  "A man can win a jack
+pot on a pair of deuces, if he plays the game right!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At this point Packard's Creek is narrow; the distance between the spot
+where he stood and the door of the cook-shed was not over forty feet.
+He shifted Woods's gun to his left hand, taking into his right
+Blenham's old-style revolver which was more to his fancy.  Then, to get
+matters under way in as emphatic a manner as he knew how, he sent a
+bullet crashing through the cook's roof.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The murmur of voices died away suddenly; it was intensely still for a
+moment; then there was a scrambling, a scraping of heavy boots and
+dragging benches, and the cook's door snapped back against the outside
+wall, the opening filled with hulking forms, as men crowded to see what
+was happening.  What they saw was the nose of Blenham's gun in Steve's
+hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Back up there," shouted Packard.  "Stand still while you listen to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They hesitated, wondering.  A man growled something, his voice
+deep-throated and truculent.  Another man laughed.  The forms filling
+the doorway began a slow bulging outward as other forms behind crowded
+upon them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Within Woods's cabin there was a little noise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You men are leaving to-day," said Steve hastily.  "Just as fast as you
+can pull your freight.  Blenham and Woods are going with you.  All told
+there are above a dozen of you and only one of me.  But I've got
+Woods's gun and Blenham's and I happen to mean business.  This is my
+outfit; if you fellows start anything and there is trouble, why you're
+on the wrong side of the fence.  Besides, you're apt to get hurt.
+Blenham and Woods are quitting cold; so far as I can see you boys would
+be a pack of fools to make more of a stand than they are doing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man who had laughed and who now thrust his face forward through his
+companions, grinned widely and announced:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We mightn't worry none about where Blenham an' Joe get off.  But we
+ain't had our breakfasts yet!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't get any breakfast on my land!" said Steve sharply, more
+afraid just now of having to do with good nature than with anger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For if the dozen men there simply laughed and stepped out and
+dispersed, his hands would be tied; he couldn't shoot down a lot of
+joking men and he knew it.  And they would know it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're on your way right now!  You, there!"  This to a big,
+stoop-shouldered young giant in the fore, blue-eyed, straw-haired,
+northern-looking.  "Step out this way, Sandy!  And step lively."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The northerner shrugged and looked belligerent.  Steve moistened his
+lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can't bluff me&mdash;" began the northerner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Steve knew that, having gone this far, he could not stop at
+bluffing.  And he knew that he must not seem to hesitate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can shoot as straight as most men," he said smoothly.  "But
+sometimes I miss an inch or two at this distance.  You men who don't
+want to take any unnecessary chances had better give Sandy a little
+more elbow-room!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stoop-shouldered man squared himself a little, jerked up his head,
+took on a fresh air of defiance.  Slowly Steve lifted the muzzle of his
+gun&mdash;slowly a man drew back from the northerner, a man fell away to the
+right, a man drew a hasty pace back at the left.  He was left standing
+in the middle of the open doorway.  He shifted a little, doubled his
+fists at his sides, twisted his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again a noise from Woods's cabin.  Steve saw that the door had quietly
+opened six inches.  There was a quick movement within; the door was
+flung wide open.  Woods was standing in the opening, a rifle in his
+hands, the barrel trained on Steve's chest.  Steve saw the look in
+Woods's eye, whirled and fired first.  The rifle bullet cut whistling
+high through the air; Woods dropped the rifle and reeled and went down
+under the impact of a leaden missile from a forty-five calibre
+revolver.  The rifle lay just outside now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The squat young giant with the blue eyes and shock head of hair had not
+stirred.  His mouth was open; his face was stupidly expressionless.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Throw up your hands and step outside!" Steve called to him roughly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man started, looked swiftly about him, stepped forward, lifting his
+big hands.  They were still clenched but opened slowly and loosely as
+they went above his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Turn your back this way," commanded Steve, feeling his mastery of the
+moment and knowing that he must drive his advantage swiftly.  "Belly to
+the wall.  That's it.  Next!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A man, the man who had twice laughed, stepped forward eagerly.  He
+needed no invitation to lift his hands, nor yet to go to the other's
+side, his face to the wall.  His eyes were bulging a little; they were
+fixed not on Steve Packard but on the body of Joe Woods.  The timber
+boss lay across the threshold, half in, half out, twisting a little
+where he lay.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now, one after another, speaking in low voices or not at all, the
+timber crew came out into the stillness of the new day.  Steve counted
+them as they appeared, always keeping the tail of his eye on Woods's
+door, always realizing that Blenham was still to be dealt with, always
+watchful of the small square window in the cook's shed.  Once he saw a
+face there; he called out warningly and the face hastily withdrew.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At last they were outside, thirteen men with their backs to him, their
+hands lifted.  Stepping backward Steve went to Woods's cabin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come out, Blenham," he called curtly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham cursed him but came.  Stepping over Woods's body he said
+threateningly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Killed him, have you?  You'll swing for that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stand where you are, Blenham."  He wondered dully if he had killed
+Woods.  He considered the matter almost impersonally just now; the game
+wasn't yet played, cards were out, the mind must be cool, the eye
+quick.  "You two boys on the end come over here and help me with Woods."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again Woods's big body twisted; it even turned half over now, and Woods
+sat up.  His hand went to his shoulder; Steve saw the hand go red.
+Woods's face was white and drawn with pain.  His eyes went to the rifle
+at his feet.  Steve stepped forward, took the thing up, tossed it back
+into the cabin.  Woods swayed, pitched a little forward, caught
+himself, steadied himself with a hand on the door-jamb, and shakily
+drew himself to his feet.  Steve marvelled at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you like, Woods," he said quietly, "I'll have you taken over to my
+place and will send for a doctor for you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Aw, hell, I ain't hurt bad," said Woods.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve saw how his brows contracted as he spoke.  The red hand was laid
+rather hurriedly on the shoulder of one of the two men whom Steve had
+summoned across the creek.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham turned away and went down-stream, toward the big wagon.  Woods
+followed, walking slowly and painfully, leaning now and again on his
+support.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Steve called to them the men lined up along the wall of the cook's
+shed, turned, and, their hands still lifted, went down-stream.  One
+after another they climbed up into the wagon.  Two or three laughed;
+for the most part there were only black faces and growing anger.  Many
+of them had drunk much and slept little last night; not a man of them
+but missed his coffee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard caught up his horse's reins and swung into the saddle calling
+out:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know anything you're waiting for.  Climb into the seat,
+somebody.  Get started.  Blenham and Woods both need a doctor.  And you
+needn't come back for anything you left; I'll have all your junk boxed
+and hauled into Red Creek this afternoon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A man gathered up the four reins and climbed to the high seat.  The
+brake was snapped back, the horses danced, set their necks into their
+collars, and the wheels turned.  Behind them Steve Packard, still
+watchful, rode to escort them to a satisfactory distance beyond the
+border of his property.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Terry Temple out in front of the dilapidated Temple home was amusing
+herself with a pair of field-glasses.  Her big wolf-hound had just
+temporarily laid aside his customary dignity and was chasing a rabbit.
+Terry had her binoculars focussed on a distant field, curious as to the
+outcome.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly she lost this interest.  Far down the road she glimpsed a big
+wagon; it was filled with standing men.  She altered her focus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dad!" she called quickly.  "Oh, dad!  Come here!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her father came out on the porch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you want?" he asked irritably.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry came running to him, flushed with her excitement, and shoved the
+glasses up to his eyes.  Temple dodged, fussed with the focussing
+apparatus, lowered the glasses, and blinked down the road.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's just a wagon, ain't it?" he demanded.  "Looks like&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again she snatched the binoculars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A lot of men are standing up," she announced.  "That's the team from
+the Packard logging-camp, There's a man sitting on the front seat with
+the driver and he's got a rag around his head.  There's some sort of a
+bed made in the bottom of the wagon; a man's lying down.  I actually
+believe, Dad Temple&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She broke off in a strange little gasp.  Behind the wagon a man rode on
+horseback; the sun glinted on a revolver in his hand.  They came closer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's Blenham on the front seat with a bandage around his head!" she
+cried.  "He's hurt!  And&mdash;dad, that man back there is Steve Packard!
+And he's driving that crowd off his ranch, as sure as you are Jim
+Temple and I'm Teresa Arriega Temple!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Temple started.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's that?" he demanded with a genuine show of interest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Together they stared down the road.  On came the wagon and the rider
+behind it.  Slowly the look in Terry's eyes altered.  In a moment they
+were fairly dancing.  And then, causing her father to stare at her
+curiously, she broke out into peal after peal of delicious laughter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Steve Packard," she cried out, her exclamation meant for her own ears
+alone and reaching no further than those of her newly imported Japanese
+cook who was peering out of his kitchen window just behind her, "I
+believe you're a white man after all!  And a gentleman and a sport!
+Dad, he's nabbed the whole crowd of them and put them on the run.  By
+glory, it looks to me like a man has turned up!  Maybe he was telling
+me the truth last night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The wagon came on, drew abreast of the Temple gate, passed by.  Temple
+stared in what looked like consternation.  Steve, following the wagon,
+came abreast of the gate, stopped, watched the four horses draw their
+freight around the next bend in the road, accounted his work done, and
+turned toward the Temples.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good morning," he called cheerily, highly content with life just at
+this moment.  "Fine day, isn't it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry looked at him coolly.  Then she turned her back and went into the
+house.  Iki, the new cook, looked at her wonderingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To me it appears most probable certain," said the astute Oriental
+within his soul, "that inhabitants of these wilderness places have much
+madness within their brains."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve swung his horse back into the road and set his face toward his
+own ranch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Darn the girl," he muttered.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap14"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIV
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE MAN-BREAKER AT HOME
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+In a short time the cattle country had come to know a good deal of
+Steve Packard, son of the late Philip Packard, grandson of Old Man
+Packard, variously known.  Red Creek gossiped within its limits and
+sent forth word of a quarrel of some sort with Blenham, a winning game
+of seven-and-a-half, a fight with big Joe Woods.  Red Creek was
+inclined to set the seal of approval on this new Packard, for Red
+Creek, on both sides of its quarrelsome street, stood ready to say that
+a man was a man even when it might go gunning for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the days went by Packard's fame grew.  There were tales that in a
+savage mêlée with Blenham he had eliminated that capable individual's
+right eye; and though there were those who had had it from some of the
+Ranch Number Ten boys that Blenham's loss was the result of an
+accident, still it remained unquestioned that Blenham had suffered
+injury at Packard's ranch and had been driven forth from it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, Packard had followed Blenham to the logging-camp; he had tackled
+the crowd headed by Joe Woods; he had come remarkably close to killing
+Woods; he had broken up the camp and sent the timberjacks on their way.
+He had had a horse killed under him; he had quarrelled with his
+grandfather; he was standing on his own feet.  In brief&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's a sure enough, out an' out Packard!" they said of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To be sure, while there were men who spoke well of him there were
+others, perhaps as many, who spoke ill.  There were the barkeeper of
+the Ace of Diamonds, Joe Woods, Blenham; they had their friends and
+hangers-on.  On the other hand, offsetting these, there were old
+friends whom Steve had not seen for twelve or more years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Such was Brocky Lane whose cowboy had loaned Steve a horse which had
+been killed on the Red Creek road.  Young Packard promptly paid for the
+animal and resumed auld lang syne with the hearty, generous Brocky Lane.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What men had to say of him came last of all to Steve.  But some fifty
+miles to the north of Ranch Number Ten, on the far-flung acres of the
+biggest stock-ranch in the State, there was another Packard to whom
+rumors came swiftly.  And this was because the old grandfather went far
+out of his way upon every opportunity to learn of his grandson's
+activities.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What for a man is he growed up to be, anyhow?" was what Hell-Fire
+Packard was interested in ascertaining.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the old man wanted to get anywhere he ordered out his car and Guy
+Little.  When he wanted information he sent for Guy Little.  The
+undersized mechanician was gifted with eyes which could see, ears which
+could hear, and a tongue which could set matters clear; he must have
+been unusually keen to have retained his position in the old man's
+household for the matter of five or six years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To his employer he had come once upon a time, half-starved and weary, a
+look of dread in his eyes which had the way of turning swiftly over his
+shoulder; the old man had had from the beginning the more than
+suspicion that the little fellow was a fugitive from the law and in a
+hurry at that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had immediately taken him in and given him succor and comfort.  The
+poor devil fumbled for a name and was so obviously making himself a new
+one that Packard dubbed him Guy Little on the spot, simply because, he
+explained, he was such a little guy.  And thereafter the two grew in
+friendship.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Guy Little's first coming had been opportune.  The old man had only
+recently bought his first touring-car; in haste to be gone somewhere
+his motor failed to respond to his first coaxing and subsequent bursts
+of violent rage.  While he was cursing it, reviling it, shaking his
+fist at it, and vowing he'd set a keg of giant powder under the thing
+and blow it clean to blue blazes, Guy Little ran a loving hand over it,
+stroked its mane, so to speak, whispered in its ear, and set the engine
+purring.  Old Man Packard nodded; they two, big-bodied millionaire and
+dwarfed waif, needed each other.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Climb on the runnin'-board, Guy Little," he said right then.  "You go
+wherever I go."  And later he came to say of his mechanician, "Him?
+Why, man, he can take four ol' wagon wheels an' a can of gasoline an'
+make the damn' thing go.  He's all automobile brains, that's what Guy
+Little is!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the Big Bend ranch, the old man's largest and favorite of several
+kindred holdings, an outfit which flung its twenty thousand acres this
+way and that among the Little Hills and on either side of the upper
+waters of the stream which eventually gave its name to Red Creek, the
+oldest of the name of Packard had summoned Guy Little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was some ten days after the stopping of all activity in the Ranch
+Number Ten lumbercamp.  He had been sitting alone in his library,
+smoking a pipe, and staring out of his window and across his fields.
+Suddenly he sprang to his feet, went to his door, and shouted down the
+long hall:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ho, there!  Guy Little!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The house was big; rooms had been added now and then at intervals
+during the last thirty or forty years; the master's library was of
+generous dimensions and could have stabled a herd of fifty horses.
+This chamber was in the southwest corner of the rambling edifice; Guy
+Little's quarters were diagonally across the building.  But Packard
+asked no tinkling electric bell; as usual he was content to stick his
+head out into the hall and yell in that big, booming voice of his:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ho, there!  Guy Little, come here!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Having voiced his command he went back to his deep leather chair and
+refilled his pipe.  It was the time of early dusk; not yet were the
+coal-oil lamps lighted; shadows were lengthening and merging out in the
+rolling fields.  Packard's eyes, withdrawn from the outdoors, wandered
+along his tall and seldom-used book-shelves, fell to the one worn
+volume on the table beside him, went hastily to the door.  Down the
+hall came the sound of quick boot-heels.  He took up the single volume
+and thrust it out of sight under the leather cushion of his chair.  The
+mechanician was in the room before he could get his pipe lighted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You called, m'lord?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Guy Little stood drawn up to make the most of his very inconsiderable
+height, eyes straight ahead, hands at sides, chin elevated and
+stationary.  Nothing was plainer than that he aped the burlesqued
+English butler&mdash;unless it be that it was even more obvious that in his
+chosen role he was a ridiculous failure.  There never was the man less
+designed by nature for the part than Guy Little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet he insisted; in the beginning of his relationship with his
+employer, his soul swelling with gratitude, his imagination touched by
+the splendors into which his fate had led him, awed by the dominant
+Packard, he had wanted always upon an occasion like this to demand
+stiffly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You rang, your majesty?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard had cursed and threatened and brow-beaten him down to&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You called, m'lord?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But not even old Hell-Fire Packard could get him any further.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I called," grunted the old man.  "I hollered my head off at you.
+I want to know what you foun' out.  Let's have it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Guy Little made his little butler-bow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your word is law, m'lord," he said, once more rigid and unbending.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Although Packard knew this very well without being told and had known
+it a good many years before Guy Little had been born, and although Guy
+Little had repeated the phrase time without number, the old man
+accepted it peacefully as a necessary though utterly damnable
+introduction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's like this," continued the mechanician.  "Not knowin' what you
+thought an' not even knowin' what you wanted to think, an' figgerin' to
+play safe, I've picked up the dope all over.  Which is sayin' I bought
+drinks on both sides the street, whiskey at Whitey Wimble's joint an'
+more of the same at Dan Hodges's.  An' I foun' out several things,
+m'lord.  If it is your wish&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Spit 'em out, Guy Little!  What for a man is he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Firs'," said Guy Little, shifting his feet the fraction of an inch so
+that his chin bore directly upon Packard, "he's a scrapper.  He beat up
+Joe Woods, a bigger man than him; later he took part in some sort of a
+party durin' which, like is beknown to you, somebody gouged Blenham's
+eye out; after that, single-handed, he cleaned out your lumber-camp,
+fifteen men countin' Blenham.  Tally one, he's a scrapper."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For an instant it seemed that all of the light there was in the swiftly
+darkening room had centred in the blue eyes under the old man's bushy
+white brows.  He drew deeply upon his pipe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go on, Guy Little," he ordered.  "What more?  Spit it out, man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nex'," reported the little man, "he's a born gambler.  If he wasn't he
+wouldn't of tied into a game of buckin' you; he wouldn't of played
+seven-an'-a-half like he did in at the Ace of Diamonds; he wouldn't of
+took them long chances tacklin' Woodsy's timberjacks before breakfas'.
+Scrapper an' gambler.  That's tally one an' two."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man frowned heavily, his teeth remaining tight clamped on his
+pipestem as he cried sharply:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's it!  You've said it: gambler!  Drat the boy, I knowed he had it
+in his blood.  An' it'll ruin him, ruin him.  Guy Little, as it would
+ruin any man.  We got to get that fool gamblin' spirit out'n him.  A
+man that's always takin' chances never gets anywhere; take a chance an'
+you ain't got a chance!  That's the way of it, Guy Little!  Go on,
+though.  What else about him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's a good sport," went on the news-gatherer, "an' he don't ask no
+help from nobody.  He stan's on his two feet like a man, m'lord.  When
+he sees a row ahead he don't go to the law with it; no, m'lord; no
+indeed, m'lord.  He says 'Hell with the law!'  Like a man would, like
+me an' you&nbsp;&#8230; an' he kills his own rats himself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's the Packard of him!  For, by God, Guy Little, he is a Packard
+even if he has got a wrong start!  Rich man's son&mdash;silver-spoon
+stuff&mdash;why, it would spoil a better man than you ever saw!  Didn't I
+spoil my son Phil that-a-way?  Didn't Phil start out spoilin' his son
+Stephen that same way?  But he's a Packard&mdash;an'&mdash;an'&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An' what, m'lord?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man's fist fell heavily on the arm of his chair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An' I'm still hopin' he's goin' to be a damn' good Packard at that!
+But you go on, Guy Little.  What else?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sorta reckless, he is," resumed Guy Little.  "But that's purty near
+the same thing as havin' the gamblin' spirit, ain't it?  Nex' an'
+final, m'lord, he's got what you might call an eye for a good-lookin'
+girl."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The devil you say, Guy Little!"  The old man, beginning to settle in
+his chair, sat bolt upright.  "Is some female woman tryin' to get her
+hooks in my gran'son already?  Name her to me, sir!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Name of Temple," said Little.  "Terry Temple as they call her, an' a
+sure good-lookin' party, if you ask me!  Classy from eyes to ankles an'
+when it comes to&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hold on, Guy Little!" exploded old man Packard, leaping to his feet,
+towering high above the little man, who looked up at him with an
+earnest and placid expression.  "That wench, that she-devil, that
+Jezebel!  Settin' her traps for my boy Stephen, is she?  Why, man
+alive, she ain't fit to scrape the corral-mud off'n his boots.  She's a
+low-down, deceitful jade, that's what she is, sired by a
+sheep-stealin', throat-cuttin', ornery, no-'count, worthless cuss!  The
+whole pack of them Temples, he an' she of 'em, big an' little of 'em,
+ought to be strung up on the firs' tree!  The low-down bunch of little
+prairie dawgs, tryin' to trap a Packard with puttin' a putty-faced fool
+girl in their snare.  I say, Guy Little, I'll make the whole crowd of
+'em hunt their holes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he hurled his pipe from him so that on the hearthstone it broke
+into many pieces.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now that was a long speech for old man Packard and Guy Little listened
+interestedly.  At the end, when the old man went growling back to his
+chair, the mechanician took up his tale.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's purty, though," he maintained.  "Like a picture!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doll-faced," snorted the old man, who had not the least idea what
+Terry Temple looked like, not having laid his eyes on her for the
+matter of years.  "Dumpy, pudgy, squidge-nosed little fool.  I'll run
+both her and her thief of a father out of the country."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An'," continued Guy Little, "I didn't exac'ly' say, m'lord, as how
+this Terry Temple party was after him.  I said as how he was after her!
+That is, as how, roundin' out what I know about him, he's got a eye for
+a fine-lookin' lady.  Which, against argyment, I maintain that Terry
+Temple girl is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Guy Little," cried Packard sharply, "you're a fool!  Maybe you know
+all there is about motor-cars an' gasoline.  When it comes to females
+you're a fool."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, m'lord, not so!" protested Guy Little, a gleam in his eye like a
+faint flicker from a dead fire.  "There was a time&mdash;before I set these
+hoofs of mine into the wanderin' trail&mdash;when&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The rest might best be left entirely to the imagination and there he
+left it.  But the old man was all untouched by his henchman's utterance
+and innuendoed boast for the simple reason that he had heard nothing of
+it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Those Temple hounds," he muttered, staring at Guy Little who stared
+butlerishly back, "are leeches, parasites, cursed bloodsuckers and
+hangers-on.  They think I'm goin' to take this boy in an' give him all
+I got; they think they see a chance to marry him into their rotten
+crowd an' slip one over on me this way!  That simperin', gigglin' fool
+of a girl try an' hook my gran'son!  I'll show 'em, Guy Little; I'll
+show the whole cussed pack of 'em!  I'll exterminate 'em, root an'
+branch an' withered leaf!  By the Lord, but I'll go get 'em!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He'll do it," nodded Guy Little, addressing the invisible third party
+in order not to directly interrupt his patron's flow of words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But for a little the old man was silent, running his calloused fingers
+nervously through his beard, frowning into the dusk thickening over the
+world outside.  When he spoke again it was softly, thoughtfully, almost
+tenderly.  And the words were these:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Break a fool an' make a man, Guy Little!  That's what we're goin' to
+do for Stephen Packard.  He's always had too much money, had life too
+easy.  We'll jus' nacherally bust him all to pieces; we'll learn him
+the big lesson of life; we'll make a man out'n him yet.  An' when
+that's done, Guy Little, when that time comes&mdash;  Go send Blenham here,"
+he broke off with sharp abruptness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Guy Little achieved his stage bow and departed.  The door only half
+closed behind him, he was shouting at the top of his voice:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hey, Blenham!  Oh, Blenham!  On the jump.  Packard wants you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The door slammed behind him.  His back once turned on "m'lord," Guy
+Little did not wait to get out of earshot to become less butler than
+human sparrow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham needed but the one summons and that might almost have been
+whispered.  He was fidgeting in his own room, waiting for this moment,
+knowing that he was to receive definite instructions concerning Stephen
+Packard.  Over his right eye was a patch; his face was still a sickly
+pallor; his one good eye burned with a sullen flame which never went
+out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Guy Little was the one human being in the world with whom the old man
+talked freely, to whom he unburdened himself.  With his chief
+lieutenant Blenham he was, as with other men, short, crisp-worded,
+curt.  Now, seeming to take no stock of Blenham's disfigurement, in a
+dozen snapping sentences he issued his orders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Their gist was plain.  Blenham was to go the limit to accomplish two
+purposes: the minor one of making the world a dreary place for certain
+scoundrels, name of Temple; the major one of utterly breaking Steve
+Packard.  When Blenham went out and to his own room again the sullen
+fire in his good eye burned more brightly, as though with fresh fuel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A little later Guy Little returned, lighted the lamps, made a small
+fire in the big fireplace, and ignoring the presence of his master,
+went to stand in front of the high book-shelves.  After a long time he
+got the step-ladder and placed it, climbed to the top, and squatted
+there in front of his favorite section.  Ultimately he drew down a
+volume with many colored illustrations; it was a tale of love, its
+<I>mise en scène</I> the mansions of the lords and ladies whose adventures
+occurred in that atmosphere of romance which had captivated the soul of
+Guy Little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he climbed down and sought the big chair in which he would curl up
+to read and chew countless sticks of gum, chewing fast when the action
+hurried, slowly when there was the dramatic pause, stopping often with
+mouth wide open when tense and breathless interest held him, he
+discovered that the old man had gone out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Guy Little pursed his lips.  Then he went to the recently vacated
+leather chair.  Not to sit in it; merely to draw out the little volume
+from under the cushion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Lyrics from Tennyson,'" he read aloud.  "What the devil are them
+things?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned the pages.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pomes!" he grunted in disgust.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whereupon he carried his own book to his own chair.  But, beginning to
+turn the pages, he stopped and looked up wonderingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Funny ol' duck," he mused.  "Here I've knowed him all these years an'
+I never guessed he read pomes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He shook his head, admitted to himself that the "ol' duck" was a keen
+ol' cuss, returned to his book, began stripping the paper from the
+first stick of gum, and knew no more of what went on about him.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap15"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XV
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+AT THE FALLEN LOG
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+Since the hill ranch operated by the Temples and the Packard Ranch
+Number Ten had over two miles of common border-line, it was unavoidable
+that Steve and Terry should meet frequently.  Truly unavoidable since
+further they were both young, Terry as pretty as the proverbial
+picture, Steve the type to stick somehow in such a girl's mind.  She
+turned up her nose at him; she gave him a fine view of her back; but in
+riding her father's range she let her eyes travel curiously across the
+line.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For his part Steve, seeing where some of his calves had invaded Temple
+property, followed the errant calves himself instead of sending one of
+his men.  And as he rode he was apt to forget his strayed cattle as he
+watched through the trees for a fluttering, gay-hued scarf.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Certainly of girls and women he had known she was the most refreshing;
+certainly she was the prettiest after an undeniably saucy style.  And
+life here of late, with Blenham and Woods gone and unheard from, was a
+quiet, uneventful affair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry, for her part, told herself and any one else who cared to listen,
+that he was a Packard, hence to be distrusted, avoided, considered as
+beneath a white person's notice.  His breed were all crooked.  Sired
+and grandsired by precious scoundrels, he was but what was to be
+expected.  And yet&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For "yets" and "ifs" and "howevers" had already begun to intrude,
+befogging many a consideration hitherto clear as cut glass.  He had not
+lied about a horse being shot under him; he had been party to Blenham's
+departure from the ranch; he had been man enough in Red Creek to whip
+Joe Woods; and, single-handed, he had driven a crew of rough-and-ready
+timberjacks off his property.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Further, it was undeniable that he had a good-natured grin, that his
+eyes though inclined either to be stern or else to laugh at her, were
+frank and steady, that he made a figure that fitted well in the eye of
+a girl like Terry Temple.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, the Packards are men," said Terry begrudgingly, "even if they are
+pirates!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This to her father and, it is to be suspected, for her father's sake.
+For, despite the girl's valiantly repeated hope that Temple "would come
+back yet" and be again the man he once was, he seemed in fact to grow
+more shiftless day after day, communing long over his fireplace with
+his drink, passing from one degree to another of untidiness.  He made
+her "feel just like screaming and running around the house breaking
+things" at times.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are impatient, my dear," said Temple as one speaking to a very
+young child.  "And there are matters which you don't understand; which
+I cannot even discuss with you.  But," and he winked very slyly, less
+at Terry than just in a general acknowledgment of his own acumen, "you
+just wait a spell!  I've got somethin' up my sleeve&mdash;somethin' that&mdash;&mdash;
+Oh, you just wait, my dear!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry sniffed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I ought to be pretty good at waiting by now," she told him, little
+impressed.  "And if you have anything up your sleeve besides the flabby
+arm of a do-nothing, then it must be another bottle of whiskey!  You
+can't flim-flam me, dad, and you ought to know it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She whisked out of the house, her face reddened with vexation, a sudden
+moisture in her eyes.  It took all of the fortitude she could summon
+into her dauntless little bosom to maintain after days like this that
+there was still a "come-back" left in her father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In an hour made fragrant by the resinous odors of the upland pines and
+the freshly liberated perfumes of the little white evening flowers
+thick in the meadows, Terry on her favorite horse went flashing through
+the long shadows of the late afternoon, riding as Terry always rode
+when her breast was tumultuous and her temper rising.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The recently imported Japanese cook and houseboy peered out after her
+from his kitchen window, his eyes actually losing their Oriental cast
+and growing round; a trick, this, of Iki's whenever Terry came into his
+view.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Part bird," mused Iki, "part flower, big part wild devil-girl!  Oof!
+Nice to look at, but for wife Japonee girl more better.  Think so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Little by little as she rode, letting her horse out until she fairly
+raced through the fields and into the woods beyond, the pitiful picture
+of her father faded from her mind.  As the vision dimmed of Temple's
+shoddiness in his worn-out slippers another image formed in Terry's
+mind; an image which was there more than the girl had as yet come to
+realize.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yes, as types the Packards were all right; how many times had she
+admitted that to herself?  But as individuals&nbsp;&#8230;  Oh, how she hated
+them!  And to-day, for some reason not clearly defined in Terry's
+consciousness, she found it convenient to assure herself with new
+emphasis that she hated and despised the Packards with a growing
+detestation, and from this point to go on and inform Miss Teresa Temple
+exactly why she looked on those of the Packard blood just as she did.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She summoned a host of reasons, set them in ranks like so many soldiers
+to wage war for her, marshalled and deployed and reviewed and
+dress-paraded them, and found them all eminently satisfactory
+mercenaries.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was one reason which she thrust into the background, seeking to
+keep it hidden behind the serried ranks of its brothers-in-arms.  And
+yet it insisted in mutinous fashion on pushing to the fore.  Seeking to
+consider the Packards en masse, as a curse rather than as individuals,
+she found that she was remembering Steve Packard rather vividly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the outward seeming Steve Packard was a gentleman; he had that vague
+something called culture; he bore himself with the assurance and ease
+of one who knew the world; he had been to college&mdash;and Terry knew
+nothing more of school than was to be learned at a country high school.
+Steve's father had "broken" her father financially; had such not been
+the fact Terry herself would have had her own college diploma on her
+wall; Terry would have known something more of the world than she now
+knew; she would have been "a lady."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, pickles!" cried Terry aloud, bringing her runaway thoughts to a
+sharp halt.  "What difference does it make if he knows Latin and I
+don't?  And a hot specimen of a 'lady' I'd make anyhow!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Over a ridge she flew, the low sun glistening from her spurs and the
+polished surfaces of her boot-tops, down into the dusk-filled fragrance
+of a woodsy cañon, into the mouth of a silent trail, around a wide
+curve, and to her own favorite spot of all these woods.  A nook of
+haunting charm with its sprawling stream, its big-boled and widely
+scattered trees, its grass and flowers.  "Mossy Dell," she called it,
+having borrowed the name from an old romance read in breathless fashion
+in her room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Slipping out of her saddle and leaving her horse to browse if such
+pastime suited him, Terry went through the trees and down along the
+flashing creek, humming softly, her voice confused with the gurgle of
+the noisy little stream, her eyes at last growing content.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was half smiling at some shadowy thought before she had gone twenty
+paces; she tossed off her hat and let it lie, meaning to come back for
+it later; she unfastened the scarf about her neck, baring her white
+throat to the hour's cool invitation, she let her bronze-brown hair
+down in two loose, curling braids across her shoulders, toying with the
+ends as she went.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Coming here at troubled moments altered the girl's mood very much as an
+hour in a quiet cathedral may soothe the soul of the orthodox.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A little further on, lying across the stream and just around another
+bend, was a great fallen cedar, its giant trunk eight or ten feet
+through at the base.  Approximately it marked the border-line between
+the Temple Ranch and Ranch Number Ten; it was quite as though the
+wilderness itself had cast down the big tree across an old trail to
+indicate a line which must not be crossed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Upon the top of this supine woodland monarch Terry was accustomed to
+sit, her back against one of the big limbs, her heels kicking at the
+mossy sides, while she glanced back and forth from Temple property to
+Packard land and told herself how much finer was her side than the
+other.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Just where the tree had fallen the creek-bed was rocky and uneven; the
+water eddied and whirled and plunged noisily into its pools.  Terry,
+clambering up from her side of the big log, heard only the shouting of
+the brook.  She grasped the dead branches, pulled herself up, slipped a
+little, got a new foothold; Terry's head, her face flushed rosily, her
+eyes never brighter, popped up on one side of the log just in time with
+the tick of her destiny's clock.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-208"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-208.jpg" ALT="Terry's head, her face flushed rosily, her eyes never brighter, popped up on one side of the log." BORDER="2" WIDTH="388" HEIGHT="570">
+<H3>
+[Illustration: Terry's head, her face flushed rosily, her eyes never brighter, <BR>
+popped up on one side of the log.]
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+That is to say just as Steve Packard, climbing up from the other side,
+thrust his head up above the top.  An astonished grunt from Steve who
+in the first start of the encounter came close to falling backward; a
+little choking ejaculation from Terry whose eyes widened
+wonderfully&mdash;and the two of them settled silently into their places on
+the cedar and stared at each other.  Some three or four feet only lay
+between the brim of Steve's hat and Terry's upturned nose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well?" demanded Terry stiffly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well?" countered Steve.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He regarded her very gravely.  He had never had a girl materialize this
+way out of space and his own thoughts.  This sudden confronting savored
+of the supernatural; for the moment it set him aback and he was content
+to stare wonderingly into the sweet gray eyes so near his own and to
+take note of the curve of her lips, the redness of them, the dimple
+which, though departed now and, he felt, in hiding, had left a hint of
+itself behind in its hasty flight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If there's one thing I hate worse than a potato-bug," said Terry,
+"it's a fresh guy!  Think you're funny, don't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fresh?  Funny?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He lifted his eyebrows.  And then, her suspicion clear to him, his
+gravity departed the way Terry's dimple had gone and he put back his
+head and laughed.  Laughed while the girl with deepening color and
+darkening eyes looked at him indignantly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Think I did that on purpose?" he cried in vast good nature.  "That I
+was spying on you?  That I waited until you started to climb up here
+and that then I popped my head up just at the same time?  All on
+purpose?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's just exactly what I do think!" Terry told him hotly.  "You&mdash;you
+big smarty!  Everywhere I go, have you got to keep showing up?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll tell you something," said Steve.  "If I had climbed up here just
+to give you a little surprise party; if I had known you were there and
+that I could have poked my head up just as you did yours&mdash;know what I
+would have done?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?" Terry in her curiosity condescended to ask.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd have kissed the prettiest girl I ever saw!" he chuckled.  "Honest
+to grandma!  That's just what I'd have done.  As it was, you half
+scared me out of my wits; I came as close as you please to going over
+backward and breaking my neck."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not as close as I please.  And as for kissing me, Long Steve Packard,
+you just try that on sometime when you want your face slapped good and
+hard and a bullet pumped into you besides!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mean it?" grinned Steve.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I most certainly do," she retorted emphatically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Offered merely as information?" he wanted to know.  "Or as a dare?  Or
+an invitation?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When she did not reply at once but contented herself by putting a deal
+of eloquence into a look&mdash;which, by the way, had no visible effect upon
+his rising good humor&mdash;he went on to remark:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you just slapped my face it would be worth it.  If you just shot me
+through the finger-nail or something like that, it would be worth it
+still."  He examined her critically.  "Even if you plugged me square
+through the thumb&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you don't know it," she informed him aloofly, "you are trespassing
+right now where you are not wanted.  The sooner you trail your big feet
+off Temple land the better I'll like it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Temple land?  Since when was a tree considered as land, Miss Teresa
+Arriega Temple?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Think that's funny?" she scoffed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And besides," he continued, "the tree is on Packard property.  See
+that old pine stump over yonder?  And that big rock there?  Those
+things mark the boundary-line and you'll notice we're on my side!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry's temper flamed higher in her eyes, flashed hotter in her cheeks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We are not!  And you know we are not!  The line runs yonder, just
+beyond that big white rock on the creek-bank.  And you are a good ten
+feet on my side.  Where, if you please, you are not wanted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That isn't a pretty enough thought to bear repetition," he offered
+genially.  "Look here, Terry Temple, what's the use&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you going?  Or do you intend just to squat there like a toad and
+spoil the view for me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Toads are fat animals," he corrected her.  "I'm not.   More like a
+bullfrog, if you like.  What am I going to do?  Why, just squat, I
+guess."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he leaned back against the limb which offered its support to his
+shoulders Terry noted that he wore in full sight at his side the heavy
+Colt he had bought the other night in Red Creek.  A new habit, with
+Steve Packard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gunman, are you?" she jeered.  "I might have known it.  Gunmen are all
+cowards."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He sighed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can be the most irritating young lady I ever met.  And why?  What
+have I ever done to you&mdash;besides save you from drowning?  Since we are
+neighbors, why not be good friends?  By the way, where do you carry
+your gun?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's different with a girl," she said bluntly.  "There's some excuse
+for her.  With the kind that's filling the woods lately she's apt to
+need it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you wouldn't be afraid to use it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm not here to chin with you all day," observed Terry coolly.  "And
+you haven't told me what you're doing on my land."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your land?" he demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On my side of the line, then."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He considered the question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm here to meet some one," he answered finally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I like your nerve!  Arranging to meet your friends here!  Steve
+Packard, you are the&mdash;the&mdash;the&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go on," he prompted.  "You'll need a cuss-word now; any other finish
+will sound flat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"&mdash;the <I>Packardest</I> Packard I ever heard of!" she concluded.  "You and
+your friend&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No more my friend than he is yours," he said, interrupting her.  "An
+individual named Blenham.  And I'm not here so much to meet him
+as&mdash;let's say to head him off."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry set it down that, since it was next to impossible at any time for
+a Packard to speak the truth, he was just lying to her for the sake of
+the devious exercise.  As she was on the point of saying emphatically
+when Steve said "Sh!" and pointed.  She heard a breaking of brush and
+saw the horns of a steer; the animal was coming into the trail from the
+Packard side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You just watch," whispered Steve.  "And sit right still.  It won't do
+you any harm to know what's going on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The big steer broke through into the trail, stopped and sniffed, and
+then came on up the stream.   Behind came another and another, emerging
+from the shadows, passing through the swiftly fading light of the open,
+gone again into the shadows that lay over the wooded Temple acreage.
+In all nine big fat steers.  And behind them, sitting loosely in his
+saddle, came Blenham.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Only when the last steer had crossed the line did Steve rise suddenly,
+standing upright on the great log, his hands on his hips.  Terry
+looking up into his face saw that all of the good humor had gone from
+it and that there was something ominous in the darkening of his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hold on, Blenham!" he called.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham drew a quick rein.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That you, Packard?" he asked quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is," answered Steve briefly.  "On the job, too, Blenham.  All the
+time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So it seems," he said, his look like his tone eloquent of an innuendo
+which embraced Terry evilly.  "If you're invitin' me to join your
+little party, I ain't got the time.  Thanks jus' the same."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Since one's consciousness may harbor several clear-cut impressions
+simultaneously, Steve Packard, while he was thinking of other matters,
+felt that never until this moment had he hated Blenham properly; no,
+nor respected him as it would be the part of wisdom to do.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man's glance running over Terry Temple's girlishness was like the
+crawling of a slug over a wild flower and supplied a new and perhaps
+the key-note to Blenham's ugliness.  It was borne in upon Steve that
+his grandfather's lieutenant was bad, absolutely bad; that, old adages
+to the contrary notwithstanding, here was a character with not a hint
+of redemption in it; after the Packard outright way, this youngest
+Packard was ready to condemn out of hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And further, to all of this Steve marked how Blenham had drawn a quick
+rein but had shown no tremor of uneasiness; had considered that though
+the man had been taken completely by surprise he had given no sign of
+being startled, but had answered a sharp summons with a cool, quiet
+voice.  So, summing it up, here was one to be hated and watched.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you doing on my land, Blenham?" asked Steve sharply.  "And
+where are you driving those steers?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham eased himself in his saddle, drew his broad hat lower over his
+eyes; thus he partly hid the patch which he had worn since he came from
+the doctor's hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I ain't on your land any more," he returned.  "An' as for them
+steers&mdash;what's it to you, anyhow?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Open defiance was one thing Steve had not looked for.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Looking for more trouble yet, Blenham?" he asked briefly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham shrugged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm tendin' to business," he said slowly.  "No, I'm not lookin' for
+trouble&mdash;yet.  Since you want to know, I'm hazin' them cow-brutes the
+shortes' way off'n Number Ten an' on to the North Trail.  I'm puttin'
+'em on the trot to the Big Bend ranch where they happen to belong."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve lifted his brows, for the moment wondering.  Blenham was not
+waiting for pitch dark to move these steers; he manifested no alarm at
+being discovered; now he calmly admitted that he was driving them to
+old man Packard's ranch where they belonged.  It was possible that he
+was right.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the few weeks that he had been back Steve had not had the time to
+know every head on his wide-scattered acreage; as the steers had
+trotted through the shadows and into the open his eyes had been less
+for them than for the coming of Blenham and he was not sure of the
+brands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He felt that Terry's eyes, as Terry sat very still on her log, were
+steadily upon him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham," he said curtly, "I don't know whose cattle those are.  But I
+do know this much: If they are mine I am going to have them back; if
+they are not mine I am going to have them back just the same."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How do you make that out?" demanded Blenham.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I make out that neither you nor any other man has any business driving
+stock off my range without consulting me first."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They're Big Bend cows," muttered Blenham.  "The ol' man's orders&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Curse the old man's orders!" Steve's voice rang out angrily.  "If he
+can't be decent to me, can't he at least let me alone?  Need he send
+you here to do business with me?  If you want orders, Blenham, you just
+take these from me: Ride back to the old man on Big Bend ranch and tell
+him that what stock is on my ranch I keep here until he can prove it is
+his!  Understand?  If he can prove that these steers belong to him&mdash;and
+I don't believe he can and you can tell him that, too&mdash;why then, let
+him send me the money to pay for their pasturage and he can have them.
+And in the meantime, Mr. Blenham, get out and be damned to you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For the moment Steve lost all thought of Terry sitting very still so
+close to him, his mind filled with his grandfather and his
+grandfather's chosen tool.  So when he thought that he heard the
+suspicion of a stifled giggle, a highly amused and vastly delighted
+little giggle, he was for the instant of the opinion that Blenham was
+laughing at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the intruder was all seriousness.  He sat motionless, his glance
+stony, his thought veiled, his one good eye giving no more hint of his
+purpose than did the patch over the other eye.  In the end he shrugged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My orders," he said finally, "was simply to haze them steers back to
+the Big Bend.  The ol' man didn't say nothin' about startin' anything
+if you got unreasonable."  Again he shrugged elaborately.  "I'll come
+again if he says so," he concluded and, jabbing his spurs viciously
+into his horse's flanks, his sole sign of irritation, Blenham rode away
+through the woods.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He let go too easy," murmured Terry.  "He's got a card in the hole
+yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her eyes followed the departing rider, she pursed her lips after him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve turned and looked down upon her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope you don't mind if I trespass to the extent of riding after
+those steers?" he offered.  "I want to drive them back and at the same
+time I don't mind making sure that Blenham is still on his way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry regarded him long and searchingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go ahead," she said at last.  And, as though an explanation were
+necessary, she continued: "There's just one animal I hate worse than I
+do a Packard!  For once the fence is down between you and Temple land,
+Steve Packard."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let's keep it down!" he said impulsively.  "You and I&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, thanks!"  Terry rose swiftly to her feet, balancing on her log,
+reminding him oddly of a bright bird about to take flight.  "You just
+remember that there's just one animal I hate <I>almost</I> as much as I do
+Blenham; and that that's a Packard."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so she jumped down from the log and left him.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap16"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVI
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+TERRY DEFIES BLENHAM
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+Blenham must have ridden late into the night.  For at a very early hour
+the next morning he was at the Big Bend ranch fifty miles to the north
+and reporting to his employer.  Early as it was, the old man had
+breakfasted, and now the wide black hat far back on his head, the spurs
+on his big boots, bespoke his readiness to be riding.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At times he stood stock-still, his hands on his hips, staring down at
+Blenham's lesser stature; at other times and in a deep, thoughtful
+silence he strode back and forth in the great barn-like library, his
+spurs jingling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, burn it, man," he exploded once during the fore part of the
+interview, "the boy is a Packard!  I'm proud of him.  We're going to
+make a real man out of Stephen yet.  Haven't I said the words a dozen
+times: 'Break a fool an' make a man!'  I'm tellin' you, the las'
+Packard to be spoiled by havin' too much easy money has lived an' died.
+All we got to do with Stephen is put him on foot; set him down in the
+good ol'-fashioned dirt where he's got to work for what he gets, an'
+he'll come through.  Same as I did.  Yessir!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham waited for his signal to continue his report, and when he got
+it, a look and a nod, he resumed, face, voice, and eye alike
+expressionless of any personal interest in the matter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know them nine big steers as strayed from here some time ago?  I
+tol' you about 'em two or three weeks ago?  Well, I found 'em like I
+said I would, all nine of 'em, an' on Ranch Number Ten."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's quite a way for cattle to stray," said the old man sharply.
+Blenham shrugged carelessly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I dunno," he returned lightly.  "I've knowed 'em to go fu'ther
+than that.  Well, I made a pass to haze 'em on back this way an' young
+Packard blocks my play."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man's eye brightened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did he say?" he asked eagerly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He said," said Blenham, picking at his hat-band, "as how if the stock
+was yours which he didn't believe he'd hold 'em until you sent over
+enough coin to pay for their feed.  He said as how, if you couldn't be
+decent you better anyhow leave him alone.  He said hell with both of
+us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He did?" cried old Packard.  "He said that, Blenham?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He did," answered Blenham with a quick, curious, sidewise glance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard's big hand was lifted and came down mightily upon his thigh as,
+suddenly released, the old man's voice boomed out in a great peal of
+laughter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ho!" he cried, shouting out the words to be heard far out across the
+open meadow.  "Say to hell with me, does he?  Holds my stock for
+pasture money, does he?  Defies me to do my worst, him a young,
+penniless whippersnapper, me a millionaire an' a man-breaker!  Why,
+curse it, he's a man already, Blenham!  He's a Packard to his backbone,
+I tell you!  By the Lord, I've a notion to jump into my car and go get
+the boy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A troubled shadow came and went swiftly across Blenham's face, not to
+be seen by the old man who was staring out of his window.  All of the
+craft there was in the ranch foreman rose to the surface.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," he agreed quietly, "he's got the makin's in him.  He ain't
+scared of the devil himself, which is one right good earmark.  He's
+independent, which is another good sign.  Why, when I runs across him
+an' that Temple girl out in the woods&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's that!" snapped the old man, though he had heard well enough.
+"Do you mean to tell me&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They was sittin' on top a big log," said Blenham tonelessly.
+"Confidential lookin', you know.  I won't say he was holdin' her hands,
+an' at the same time I won't say he wasn't.  An' I won't say he'd jus'
+kissed her, two seconds before I rode aroun' a bend in the trail."  One
+of his ponderous shrugs and a grimace concluded his meaning.  Then he
+laughed.  "Nor I wouldn't say he hadn't.  But, like I was tellin'
+you&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You were tellin' me," growled the old man, "that that scoundrel of a
+Temple's fool of a girl is tryin' her hand at spellbindin' my gran'son
+Stephen!  The dirty little saphead&mdash;  Look here, Blenham; you've got
+more gumption than most: tell me how far things have gone an' what
+Temple's game is.  Guy Little has been tellin' me the same sort of
+thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There ain't much to tell," answered Blenham.  "That is, that a man
+couldn't guess without bein' told.  He's your gran'son; even with a
+scrap on between you an' him, still blood is thicker'n water an' some
+day, maybe, you'll pass on to him all you got.  Leastways, there's a
+chance, an' also he oughta fit pretty snug in a girl's eye.  Fu'ther to
+all that, it's jus' the same ol' story.  A feller an' a girl, an' the
+girl with a fine figger an' a fine pair of eyes which, bein' a
+she-girl, she knows how to use.  Seein' as you ask the question, I
+guess I could answer it by jus' sayin' that the Temples are makin' the
+one move they'd be sure to make."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The senior Packard's scowl had known fame as long as fifty years ago;
+never was it blacker than right now.  For a little he stood still
+glaring at the floor.  Blenham watched him covertly, a look of craft in
+the one good eye.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Better go over an' see Temple right away," said Packard presently.
+"He won't be able to pay up his next instalment.  Tell him I'm goin' to
+foreclose an' drive him out.  While you're at it you can show him the
+plum foolishness of sickin' his idiot girl on Stephen.  How it won't
+bring 'em any good an' will jus' get me out on his trail red-hot.
+He'll understand."  And the stern old mouth set into lines of which
+Blenham read the full and emphatic meaning.  "Go on: anything else to
+report?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After his fashion in business matters he had pondered deeply but
+briefly upon this interference of Terry, had planned, had instructed
+his agent, and now turned to whatever might next demand his attention
+in connection with his campaign against and for Steve Packard.  And
+Blenham, deeming that he had scored a certain point, moved straight on
+to another.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He said&mdash;an' she watched an' listened an' giggled&mdash;as how he was in
+right an' you was in wrong; as how the law was on his side an' he'd
+stick it out; how he could take the whole ruction into court an' beat
+you; how&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Old Hell-Fire Packard stared at him, mumbling heavily:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He said that?  Stephen, my gran'son said that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," lied Blenham glibly.  "Them was his words.  An', not knowin' a
+whole lot about law an' such&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He ended there, knowing that his words went unheeded.  The look upon
+the old man's face changed slowly from one of pure amazement to one of
+pain, grief, disappointment.  Stephen, his gran'son, threatened to go
+to law!  It was unthinkable that any one save a thief and an out-right
+scoundrel, such by the way as were all of his business rivals and the
+men who refused to tote and carry at his bidding, should make a threat
+like that; worse than unthinkable, utterly, depravedly disgraceful that
+one of the house of Packard should resort to such devious and damnable
+practices.  For an instant Blenham thought that tears were actually
+gathering in the weary old eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the emotion which came first was gone in a scurry before a sudden
+windy rage.  The face which had been graven with humiliation and
+chagrin went fiery red; the big hands clenched and were uplifted; the
+great booming voice trembled to the shouted words:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let him; burn him, let him!  I can break the fool quicker that way
+than any other; don't he know it takes money, money without end, for
+the perjurin', trickery, slippery law sharks that'll bleed a man, aye,
+suck out his life-blood an' then spit him out like the pulp of an
+orange?  Infernal young puppy-dawg!  See what it's done for him
+already, this rich-man's-son business.  To think that one of my blood,
+my own gran'son, should go to law!  Why, by high heaven, Blenham, the
+thing's downright disgraceful!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Swiftly, deftly, employing a remark like a surgeon's lancet, Blenham
+offered:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have the hunch that Temple girl put it in his head."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're right!"  This new suggestion required no weighing and fine
+balancing.  You could attribute no villainy whatever to one of the old
+man's enemies that he would not admit the extreme likelihood of your
+being right.  "Stephen ain't that sort; she's got him by the nose, hell
+take her!  She's drivin' him to it, an' it's Temple drivin' her.  An'
+it's up to you an' me to drive him clean out'n this corner of the
+universe.  Which we can do without goin' to the law!" he interjected
+scornfully.  "I reckon you understan', don't you, Blenham?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham nodded and put on his hat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm to hound him from the start to finish; until we drive him an' her
+out the country.  An' I'm to pound at your gran'son too an' at the same
+time until we bust him wide open.  That right?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Right an' go to it!" cried Packard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham saluted as he might have done were he still a sergeant down on
+the border, wheeled and went out.  Five minutes later he was riding
+again toward the south.  And now the look on his face was one of near
+triumph.  For at last the time had come when the old man had given
+outright the instructions which could make many things possible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That same day, about noon, Terry Temple, flashing across country in her
+car, met Blenham on the country road.  She was going toward Red Creek,
+her errand urgent as were always the errands of Terry.  Half a mile
+away she knew him, first by the white stocking of his favorite mare,
+second by his big bulk and the way it sat the saddle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So, quite like the old Packard whom she so heartily detested, she gave
+him the horn and never an inch of the road which was none too wide.
+Blenham, his mouth working, jerked his horse out of the way, down over
+the edge of the slope, and cursed after her as she passed him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry, in Red Creek, went straight to the store and to a shelf in a far
+and dusty corner where were all of the purchasable books of the
+village.  A thumb in her mouth, a frown in her eyes, she regarded them
+long and soberly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the end she severed the Gordian knot by taking an even dozen
+volumes.  There were a grammar, an ancient history, some composition
+books, and, most important of all, a treatise upon social usages.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How to write letters, what R. S. V. P. meant, "Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so
+request and so forth," how a lady should greet a gentleman friend&mdash;in
+short, an answer to all possible questions of right and wrong ways of
+appearing in polite society.  With her purchases stowed away in a
+cracker-box Terry turned again toward the ranch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the ordinary course of events Terry should have returned to her home
+well ahead of Blenham.  But this afternoon she made a wide, circling
+detour to chat briefly with Rod Norton's young wife at the Rancho de
+las Flores, and so came under the Temple oaks after dusk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she turned in at the gate she saw Blenham's horse standing tied down
+by the stable.  Terry's eyes opened wonderingly and a little flush came
+into her cheeks.  Plainly Blenham was closeted with her father.  Terry
+bit her lip, gathered her books in her arms, and hastened toward the
+house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The bawling of a mother cow and a baby calf, separated by a corral
+fence, had quite drowned out the purr of her motor; her step as usual
+was light upon the porch.  The first that Temple and Blenham knew of
+her coming was her form in the doorway, her face turned curiously upon
+them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And in that instant, while all three stood motionless, Terry saw and
+wondered at a look of understanding which had flashed between her own
+father and the despised representative of a hated race.  Further she
+noted how the glass in Temple's hand was still lifted, as was the glass
+in Blenham's, the whiskey still undrunk, winking at her in the pale
+lamplight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Isn't your eternal drinking bad enough without your asking such as
+that to drink with you?" she asked quietly.  Very, very quietly for
+Miss Terry Temple.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her father shifted a trifle uneasily.  Blenham watched her intently,
+admiringly after a gross fashion and yet a bit contemptuously.  Blenham
+could put a look like that into his eye; to him a girl was a thing that
+might be both sneered at and coveted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear," said Temple, striving for clear enunciation and in the end
+achieving it heavily, "I am glad you came.  I want you to listen.  We
+must act wisely.  We must not misjudge Mr. Blenham."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+While Terry remained silent, looking from one to the other of the two
+men.  Temple drank his whiskey hastily, furtively, snatching the second
+when her gaze had gone to Blenham.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the game?" asked Terry in a moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She set her books down upon the table at her side, put out her hand to
+the back of a chair, and like the men remained standing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Temple looked to Blenham, who merely shrugged his thick shoulders and
+sipped at his whiskey, as though it had been a light wine and very soft
+to an appreciative palate.  In some vague way the act was vastly
+insolent.  Temple appeared uncertain, no uncommon thing with him; then,
+going to set his emptied glass down he put an elbow on the mantel,
+dropped his head, and spoke in a low, mumbling voice:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The game?  It's what it always was, Terry girl; what it always will
+be.  The game of the ear of corn and the millstones; the game of the
+unfortunate under the iron heel."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unfortunate!"  cried Terry in disgust.  "Pooh!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Listen to me," commanded her father.  "You ask: What's the game? and
+I'm telling you."  His head was up now; Terry noted a new look in his
+eyes, as he hurried on.  "It's just the game of life, after all.  The
+war of those who have everything against those who have nothing; of men
+like Old Hell-Fire Packard against men like me.  A game to be won more
+often than not through the sheer force of massed money that squeezes
+the life out of the under dog&mdash;but to be lost when the moneyed fool,
+curse him, runs up against a team like Blenham and me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham and you?" she repeated.  "You and Blenham?  You mean to tell
+me that you are chipping in with him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham turned his whiskey-glass slowly in his great thick fingers.
+His eye shone with its crafty light; his lips were parted a little as
+though they held themselves in readiness for a swift interruption if
+Temple said the wrong thing or went too far.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are prejudiced," said Temple.  "You always have been.  Just
+because Blenham here has represented Packard, and Packard&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is an old thief!" she cried passionately.  "And worse!  As Packard's
+<I>Man Friday</I> Blenham doesn't exactly make a hit with me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come, come," exclaimed Temple.  "Curb your tongue, Teresa, my dear.
+If you will only listen&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shoot then and get it over."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry sank into her chair, clasped her gauntleted hands about a pair of
+plump knees which drew Blenham's gaze approvingly, and set her white
+teeth to nibbling impatiently at her under lip as though setting a
+command upon it for silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let's have it, Dad."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's sensible," mumbled Temple.  "You always were a smart girl,
+Teresa, when you cared to be.  Let's see; where had I got?  Oh, yes;
+speaking of Blenham chipping in with us, as you put it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"With <I>you</I>!" corrected Terry briefly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We're mortgaged to old man Packard," continued Temple, somewhat hasty
+about it now that he had fairly plunged into the current of what he had
+to say, as though the water were cold and he was anxious to clamber out
+upon the far side.  "Not much in a way; a good deal when you figure on
+how tight money is and how little we've seen of it these last few
+years.  Now, Packard sends Blenham across with a message; he's going to
+foreclose; he is going to drive us out; to ruin us.  That is Packard's
+word."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry stiffened in her chair; her chin rose a little in the air; her
+eyes brightened; the color in her cheeks deepened.  That was her only
+answer to Packard's ultimatum as quoted to her father by Blenham and by
+Temple to her.  Knowing that there was still more to come, she sat
+still, her clasped hands tightening about her knees.  Blenham, as still
+as she, was sipping at his whiskey.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But Blenham is a white man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Temple attempted to say it with the force of conviction, but Terry
+merely sniffed, and Temple himself failed somewhat to put his heart
+into his words.  He hurried on, repeating:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, a white man.  And he's got a little money of his own that he's
+been tucking away all these years of working for Packard.  He comes
+over this evening, Teresa, my dear, and makes us a&mdash;curse it, a
+generous offer.  You see, as things are, we are bound to lose the whole
+place, lock, stock, and barrel, to Packard; you don't want to do that,
+do you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go on," said Terry.  Her face was suddenly as white as the hands from
+which she was swiftly, nervously stripping her gauntlets.  "Just what
+is Blenham's generous offer, Dad?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's one of two things."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He hesitated and licked his lips.  Terry's heart sank lower yet; it
+took him so long to set the thing into words!  "You see, as Old Man
+Packard's foreman and agent he comes to tell us that he is ordered to
+foreclose; to break us utterly.  As a friend to us he says&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For God's sake!" cried Terry sharply.  "What does he say?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He will pay us a thousand dollars to let him take over everything!  He
+will assume the mortgage; he will scrap it out with old Packard; he
+will clear the title; and, if we get where we want the ranch back some
+time, he will let us buy him out for just what he has put in it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry looked at him gravely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In words of one syllable," she said quietly, "Blenham plans to give
+you one thousand dollars; then to pay to old Packard the seven thousand
+you owe him; and for this amount of eight thousand to grab an outfit
+that is worth twenty thousand if it's worth a nickel!  That's his
+generous offer, is it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't my dear me!" she snapped impatiently.  "Just go on and get the
+whole idiotic thing out of your system.  What else?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's all.  As I have said already, as things are we are bound to
+lose everything to Packard.  Blenham steps up and offers us a
+thousand&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should think he would step up!  Lively!  Well, I can't stop you, can
+I?  You don't have to have my consent to make a laughing-stock out of
+yourself?  Have you signed up with Blenham already?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Temple sought to assume an air of dignity which went poorly with his
+ragged slippers and bleary eye.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham has his money in a safe in Red Creek.  There will be papers to
+be signed.  We are going there now.  I&mdash;I am sorry you take it this
+way, Teresa."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then she sprang to her feet, her two hands clenched, her eyes blazing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I," she cried hotly, "am sorry.  Oh, I am ashamed! that one of the
+name of Temple should sink so low as to hobnob with a cur and a
+scoundrel, a cheat, a liar, and all that Blenham is, and that you and I
+and the whole country know he is!  I'd rather see Old Hell-Fire Packard
+break you and grind you under foot than see you stand there and drink
+with that thing!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And that there should be no mistake her finger shot out, pointing at
+Blenham.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Terry!" commanded her father, "be silent.  You don't know what you are
+saying!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't I, though!  I&mdash;I&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham laughed as she broke off, laughed again as he stood watching
+how she was breathing rapidly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pretty puss," he said impudently, "you need them pink-an'-white nails
+of your'n trimmed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you dare say a word to me," she flung at him.  "Not a word."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not a single little word, eh?"  He tossed off his whiskey, dropped the
+empty glass to the floor behind him, and came a quick stride toward
+her, an ugly leer twisting at the corner of his mouth, his one eye
+burning.  "I've got your ol' man where I want him; he knows it an' I
+an' you know it.  An' when I like I can have you where I want you, too.
+Understan'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had taken another step toward her.  The sudden thought leaped up in
+her mind that he and her father had had many drinks together before her
+arrival.  She drew back slowly.  Temple, seeing that for the moment all
+attention had been drawn from him, reached out for a bottle on the far
+end of the mantel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then suddenly and without another word being spoken Terry was
+galvanized into action.  Blenham was coming on toward her and she saw
+the look in his eye.  She whipped back; her breath caught in her
+throat; the color ran out of her cheeks.  She glanced wildly toward her
+father; his fingers were closing about the neck of a bottle when they
+should have been at the neck of a man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry whipped up a book from the table&mdash;it was a volume answering many
+a question about how to act in society but without any mention of such
+a situation as now had arisen&mdash;and flung it straight into Blenham's
+hectic face.  Then she slipped through the door behind her, slammed it,
+and ran out, down the porch and into the night.  Behind her she heard
+Blenham's heavy, spurred boots and Blenham's curse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If he comes on I will kill him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was at her car; her revolver was in her hand.  She saw Blenham come
+outside.  A moment he seemed to hesitate, his big bulk outlined against
+the door's rectangle of light.  Then she heard him laugh and saw him
+return to the room.  She came back slowly, tiptoe, to stand under the
+window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can drive the girl's car, can't you?" Blenham was asking.  And
+when Temple admitted that he could: "Let's pile in an' be on our way.
+Like I said, you close with me tonight or I won't touch the thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then again Terry ran back to her car.  She sprang in, started her
+engine, opened the throttle as she let in the clutch, and making a wide
+circle shot up the road, out the gate, and away into the darkness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll take this pot yet, Mr. Cutthroat Blenham!" she was crying within
+herself.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap17"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVII
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+AND CALLS ON STEVE
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+Though a tempest brewed in her soul and her blood grew turbulent with
+it, Terry did not hesitate from the first second.  Just the other day
+upon a certain historic log had she not said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hate Blenham worse than a Packard!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+True, she had gone on to intimate that the youngest of the house of
+Packard was scarcely more to her liking than was the detested foreman.
+But&mdash;  Well, if Steve didn't know, at least Terry did, that that remark
+was uttered purely for its rhetorical effect.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's been a pretty decent scout from the jump," Terry admitted
+serenely to herself as she threw her car into high and went streaking
+through the pale moonlight.  Then she smiled, the first quick smile to
+come and go since she had hurled a book in Blenham's face.  "A pretty
+decent scout from the jump!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had literally jumped into her life, going after her quite as
+though&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, shucks!" laughed Terry.  "It's the moonlight!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There came a certain sharp turn in the road where even she must slow
+down.  Here Terry came to a dead stop, not so much in hesitation as
+because she was conscious of a departure from the old trails and felt
+deeply that the act might be filled with significance.  For when she
+had made the turn she would have crossed the old dead line, she would
+have passed the boundary and invaded Packard property.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," thought Terry, "when you are between the devil and the deep sea
+what are you going to do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So she let in her clutch, opened her throttle, sounded her horn purely
+by way of defiance, and when next she stopped it was at the very door
+of the old ranch-house where Steve Packard should be found at this
+early hour of the evening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The men in the bunk-house had heard her coming, and to the last man of
+them pushed to the door to see who it might be.  Their first thought,
+of course, would be that the old mountain-lion, Steve's grandfather,
+had come roaring down from his place in the north.  Terry tossed up her
+head so that they might see and know and marvel and speculate and do
+and say anything which pleased them.  Having crossed her Rubicon, she
+didn't care the snap of her pretty fingers who knew.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want Steve Packard," she called to them.  "Where is he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was young Barbee who answered, Barbee of the innocent blue eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the ranch-house, Miss Terry," he said.  And he came forward,
+patting his hair into place, hitching at his belt, smiling at her after
+his most successful lady-killing fashion.  "Sure I won't do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You?"  Terry laughed.  "When I'm looking for a man I'm not going to
+stop for a boy, Barbee dear!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And she jumped down and knocked loudly at Steve's door, while the men
+at the bunk-house laughed joyously and Barbee cursed under his breath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve, supposing that it was one of his own men grown suddenly formal,
+did not take his stockinged feet down from his table or his pipe from
+his lips as he called shortly&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come in!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Terry asked no second invitation.  In she went, slamming the door
+after her so that those who gawked at the bunk-house entrance might
+gawk in vain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now Steve Packard achieved in one flashing second the removal of
+his feet from the table, the shifting of his pipe from his teeth, the
+swift buttoning of his shirt across his chest.  And as he stared at her
+he gasped:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll be&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Say it!" laughed Terry.  "Well, I'm here.  Came on business.  There's
+a hole in the toe of your sock," she ended with a flash of malice, as
+she noted how, embarrassed for the first time since she had known him,
+he was trying to hide a pair of man-sized feet behind his table.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-240"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-240.jpg" ALT="&quot;Say it!&quot; laughed Terry.  &quot;Well, I'm here.  Came on business.&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="389" HEIGHT="564">
+<H3>
+[Illustration: "Say it!" laughed Terry.  "Well, I'm here.  Came on business."]
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Steve grew violently red.  Terry laughed deliciously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&mdash;I didn't know&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course you didn't," she agreed.  "Now, I'm in something of a rush
+of the red streak variety, but in a little book of mine I have read
+that a young gentleman receiving a young lady caller after dark should
+have his hair combed, his shirt buttoned, and at least a pair of
+slippers on.  I'll give you three minutes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Packard looked at her wonderingly.  Then, without an answer, he strode
+by her and to the window.  The shade he flipped up so that anyone who
+cared to might look into the room.  Next he went to the door and called:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bill, oh, Bill Royce.  Come up here.  Here's some one who wants a word
+with you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry Temple's face went a burning, burning red.  There came the
+impulse to put both arms about this big shirt-sleeved, tousled Packard
+man and squeeze him hard&mdash;and at the end of it pinch him harder.  For
+in Terry's soul was understanding, and he both delighted her and shamed
+her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But when Steve came back and slipped his feet into his boots and sat
+down across the table from her, Terry's face told him nothing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're a funny guy, Steve Packard," she admitted thoughtfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's nothing," grinned Steve, by now quite himself again.  "So are
+you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had come from the Temple ranch without any hat; her hair had
+tumbled down long ago and now framed her vivacious face most adorably.
+Adorably, that is, to a man's mind; other women are not always agreed
+upon such matters.  At any rate, Steve watched with both admiration and
+regret in his eyes as Terry shook out the loose bronze tresses and
+began to bring neat order out of bewilderingly becoming chaos.  Her
+mouth was full of pins when Bill Royce came in.  But still she could
+whisper tantalizingly&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you picked on Bill for a chaperon because he's blind&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Royce stopped in the doorway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That you, Terry Temple?" he asked.  "An' you wanted me?  What's up?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I came to have a talk with Steve Packard," answered Terry promptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She got up and took Royce's hands between hers and led him to a chair
+before she relinquished them.  And before she went back to her own
+place she had said swiftly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I haven't seen you since you licked Blenham.  I&mdash;I am glad you got
+your chance, Bill."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you, Miss Terry," said Royce quietly.  "I sorta evened up things
+with him.  Not quite.  But sorta.  Then you didn't want me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not this trip, Bill.  It's just a play of Mr. Packard's here.  He
+didn't like to have it known that I had him all alone here; afraid it
+might compromise him, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She giggled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Or queer him with his girl, mos' likely!" chuckled Royce.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whereat Steve glowered and Terry looked startled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're both talking nonsense," said Packard.  He reached out for his
+pipe but dropped it again to the table without lighting it.  "If there
+is anything I can do for you, Miss Temple&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saw how the look in her eyes altered.  Nothing less than an errand
+of transcendent importance could have brought her here and he knew it.
+And now, in quick, eager words she told him:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham has almost put one across on us.  Our outfit is mortgaged to
+your old thief of a grandfather for a miserable seven thousand dollars.
+Old Packard sent Blenham over to tell dad he is going to shove us out.
+Blenham plays foxy and offers dad a thousand dollars for the mortgage.
+Oh, I don't understand just how to say it, but Blenham has a few
+thousand dollars he has saved and stolen here and there, and he means
+to grab the Temple ranch for a total of eight thousand dollars; seven
+thousand to old Packard, one thousand to dad&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But surely&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Surely nothing!  Dad's half full of whiskey as usual, and a thousand
+dollars looks as big to him as a full moon.  Besides, he's sure of
+losing to old Hell-Fire sooner or later."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you want me&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you've got any money or can raise any," said Terry crisply, "I'm
+offering you a good proposition.  The same Blenham is after.  The ranch
+is worth a whole lot better than twenty thousand dollars.  My
+proposition is&mdash;  But can you raise eight thousand?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve regarded her a moment speculatively.  Then, quite after the way
+of Steve Packard, he slipped his hand into his shirt and brought out a
+sheaf of banknotes and tossed them to her across the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm not a bloodsucker," he said quietly.  "Take what you like; I'll
+stake you to the wad."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry looked, counted&mdash;and gasped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ten thousand!" she cried.  "Good Lord, Steve Packard!  Ten
+thousand&mdash;and you'd lend me&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To pay off a mortgage to my grandfather, yes," he answered soberly,
+quite conscious of what he was doing and of its recklessness and,
+perhaps, idiocy.  "And to beat Blenham."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She jumped up and ran around the table to put her two hands on his
+shoulders and shake him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're a God-blessed brick, Steve Packard!" she cried ringingly.  "But
+I'm not a bloodsucker, either.  If you're a dead game sport&mdash;  Well,
+that's what I'd rather be than anything else you can put a name to.
+Lace your boots, get into a hat, shove that in your pocket."  And she
+slipped the roll of bills into his hand.  "By now dad and Blenham will
+be on the road to Red Creek; we'll beat them to it, have a lawyer and
+some papers all ready, and when they show up we'll just take dad out of
+Blenham's hands."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't quite get you," said Steve.  "If you won't borrow the
+money&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll make dad sell out to you for eight thousand; he pockets one
+thousand and with the other seven your money-grabbing, pestiferous old
+granddad is paid off.  Then you and I frame a deal between us&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Partners!" ejaculated Bill Royce.  "Glory to be!  Steve Packard an'
+Terry Temple pardners&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you see?"  Terry was excitedly tugging at Steve's arm.  "Come
+on; come alive.  We're going to play freeze-out with Hell-Fire Packard
+and his right-hand bower, both.  And we're going to keep dad from doing
+a fool thing.  And we're going to&mdash;  Oh, come on, can't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve got up and stood looking down at her curiously.  Then he laughed
+and turned away for his coat and hat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lead on; I'm trailing you," he said briefly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bill Royce rubbed his hands and chuckled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Even if I ain't got eyes," he mused, "there's some things I can see
+real clear."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap18"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVIII
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+"IF HE KNOWS--DOES SHE?"
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+There seemed no particular need for haste.  And yet Terry ran eagerly
+to her car, and Steve hurried after her with long strides while the men
+down at the bunkhouse surmised and looked to Bill Royce for a measure
+of explanation.  Steve was not beyond the age of enthusiasm; Terry was
+all atingle.  Life was shaping itself to an adventure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so, though it appeared that all of the time in the world was theirs
+for loitering&mdash;for it should be a simple matter to come to Red Creek
+well in advance of Blenham and his dupe&mdash;Terry yielded to her
+excitement, Steve yielded out of hand to the lure of Terry, and, quite
+gay about it, they sped away through the moonlight.   While Terry,
+driver, perforce kept her eyes busied with the road, Steve Packard
+leaned back in his seat and contented himself with the vision of his
+fellow adventurer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Terry Temple," he told her emphatically and utterly sincerely, "you
+are absolutely the prettiest thing I ever saw."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm not a thing," said Terry.  "And besides, I know it already.
+And&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then it was that they got their first puncture; a worn tire cut through
+by a sharp fragment of rock so that they heard the air gush out
+windily.  Terry jammed on her brakes.  Steve jumped out and made hasty
+examination.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Looks like a man had gone after it with a hand-ax," he announced
+cheerfully.  "Good thing you've got a spare."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry flung down from her seat impatiently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I need some new tires," she said, as she from one side and he from the
+other began seeking in the tool-box under the seat for jack and wrench.
+"That spare is soft, too, and half worn through; I'll bet we get more
+than one puncture before the job's done.  But it's mounted, anyway."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve went down on his knee and began jacking the car up; Terry
+standing over him was busy with her wrench loosening the lugs at the
+rim.  Then, while he made the exchange and tightened the nuts, she
+strapped the punctured tire in its carrier and slipped back into her
+seat.  As Steve got in beside her he marked how speculatively her eyes
+were busied with the road.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We've got them behind us, haven't we?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry nodded quickly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  We've got the head start and they're on horseback.  It's no
+trick to beat them to it.  But&mdash;  Oh, I saw a look on Blenham's face
+to-night!  He's bad, Steve Packard; all bad; the kind that stops at
+nothing!  And somehow, somehow he's got a strangle-hold on poor old dad
+and is making him do this.  We've got the head start, we can beat them
+to Red Creek, but&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you don't like the idea of leaving your father alone in Blenham's
+company to-night?" he finished for her.  "Is that it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again she nodded.  He could see her teeth set to nibbling at her lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then," he suggested, "why go to Red Creek at all?  Why not turn back
+here and stop them?  You can take Mr. Temple back home with you.  I
+imagine that between the two of us we can make Blenham understand he is
+not wanted this time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was thinking of that," said Terry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And where the Ranch Number Ten road runs into the country road, Terry
+turned to the right, headed again toward her own home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When, with Steve at her heels, she ran up on the porch it was to be met
+by Iki, the Japanese cook, his eyes shining wildly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where's my father?" she asked, and Iki waving his hands excitedly
+answered:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Departed with rapid haste and many curse-words from his gentleman
+friend.  The master could not make a stop for one little more drink of
+whiskey.  The other strike and vomit threats and say: 'Most surely will
+I cause that you tarry long time in jail-side.'  Saying likewise: 'I
+got you by the long hair like I want you and yes-by-God, like some day
+soon I get your lovely daughter!'  Only he say the latter with
+unpleasant words of&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry was shaking him by both shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where did they go?" she demanded.  "How long ago?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On horses, running swiftly," gibbered Iki.  "Ten minutes,
+maybe&mdash;perhaps twenty or thirty.  Who can tell the time when&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why didn't we meet them?" asked Steve of Terry.  "If they are really
+headed for Red Creek?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are taking all of the short-cuts there are," she answered
+promptly.  "They'll take a cow-trail through the ranch, cut across the
+lower end of your place, and come into the old road just beyond.
+Blenham's all fox; he has guessed that I am out to put a spoke in his
+wheel somehow.  He won't be wasting any perfectly good moonlight.  Come
+on!"  And again she was running to the car.  "We'll overhaul them just
+the same.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I believe you," grunted Steve, once more seated beside her, the engine
+drumming, the wheels spinning.  "You don't know what a speed law is, do
+you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Speed law?" she repeated absently, her eyes on the next dark turn in
+the road.  "What's that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He chuckled and settled back in his seat.  His eyes, like the girl's,
+were watchfully bent upon the gloom-filled angle which Terry must
+negotiate before the way straightened out again before her.  Her
+headlights cut through the shadows; Terry's little body stiffened a bit
+and her hands tensed on her wheel; her flying speed was lessened an
+almost negligible trifle; she made the turn and opened the throttle.
+Steve nodded approvingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For the greater part they were silent.  He had never seen her in a mood
+like to-night's.  He read in her face, in her eyes, in the carriage of
+her body, one and the same thing; and that was a complex something made
+of the several emotions of determination, sorrow, and fiery anger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He read her thought readily; it was clear that she made no attempt to
+conceal it: She was going to consummate a certain deal, she was grieved
+and ashamed for her father, she remembered the "look on Blenham's face
+to-night," and again and again her fury shot its red tide into her
+cheeks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham put his dirty hands on her," was Steve's thought; "or tried
+to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he found that his own pulses drummed the hotter as he let his
+imagination conjure up a picture for him, Blenham's big, knotted hands
+upon the daintiness that was Terry.  In that moment it seemed to him
+that he had been drawn home across the seas to help mete out punishment
+to a man: a man who had stricken old Bill Royce, and who now dared look
+evilly upon Terry Temple.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then came their second puncture, an ugly gash like the first caused by
+a flinty fragment of rock driven against the worn outer casing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I ordered new tires a month ago," said Terry by way of explanation, as
+she and Steve in the road together set about remedying the trouble.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+While he was getting the inner-tube out, squatting in front of her car
+so as to work in the glow from her headlights, she was rummaging
+through her repair kit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"These rocky roads, you know, and the way I drive."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He laughed.  "The way she drove!"  That meant, "Like the devil!" as he
+would put it.  Over rocky roads, racing right up to a turn, jamming on
+her brakes when she must slow down a little; swinging about a sharp
+bend so that her car slid and her tires dragged; in short getting all
+of the speed out of her motor that she could possibly extract from it,
+regardless and coolly contemptuous of skuffed tires and other trifles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Finding the cut in the inner-tube was simple enough; the moonlight
+alone would have shown it.  He held it up for her to look at and she
+shook her head and sighed.  But making the patch so that it would hold
+was another matter; and pumping up the tire when the job was done was
+still another, and required time and ate up all of Terry's rather
+inconsiderable amount of patience.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A little more luck like this," she cried as once more they took to the
+road, "and Blenham will put one over on us yet!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was borne in upon Steve that Terry's fears might prove to be only
+too well founded.  The time she had taken to drive to him at his ranch,
+the time lost in returning to her home and in changing tires and
+mending a puncture, had been put to better use by Blenham.  True, he
+was on horseback while they motored.  And yet, for a score or so of
+miles, a determined, brutally merciless man upon a horse may render an
+account of himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But while they both speculated they sped on.  They came to the spot
+where the "old road" turned into the new; Blenham and Temple were to be
+seen nowhere though here the country was flat and but sparsely
+timbered, and the moon pricked out all objects distinctly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so on and on, beginning to wonder at last, asking themselves if
+Blenham and Temple had drawn out of the road somewhere, hiding in the
+shadows, to let them go by?  But finally only when they were climbing
+the last winding grade with Red Creek but a couple of miles away, they
+saw the two horsemen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry's car swung about a curve in the road her headlights for a brief
+instant aiding the moon in garishly illuminating a scene to be
+remembered.  Blenham had turned in his saddle, startled perhaps by the
+sound of the oncoming car or by the gleam of the headlights; his
+uplifted quirt fell heavily upon the sides of his running horse; rose
+and fell again upon the rump of Temple's mount, and the two men, their
+horses leaping under them, were gone over the ridge and down upon the
+far side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a few moments, from the crest of the ridge, they made out the two
+running forms on the road below.  Blenham was still frantically beating
+his horse and Temple's.  Terry's horn blared; her car leaped; and
+Blenham, cursing loudly, jerked his horse back on its haunches and well
+out of the road.  With wheels locked, Terry slid to a standstill.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pile in, dad," she said coolly, ignoring Blenham.  "Steve Packard and
+I will take you into Red Creek.  Packard is ready to make you a better
+proposition than Blenham's.  Turn your horse loose; he'll go home, and
+pile in with us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He'll do nothing of the kind!" shouted Blenham, his voice husky with
+his fury.  "Just you try that on Temple, an'&mdash;  He'll do nothing of the
+kind," he concluded heavily, his mien eloquent of threat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We know you think you've got some kind of a strangle-hold on him,
+Blenham," cut in Terry crisply.  "But even if you have, dad is a white
+man and&mdash;dad!  What is the matter?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Temple slipped from his saddle and stood shaking visibly, his face dead
+white, his eyes staring.  Even in the moonlight they could all see the
+big drops of sweat on his forehead, glistening as they trickled down.
+He put out his hand to support himself by gripping at his saddle,
+missed blindly, staggered, and began slowly collapsing where he stood
+as though his bones were little by little melting within him.  Blenham
+laughed harshly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Drunker'n a boiled owl," he grunted.  "But jus' the same sober enough
+to know&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dad!" cried Terry a second time, out in the road beside him now, her
+arms belting his slacking body.  "It isn't just that.  You&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sick," moaned Temple weakly.  "God knows&mdash;he's been hounding me to
+death&mdash;I don't know&mdash;I wanted to stop, to rest back there but&mdash;I'm
+afraid that&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He broke off panting.  Steve jumped out and slipped his own arms about
+the wilting form.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me get him into the car," he said gently.  And when he had lifted
+Temple and placed him in the seat he added quietly: "You'd better hurry
+on I think.  Get a doctor for him.  I'll follow on his horse."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry flashed him a look of gratitude, took her place at the wheel and
+started down grade.  Her father at her side continued to settle in his
+place as long as Steve kept him in sight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well?" growled Blenham, his voice ugly and baffled and throaty with
+his rage.  "You butt in again, do you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve swung up into the saddle just now vacated by Temple.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," he retorted coolly.  "And I'm in to stay, too, if you want to
+know, Blenham.  To the finish."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With only the width of a narrow road between them they stared at each
+other.  Then Blenham jeered:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oho!  It's the skirt, huh?  Stuck on her yourself, are you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve frowned, but met his piercing look with level contempt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your language is inelegant, friend Blenham," he said slowly.  "Like
+yourself it is better withdrawn from public notice.  As to your
+meaning&mdash;why, by thunder, I half believe you are right!  And I hadn't
+thought of it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham caught In one of his rare bursts of heady rage shook his fist
+high above his head and cried out savagely:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll beat you yet, the both of you!  See if I don't.  Yes you an' your
+crowd an' him an' her an'&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't take on too many all at once," suggested Steve.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Only the tail of his eye was on Blenham; he was looking wonderingly and
+a bit wistfully down the moonlit, empty road.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I got him where I want him right now," snarled Blenham.  "An'
+her&mdash;I'll have her, too, where I want her!  An', inside less time than
+you'd think I'll have&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he clamped his big mouth tight shut, glared at Steve a moment and
+then, striking with spur and quirt together, so that his frightened
+horse leaped out frantically, he was gone down the road after Temple
+and Terry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Steve followed a smile was in his eyes, a smile slowly parting his
+lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The scoundrel was right!" he mused.  "And I hadn't even thought of it.
+Now how the devil do you suppose he knew?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then, before he had gone a dozen yards a curious, puzzled,
+uncertain look come into his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If he knows," was his perplexity, "Does she?"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap19"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIX
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+TERRY CONFRONTS HELL-FIRE PACKARD
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+"Father's got it in his head he is going to die!" cried Terry.  "He
+sha'n't.  I won't let him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve Packard, riding into Red Creek, met Terry coming out.  She was
+just starting, her car gathering speed; seeing him she drew down
+abruptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I left him at the store," she added breathlessly.  "He is sick.  They
+are friends there; they'll take care of him.  He knows you are coming;
+he has promised to do business with you and shut Blenham out of the
+running.  You are to hurry before Blenham gets there&mdash;he's across the
+street at the saloon already.  After his money, I guess; next thing,
+unless you block his play, he'll be standing over poor old dad's bed,
+bullyragging him.  Come alive, Steve Packard, and beat him to it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And with the last words she had started her car, after Terry's way of
+starting anything, with a leap.  Steve reined in after her, urging his
+horse to a gallop for the first time, calling out sharply:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you&mdash;where are you going?  Why&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"After Doctor Bridges," Terry called back.  "The fool is over at your
+old thief of a grandfather's, playing chess!  The telephone won't&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He could merely speculate as to just what the telephone would not do.
+Terry was gone, was already at the fork of the roads, turning
+northward, hasting alone on a forty-mile drive over lonely roads and
+into the very lair of the old mountain-lion himself.  Steve whistled
+softly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish she had invited me to go along," he grunted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But, instead she had commissioned him otherwise.  So, though his eyes
+were regretful he rode on to the store.  A backward glance showed him a
+diminishing red tail-light disporting itself like some new species of
+firefly gone quite mad; it was twisting this way and that as the road
+invited; it fairly emulated the gyrations of a corkscrew what with the
+added motion necessitated by the deep ruts and chuck-holes over and
+into which the spinning tires were thudding.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the shoulder of a hill, a clump of brush, and Terry and her car
+were gone from him, swallowed up in the night and silence.  He looked
+at his watch.  It was twenty minutes after eight.  She had forty miles
+ahead of her, a return of forty miles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will take her two hours each way," he muttered, "unless she means
+to pile her car up in a ditch somewhere.  Four hours for the trip.
+That means I won't see her until well after midnight."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then he grinned a shade sheepishly; Blenham was right.  He had
+thought of those four hours as though they had been four years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But for her part Terry had no intention of being four hours driving a
+round trip of any eighty miles that she knew of; she had never done
+such a thing before and could see no cause for beginning to-night.
+True, the roads were none too good at best, downright bad often enough.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, that was just the sort of thing she was used to.  And to-night
+there was need for haste.  Great haste, thought the girl anxiously, as
+she remembered the look on her father's face when she and the
+storekeeper's wife had gotten him into bed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll have the roads all to myself; that's one good thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She settled herself in her seat, preparing for a tense hour.  She, too,
+had marked the time; it had been on the verge of twenty minutes after
+eight as she left the store.  "What right has the only doctor in the
+country to play chess, anyway?  And with old Hell-Fire Packard at that?
+Two precious old rascals they are, I'll be bound.  But a rascal of a
+doctor is better than no doctor at all, and&mdash;  Ah, a good, open bit of
+road!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The car leaped to fresh speed under her.  She glanced at her
+speedometer; the needle was wavering between twenty-seven and thirty
+miles.  She narrowed her eyes upon the road; it invited; she shoved the
+throttle on her wheel a little further open; thirty miles,
+thirty-three, thirty-five&mdash;forty, forty-five&mdash;there she kept it for a
+moment&mdash;only a moment it seemed to her breathless impatience.  For next
+came a series of curves where her road, rising, went over the first
+ridge of hills and where on either hand danger lurked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Beyond the ridge the road straightened out suddenly.  Better time now:
+twenty-five miles, thirty, thirty-five&mdash;and then, down in the valley,
+forty-five miles, fifty, fifty-five&mdash;her horn blaring, sending far and
+wide its defiant, warning echoes, her headlights flashing across trees,
+fences, patches of brush, and rolling hills&mdash;sixty miles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If my tires only stick it out&mdash;they ought to&mdash;this road hasn't a sharp
+rock on it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But from sixty miles she must pull down sharply.  Far ahead something
+was across the road; perhaps only a shadow, perhaps a tangible barrier;
+she didn't know these roads any too well.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She cut off her power, jammed on foot and emergency brakes, and so came
+to a stop just in time.  Here a fence stretched across the road; the
+tall gate throwing its black shadows on the white moonlit soil was not
+five feet from her hood when she stopped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She jumped down, threw the gate wide open, propped it back with a stone
+knowing full well how the farmers and cattlemen hereabouts builded
+their gates to shut automatically, drove through in such haste that she
+grazed the gate itself and so jarred it into closing behind her, and
+was again glancing from road to speedometer&mdash;twenty-five, thirty-five,
+a turn to negotiate, seen far ahead, dropping back to twenty-five, to
+twenty.  A straight, alluring stretch&mdash;twenty-five, thirty-five,
+forty-five, fifty, fifty-five, sixty, sixty-two, sixty-three&mdash;the far
+rim of the valley, another line of hills black under the stars&mdash;fifty
+again and down to twenty-five, to twenty and horn blowing as she sped
+into the mouth of the first cañon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And again, when at last she was down in Old Man Packard's valley and
+within hailing distance of his misshapen monster of a house, she set
+her horn to blaring like the martial trumpet of an invading army.
+Cattle and horses along her road awoke from their dozing in the
+moonlight, perhaps leaped to the conclusion that it was old Hell-Fire
+himself in their midst, flung their tails aloft and scampered to right
+and left, and Terry's car stood in front of Packard's door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Right square in front of the door so that Terry herself could jump from
+her running-board and so that her front wheels were planted firmly in
+the old man's choice bed of roses.  There were two flat tires,
+punctured on the way; two ruined, battered rims; her tank still held
+perhaps a gallon of gasoline.  But she had arrived.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before she leaped out Terry had glanced at her clock; she had made the
+trip of forty miles in exactly fifty-three minutes.  Considering the
+state of the roads&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not bad," admitted Terry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then with a final clarion call of her horn she had presented herself at
+Packard's door.  She had got a few of the wildest blown wisps of brown
+hair back where they belonged before the door opened.  She heard
+hurrying feet and prepared herself by a visible stiffening for the
+coming of the arch villain himself.  There was a sense of
+disappointment when she saw that it was only the dwarfed henchman come
+in the master's stead.  Guy Little stared at her in pure surprise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Terry Temple, ain't it?" gasped the mechanician.  "For the love of
+Pete!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want Doctor Bridges," said Terry quickly.  "He's here, isn't he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Guy Little instead of making a prompt and direct answer presented as
+puzzled a countenance as the girl ever saw.  He was in slippers and
+shirtsleeves; he had a large volume which in his hands appeared little
+less than huge; his hair was as badly tousled as Terry's own;  his eyes
+were frankly bewildered.  Terry spoke again impatiently:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Answer me and don't gawk at me!  Is the doctor here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For the love of Pete!" was quite all that Guy Little offered in
+response.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She sniffed and pushed by him, standing in the hallway and for the
+first time in her life fairly in the lion's den.  She looked about her
+with lively interest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Say," said Little then.  "Hold on a minute."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He came quietly close to her, his slipper-feet falling soundlessly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doc Bridges is in there with the ol' man."  He jerked his head toward
+the big library and living-room whose door stood closed in their faces.
+"They're playin' chess.  Unless your sick man's dyin' I guess you
+better wait until they get through.  Even if he is dyin'&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll do nothing of the kind!" retorted Terry emphatically.  "When I've
+raced all the way from Red Creek, banging my car all up, risking my
+precious life every jump of the way, doing the trip in fifty-three
+minutes do you think that&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hey?" cried Guy Little.  "How's that?  How many minutes?
+Fifty-three, you said, didn't you?  Fifty-three minutes from Red Crick
+to here?  Hey?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is the man crazy?" demanded Terry.  "Didn't I say I did?  I could have
+done it in less, too, only with a flat tire and&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hey?" repeated Guy Little, over and over.  "You done that?  Hey?  You
+say&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say," cut in Terry starting toward the closed door, "that there is a
+man sick and a doctor wanted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, can that part of it!" cried Little, coming after her again in his
+excitement.  "Chuck it!  Forget it!  The thing is that you made the run
+from there to here&mdash;an' in the night time&mdash;an' with tire trouble
+an'&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doctor Bridges&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is in there.  Like I said.  Playin' chess with the ol' man.  You don't
+know what that means.  I do.  Mos' usually, askin' a lady's pardon for
+the way of sayin' it, it means Hell.  Capital H.  An' to-night the ol'
+man has got the door locked an' he's two games behind an' he's sore as
+a hoot-owl an' he says that anybody as breaks in on his play is&mdash;  No,
+I can't say it; not in the presence of a lady.  There's times when the
+ol' man is so awful vi'lent he's purty near vile about it.  Get me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Guy Little, you just stand aside!"  Terry's eyes blazed into his as
+she threw out a hand to thrust his back.  "I came for the doctor and
+I'm going to get him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Guy Little merely shook his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't know the ol' man," he said quietly.  "An' I do.  I'm the
+only man, woman or child livin' as does know him.  You stan' aside."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stepped quickly by her and rapped at the door.  When only silence
+greeted him he rapped again.  Now suddenly, explosively, came Old Man
+Packard's voice, fairly quivering with rage as the old man shouted:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If that's you, Guy Little, I'll beat your head off'n your fool body!
+Get out an' go away an' go fast!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's important, your majesty," returned Guy Little's voice
+imperturbably.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He rubbed one slippered toe against his calf and winked at Terry,
+looking vastly innocent and boyish.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm pullin' for you," he whispered.  "There's jus' one way to do it."
+Aloud he repeated.  "It's important, your majesty.  An' there's a lady
+here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lady?" shouted the old man, his voice fairly breaking with the emotion
+that went into it.  "Lady?  In my house?  What do you mean?"  Then,
+without waiting for an answer, "I don't care who she is or what she is
+or what the two of you want.  Get out!  This fool pill-roller in here
+thinks he can beat me playin' chess; you're in league with him to
+distract me, you traitor!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Guy Little smiled broadly and winked again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ain't he got the manner of a dook?" he whispered admiringly.  And to
+his employer, "Say, Packard, it's the little Temple girl.  Terry
+Temple, you know.  An'&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Even Terry started and drew back a quick step from the closed door.
+She did not know that a man's voice could pierce to one's soul like
+that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An'," went on Guy Little hurriedly, knowing that he must rush his
+words now if he got them out at all, "she's jus' drove all the way from
+Red Crick&mdash;in a Boyd-Merrill, Twin Eight car&mdash;had tire trouble on the
+road&mdash;an' done the trip in fifty-three minutes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He got it all out.  A deep silence shut down after his words.  A
+silence during which a man's eyes might have opened and stared, during
+which a man's mouth too might have opened and closed wordlessly, during
+which a man's brain might estimate what this meant, to drive forty
+miles in fifty-three minutes over such roads as lay between the Packard
+ranch and Red Creek.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a lie!" shouted Packard.  "She couldn't do it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want Doctor Bridges&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sh!" Guy Little cut her short.  "I got the ol' boy on the run.  Leave
+it to me."  And aloud once more: "She done it.  She can prove it.
+An'&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There came a snort of fury from the locked room followed by the noise
+of a chess-board and set of men hurled across the room and by an old
+man's voice shouting fiercely:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a cursed frame-up.  Bridges, you're a scoundrel and I can beat
+you any three games out of five and I'll bet you ten thousan' dollars
+on it, any time!  An' as for that thief of a Temple's squidge-faced
+girl&mdash;  Come in.  Damn it all, come in and be done with it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And as he unlocked the door with a hand that shook and flung it wide
+open he and Terry Temple confronted each other for the first time.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap20"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XX
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+A GATE AND A RECORD SMASHED
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+The man never yet lived and knew old man Packard who would have
+suggested that he was not a good and thorough-going hater.  His enemy
+and all of his enemy's household, wife and child, maid-servant and
+man-servant were all as the spawn of Satan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now he stood back, his face flushed, his two hands on his hips, his
+beard thrust forward belligerently and fairly seeming to bristle.
+Terry Temple, her heart beating like mad all of a sudden and for no
+reason which she would admit to herself, lifted her head and stepped
+across the threshold defiantly.  For a very tense moment the two of
+them, old man and young girl, stared at each other.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Doctor Bridges still sat at the chess-table, his mouth dropping open,
+his expression one of pure consternation; Guy Little stood in the
+doorway just behind Terry, rubbing a slippered toe against his leg and
+watching interestedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So you're Temple's girl, are you?" snorted the old man.  "Well, I
+might have guessed it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And the manner of the statement, rather than the words themselves, was
+very uncomplimentary to Miss Teresa Arriega Temple.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And, as a mere matter of fact&mdash;and old man Packard knew it well enough
+down in his soul&mdash;he would have guessed nothing of the sort.  So long
+had he held her in withering contempt, just because of her relationship
+to her father, so long had he invested her with all thinkably
+distasteful attributes, so long had he in his out-of-hand way named her
+squidge-nosed, putty-faced, pig-eyed, and so on, that in due course he
+had really formed his own image of her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now, suddenly confronted by the most amazingly pretty girl he had
+ever seen, he managed to snort that she was just what he knew she
+was&mdash;and in the snorting no one knew better than old man Packard that,
+as he could have put it himself, "He lied like a horse-thief!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry had seen him once when she was a very little girl.  He had been
+pointed out to her by one of her father's cowboys who, for reasons of
+his own, heartily hated and a little feared the old man.  Since then
+the girl's lively imagination had created a most unseemly brute out of
+the enemy of her house, a beetle-browed, ugly-mouthed, facially-hideous
+being little short of a monstrosity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now Terry's fine feminine perception begrudgingly was forced to set
+about constructing a new picture.  The old man, black-hearted villain
+that he was, was the most upstanding, heroic figure of a man that she
+had ever seen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Beside him Doctor Bridges was a spectacle of physical degeneracy while
+Guy Little became a grotesque dwarf.  The grandfather was much like the
+grandson, and&mdash;though she vowed to like him the less for it&mdash;was in his
+statuesque, leonine way quite the handsomest man she had ever looked on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps it was at just the same instant that each realized that rather
+too great an interest had been permitted to go into a long, searching
+look.  For Terry suddenly affected a look of supreme contempt while the
+old man jerked his eyes away, transferring his regard to the serene Guy
+Little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You said, Guy Little&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir, I said it!"  Guy Little nodded vigorously.  "Them forty
+miles in fifty-three minutes.  In the dark.  An' with tire trouble.
+It's a record.  The best you ever done it in was fifty-seven minutes.
+She beat you four minutes.  Her!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He indicated Terry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doctor Bridges&mdash;" began Terry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a lie!" cried the old man, smashing the table top with a clenched
+fist.  "I don't care who says it; she couldn't do it!  No girl could;
+no Temple could.  It ain't so!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Call me a liar?" cried Terry, a sudden flaming, surging, hot current
+in her cheeks, her eyes blazing.  "You are a horrid old man.  I always
+knew you were a horrid old man and you are a lot horrider than I
+thought you were.  And&mdash;you just call me a liar again, Hell-Fire
+Packard, and I'll slap your face for you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment, gripped by his ever-ready rage, the old man stood
+towering over her, looking down with blazing eyes into eyes which
+blazed back, a little tremor visibly shaking him as though he were
+tempted almost beyond resistance to lay his hands on her and punish her
+impudence.  A bright, almost eager, fearlessness shone in her eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I dare you," said Terry.  "Old man that you are, I'll slap you so that
+you'd know who it is you're insulting.  Pirate!" she flung at him.
+"And land-hog&mdash;  Oh!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doctor Bridges, you are to come with me right now."  She had flung
+about giving her shoulder to Packard's inspection.  "We must hurry back
+to Red Creek."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Say, Packard," chimed in Guy Little.  "Her car's all shot to pieces.
+An' her gas is all gone.  An' her ol' man is awful sick in Red Creek
+an' needin' a doc in a hurry&mdash;or not any.  You understan'&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's it got to do with me?" boomed Hell-Fire Packard.  "What do I
+care whether her old thief of a father dies to-night or next week?
+What do I&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Aw, rats," grunted Guy Little.  "What's eatin' you, Packard?  Listen
+to me: She says how she done it in fifty-three minutes an' you can't do
+it any better'n fifty-seven; how you ain't no dead-game sport noways;
+how she's short of change but would bet a man fifty dollars you
+couldn't an' wouldn't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She said them things?" roared the old man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&mdash;" began Terry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She did!" answered Guy Little hastily and loudly.  "She did!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bridges," snapped old Packard, "grab your hat an' black poison bag an'
+be ready in two minutes."  Packard was on his way to the door.  "Guy
+Little, you get my car at the front door&mdash;quick!  An' as for you&mdash;"  He
+was at the door and half turned to stare angrily into Terry's
+eyes&mdash;"You can do what you please.  I'm goin' to take the only
+pill-slinger in the country to the worst ol' thief I ever heard a man
+tell about."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm going back with you," said Terry briefly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Old man Packard shrugged.  Then he laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you ain't scared," he grunted, "to ride alongside a man as swears,
+so help him God, in spite of smash-bang-an'-be-damn', is goin' to make
+that little run back to Red Creek&mdash;in less'n fifty minutes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mind you," said old man Packard at the front door, his eye stony as it
+marked how Terry's car stood among his choice roses, "I ain't doin'
+this because I got any use for a Temple, he or she.  Especially she.
+You jus' get that in your head, young lady.  An' before we start let me
+tell you one more thing: You keep your two han's off'n my gran'son!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What!" gasped Terry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I said it," he fairly snorted.  "Come on there, Guy Little, with that
+car.  Ready there, Bridges, you ol' fool?  Pile in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took his seat at the wheel, his old black hat pushed far back on his
+head, his eye already on the clock in the dash.  Terry slipped ahead of
+Doctor Bridges and took her seat at the old man's side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You said&mdash;just what?" she demanded icily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I said," he cried savagely, "as I know how you been chasin' my fool of
+a gran'son Stephen, an' as how you got to stop it.  I won't have you
+makin' a bigger fool out'n him than he already is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry sat rigid, speechless, grown suddenly cold.  For once in her life
+no ready answer sprang to her lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Hell-Fire Packard had started his engine, sounded his horn, and
+they were on their way.  And Terry, because no words would come, put
+her head back and laughed in a way that, as she knew perfectly well,
+would madden him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The drive from Hell-Fire Packard's front door to the store in Red Creek
+was made in some few negligible seconds over forty-eight minutes.  The
+three occupants of the car reached town alive.  Never in her life after
+that night would Terry Temple doubt that there was a Providence which
+at critical times took into its hands the destinies of men.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There had been never a word spoken until they had come to the gate
+which had closed behind Terry on the way out.  Old man Packard had
+looked at speedometer, clock and obstruction.  Terry had seen his hands
+tighten on his wheel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Set tight an' hang on," he had commanded sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The big front tires and bumper struck the gate; there was a wild flying
+of splinters and at sixty miles an hour they went through and on to Red
+Creek.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The old devil!" whispered Terry within herself.  "The old devil!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap21"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXI
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+PACKARD WRATH AND TEMPLE RAGE
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+No far-sighted, inspired prophet's services were needed to predict a
+rather stormy scene upon the arrival of old Hell-Fire Packard and Miss
+Terry Temple at the place of the storekeeper of Red Creek.  It was to
+be expected that Steve Packard would be on hand; that he would be
+impatiently awaiting the drum of a racing motor; that he would be on
+the sidewalk to greet Temple's daughter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Terry!" he called.  "So soon?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He couldn't have made a worse beginning had he pondered the matter long
+and diabolically.  Blenham had been right and Steve had had ample time
+to admit the fact utterly and completely; now there was a ringing note
+in his voice, the effect of which, falling upon his grandfather's ears,
+might be likened with no great stretch of imagination to that of a
+spark in a keg of gunpowder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man's brakes, applied emphatically, brought his car to a
+standstill.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look at that clock!" was his first remark, at once apprising Steve of
+his relative's presence and hinting, by means of its no uncertain tone,
+at an unpleasant situation on hand or about to burst upon them.  "Made
+it in fifty-three minutes, did you?  Well, I done it in less'n
+forty-nine!  What have you got to say about that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Terry ignored him and jumped down, her hand impulsively laid on
+Steve's arm.  Thus she, in her turn, may be said to have added another
+spark to young Packard's in the powder keg.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How's dad?" she asked quickly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve patted the hand on his arm and either Terry did not notice the
+act or did not mind.  Old man Packard both noted and minded.  His grunt
+was to be heard above Doctor Bridges's devout "Thank God, we're here!"
+as the physician stepped stiffly to the sidewalk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Better," said Steve.  "I think he's going to be all right after all.
+I hope so.  He&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham?" she asked insistently.  "He didn't put one over on you?  The
+mortgage&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve tapped his breast pocket.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The papers have been signed; we got a notary; everything is shipshape.
+Go in; I'll tell you all about it later."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned toward the car and the stiffened figure of the man gripping
+the wheel with tense, hard hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Grandy&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Grandy, your foot!" boomed old Packard suddenly, one hand jerked away
+to be clenched into a lifted fist.  "An' <I>Terry</I>!  My God!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you mean?" asked Steve.  "I don't understand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean," shouted Packard senior, his voice shaking with emotion, "that
+no mouth in the world is big enough to hold them two words the same
+night!  If you want to chum with any Temple livin', he-Temple or
+she-Temple, if, sir, you intend to go 'round slobberin' over the
+low-down enemies of your own father an' father's father, why, sir, then
+I'm Mr. Packard to you and the likes of you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Still was Steve mystified.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought," he muttered, "that since you two came together, since you
+yourself have driven her in&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I, sir," thundered his grandfather, "have chosen to bring that
+petticoated wildcat there an' that ol' pill-slinger from my place to
+Red Creek in a shake less'n forty-nine minutes&mdash;jus' to show her that
+anything on God's earth done by a Temple can be better done by a
+Packard&mdash;you got to go to thinkin' things, have you?  Why, sir, so help
+me, sir, I've a notion to jump down right now an' give you the
+horsewhippin' of your life!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve, in spite of himself, chuckled.  Terry, reassured about her
+father, giggled.  Both sounds were audible; the two, mingled, were
+entirely too much to be borne.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You&mdash;you disgrace to an honorable name," the old man called bitterly
+and wrathfully.  "You&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He broke off, hesitated, glared from Steve at the car's side to Terry
+already on the steps of the store, and concluded something more quietly
+though not a whit less furiously for all that: "You speak of papers
+signed.  You don't mean you're actually havin' any kind of business
+dealin's, frien'ly dealin's, with the Temples?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham brought word you were foreclosing on Temple; he had some sort
+of a crooked scheme to cheat Temple out of his land.  I have just
+framed a deal whereby I put up the money to pay you your mortgage
+and&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You?  <I>You</I>, Stephen Packard?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Steve, wondering whether the old man were the more moved
+because of the shock of finding his nephew able to pay off so large a
+sum or because of the "frien'ly dealin's with the Temples."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a brief silence.  Doctor Bridges mounted the steps; he and
+Terry were going in.  Then again Hell-Fire Packard's voice burst out
+violently and Terry stopped short, her hands going suddenly to her
+breast.  Her face, could they have noted in the pale light, was flaming
+scarlet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That hussy, that jade, that Jezebel!" came the ringing denunciation.
+"The tricky, shameless, penurious, graspin' unprincipled little
+she-devil!  She's after you, my boy, after you hard.  An', you poor
+miserable blind worm of a fool, you ain't got the sense to see it!
+Everybody knows it; the whole country's talkin' about it; how Temple's
+baitin' his trap with her an' she's baitin' her trap with herself
+an'&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Grandfather!" cried Steve, his own face flushing under the scathing
+torrent.  "You don't know what you are saying!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know what he's saying."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry, her hands still tight pressed to her breast, came slowly down
+the steps.  Though but a moment had passed her face was now dead white
+in the moonlight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are saying," and her eyes shone straight up into the old man's,
+"that I am setting a trap for your grandson?  That I, Teresa Arriega
+Temple, would for an instant consider a Packard, the son and the
+grandson of a Packard, as worthy of shining my boots for me?  Why, I
+spit upon the two of you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She whirled and was gone into the house.  Steve instead of watching her
+going kept his eyes hard upon his grandfather's face.  Now that the
+door closed he said quietly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Grandfather, we have seen rather little, of each other.  I think we
+had better see even less from now on.  You have insulted that girl in a
+way that makes me want to climb into your car and drag you down&mdash;and
+beat you half to death!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His restraint was melting under the fire of his passion; his voice grew
+less quiet and began to tremble.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am going to make that girl the next Mrs. Packard or know the reason
+why!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Defy me, do you?  Defy me an' go an' run with a pack of thieves
+an'&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's enough!" shouted Steve.  "I am going right straight and ask
+her&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ask her an' hell swallow you!" came the vociferous permission from the
+infuriated old man.  "But remember one thing: Blenham has slipped up
+to-night, maybe, an' let you an' her an' her lyin', thievin',
+scoundrelly father steal a march on me.  But it's the last one; mark
+that!  Blenham gets his orders straight from me to-night; he goes after
+you to break you, smash you, literally pull you to pieces root an'
+branch&mdash;an' with me an' Blenham workin' on the job night an' day,
+stoppin' at nothin'.  Hear me?  I mean it!"  His two fists were now
+lifted high above his head.  "Stoppin' at nothin' I'll step on you an'
+your Temple frien's like you was a nest of caterpillars.  You hear me,
+Stephen!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Stephen, his lips tight pressed as he fought with himself to keep
+his hands off his own father's father, turned and went the way Terry
+had gone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You hear me, Stephen.  There's nothin' I'll stop at to smash you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So his grandfather's voice followed him mightily.  But young Packard
+had already set his thought upon another matter.  Before him in the
+tiny living-room of the ramshackle store building a kerosene lamp was
+burning palely and lying upon an old sofa, face down, shaken with sobs
+was Terry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Terry!" he called softly.  "Your father isn't&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He thought that she had not heard.  He came closer and laid his hand
+gently&mdash;there was a deep tenderness even in the action&mdash;upon her
+shoulder.  But Terry had heard and now flung his hand violently aside
+and sprang to her feet, her eyes blazing angrily into his.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My father is asleep.  Doctor Bridges rather thinks there is nothing
+very much the matter with him," she remarked crisply.  "I am sorry I
+troubled you in any way, Mr. Packard.  You say you arranged matters
+with dad?  Well, I want you to tear up the papers; I'll see that your
+money is returned to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Terry!" he muttered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then she flared out hotly, her two small hands clenched at her sides,
+her chin lifted, her voice a new voice in his ears, bitter and hostile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you Terry me, Steve Packard!  Now or ever again.  I am sorry
+that I ever saw you; I am ashamed that I ever spoke to you.  I had
+rather be dead or&mdash;yes, I'd rather be in Blenham's arms than have you
+look at me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good Lord!" ejaculated Steve, utterly at sea.  "I don't understand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't have to," snapped Terry.  "All you've got to know is that I
+won't have anything further in any way whatever to do with you.  I
+won't have you helping us with our mortgage; I won't have you advancing
+money to us; I won't stand one little minute for any of your&mdash;your
+wretched interference with our affairs!  If you think you can&mdash;can butt
+in on our side of any fight in the world&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She ended abruptly, beginning to flounder, panting so that the swift
+rise and fall of her breast was an outward token of inward emotion.
+Steve Packard stared and flushed hotly and began to feel his own anger
+mount quickly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Butt in on your affairs!" he snorted after a fashion more than vaguely
+reminiscent of his grandfather.  "I like that!  As if I'd have come a
+step without your invitation."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so he blurted out the one thing he should have left unsaid, the
+thing which already rankled in Terry's proud heart.  She had asked him
+to come; she had in a way suggested a&mdash;a sort of partnership.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh! how I hate you!" cried Terry.  "You&mdash;you Packard!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If there's some crime, some string of crimes that I have committed&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you tear up those papers?  I'll get you back your money.  Will
+you tear up those papers?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you explain what's gone wrong?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will not."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He shrugged exasperatingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll keep the papers," he returned stonily.  "I put over rather a good
+deal to-night, come to think of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He put on his hat, jamming it down tight, and half turned to go.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When you want to talk ranch matters over with me&mdash;come to my
+ranch-house, little pardner!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!" cried Terry.  "Oh!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap22"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXII
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE HAND OF BLENHAM
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+"Each man's life is what he shapes it for himself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A stupid, bare-faced, platitudinous lie!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve Packard, grown irritable here of late, flung the offending book
+through an open window and got to his feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A man's life is what the evil little gods of chance make it, curse
+them.  Or what a fool of a girl tangles and twists it into."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He shook himself viciously and went to his door, staring out across the
+hills vaguely moulded under the stars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Life was just a very unsatisfactory sort of a proposition.  It was a
+game that wasn't worth the players' serious attention, a game all of
+chance and not in the least of skill, and not even interesting!  So, in
+the sombre depths of his soul Steve Packard admitted freely.  And,
+until a certain night only some six months ago, he had never divined
+this great truth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That night Blenham had sneered, "Stuck on her yourself, are you?" and
+Steve had recognized a vital fact inelegantly expressed; that night
+Terry Temple had appeared to him more than just a "good little sport";
+that night he had somewhat brusquely considered the sweet femininity of
+her under her assumed surface of <I>diablerie</I> and had found her
+infinitely desirable; that same night Terry, for no reason in the world
+that Steve Packard could discover, had suddenly congealed into a thing
+of ice that had never since thawed save only briefly before burning
+fits of wrath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Two hours after he had admitted to himself that he loved her she
+informed him with all of the emphasis she could summon for the occasion
+that she hated him.  And life hadn't been what he had made it at all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The papers which Temple had signed were still in existence, safely
+deposited in a bank in San Juan.  Steve had paid off the Temple
+mortgage to his grandfather; he had paid Temple a thousand dollars in
+cash; thereby he had acquired a half interest in the Temple ranch.
+That had all been quite in accordance with Terry's suggestions and
+entirely satisfactory.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not being a thief, Steve counted upon relinquishing his right to his
+half at any time that Temple paid back just what had been advanced.
+But it became evident very soon that Temple would never pay back
+anything.  Though Doctor Bridges found nothing very much the matter
+with him, nevertheless Temple died less than two weeks later.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During those two weeks Steve had not seen Terry.  With word of the
+girl's bereavement, however, he had gone immediately to her.  She
+looked at him curiously, saying quietly that the boys were doing all
+that was necessary and had asked him to go.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, after another two weeks, he had ridden again to the Temple ranch.
+He found it deserted, doors and windows shut, dead leaves thick in the
+path.  His heart sank and thereafter knocked hard at his ribs; Terry
+was gone and had said nothing to him.  He turned and went home, bitter
+and angry and hurt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Where had she gone?  He didn't know; he told himself he didn't care;
+certainly he would bite his tongue out before he would ask any of her
+friends.  But he knew within himself that he did care as he had cared
+about nothing else in the world; and he asked himself a thousand times:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where has Terry gone?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For the world was not right without her; the sunlight was thin; the
+season of bursting buds was but a pale, lack-lustre imitation of
+spring.  And as the long, hot days dragged by and the verdure died on
+hill and plain and dusty mountainside, he asked himself "When will she
+come back to us?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Long after every one else had heard and forgotten the story, or at
+least had given over all thinking upon it, Steve heard how Terry had
+drawn against the last of the inconsiderable legacy left her long ago
+by her Spanish mother, and had gone to San Juan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had friends there; the banker's wife, Mrs. Engle and her
+fluffy-haired daughter, Florrie, had opened their arms to her and made
+her tarry with them until the family made their annual trip East.  Then
+Terry had gone with them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And never a word to Steve Packard.  He cursed himself, tried to curse
+her, and found that he couldn't quite make a go of it, and settled down
+to good, hard work and the job of forgetting what a pair of gray eyes
+looked like and how two certain red lips smiled and the tinkly notes of
+a laughing voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the good, hard work of stock ranching he succeeded more than well;
+in the other task he set himself he failed utterly.  Never, when alone
+out on the range a shadow fell across, did he fail to look up quickly
+with his lips half forming to the word, "Terry!"  And, after all this
+time, still no word from her, no word of her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eight thousand dollars he had paid to Temple.  The remaining two
+thousand of his father's heritage he had turned over promptly to his
+grandfather to apply on his own indebtedness.  He had consulted with
+Bill Royce and Barbee and had cut down his crew of men, thereby
+curtailing expenses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had sold a few head of beef cattle and banked the money for the
+men's wages and current expenses.  By the same means he had managed to
+keep abreast of his interest payments to old man Packard and had even
+paid off a little more of the principal.  Then, catching the market
+right "going and coming," he had bought a lot of young cattle from an
+overstocked ranch adjoining, and had made a second profitable sale a
+month later.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Finally, to indicate that he was still in the game and playing it to
+win, consequently overlooking never a bet, he had cashed in pretty
+fortunately on a section of his timber-land.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Rollston mills were just opening upon the other side of the
+mountains; he showed the firm's buyer a stretch of his big timber and
+closed the deal to their common satisfaction.  And with every deal of
+this sort old man Packard felt his grip being pried loose from Ranch
+Number Ten.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the beginning Steve had been puzzled to know what to do with the
+Temple outfit.  Terry had paid off the men and had let them go; the
+stock on the place she had left, and without a word, to Steve's care.
+Since the place was well stocked, chiefly with young cattle, there was
+enough here to demand the attention which so busy a man as Steve
+Packard could not give.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He talked matters over with Bill Royce and in the end sent both Bill
+and Barbee to the Temple place, riding over once or twice a week
+himself to see how matters went.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so the months dragged by.  Twice, swearing to himself that he was
+doing so only because the management of the business made it absolutely
+necessary, Steve wrote to Terry.  He got no answer.  He did not even
+know if she had received his notes.  The first he had signed, by the
+way, "Yours very truly, Steve."  The second ended "Respectfully, S.
+Packard."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Terry's havin' the time of her life," Bill Royce startled him by
+announcing one day out of a clear sky.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How do you know?" asked Steve sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, she writes letters to her frien's," said Royce.  "One of the boys
+brought word from the Norton place.  Terry wrote her an' wrote some
+folks in Red Creek an' wrote the Lanes an'&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Appears to be quite a letter-writer," remarked Steve stiffly.  "And
+she's having the time of her life, is she?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure," said Royce innocently.  "Why not?  The boys are bettin' she's
+dead gone on some young down-East jasper an' that maybe she'll be
+married in no time.  What do you think, huh, Steve?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is she?" demanded Steve, very brusque about it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blessed if I know," admitted Royce.  "Chicago, I think.  Or New York.
+Or Pennsylvany.  One of them towns.  Shucks.  She'd ought to come on
+home where she belongs."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I don't know," said Steve.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But in Royce's ears the voice didn't ring quite true.  It was meant to
+be careless in the extreme and&mdash;no, it didn't ring quite true.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hot, cloudless skies as the season dragged on, dry, burning fields
+under a blazing sun, the cattle seeking shade wherever it was to be
+had, crowding at the water-holes, browsing early and late and
+frequenting the cooler cañons during the heat of the days.  And nights
+of stars and a vast silence and emptiness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A girl had come, had for a little posed laughing outlined against the
+window of a man's soul, had flashed her unforgettable gray eyes at him
+and had gone.  And so, and just because of her, the blistering hills
+seemed but ugly, lonely miles, the nights under a full moon were just
+the more silent and empty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Steve Packard held on, grown grim and determined.  He had entered
+the game, lightly enough he had demanded his stack of chips, now he
+would stay for the show-down.  Either he would clear his ranch of its
+mortgage and thus make clear to his meddlesome old grandparent that he
+was a man grown and no mere boy to be disciplined and badgered
+willy-nilly, or else his meddlesome old grandparent would in truth
+"smash" him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In either case there would be the end soon.  For, win or lose, Steve,
+tired of the game, would draw out and set his back to Ranch Number Ten
+and the country about it and go back to the old rudderless life of
+vagabondage.  Just because a girl had come, had tarried, and then had
+gone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So, though the game had long ago lost its zest, Steve Packard like any
+other thoroughbred played on for a finish.  Now and then, but seldom,
+he saw Blenham.  Often, in little, annoying, mean ways Blenham made
+himself felt.  Early in the season Steve's riders had found three of
+his steers dead on the outskirts of the range; a rifle bullet had done
+for each one of them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Since old man Packard had promised to stop at nothing, since Blenham
+was full of venom, Steve never for a moment doubted whose hand had
+fired the three shots.  But he merely called his cowboys together, told
+them what had happened, ordered them to keep their eyes open and their
+guns oiled, and hoped and longed for the time when he himself could
+come upon Blenham busied with some act like this.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were other episodes which he attributed to Blenham though he must
+admit in each case that anything in the vaguest way approaching a proof
+was lacking.  Just before he closed the deal with the lumber company
+that had taken over his timber tract a forest fire had broken out.
+Luck and a fortuitous shifting of the wind had saved him from a heavy
+loss.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Incidents, these and others of their kind, to fill Steve Packard with
+rage; but Blenham's supreme blows&mdash;Blenham's and old man
+Packard's&mdash;were reserved for late in the dry season when they fell
+hardest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A growing shortage of feed and the necessity for cash for the
+forthcoming substantial sum to be paid on the mortgage held by his
+grandfather, combined with the fact that his lean acres were
+overstocked, drove Steve in search of a market late in the summer.
+Bill Royce shook his head and raised his objections.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Everybody else is doin' the same thing an' at the same time," he said
+lugubriously.  "Which'll mean the market all glutted up so's you won't
+get no kind of figger.  If you could only hold on till next spring."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Steve merely said&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, well, Bill, it's all in a lifetime," and shaped his plans for a
+sale.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And within ten days there came an offer which startled him.  It was
+from the big buyers, Doan, Rockwell, and Haight, who, their
+communication said, knew his line of stock thoroughly and were prepared
+to pay the top prices for all he had.  He estimated swiftly and sent a
+man hurrying into town with a message to go by wire; he would round up
+between a hundred and fifty and two hundred head and would have them in
+San Juan when desired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Old Doan's a sport and a wise boy, both," announced Steve triumphantly
+when he made the news known to Bill Royce.  "He knows high-grade stuff
+and he's willing to pay the price."  He narrowed his eyes
+speculatively.  "We'll scare up close to two hundred head, William.
+And they'll bring us just about twenty thousand.  Maybe a thousand or
+so above that.  And, Bill, did you ever know the time when twenty
+thousand dollars would look more like twenty thousand full moons just
+showing up over the skyline?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bill's grin reflected Steve's lively satisfaction.  Now there would be
+the money for old Hell-Fire Packard's next payment, there would be a
+long respite from him, there would be ample feed for the rest of the
+cattle.  Steve might even spend a part of the money for a herd of
+calves to be had dirt-cheap just now from the Biddle Morris dairy
+outfit, down near San Juan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The prospect was exceedingly bright; just as though in truth a string
+of full moons were shining down upon them.  And still there was the
+shadow, even at this time, the shadow cast by Terry's absence and
+silence.  If she were only here to rejoice with them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve snorted his disgust with himself, got on a horse and went
+streaking across the fields, riding hard as was a habit here of late,
+yelling an order to Barbee as he went.  Barbee's innocent blue eyes
+followed him thoughtfully: then Barbee shrugged and spat and thereafter
+called to his men to "get busy."  The round-up began immediately.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then came a handful of long, hot, feverishly busy days.  Strayed steers
+carrying the Number Ten brand were hazed back to the big fenced-in
+meadows from the mountain slopes, were counted and held, in an
+ever-swelling herd.  There was little rest for the men, who, shifted
+from one sweating horse to another, rode late and early.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Word came from Doan setting the date for the delivery in San Juan.
+Steve wired his satisfaction with the arrangement, undertaking to have
+the cattle in the stock pens just out of the town two or three days
+before Doan's coming.  And no one knew better than did Steve Packard
+the true size of the job he had on his hands at this time of year and
+with a herd of close to two hundred wild steers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The drive began one morning in the dark long before the dawn.  Steve
+estimated that he could make the Rio Frio the first night and had
+arranged beforehand with the Talbot boys for the night's pasturage.
+The second day would find them on the edge of the bad lands; his wagons
+hauling baled hay were to push on ahead and be waiting at the only
+sufficient water-holes to be found within a number of miles.  San Juan
+in four days was the schedule.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We'll lose weight all along the road," he conceded.  "But it can't be
+helped.  And a couple of day's rest and lots of feed and water in San
+Juan before Doan shows up will put back a part of the lost weight."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had made allowances for a hard drive.  Nevertheless the actuality
+was a sterner matter than he had foreseen.  All along the way the feed
+was scant.  Water was low in the holes, Rio Frio for the first time in
+years was a mere series of shallow pools.  The blazing heat was such
+that men and horses and steers all suffered terribly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the end of the second day he ordered a full dozen of the less hardy
+of his beasts cut out from the herd and turned into a neighboring
+range; it was questionable if they would have been able to drag on the
+two remaining days and even had they done so they would have brought no
+top price from the buyer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The drive was made on schedule time.  Circumstances not only permitted
+but insisted.  There were no places for loitering, there were only the
+major water-holes upon which Steve had counted, the distances between
+them regulating each day's progress.  And so the stock was in San Juan
+a full two days before the time for Doan's coming.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For Steve the two days dragged heavily.  He camped with his herd on the
+edge of the settlement, allowing the boys to disport themselves as they
+saw fit a large part of the time, himself having little desire for the
+bad whiskey and crooked gaming of La Casa Blanca.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tuesday morning Doan was to arrive.  Steve met the stage and one glance
+showed him that Doan was not on it.  He asked the driver if he knew
+anything of Doan and the man shook his head.  Steve supposed that he
+was coming up from the railroad by auto and so idled about the town all
+forenoon, waiting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By midday, when Doan still failed to put in an appearance, Steve had
+grown impatient.  By the middle of the afternoon his impatience gave
+place to anger.  He had kept his appointment bringing his herds over a
+hard trail, and Doan with nothing to do but travel luxuriously, had
+failed him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But it was not until the stage came in Wednesday morning and again
+brought no Doan and no word of Doan that Steve telephoned a message to
+the nearest Western Union office at Bidwell demanding to know what the
+trouble was.  Not only was he on heavy expenses; his mood never had
+been one to take kindly to the long waiting game.  And yet he was
+forced to wait all that day and all the next day with no word from Doan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He telegraphed again Wednesday night, a third time Thursday morning.
+No answers came.  But a little before noon, Thursday, Doan came.  Came
+by automobile from the railroad, a man with him.  Steve saw them as
+they drove into town; he noted Doan's thin face and his tall form in
+the gray linen duster; then he marked the man with him.  The man was
+Blenham.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve, raw-nerved through these long hours of inaction and uncertainty,
+pushed straightway to Doan bent upon demanding an explanation.  He got
+an inkling of one from an unexpected quarter, Blenham's lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We sure appreciate this, Mr. Doan," Blenham said, getting down and
+offering his hand to the cattle-buyer.  "Count on me an' ol' man
+Packard doin' you a favor any time.  So long."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And casting to Steve a look of blended triumph and venom he hurried
+down to the stable and his horse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Doan," said Steve bluntly, "what in hell's name do you mean by
+treating me this way?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Doan turned his thin impassive face with the hawk-eyes toward young
+Packard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who do you happen to be?" he asked coolly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm Steve Packard from Ranch Number Ten.  And I've got a herd of
+steers out here that's been waiting for you some time now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes," said Doan, still very cool.  "Got my wire, didn't you,
+saying that I was unavoidably detained?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did not!" snapped Steve.  "Detained by what?  Blenham?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Strange," murmured Doan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He got down from his car and stretched his long legs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've had a new secretary, Mr. Packard.  I found out that he drank.  He
+has been discharged.  Hem.  Let me see: you've got about fifty steers,
+haven't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've got a hundred and eighty-six," Steve said sharply, staring at
+Doan's inscrutable face and wondering just what was up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A hundred and eighty-six!" Doan shook his head.  "I couldn't take that
+many on just now; I've made other plans.  Unless, of course, you are in
+a position to tempt me to buy by making me a very attractive figure!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve came a sudden step nearer, his eyes blazing, his two fists
+clenched.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's this game of yours?" he demanded.  "Out with it.  What are you
+up to?  You wired me an offer of ten to twelve cents, twelve and a half
+for the fancy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What!" cried Doan.  "Why, my dear fellow, you must have lost your
+senses!  With the market the way it is now I don't have to pay more
+than seven and eight cents."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve waited for no more.  His days of waiting were past.  He drew
+back, swung from the shoulder and struck with all of his might.  His
+fist against Doan's chin hurled the lean body of the cattle-buyer half
+across the street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Barbee," said Steve quietly, "round up the boys.  We start our herd
+back in ten minutes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Barbee, taking stock of Steve's white face, went hastily on his
+errand.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap23"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXIII
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+STEVE RIDES BY THE TEMPLE PLACE
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+"Dear me, Mr. Man!  How savage you do look!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve started and whirled.  No; this time he was not dreaming.  It was
+Terry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry laughed lightly, deliciously.  She had grown prettier.  She had
+learned a new way to smile.  No, it was just the old way, after all.
+But she had discovered a new way to do her hair, an amazingly charming
+way.  Her lips were redder than ever before; her eyes were gayer and
+grayer and softer and sweeter.  Her voice tinkled with new, thrilling
+music.  She was just exactly perfect in Steve Packard's eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're super," said Steve.  "You're superlative.  You haven't done a
+thing all these long, weary months except grow more devilishly
+attractive."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you as savage as you looked?" she asked swiftly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a brief instant he turned his eyes away from her and gazed after a
+herd that was moving slowly toward the north, Barbee and the other boys
+heading again toward the home range.  But, no matter what rage and
+sullen chagrin lay in his heart, his eyes, returning to Terry, showed
+that already her coming had worked its change.  He appeared almost
+content.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you going to shake hands?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shall I?" she asked.  "We are to be good friends after all?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Or, are you going to kiss me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry arched her brows at him.  But there was a live fire in her eyes
+and a crimsoning tide under her lovely skin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smarty!" cried the old Terry.  "Just try getting fresh with me and
+you'll get your face slapped!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whereupon Steve's laughter boomed out joyously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's Terry come home again!" he announced to the open meadow about
+them.  "Terry herself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Was it Terry herself?  She seemed strangely embarrassed all of a
+sudden.  Just why?  Terry didn't know.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We are going out in my car," she said hurriedly.  It seemed that she
+must hasten to make some safe remark each time that his eyes, busied
+with her, rested upon her eyes.  "We'll be at the ranch long before you
+get your cows home.  You may come to see me&mdash;if you please to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who is we?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," said Terry, "that means Mrs. Randall who is going to be cook and
+chaperon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+San Juan dozed in the late afternoon heat.  The corrals were between
+them and the quiet street.  He threw out his arms, caught Terry in them
+and kissed her.  And Terry, whipping back, slapped his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You&mdash;you&mdash;&mdash;" she panted, her face scarlet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He touched tenderly with his finger-tips the place where her hand had
+struck him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll be over to call on you and Mrs. Randall," he said.  "Real soon."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Now as Steve Packard rode slowly after his cowboys and a diminishing
+herd, the dust-filled air, dry and hot as it was, seemed sweet and
+caressing to his temples, his eyes mused happily.  Blenham had just
+worsted him, Blenham had tricked him, had put him to the heavy expense
+of the long drive, had knocked his steers up for him, had laughed at
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Very well; tally for Blenham.  A matter to be considered in due time.
+A body blow, perhaps, but then what in God's good world is a strong
+body for if not to buffet and be buffeted?  He and Blenham would come
+to grips again, soon or late, and in some way still hidden by the
+future matters would finally adjust themselves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All considerations with which only some dim future was concerned.  Just
+now, in the living, breathing, quivering present there was room for but
+the one thought: Terry had come back to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yes.  Terry had come back to him.  And he had kissed her.  And she had
+slapped him.  He smiled and again his finger-tips went their way
+tenderly to his cheek.  He had kissed her because he loved her, meaning
+her no harm, offering her no insult.  She had slapped him because she
+was Terry, and because she couldn't very well help it.  Not because she
+did not love him!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Somewhere in the world, off in some misty distance, there was a man
+named Blenham, a trickery, treacherous, cruel hound of a man.  He would
+require attention presently.  Just now&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You've come back to me!" whispered Steve Packard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he sighed and shook himself and wished longingly that the return
+drive were over and that he had a bath and a shave and were just
+calling at the Temple ranch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Though presently he overhauled his men Steve rode all that day pretty
+well apart, maintaining a thoughtful silence which Barbee and the
+others supposed had to do solely with the failure of his plans for a
+good market.  His men knew that he had banked pretty heavily on this
+deal; and that now again he would be confronted by the old problem of
+finding sufficient feed to pull his herds through.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hay was scarce and high and would need to be hauled far, making its
+final cost virtually prohibitive.  The herders, grumbling among
+themselves, were for the most part of the opinion that he should have
+accepted his defeat at Blenham's hands and sold to Doan at a sacrifice
+figure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That night they camped at the Bitter Springs, making but a brief stop
+to water and feed and rest the road-weary cattle.  Then in the night
+and moving slowly they pushed on planning to get to the next
+water-holes before the heat of another day.  And now Steve, giving his
+orders to Barbee, left them and struck out ahead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was small need of accommodating his impatience to the sluggish
+progress of the leg-dragging brutes and there were matters to be
+arranged.  Further, it was his intention to have a talk with Terry
+Temple just as soon as might be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That day Terry's automobile with shrieking horn swept on by him.  He
+caught a glimpse of two veils, a brown and a black; the car's top was
+up.  Terry appeared not to see him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She hasn't lost a speck of her impudence!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He frowned after her departing car, praying in his heart for a puncture
+or a stalled engine.  She deserved as much for the way in which she
+tooted her infernal horn.  But his prayer went unanswered and his
+displeasure vanished presently as he pushed on steadily in her wake,
+eager to come to the end of his ride.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he must never entirely forget the panting herd straggling on far
+behind him, choking and coughing in its own dust.  He must arrange
+somewhere, somehow for pasturage.  So he made a detour and looked in on
+Brocky Lane first, then on Rod Norton.  Both old friends were glad to
+see him and gave him hard brown hands in grips that were good to feel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But they merely shook their heads when he mentioned his errand.  Lane
+had sold a few head last week; Norton was afraid that he would have to
+make a sacrifice sale himself.  They would do anything that they could
+but it was only too clear that they could not give him that which they
+themselves did not have and could not get.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Old man Packard," offered Norton bluntly, "is the only man I can think
+of who has pasture to rent.  Drop Off Valley, just up in the mountains
+back of your place."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve laughed shortly and swung up into his saddle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So long, Nort," he said colorlessly  "The old man would burn his grass
+off before he'd let me have it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he rode on, two problems in his mind, both growing more difficult
+as he drew nearer the home ranch.  Problem One: Just what was Terry
+going to say?  Problem Two: How was he going to pull his stock through?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As though he did not already have enough on his hands, Bill Royce
+greeted him at the home ranch-house with the significant word&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Trouble!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know it," grunted Packard, swinging down stiffly from his saddle.
+"What kind this time, Bill?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham-brand, I'd reckon," said Bill angrily.  Steve noted that both
+of the old hand's cheeks were flushed hotly.  "Barbee telephoned in
+about four hours ago.  Seven steers dead, some more sick.  An'," the
+explanation coming quickly, "Barbee's got the hunch Blenham had rode on
+ahead an' had poisoned the water-holes an'&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Damn him!" cried Steve, a sudden fury seeming to leap out upon him and
+take him by the throat.  "Am I to stand everything from that man and
+from my old fiend of a grandfather?  It's this and that and any other
+thing they want to turn loose and here I stick like a cursed
+toad-stool, doing nothing for want of proof!  Proof," he snorted
+disgustedly.  "Bill Royce, let's quit waiting for anything but just go
+get the trouble-seeking outfit!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Which sounds good to me," retorted Royce eagerly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet when his rage cooled a bit Steve ground his teeth in his
+impotence.  He must wait until Barbee came with what God chose to leave
+him of his steers, he must hear the foreman's account and decide
+whether Blenham were really at the bottom of this or if it were just
+his way and his men's to blame all things upon Blenham.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The first thing, Bill," he said when he had turned his tired horse
+loose in the pasture, "is to decide what we are going to do with what
+cattle Blenham hasn't poisoned for us.  We are fed off pretty short
+down at this end.  I'll ride over to the Temple place and see if we
+can't arrange with Miss Terry to run a few head there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Royce dryly.  "I'd hurry if I was you, Steve.  But, say!"
+He slapped his leg and jerked up his head.  "How about the old Indian
+Valley, Drop Off Valley, as they call it now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gone crazy, Bill?  When did my grandfather ever show any inclination
+to help out?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Royce, thoroughly excited, explained.  Andy Sprague from beyond
+the ridge had ridden by only yesterday afternoon.  If Royce had only
+known at that time that Steve was bringing back the cattle from San
+Juan he would have arranged with Andy.  For the man had said that he
+had just bought Drop Off Valley from old Packard; that he wouldn't want
+the range this year as he had only recently sold close.  He would rent
+and reasonably.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's close on a couple of thousan' acres in there; there's plenty
+water an' enough good grass to run two or three hundred head easy until
+your feed comes in again down this way.  Nail him, Steve; for the love
+of Mike, nail Andy Sprague quick before the crooked little cuss finds
+out jus' how bad you need the pasture an' sticks you accordin'.  Go
+nail him, Steve."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Steve, seeing hope like a brightening flush of a new day, hurried
+to the corrals and a fresh horse.  He was going straight after Andy
+Sprague.  But&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Guess I'll ride by the Temple place," he said carelessly.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap24"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXIV
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+DOWN FROM THE SKY!
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+Drop Off Valley, its name won to it by its salient feature, was but a
+long, narrow, and very high plateau in the mountains lying to the east
+of Ranch Number Ten.  It was well watered from springs at the upper end
+which wandered the entire length of the tract and spilled down the
+cliffs which cut in abrupt fashion across the lower end, making a
+natural and fearsome boundary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From this portion of the "valley" one might kick a stone a sheer and
+dizzy distance down into the head-waters of Indian Creek, which
+indicated the beginning of the narrow pass which led through the
+mountains and to the misty blue hills of Old Mexico.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here in the abundant, rich, dry feed wandered upward of two hundred
+head of Ranch Number Ten and Temple Ranch cattle, mingling freely, the
+herds of one outfit carrying their brands in and out of the herds of
+the other.  A sign and a token that at last a certain dead-line had
+ceased to exist.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve had found Andy Sprague, as crooked a little man as he looked to
+be according to Bill Royce and others who should know, and had arranged
+with him for the leasing of the mountain pasturage.  Less than a week
+later Sprague was back saying that he had seen Hell-Fire Packard and
+that that old mountain-lion had roared at him terribly, had threatened
+him with utter ruin if ever again he helped out Steve Packard and had
+bade him carry a message.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell that smart young fool of a gran'son of mine," was the word
+Sprague gave Steve, "that right now I'm gettin' ready to polish him off
+final.  Tell him what I done to him, blockin' his sale in San Juan,
+wasn't a patch on what I can do; tell him he'll lose more steers than
+he ever los' before.  Tell him if he don't want to get hisself all
+mussed up in this deal he'd better come over to my place an' throw up
+his han's.  I'm gettin' mad!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before having these words from Andy Sprague's twisted mouth Steve
+Packard had been puzzled to explain two matters: According to count, on
+one hand there were too few cattle by perhaps a score while on another
+hand there were too many by at least a half dozen.  And, though Terry
+Temple was directly concerned, he had said nothing to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The first mystifying suggestion that some strange juggling of stock had
+been going on came to him just before he had driven the hundred and
+eighty-six steers to San Juan.  Rounding up his own stock and cutting
+it out from Temple stock, he had had the opportunity to check up
+carefully in Terry's interests.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Calves, cows, steers, and horses, he knew to the head just what Terry
+numbered them.  And in the round-up, going over his figures carefully,
+he had found that wearing the Temple brand there were six steers more
+than there should be.  A matter of some five or six hundred dollars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Were it only the financial end of it Steve would have thought little of
+the matter.  But, going over the herd animal by animal, he made a
+discovery which shocked him.  He found six big steers in the lot which
+wore fairly recently burned Temple brands&mdash;crudely scrawled over the
+brands of the Big Bend ranch, old man Packard's favorite outfit in the
+north.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was impossible to know just how long ago a searing-hot iron had
+altered the range indication of ownership; Steve could merely stare and
+wonder and finally hazard a guess.  Temple had been hard-driven; he had
+succumbed to temptation and opportunity as he had to whiskey and many
+other things.  Seeing life obliquely he had no doubt told himself that
+he was squaring accounts.  So, in the end, Steve was inclined to
+believe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Just what to do he did not know.  It seemed best to him to bide his
+time, to keep his eyes open, to hope for the way out of an embarrassing
+situation.  He would willingly have made restitution himself, to save
+Terry from knowing and to save her name from the smudge which old man
+Packard would eagerly put upon it were he offered the opportunity.  And
+right here was the trouble; he did not care to let his grandfather know
+what had happened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+While striving with this matter the other was brought to his attention.
+Also at the time of the round-up Barbee reported a black-and-white
+steer missing, the prize of the beef herd, said Barbee.  Strayed into
+some far out-of-the-way cañon, perhaps.  But as the days went by other
+cattle, finally totalling a score, were reported missing.  And Steve
+remembered how one evening he and Terry from a log had watched Blenham
+driving off a string of steers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My beloved grandfather has no love for the courts of law," mused Steve
+many a time.  "And he knows that in that I am like him.  So to his way
+of thinking it's just Packard eat Packard and the rest of the world
+'Hands Off.'  And so he is going the limit.  Well, I guess that's as
+good a way as any other."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The day came when Steve put his cattle into Drop Off Valley.  The
+herds, his and Terry's, were counted twice, once as they filed through
+the gate of the round-up corrals, again as they were turned into the
+upland range.  Two hundred and thirty-four head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Two hundred and thirty-four head where I defy Blenham or the devil
+himself to steal a single one of them," said Steve positively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For though there were no fences here nature had raised sufficient
+barriers in the way of the sheer Drop Off Chasm cutting across the
+southern end of the plateau and in rocky, uninviting and all but
+impassable mountain peaks on north and east and a section of the
+western boundary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed the simplest matter in the world here with but ordinary
+diligence and vigilance on the part of his cowboys to make good Steve's
+vow.  Therefore, with Barbee in charge of the men here and under
+instructions to keep the eyes of trusted night riders always open,
+Steve thought to have heard the last of cattle losses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The steers were to be counted every day if Barbee thought necessary; so
+much Steve had said coolly, merely for the emphasis of the words.
+Barbee had looked at him curiously, making no rejoinder and going about
+his business with a puzzled look on his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A week later Barbee reported to Steve down at Ranch Number Ten.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Five steers gone," he said succinctly, his eyes hard and expectant,
+challenging his employer's.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gone?" repeated Steve.  "Where?  And when?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know," replied Barbee.  "I missed 'em four days ago.  I
+wouldn't believe they'd gone for good.  I didn't see how they could of
+gone.  I've looked for 'em ever since; I've rode into an' out of every
+cañon an' pass; I've been everywhere they could go.  But&mdash;they're gone.
+Five big steers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment their eyes, Steve's as hard as Barbee's, held steady and
+unwinking in a deeply probing gaze.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Barbee," said Steve after a little, "remember the night Blenham tried
+to bribe you with a thousand-dollar bill?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barbee flushed and nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I get you," he said quietly.  "Think he's bought me up, maybe?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know what to think.  But this much is clear; If you are on the
+level it's up to you to see that I don't lose any more stock.  And it's
+also up to you to find where those five steers went.  And get them
+back.  Every single hoof of them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That night Steve himself spent in Drop Off Valley, a rifle over his
+arm.  He had ordered his men to carry guns, and if Blenham or another
+man were detected driving off his cattle, to shoot and to shoot to kill.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the next day he returned to the home ranch.  He trusted his
+cowboys&mdash;all but Barbee, and in Barbee's case he was not sure what to
+think&mdash;and it was only too clear to him that there were enough men
+there to cope with the situation without his interference.  Two days
+later Barbee reported to him again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The boy's face was haggard and drawn, his eyes burned sullenly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Six head more gone!" he announced defiantly.  His look said plainly:
+"What are you going to say about it?  They're gone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So you've turned cattle-thief, have you, Barbee?" was what Steve said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A sickly flush stained Barbee's hollow cheeks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!" he snapped hotly.  "I ain't.  But&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He swung on his heel and started to the door.  Steve called him back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you going to do, Barbee?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm goin' an' get Blenham," said Barbee between his teeth.  "I been
+wantin' him a long time.  Now this is his work an' he makes it look
+like it's mine.  I'm goin' an' get him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If it is Blenham," Steve offered coldly, "and if you are playing
+square with me, how does it happen that he can get away with a thing
+like this?  Right under your nose&mdash;and you not know?  It sounds&mdash;  You
+know how it sounds, Barbee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know how he does it," growled Barbee.  "I don't know how a man
+could run off a string of cows like that in them mountains an' not
+leave no tracks.  Why, there ain't half-a-dozen places where they could
+be drove out'n the valley an' through the cliffs, an' I been watchin'
+every one of them places myself all night an' keepin' the other boys
+ridin' until they're saddle-weary.  An'&mdash;an' six head more gone&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're either a clever little actor, Mr. Barbee," muttered Steve
+sharply, "or you are straight, and I'm hanged if I know which.  Just
+leave Blenham alone for a while; go back to your job."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barbee, his spurs dragging disconsolately, went out.  Steve saw how the
+boy's shoulders slumped and again asked himself if Barbee were acting
+or if Blenham were simply too sharp for him?  In the end he decided
+that he had better move his headquarters to Drop Off Valley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That same day there came a cowboy riding from the Big Bend ranch
+bringing a brief note from Steve's grandfather.  It ran:
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="letter">
+DEAR STEPHEN: Better not go too far, my boy.  Eye for an eye is
+first-class gospel.  And there ain't no game yet I ever been bluffed
+out on.  Guess you understand.
+<BR><BR>
+PACKARD.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Steve didn't altogether understand but the messenger could add nothing
+save that the old man was chuckling with Blenham when he gave the
+message.  Steve, in no mood to hear of his grandfather's high good
+humor, tore the letter to bits, distributed them upon the afternoon
+wind and told the lean cowboy that he could tell Grandfather Packard
+and Blenham to go straight to everlasting blazes.  The cowboy laughed
+and rode away.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Steve, riding slowly through the lengthening shadows falling through
+the pines of the mountain slopes before one comes to Drop Off Valley,
+was overtaken by Terry Temple riding furiously.  Terry's horse was
+dripping with sweat; Terry's face was troubled; there was a look almost
+of terror in her eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Steve Packard," she cried out as she came abreast of him and they
+stared into each other's eyes in the dusk under the big trees.  "Tell
+me everything you know about those stolen steers!  Everything."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So she knew, too?  Yet he had cautioned Barbee not to talk and to
+instruct the other boys to keep their mouths shut until such time as
+they could understand this hand being played in the dark.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who told you?" he asked quickly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I saw them!" she told him, her spirit shining like fire in her eyes.
+"The whole six of them.  I knew they were not our cattle.  I saw how
+the brands had been worked, clumsily worked.  Oh, my God, Steve
+Packard, what does it mean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now it flashed upon him.  Terry was not speaking of the cattle lost
+from the upland valley; she referred to those half-dozen big steers
+roaming on the Temple ranch whose brands had been crudely altered from
+the sign of the Big Bend outfit to the sign of her father's.  Slowly
+the red blood of shame, shame for her, crept up into his cheeks, dusky
+under his tan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Terry," he began lamely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But she halted him with the word, her ear catching the subtle note of
+sympathy, her hand upflung, her temper flaring out that he, of all men,
+should think shame of her blood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My father was never a thief!" she cried hotly, her voice ringing clear
+and certain.  "Not that, Steve Packard.  Don't you dare say that!  And
+yet&mdash;  You saw them, you knew, and you didn't say a word to me, to
+anybody?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't know what to say or what to do,", he explained gently.  "I
+thought it best just to wait, to hope for the sense of all this
+infernal jumble.  I hoped&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You big fool!" she called him with all due emphasis.  "Just like all
+of the rest of your blundering sex.  If the good Lord had stopped with
+the job of making Adam, his whole creation wouldn't have been worth the
+snap of my thumb and finger."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It isn't, anyway," said Steve.  "I wouldn't swap your little finger
+for a king's gold crown&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Moonshine," cut in Terry.  "Listen to me, Steve Packard: You saw those
+swapped brands and you kept your mouth shut."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is generally considered&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I said to listen to me!  You didn't say a word to me because you
+believed my dad was a cattle-thief!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve, despite himself, shifted uneasily in his saddle and finally
+dropped his eyes.  Terry sat there staring at him fixedly, her own eyes
+wide open and again harboring that look that was almost fear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You&mdash;you&mdash;Oh, Steve Packard!  This is contemptible of you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he lifted his eyes and looked at her solely enough.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Terry Temple," he said very gently, "I pray God that you are right and
+that I am wrong.  I did not know, I only saw what I saw, and wondered
+and kept my mouth shut.  But&mdash;listen to me now, Terry Temple.  You are
+not the one to dodge an issue, no matter how hard it is to face it.
+Tell me: If your father did not shift those brands, then who did?  And
+why?  Don't you see that is what it amounts to, that is what we've got
+to answer?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham!" she told him swiftly, hardly waiting for him to finish.
+"Blenham, under orders.  Orders from your precious old thief of a
+grandfather!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He smiled back at her, hoping to coax an answering smile to her lips
+and into her troubled eyes.  But she only shook her head and went on
+steadily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Recrimination of a sort&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Recrimination is quite some word, no matter what it means," sniffed
+Terry.  "But we can leave it out.  In words of one syllable, your old
+thief of a grandfather ordered his pet dog and sub-thief to go tie
+something on poor old dad.  And you fell for it!  You ought to go to a
+school for the simple-minded."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just what," demanded Steve equably, "do you suppose a play like that
+would win for anybody?  Any time my old thief of a grandfather, as you
+call him, hands an enemy of his several hundred dollars in beef cattle,
+why, just please wake me up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A play like that is just what old Hell-Fire would be up to right about
+now," she told him positively.  "You have been proving something too
+much for him to swallow whole and boots on; your chipping in with us
+that time you took the mortgage over made him hungrier than ever to
+gobble up the crowd of us.  So he plays the dirty trick of making it
+appear my father is a cattle-thief."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham might do a trick like that.  My grandfather wouldn't.  That
+is, I don't think he would."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Better hedge!  Wouldn't he, though!  He's always been as mean as
+gar-broth; the older he gets the meaner and nastier he is.  He'd do
+anything to double-cross a Temple and you know it.  It's one crooked
+play; there'll be more like it.  Just you see, Steve Packard.  And the
+next one&mdash;at least if it concerns me&mdash;you see that you let me know
+about it instead of going around like a dumb man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he blurted out word of the recent losses from Drop Off Valley.
+For her herds mingled there with his and a part of the losses were to
+be borne by her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm on my way there now," he concluded.  "I've an idea&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You haven't!" she interrupted.  "Steve Packard, I don't believe you
+ever had an idea in your life.  Don't you know&mdash;don't you know what's
+going with those steers up there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You just bet your life I do!  It's that crook of a Yellow Barbee, in
+cahoots with that crook of a Blenham who's taking orders from that
+crook of an old Hell-Fire Packard!  Can't you see their play?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I rather think I can.  But I don't happen to be as positive about the
+unknown as you do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're just a man," said Terry.  "That's why.  And now you are on your
+way to the feeding-grounds up there, to come in and say, 'Here I am,
+Barbee, come to watch you and see that you don't steal any more stock
+for me to-night.'  That the idea?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not exactly.  I had intended leaving my horse before I got to the rim
+of the valley and going on on foot, not telling everybody what I was
+about."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you'd come to the rim of the valley either by Hell Gate pass or
+through the old Indian Trail, wouldn't you?  And Barbee or Blenham
+would see that both ways were watched."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You seem to know the trails rather well," he began, but she merely
+broke in:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's not all I know about this neck of the woods, either, Steve
+Packard.  Maybe it's lucky for you and for me too that you told me all
+this.  I'll take you into Drop Off Valley to-night, and Blenham and
+Yellow Barbee can watch all they please and never guess we're there.
+For there's a way up that not even Blenham knows and where they will
+never look for us.  Come on, Steve Packard; use a spur."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She shot by him, leading the way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So Steve and Terry rode through the forests, passing from the dull
+fringe of the day into the calm glory of the night, feeling the air
+grow cooler and sweeter against their faces, sensing the shutting-in
+about them of the gentle serenity of the wilderness.  They followed
+little-travelled trails where she rode ahead and he, following close at
+her horse's heels, was glad each time that an open space beyond or a
+ridge crested showed him her form pricked clearly against the sky.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They spoke less and less as they went on.  Deeper grew the silences
+into which they made their way, with only the gush of a mountain brook
+or the fluttering of a startled bird or the rustle of dead leaves under
+some alert little wild thing, just these sounds occasionally and ever
+the soft thud of shod hoofs on leaf mould and loose soil.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stars multiplied swiftly, grew in brilliancy.  But down here close
+to the face of the earth where the shadows were, the dark was
+impenetrable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For many a mile Terry led the way through the forests.  Steve was on
+the verge of suggesting that she had lost her way, when she turned off
+to the right and down a long slope in so decided a fashion that he
+closed his lips to his suspicion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She knew where she was going; as he once again saw her body against a
+patch of sky&mdash;she had gone down the slope and climbed a ridge
+ahead&mdash;and as he noted her carriage and the poise of a chin for the
+instant clearly outlined, he knew that she was sure of herself.  Well,
+she was that sort of a girl; she might have confidence in herself and a
+man might place his confidence with hers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So at last Terry brought him down into a creek-bed and the bottom on a
+steep-sided cañon.  He merely said, "I'll take your word for it!" when
+she told him that this was the deep-cleft ravine which lay like a gash
+at the base of the sheer Drop Off Cliffs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yonder, perhaps a mile ahead and yet prominently asserting itself to
+their view because of a certain widening and straightening of the cañon
+here, a bold head of cliffs stood out like a monster carving in ebony.
+Up there, at the top of these cliffs, was the southern end of Drop Off
+Valley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And it is up those cliffs that we are going," Terry announced when,
+having drawn nearer, they stopped again to gaze upward.  "There's a
+trail climbing straight up from the bed of the pass; a trail to go
+hand-and-foot style.  Once on top we'll be among Barbee's herds, Barbee
+guessing nothing of our coming since he'll be busy watching the other
+ways in.  And&mdash;  Look!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were close together and she gripped his arm in her sudden
+amazement while she threw out one hand pointing.  He heard her little
+gasp; he looked upward; an astonished ejaculation broke from his own
+lips.  A breathless moment and already the thing, appearing from the
+black nothingness, silhouetted but a moment against the sky, was gone
+and he vaguely saw Terry's face turned toward him while they sought to
+find each other's eyes and know if each had seen what the other had
+glimpsed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's impossible!" he muttered.  "We are imagining things."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait!" said Terry.  "Maybe after all&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They waited impatiently, their blood atingle.  And in a very few
+moments there was, seeming absurd and impossible, a repetition of the
+vision which had so startled them: a black form at the head of the
+cliffs, the field of star-strewn sky back of it limning it into vivid
+distinctness&mdash;the ebon bulk of a steer moving straight out from the top
+of the precipice, straight out a half-dozen feet into nothingness of
+empty space, then slowly descending through the air, gone silently in
+the deeper shadows of the cañon below!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Block and tackle!" muttered Steve abruptly.  "A small steel cable.
+Two or three men up there; a man on horseback down below.  And while
+Barbee and the boys guard the other end&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham puts one across on us down here!" Terry finished it for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only here's where we put one over on Blenham," rejoined Steve hotly.
+He threw a cartridge into his rifle-barrel and spurred ahead of her.
+"You stay here, Terry.  I&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will I?" Terry retorted with animation.  "Not on your life, Steve
+Packard!  If this is the beginning of Blenham's finish&mdash;  Well, I'm in
+on it."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap25"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXV
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE STAMPEDE
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+Terry had sensed something of the truth.  In its way here was the
+beginning of the end of many things.  Before she and Steve Packard,
+making what haste was possible in the thick dark and with what silence
+was allowed them, had gone a score of paces deeper into the cañon, the
+crack of a rifle shouted its reverberating message of menace back and
+forth in the rocky ravine, a spurt of flame showed where the rifleman
+stood upon a pinnacle of rock almost directly above their heads and
+there came the further sounds of men's startled voices and the
+scampering of horses' hoofs, fleeing southward through the pass.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They had lookouts all along!" cried Steve over his shoulder,
+discarding caution and secrecy and throwing his rifle to his shoulder.
+"Better hold back, Terry!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He fired, accepted the precarious chances offered him by an uneven and
+unknown trail in the dark and raced on deeper and deeper into the long
+chasm.  It seemed to him that he had glimpsed something moving at the
+top of the cliffs just about the place whence Blenham's men had lowered
+the steers.  He asked no question but threw up his gun-barrel and fired
+again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From straight in front of him there came back to his ears the clang and
+thud of iron horseshoes upon granite, the rattle of rocks along the
+trail; now and again he saw a spark struck out underfoot.  Then, far
+ahead as the cañon widened suddenly and a little thinning of the
+darkness resulted, he made out dim, running forms, and again he fired
+from his own leaping horse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A flying bullet might find a target and it might not; at any rate the
+sound of the shots volleyed and boomed echoingly between the stone
+wails imprisoning them, and Barbee or one of Barbee's men should hear.
+Steve was estimating hopefully as he dashed on after the fugitives and
+as Terry dashed on after him, that the men at the top of the cliffs
+would not try to come down now, not knowing who or how many the
+attackers were, but would seek escape above.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, if his cowboys heard and rode toward the cliffs, it was all in
+the cards that they might intercept at least a couple of Blenham's
+tools.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A running form almost at his side drew his attention briefly, and all
+but drew hot, questing lead after it.  Then he made out that it was but
+one of the stolen steers, abandoned now; he pressed by, firing time
+after time into the cañon ahead of him.  And behind him he heard
+Terry's voice, eager and fearless, crying out:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good boy, Steve Packard!  We'll get 'em yet!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A spurt of flame from far ahead and close to the wall of the cañon, the
+crack of another rifle, long drawn out, and the whine of a bullet
+singing its vicious way overhead, and again Steve fired, answering shot
+with shot.  He heard a man shout and fired in the direction of the
+voice.  And then the only sounds rising from the narrow gorge were
+those of running horses and the accompanying noises of rattling stones.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now the way was again tortuous, pitch-black, boulder-strewn.  Steve
+slowed down rather than break his horse's legs or his own neck, not
+knowing whether to turn to right or left.  In a moment of uncertainty
+he felt and heard Terry push ahead of him.  He heard her hurrying on
+and followed, shouting to her to come back.  Ten minutes later, out of
+the pass now and upon a low-lying ridge whence he could look across the
+hills billowing away darkly toward the southland, he came up with her
+again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They got off that way."  She pointed south.  "Saw one figure and maybe
+two going down the slope.  There's no use following.  The way is too
+open and it's too dark.  They've got away after all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For to-night," said Steve.  "But maybe the fellows at the top of the
+cliffs&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll show you the way up," said Terry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So without delaying they turned back and came presently under Drop Off
+Cliffs again.  Here they left their horses and, Terry showing the way,
+found the old path up the precipice.  Along many a narrow shelf of rock
+they went, over many a gigantic granite splinter where foothold was
+precarious enough, up many a steep climb.  But in their present mood
+they would have achieved even a more difficult and more hazardous task
+with eagerness and assurance.  Twenty minutes brought them to the top.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who's that?" shouted a sudden voice as Steve's hat came up out of the
+void.  "Hands up!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That you, Barbee?" grunted Steve.  "Hands up?  I'd drop a clean
+hundred feet if I did a fool trick like that.  Did they get away?  The
+men up here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He wriggled up to the top, lay on his stomach and gave a hand to Terry,
+drew her to lie a moment breathless at his side and then again turned
+to Barbee.  There was another man with him and both were looking
+wonderingly at Steve and Terry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never heard a man say," muttered the astounded Barbee, "that there
+was stair-steps up here!  For a man an' girl to come up&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And for our cows to go down!" cried Steve, on his feet now and coming
+to Barbee's side.  "You heard everything, Barbee?  You know what has
+happened?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Barbee.  "A hundred yards over that way&mdash;" he pointed along
+the cliff's edge&mdash;"where a twisted cedar-tree stands in a little
+washout, not hardly to be noticed unless you're on the lookout for it,
+they had their pulleys hitched an' a long steel cable.  It was easy
+shootin', come to think of it.  Jus' rope a cow, cinch her up tight
+with two big straps they had all ready, slip a hook through the
+belly-band, an' lower away!  Pretty smooth, huh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And they all got away?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, they didn't," said Barbee queerly.  "I got one of 'em!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You did?" Steve swung back toward him eagerly.  "Who is he, Barbee?
+And where is he?  I want a talk with him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barbee shook his head and reached for his tobacco and papers.  He was
+young after all, was Barbee, and this was his first man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Andy Sprague, it was," said Barbee.  "He's dead now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There fell a heavy, breathless silence upon the three standing there
+under the stars.  Terry shivered as though with cold and drew a step
+closer to Steve; he felt her hand on his arm.  Barbee lighted his
+cigarette, his hands steady, but his face looking terribly serious in
+the brief-lived light shed upon it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I heard you shootin'," said Barbee.  "I rode this way, on the jump.  I
+was only about a mile up the valley; maybe a shade less.  He had his
+horse close an' was on him an' poundin' leather lively to get out.  We
+come pretty close to runnin' into each other.  I hollered at him to
+hold on an' he jus' rode on his spurs an' I shot.  Emptied my gun.  Got
+him twice, bein' that lucky, an' him that unlucky.  He slid off his
+cayuse an' clawed aroun' an'&mdash;an' he's dead now," ended Barbee briefly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did he tell you anything?  Did he say anything that would implicate
+anybody?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Meanin'," said Barbee steadily, "did he squeal on his pals?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just that.  Did he mention any names?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," replied Barbee thoughtfully.  "He jus' cusses me an' dies game.
+But this here was in his pocket."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He passed it to his employer.  It was a bit of note-paper.  Steve and
+Terry read it together as Steve struck one match after another.  Then
+they looked into each other's faces, grown very tense, while Barbee
+smoked in silence.  The few words were:
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="letter">
+BLENHAM: This here Mex don't seem to know what I mean.  Next time send
+a man as can talk English.  Anyway I am coming to-night.  I don't want
+no killing if it ain't necessary, but there ain't going to be a hide or
+hoof left in Drop Off by morning.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+And the signature, cramped and stiff, was that of Steve's grandfather.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So," muttered Steve heavily.  "The old man has gone the limit, has he?
+He meant it when he said he'd stop at nothing to smash me.  And yet I
+can't believe&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me see it again," Terry commanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She took the paper from his fingers and with it his block of sulphur
+matches.  For even Terry, to whom old man Packard was as relentless and
+unscrupulous as Satan himself, hesitated to believe that he was hand in
+glove with Blenham in this.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There might be a way to read between the lines, to come to some other
+understanding of the baffling situation.  Evidently the old man had
+given the note to the "Mex" who did not know enough of the English
+language to carry word of mouth; the Mex had passed it to Sprague.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve and Barbee and the man with Barbee&mdash;an old Ranch Number Ten hand
+named Bandy Oliver&mdash;had stepped aside quietly.  Terry stood with the
+note in her hand, forgetting it for the moment.  So, at the last,
+matters had come to this: There lay a man over yonder, dead, with
+Barbee's lead in him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And old man Packard was coming to-night, now of all times when Steve's
+heart was hard, when his brain was hot with his fury, when he had just
+come upon men stealing his stock and had learned that his own
+grandfather, the old mountain-lion from the north, was one of them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If they meet to-night," said Terry, "those two Packards, there are
+going to be other men killed.  Good men and bad men.  And, as likely as
+not, Blenham won't be one of them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was another jasper with Sprague.  He got away.  That way, I
+think.  Couldn't say, but there might have been more; what with the
+dark an' the cattle scared an' churnin' aroun'."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve with Barbee and Bandy Oliver had moved slowly away and toward the
+upper end of the plateau.  Detached words, fragments of their speech,
+floated back to her more and more indistinctly on the night wind that
+never sleeps upon these uplands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry turned from them and stood for a little looking down into the
+black void of the cañon into which the stolen cattle had been lowered,
+from which she and Steve had just climbed.  She fancied that the
+darkness down there was thinning.  The dawn was coming up almost
+imperceptibly over the mountain-tops, filtering wanly into the depths
+of the cañons.  The night had rushed by; it would soon be day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And old man Packard had not come.  Thank God for that.  Down in her
+heart Terry was conscious of a leaping gladness.  She knew, admitted
+now, that she had been afraid.  A man lay dead over yonder; if Packard
+met Packard to-night there would be other men dead.  Terry shivered and
+drew back from the edge of the precipice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's always colder just before day," she told herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sunrise already?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve's voice, borne to her ears with startling distinctness.  He had
+not come nearer; maybe the dawn wind was stiffening, thus bearing his
+words to her more clearly.  Or it might be that Steve had lifted his
+voice suddenly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Why should a man be startled by a new sunrise?  True, the night had
+gone quickly, but&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The sun never rose there!" Steve's voice again, thrilling through her
+with its portent.  "It's fire&mdash;range fire&mdash;in a dozen places!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A bright glow lay across the far, upper end of Drop Off Valley.  At
+first one might have done as Steve Packard did and wondered what had
+happened to the sun.  The sky had merely brightened warmly, slowly,
+gradually, showing a hint of pink.  And then, as the bone-dry grass
+here and there had caught, vivid streaks of flame and a veritable
+devil's dance of a myriad sparks shot high skyward.  And, as Steve had
+cried out, not in one place only, but in a dozen spots had the fires
+been lighted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To herald the wrathful coming of Hell-Fire Packard!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Such was the thought springing full-fledged into Terry's brain, into
+Steve's, into Yellow Barbee's.  A chain of fires had been started
+across the whole width of the feeding grounds.  Now the rising wind
+made of it a sudden burning barrier that extended from side to side of
+Drop Off Valley, came rushing toward the lower end, threatening to
+leave but a black charred devastation of the precious pasturage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barbee had run and thrown himself upon his horse.  Steve had grasped
+the dragging reins of Andy Sprague's mount.  Terry saw him and his two
+cowboys swing about toward the upper end.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Terry!" he shouted over his shoulder.  "Down the cliffs again; quick!
+The fire is coming this way; the herds will stampede!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was only the sound of thudding hoofs as the three men rode
+furiously to meet the menace the dawn had brought and seek to grapple
+with it.  Then that sound had gone and its place, for a little taken by
+heavy silence, gradually gave way to new sounds.  The crack of rifles,
+faintly heard&mdash;thin voices of men shouting a long way off&mdash;a sound like
+that of a distant sea, moving restlessly&mdash;grown to suggest the coming
+of a storm that ever swelled in violence&mdash;and then a deep and deepening
+rumble, like thunder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The herd had stampeded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To Terry there came then, for the first time in her life, the sense of
+utter helplessness and hopelessness.  At least the others were doing
+something, no matter how fruitless it might prove, while she was doing
+nothing.  Steve was riding full-tilt to meet the herd.  She saw him and
+his men, strange figures in the uncertain light, looming big against
+the dawn sky and the fires' glow.  They were shouting, waving their
+arms.  Then, going down over a swell of earth they were lost to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again and again there came to her the sound of shots and men's voices
+shouting, cursing, yelling wild commands, a rising clamor meant to
+divert the blind rush of frightened beasts, to turn them to right and
+left so that they might scramble out of the valley before they came to
+the lower end where Terry stood&mdash;where was the yawning chasm down into
+which many a great, terror-filled body was doomed to plunge to
+annihilation unless the way were found to swing the flood of fear aside
+in time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barbee and Bandy Oliver and the other boys were obeying Steve's
+commands, doing all that they could, seeking frantically to split the
+herd and divert it and so save it.  But all of the time the wind
+strengthened, the fires rose higher and higher against the sky, the
+sparks soared to rarer altitudes, were flung further out, new fires
+were catching everywhere.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tall, dry grass was burning in a hundred places.  The herd,
+sweeping on, was snorting its terror, yielding absolutely to the blind
+instinct of flight.  And steadily the thunderous murmuring sound from
+the hoof-smitten earth rose and swelled.  Closer and closer they came.
+Terry could distinguish Steve's voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In her hand were the matches he had given her in order that she might
+read again his grandfather's letter.  A little gasp broke from her
+lips.  The letter fluttered from her hand, no longer of the slightest
+importance and on the wings of the wind went outward and then down into
+the chasm.  She ran forward swiftly, a hundred yards from the
+precipice's edge.  She struck a match, stopped briefly, set it to the
+grass.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The flame caught, leaping up avidly, licking hungrily for more fuel, a
+demon for desire, newly born, yearning to rage a giant of destruction.
+The girl snatched a handful of the burning grass and ran with it; a
+little further forward, then to the side, scattering burning wisps as
+she went.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Everywhere that a spark fell it made of itself a blaze.  Already, in
+twenty seconds, she had created a broad belt of flame that rose swiftly
+and spread to right and left.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+About her everywhere the air grew stifling, hot, filled with smoke and
+ash and cinder so that as she ran her lungs began to hurt her.  But she
+kept on.  Nearer were the herds coming; Steve and his men had not been
+able to stem the mad torrent; not yet had they succeeded in turning it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And in another handful of minutes the black, tight-jammed mass of big
+panting bodies would be hurtling out into space.  Unless she made her
+fire extend from side to side in a wall of leaping, roaring, swirling
+menace that would do what no men and horses could accomplish.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry was racing as never had Terry run before, her breath coming in
+choking sobs, her eyes shining wildly, her body shaken with the effort
+she put upon it.  She had her burning barrier across the more dangerous
+end of the valley, where the cliffs dropped sheerest, she had but
+another few yards to go and there would be hope that she would succeed.
+But she must not stop yet, not yet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She ran on toward the nearer rim of the valley, scattering burning
+wisps of grass as she went, her heart beating wildly, seeming ready to
+burst through her side.  She fell, rose, ran on.  She stood still a
+moment, turning her back to the fires of her own building, looking
+toward the upper end whence came the steady roar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For an instant she stood fascinated.  It looked as though the ground
+itself, in many a low-lying swell, were racing on to meet her.  Then
+she saw the hundreds of horns glistening dully in the new light.  That
+black mass, surging forward, was the herd and she was still in its path.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She cried out and threw down her last torch and ran just as the
+frightened steers were running, fear in her heart, racing away from
+death, just running for her life.  She saw a form ahead of the others,
+breaking away from them, sweeping down upon her.  She cried out in
+terror; then she knew and cried out again and threw up her arms and
+turned toward the rider who had remembered her and feared for her and
+come for her.  And Steve, bending from his saddle, equal to the need of
+the moment, swept her up and caught her tight in his arm and rode out
+of the way of herd and fire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From a little crag-crested knoll, standing hand in hand, their forms
+blended in silhouette against the dawn, they watched breathlessly the
+end of the stampede.  The maddened brutes rushed on, straight toward
+Terry's barrier of flame.  Then those in the van sought suddenly to
+alter their headlong courses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve's face was white with anger as he saw the result.  A full
+half-dozen, perhaps ten, big bodies at the fore passed through the far
+end of the flaming line, swept on, sought to swerve only at the last
+frantic moment with their fellows crowding them to the brink, and,
+struggling wildly, went over and down and out of sight.  Terry
+shuddered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The herd, however, broke, divided, swung to right and left and passed
+about the burning danger-signal and to the outer rims of the valley,
+achieving safety somewhere in the night, scattering, tossing their
+gleaming fronts, snorting, and beginning to bellow their rage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If it hadn't been for you, Terry Temple&mdash;" Steve began, his voice a
+little hoarse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If it hadn't been for you, Steve Packard,"' laughed Terry a trifle
+unsteadily but quite happily, "where would I have been?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then, quite as though their destiny wished it made plain that not
+yet had the time come for them to devote exclusively to themselves,
+Barbee rode down toward them, spurring through the last of the fleeing
+herd, shouting:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's a dozen men ridin' this way an' ridin' like&mdash;&mdash;!  An' the
+firelight's shinin' on their guns; every man's totin' one.  An' it's
+ol' Hell-Fire Packard ridin' at their head."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm glad he has come," muttered Steve heavily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then, as though he were uncertain of his return to her, he kissed
+Terry's lips that were lifted toward his.  In a dull stupor, so much
+had she experienced these last few minutes, she watched him swing again
+to the back of a horse and ride to meet those who came.  The very way
+he carried his rifle in front of him bespoke with rare eloquence his
+readiness for anything.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap26"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXVI
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+YELLOW BARBEE KEEPS A PROMISE
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+Terry started, shook off her apathy with a sudden effort and called out:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Steve!  Steve!  Come back!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had gone but a half-dozen paces.  He swung about and returned to
+her.  It was not light enough yet for her to see his eyes; they seemed
+just unfathomable, sombre pools in the shadow of his hat-brim.  As he
+turned his head a little, harking to the distant sounds of men's voices
+earning on, the rigid profile was harsh and implacable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Terry," he said sternly, "you mustn't ask me to come back again.  I am
+just standing on my own rights this time, as a man must now and then.
+Old man Packard is over there.  He is coming on.  He wants trouble.  He
+doesn't want the law courts.  He always preferred to play the game man
+to man.  He has cost me a number of cattle; when I can figure just how
+many I am going over and collect from him&mdash;if we are both left alive,
+which is to be doubted.  And now, if he wants fight&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again he glanced over his shoulder.  Still she could not read what lay
+in his eyes.  But a new, almost eager note, boyishly eager Terry
+thought in dismay, had burst into his voice:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If he wants fight&mdash;by God, Terry Temple, I'm as much Packard as he is!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She watched him wheel again and go.  This time she did not call to him.
+Her little figure stiffened, her hands were down at her sides and
+clenched, her chin was lifted a little.  The whole attitude was
+soldierlike.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are two of a kind," said Terry within herself.  "They are men.
+They are Packards.  I am proud and&mdash;and afraid&mdash;and&mdash;  Oh, dear God!
+Dear God!  Bring him back to me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She could hear Steve giving his brief orders crisply.  Other figures
+loomed about him, coming out of the night and the shadows.  There was
+young Yellow Barbee and Bandy Oliver; there was the Number Ten cowboy
+whom she knew only as "Spotty"; in a moment these and two or three
+other men were with Steve.  Six or seven; possibly eight of them all
+told.  And Barbee had said that there were about a dozen men with old
+man Packard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is my fight, boys," Steve was saying.  "Mine and my
+grandfather's.  I want you fellows to keep out of it unless the boys
+with old man Packard mix in.  If they do&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We're with you," said Yellow Barbee.  "Huh, boys?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And a little nervously and hurriedly they answered&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then," concluded Steve, "keep your eyes open.  Hang back, now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She saw him lean forward in the saddle, noted how the horse leaped
+under him, took anxious stock of the manner in which he carried his
+rifle.  Then suddenly there came back into Terry's cheeks the good hot
+blood, into her eyes the sparkle and shine, into her heart something
+akin to the sheer joy of battle.  Had she a horse she would not have
+hung back for want of a rifle, but would have ridden after him, with
+him.  As it was she cried out ringingly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God go with you, Steve Packard!  I'm proud of you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She might not ride with him; at least she would not crouch and cringe
+and hide her eyes.  She would watch him as he rode, watch him as he
+fought, watch him to the end even though he slipped from the saddle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So she made her way hastily to a point of vantage, running the brief
+distance lying between the slight knoll on which she stood and the
+eastern edge of the valley where the rugged peaks rose abruptly.  She
+scrambled up the first bit of slope, her heart beating wildly,
+expecting each second to hear the snap and crackle of rifle-fire.  She
+turned and looked back; the floor of the valley was too uneven for her
+to have a sweeping view.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She began climbing again.  Great boulders rose in her path; somehow she
+got on them and over them.  Broken slabs of granite strewed the way;
+she made of them steps on which to mount higher and higher.  Still no
+sound of a shot and at last, upon a narrow shelf of rock offering
+sufficient foothold, she stopped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here, with her back tight pressed to a rock, her hands gripping at
+irregularities on each side of her to steady her, she sent her questing
+gaze down into Drop Off Valley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now she understood why there had as yet been no rifle-fire.  The day,
+coming on slowly, still offered more gloom than radiance, but she could
+pick out two figures clearly.  One was that of Steve.  He had ridden on
+ahead of his men, perhaps a hundred feet ahead, and was upon a bit of
+higher ground.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The other form, bulking big in the thin light, was indisputably that of
+old man Packard.  Like Steve, he had ridden on in advance of his men.
+She could just make out a dull mass yonder behind him which might have
+been but a group of boulders had not the impatient stirring showed
+where his horsemen were waiting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was very still there on the uplands in the dim dawning.  In
+breathless watchfulness a few men behind Steve watched; a few men
+behind old man Packard watched; a girl upon a granite peak watched.
+Down toward the lower end of the valley where the floor of the plateau
+dropped precipitously into the steep-walled cañon the fire Terry had
+set was still burning fiercely.  But the wind carried its fury away
+from them, so that it was only an evil whisper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here and there, elsewhere in the valley, the fires still burned on.
+There were wide stretches across which the flames had already swept so
+that now they were ink-black, burnt-out, smoking a little.  Upon such
+an open space, still hot under their horses' hoofs, the two Packards,
+grandfather and grandson, came face to face.  And they were stern,
+ominously set faces confronting each other.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At last they had pulled rein, both of them, looking grotesquely like
+clockwork mechanisms, being actuated by the same impulse at the same
+time.  Some ten feet only were between their horses' tossing heads.
+They were almost opposite Terry's lookout and at no great distance.  In
+the quiet pervading the valley their voices came to her.  Not each
+word, but a word now and then, lifted above its fellows, and always the
+purport.  For there was no mistaking the quality of the two voices.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rage in old Packard was welcomed by wrath in young Packard.  Heat and
+anger and explosive denunciation, these were to be looked for now.
+Never had it been the Packard way to temporize; always had it been the
+Packard way to leap in and strike.  Few-worded always was the old man;
+as few-worded was the young man now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are a damn' scoundrel, sir!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will draw your men off.  You will pay for the damage Blenham has
+done."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By God, sir!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was little more said.  That thunderous "By God, sir!" from the
+old man's lips carried to Terry where she stood tight pressed against
+her rock.  And then all unexpectedly and from an unexpected quarter,
+came the first rifle-shot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The first shot and the second, close together.  The bullets passed
+between grandfather and grandson, kicking up little puffs of dust
+beyond them.  Neither looked to see whence the shots came.  The thought
+was in each mind:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is this a Packard I am dealing with?  Setting one of his hired
+assassins to shooting from a blind?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man's rifle was thrown up before him; Steve's rose with it.
+Over yonder old Packard's men squared themselves in their saddles and
+made ready for grim work.  Yellow Barbee gave a signal all unneeded to
+his men; his own rifle in his eager hands, was ready, the trigger
+yielding to his calloused forefinger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then from the flinty spire of a peak rising between them and a sun
+that was slowly wheeling into the clear sky, came scream after scream
+that echoed and billowed across the open lands as Terry Temple, seeing
+something of the truth, cried out in terrified desperation and warning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A girl's voice screaming&mdash;Old man Packard turned sharply and stared in
+wonderment.  Terry's voice&mdash;Steve swung about, his anger suddenly
+quenched in alarm, his eyes seeking everywhere for her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Barbee who saw her first.  Barbee called out, a strange note in
+his voice, and clapped his spurs to his horse's sides and went racing
+across the undulating lands toward her.  Then Steve saw and old man
+Packard and the rest.  Saw but at first could not understand: the sun
+was just behind her, winking into their eyes.  There was some one with
+her, struggling with her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham!" shouted Steve.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he was racing wildly along after Barbee, yearning to shoot to kill
+and yet not daring to shoot at all.  Blenham and Terry struggling upon
+the iron side of the mountain, Terry striking and striking at him
+frantically, Blenham with his arms about her, dragging her back toward
+a wide fissure in the rocks, the sun bright above them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To Terry it seemed that the universe had come crashing down about her
+ears.  A moment ago, tense and rigid and breathless, she had stood
+watching two men face each other threateningly.  Then there had been
+the crack of the unexpected, unseen rifle; the dust struck up between
+them; the second shot.  And the smoking rifle-barrel was not three feet
+from where Terry stood, Blenham's convulsed face laid against the
+stock, Blenham's one evil eye lining the sights.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Almost on the instant she guessed something of the truth.  Blenham in
+this light was not sure of hitting; he would be a fool to shoot and
+miss.  Unless&mdash;and it was then that she screamed out her warning, then
+before he had so much as put out his hand toward her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Unless Blenham, with all of the guile of him uppermost, knew that that
+shot fired between the two would send them flying at each other's
+throats, ending all parley and bringing about unthinkable tragedy.
+Blenham had his own reasons for what he did; certainly it would fit in
+with Blenham's plans to see the hand of a Packard set against a Packard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But she had not thought to have him seize her.  Now his great,
+calloused, soiled, hairy hands shut down upon her, gripping her
+shoulders, jerking her from her place into the crevice from which his
+face had emerged.  She fought, seeking to get the revolver in her
+blouse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham must have known that she kept it there.  He snatched it and
+threw it behind him and cursed her as he dragged her with him.  As
+Barbee came on and Steve came just behind him, the figures of Blenham
+and Terry were both gone as though the mountain-side had split for them
+and closed after them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They've got in a hole," called out Barbee.  "Them mountains is full of
+caves.  They can't get away far."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As they went up the steep slope Barbee was still in the lead.  He
+mounted to the shelf of rock on which Terry had been standing.  He
+stepped into the crevice through which Blenham had dragged Terry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's a split in the rocks here," called Barbee.  "He went this way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Watch out for him!" warned Steve, now on the ledge close to the boy.
+"Let me go ahead!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barbee laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Long ago I told him I'd get him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Blenham was waiting in a little rock-rimmed hollow.  He shot from
+the hip, using a heavy revolver.  Barbee stood a moment looking
+foolishly at the sky as he slowly leaned back against the rock.  Then
+he lurched and fell, twisting, spinning so that he lay half in the
+fissure, his rifle clattering to the ledge outside, his body falling so
+that his head and shoulders were across the rifle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve stepped over Barbee's twitching body, alert, every nerve taut,
+his finger crooked to the trigger of his rifle.  But again Blenham had
+withdrawn.  In the little rudely circular hollow from which Blenham had
+fired point-blank at Yellow Barbee was Terry's hat, trodden underfoot.
+Again it was as though the mountain had swallowed the man and the girl
+he had taken with him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But a moment later Steve saw and understood.  Not ten steps from where
+he stood was the mouth of a cave.  Into it Blenham had retreated.  In
+there was Blenham now; Blenham and Terry with him.  And the way, for
+the moment at least, was securely blocked.  Evidently here was a
+hangout known before, previously employed.  It had a door made of heavy
+cedar slabs.  The door was shut, and, of course, barred from within.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Terry!" called Steve.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terry sought to answer; he heard her voice in inarticulate terror,
+little more than a gasp, choked back in her throat.  Steve went dead
+white.  He visualized Blenham's hands upon her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He came on to the door, his rifle clubbed.  There was but the one thing
+to do; smash down the door and so come at Blenham the shortest,
+quickest, only way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Blenham called to him for the first time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fool, are you, Steve Packard?  Look at that door.  Don't you know
+before you can batter it down I can pick you off!  An' I can do more'n
+that!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As though he had cruelly drawn it from her, there came again Terry's
+scream.  Steve sprang forward and struck at the heavy cedar planks.
+And Blenham called out again:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe you can break your way in; there's enough of you.  But you'll
+find her dead when the door falls!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve had again lifted his rifle.  Now he let it sink slowly so that
+the butt came to rest gently upon the rock at his feet.  Blenham held
+the high hand; Blenham was unthinkably vile; Blenham was desperate.
+And Terry, his little Terry on whom Blenham had always looked with the
+eye of a brute and a beast, was in there, just beyond three inches of
+solid seasoned cedar planking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you harm her in the least&mdash;"  It was Steve's voice though certainly
+at first neither Blenham nor even Terry could have recognized it.  "If
+you harm her in the least, Blenham, I'll kill you.  Not all at
+once&mdash;just by inches!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham answered him coolly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know when I've lost a trick, Steve Packard.  This ain't the firs'
+one an' it ain't goin' to be the last.  I've played 'em high an' I
+always knowed I took chances.  But I'm playin' safe!  Get me?  Safe!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go ahead; what do you mean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ol' man Packard is down there.  This girl's yellin' spoiled my play.
+By now he has learned a thing or two.  All right; that's jus' the run
+of luck, rotten luck!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Under the words the restraint was gone and his rage flared out briefly.
+But it was patent that Blenham's shrewdness was still with him.  He
+continued almost calmly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You an' him can have two words together.  Then come back here an' give
+me your promises, both of you, to let me go.  Then I'll let her go.
+Otherwise, I'm as good as dead&mdash;an' so's she.  I'll jam a gun to her
+head the las' thing an' blow her brains out.  An', what's more, I'll
+get one or two of you besides before you drop me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Into their parley, interrupting it, his eyes flaming, his face hot with
+anger, mounted old man Packard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stephen," he said sternly, his eyes hard on his grandson's face, "tell
+me an' tell me the down-right truth, so help you God: Did you rent this
+pasture from Andy Sprague, thinkin' he owned it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Though he wondered, Steve answered briefly, to have this done with so
+that he could again turn to Blenham&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An' the boys says you have been losin' stock an' blamin' it to me?
+An' that you've had stock poisoned an' shot?  An' blamed it to me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Steve.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So've I," said the old man heavily.  "An' I've always blamed it to
+you.  An' I never sold to Andy Sprague.  Him an' Blenham&mdash;Blenham has
+played us both ways for suckers, has stole enough cows from one an'
+another&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His voice was swept up into the roar of rage which had given him his
+name of the old mountain-lion of the north.  He came stepping over poor
+Barbee's body, thrusting by Steve, towering over the door of the cave.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hold back," commanded Steve queerly.  "He's in there.  But he's got it
+on us.  We've got to promise to let him go!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let him go!" shouted the old man, his big bulk seeming actually to
+quiver with rage.  "After all he's done, let him go?  By the Lord,
+Stephen Packard, if you're that sort of a man&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She is in there with him," said Steve heavily.  "Terry is in there.
+Don't you see?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Terry?  That Temple girl?  What have we to do&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the first place," cried Steve sharply, "she's a girl and he's a
+brute.  In the second place, she is the next Mrs. Packard and I won't
+have Blenham pawing over her!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His grandfather stared at him, long and keenly.  Then he turned away
+and called out commandingly&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham, come out of that!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham jeered at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And be shot down like a dog?  There's a girl in here, Packard.  Young
+Packard is gone on her; he wants to marry her.  An' unless you an' him
+give your word to let me go, I'm goin' to jam a gun at her head an'
+blow her brains out.  An' I'll get him as I come out; an' I'll get you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let him go!" called Terry faintly.  "Let him go, Steve!  Oh, dear
+God&mdash;if you love me&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come out, Blenham!" shouted Steve.  "I give you my word, so help me
+God, to let you go scot-free.  Come out!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not so fast," mocked Blenham, lingering over his high card.  "You've
+got to promise for your men; you've got to send 'em across the valley.
+You've got to have a horse handy for me to ride.  You've got to back
+down the valley yourse'f.  An' ol' man Packard has got to do the same."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Old man Packard roared out his curses, but in the end, seeing nothing
+else to do, he went grumbling down the rocky slope, back to his horse
+and to his men.  But first he had known perhaps the supreme humiliation
+of his life.  He had said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham, on my word of honor as a Packard an' a gentleman, I'll let
+you go.  An' I'll make my men let you go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And there were actually tears hanging to his lashes as he swung again
+into his saddle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has not hurt you, Terry?" asked Steve before he too would go down
+the slope.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," cried Terry.  "No, no!  But, oh, hurry, hurry, Steve.  I feel
+that I'll smother, I'll die!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From down in the valley they watched, close to a score of hard-eyed,
+wrath-filled men, as Blenham stepped out of the crevice and on to the
+ledge.  They saw how he jeered as he stepped over the body of the man
+he had shot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A fool was Barbee," he called.  "A fool the Packards, ol' an' young!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They saw him come down the slope, carrying himself with a swaggering
+air of braggadocio, but plainly watchful and suspicious.  Terry had
+come out upon the ledge and she too watched him.  He came down swiftly
+and swung up into the saddle of the horse they had left for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now at last his suspicion was past.  His triumph broke out like a
+streak of evil light.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was ready to go," he called, "any time!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He swung his arm out toward the blue hills of Old Mexico.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Down there&mdash;&mdash;-"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barbee whom they had thought dead stirred a little where he lay.  The
+rifle under him he thrust forward six inches.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham!" he called weakly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blenham swung about and fired, again from the hip.  But he had fired
+hastily.  Barbee's rifle, resting upon the rock, was steady.  Between
+its muzzle and Blenham's broad chest there was but the brief distance
+of some fifty feet.  The report of Barbee's rifle, the thin upcurling
+smoke under the new sun&mdash;these were the chief matters in all the world
+for their little fragment of time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Blenham threw out his arms and pitched forward.  His foot caught
+in the stirrup.  The frightened horse was plunging, running, dragging a
+man whose body was whipped this way and that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I promised&mdash;a long time ago," whispered Barbee, "that I'd get you,
+Blenham."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap27"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXVII
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IN HONOR OF THE FAIRY QUEEN!
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+"Guy Little!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man's voice boomed out mightily as the old man himself strode
+back and forth impatiently in the big barn-like library of his ranch
+home.  Guy Little appeared with a promptness savoring either of magic
+or prepared expectancy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You rang, your majesty?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rang, your foot!" shouted old Packard.  "I hollered my ol' head off.
+What's the day of the week, Guy Little?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's Wednesday, your&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An' what's the day of the month?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's the nineteenth, your&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then tell me, sir," and the old man's tone was angry and challenging
+to a remarkable degree, "why in the name of the devil my gran'son,
+Stephen, ain't showed up yet!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Guy Little might have remarked that it was rather early to expect any
+one to show up.  It was not yet six o'clock of a morning which promised
+to be one of the very finest mornings ever known.  The old man had, as
+Guy Little expressed it, "been prancin' an' pawin' aroun'," for an hour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Guy Little grinned like any cherub.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has showed up," he chuckled, though he had meant to hold back the
+tidings teasingly.  "He come in late las' night.  You was asleep an'
+sleepin' soun', so&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He did, did he?" bellowed the old man.  "Crept in like a damn' thief
+in the night, did he?  Well, where is he now?  Sleepin' yet, I'll be
+bound.  When he ought to be up an'&mdash;  Why, when I was a young devil his
+age&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's outside somewhere," said Guy Little.  "He has been down to the
+crick for a mornin' dip, I'd guess, your majesty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why would you guess that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because pretty near all he had on was a towel an' a&mdash;a sort of
+a&mdash;&mdash;immodes' britch-cloth," explained Guy Little confidentially.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An'," continued old man Packard, "where's&mdash;she?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Meanin' the Fairy Queen, your majesty?"  Guy Little's voice was now a
+whisper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Meanin' her&mdash;the Fairy Queen," said the old man gently.  "Sleepin',
+Guy Little?  I won't have her woke!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Woke, your eyebrow!" chuckled Guy Little.  "I'd say she's gone for
+a&mdash;a dip, too, your majesty.  An'&mdash;an', between just the two of us ol'
+fellers, hers is purty near as immodes' as his!  Fact, an' I don't care
+whose granddaughter she is.  Blue, you know; an' not very much of it.
+An' a red cap.  An'&mdash;I couldn't see very well through the curtains an'
+I dasn't let 'em know I was lookin'.  Only don't you let her know we
+know; why, bless her little simple heart, she ain't got the least idea
+how pretty an'&mdash;an'&mdash;&mdash;immodes'&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Old man Packard fixed him with a knowing eye.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ain't she?" he demanded.  "Ain't she, Guy Little?  Why, if there's one
+thing in this world worth knowin' that my granddaughter don't know&mdash;
+Go order breakfas' ready in two shakes, Guy Little."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did," said Guy Little.  "It's ready already.  There they come.
+Happy-lookin', ain't they?  Like a couple kids."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An' see that them two new saddle-horses is ready right after breakfas'
+for 'em, Guy Little."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They're ready now," chuckled Guy Little.  "I remembered."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An&mdash;an' she likes&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Flowers on the table?  An' her grapefruit stacked high with sugar?
+An' the coffee with hot milk?  Don't I know nothin' a-tall, Packard?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steve and Terry, dripping and laughing, breaking into a run as they
+came on across the meadow, spied the big man and the little at the
+window and shouted a joyous good morning and Terry threw them a kiss
+apiece.  And old man Packard, his hands on his hips, a look of
+absolute, ineffable content in his eyes, said softly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've made a mistake or two in my life, Guy Little.  But ain't I lived
+long enough to squeeze in a blunder or so here an' there?  An' I've
+made a mistake a time or two on a man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blenham did fool you pretty slick," suggested Guy Little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But," went on the old man hurriedly, "I know a real, upstandin',
+thoroughbred&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fairy Queen of a woman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fairy Queen of a woman when I see her.  An' that little thing out
+there, her eyes shinin' like I ain't seen a pair of eyes shine for
+more'n fifty year, Guy Little&mdash;why, sir, she's what I call a&mdash;  Why,
+she's a Packard, man!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Man to Man, by Jackson Gregory
+
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+</BODY>
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+</HTML>
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Man to Man, by Jackson Gregory
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Man to Man
+
+Author: Jackson Gregory
+
+Release Date: July 29, 2006 [EBook #18933]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN TO MAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: The blazing heat was such that men and horses and steers
+suffered terribly.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MAN TO MAN
+
+
+BY
+
+JACKSON GREGORY
+
+
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+JUDITH OF BLUE LAKE RANCH, THE BELLS OF SAN JUAN, SIX FEET FOUR, ETC.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY
+
+J. G. SHEPHERD
+
+
+
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP
+
+PUBLISHERS -------- NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
+
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+
+Published October, 1920
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+     I. STEVE DIVES INTO DEEP WATERS
+    II. MISS BLUE CLOAK KNOWS WHEN SHE'S BEAT
+   III. NEWS OF A LEGACY
+    IV. TERRY BEFORE BREAKFAST
+     V. HOW STEVE PACKARD CAME HOME
+    VI. BANK NOTES AND A BLIND MAN
+   VII. THE OLD MOUNTAIN LION COMES DOWN FROM THE NORTH
+  VIII. IN RED CREEK TOWN
+    IX. "IT'S MY FIGHT AND HIS.  LET HIM GO!"
+     X. A RIDE WITH TERRY
+    XI. THE TEMPTING OF YELLOW BARBEE
+   XII. IN A DARK ROOM
+  XIII. AT THE LUMBER CAMP
+   XIV. THE MAN-BREAKER AT HOME
+    XV. AT THE FALLEN LOG
+   XVI. TERRY DEFIES BLENHAM
+  XVII. AND CALLS ON STEVE
+ XVIII. "IF HE KNOWS--DOES SHE?"
+   XIX. TERRY CONFRONTS HELL-FIRE PACKARD
+    XX. A GATE AND A RECORD SMASHED
+   XXI. PACKARD WRATH AND TEMPLE RAGE
+  XXII. THE HAND OF BLENHAM
+ XXIII. STEVE RIDES BY THE TEMPLE PLACE
+  XXIV. DOWN FROM THE SKY!
+   XXV. THE STAMPEDE
+  XXVI. YELLOW BARBEE KEEPS A PROMISE
+ XXVII. IN HONOR OF THE FAIRY QUEEN!
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+The blazing heat was such that men and horses and steers suffered
+terribly . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
+
+The men about him and Packard withdrew this way and that leaving empty
+floor space.
+
+Terry's head, her face flushed rosily, her eyes never brighter, popped
+up on one side of the log.
+
+"Say it!" laughed Terry.  "Well, I'm here. Came on business."
+
+
+
+
+MAN TO MAN
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+STEVE DIVES INTO DEEP WATERS
+
+Steve Packard's pulses quickened and a bright eagerness came into his
+eyes as he rode deeper into the pine-timbered mountains.  To-day he was
+on the last lap of a delectable journey.  Three days ago he had ridden
+out of the sun-baked town of San Juan; three months had passed since he
+had sailed out of a South Sea port.
+
+Far down there, foregathering with sailor men in a dirty water-front
+boarding-house, he had grown suddenly and even tenderly reminiscent of
+a cleaner land which he had roamed as a boy.  He stared back across the
+departed years as many a man has looked from just some such resort as
+Black Jack's boarding-house, a little wistfully withal.  Abruptly
+throwing down his unplayed hand and forfeiting his ante in a card game,
+he had gotten up and taken ship back across the Pacific.  The house of
+Packard might have spelled its name with the seven letters of the word
+"impulse."
+
+Late to-night or early to-morrow he would go down the trail into
+Packard's Grab, the valley which had been his grandfather's and,
+because of a burst of reckless generosity on the part of the old man,
+Steve's father's also.  But never Steve's, pondered the man on the
+horse; word of his father's death had come to him five months ago and
+with it word of Phil Packard's speculations and sweeping losses.
+
+But never had money's coming and money's going been a serious concern
+of Steve Packard; and now his anticipation was sufficiently keen.  The
+world was his; he had no need of a legal paper to state that the small
+fragment of the world known as Ranch Number Ten belonged to him.  He
+could ride upon it again, perhaps find one like old Bill Royce, the
+foreman, left.  And then he could go on until he came to the other
+Packard ranch where his grandfather had lived and still might be living.
+
+After all of this--Well, there were many sunny beaches here and there
+along the seven seas where he had still to lie and sun himself.  Now it
+was a pure joy to note how the boles of pine and cedar pointed straight
+toward the clear, cloudless blue; how the little streams trickled
+through their worn courses; how the quail scurried to their brushy
+retreats; how the sunlight splashed warm and golden through the
+branches; how valleys widened and narrowed and the thickly timbered
+ravines made a delightful and tempting coolness upon the mountainsides.
+
+It was an adventure with its own thrill to ride around a bend in the
+narrow trail and be greeted by an old, well-remembered landmark: a
+flat-topped boulder where he had lain when a boy, looking up at the sky
+and thrilling to the whispered promises of life; or a pool where he had
+fished or swum; or a tree he had climbed or from whose branches he had
+shot a gray squirrel.  A wagon-road which he might have taken he
+abandoned for a trail which better suited his present fancy since it
+led with closer intimacy into the woods.
+
+It was late afternoon when he came to the gentle rise which gave first
+glint of the little lake so like a blue jewel set in the dusty green of
+the wooded slopes.  As he rose in his stirrups to gaze down a vista
+through the tree-trunks, he saw the bright, vivid blue of a cloak.
+
+"Now, there's a woman," thought Packard without enthusiasm.  "The woods
+were quite well enough alone without her.  As I suppose Eden was.  But
+along she comes just the same.  And of course she must pick out the one
+dangerous spot on the whole lake shore to display herself on."
+
+For he knew how, just yonder where the blue cloak caught the sunlight,
+there was a sheer bank and how the lapping water had cut into it,
+gouging it out year after year so that the loose soil above was always
+ready to crumble and spill into the lake.  The wearer of the bright
+garment stirred and stood up, her back still toward him.
+
+"Young girl, most likely," he hazarded an opinion.
+
+Though she was too far from him to be at all certain, he had sensed
+something of youth's own in the very quality of her gesture.
+
+Then suddenly he clapped his spurs to his horse's sides and went racing
+down the slope toward the spot where an instant ago she had made such a
+gay contrast to dull verdure and gray boulders.  For he had glimpsed
+the quick flash of an up-thrown arm, had heard a low cry, had guessed
+rather than seen through the low underbrush her young body falling.
+
+As he threw himself from his horse's back, his spur caught in the blue
+cloak which had dropped from her shoulders; he kicked at it savagely.
+He jerked off his boots, poised a moment looking down upon the
+disturbed surface of the water which had closed over her head, made out
+the sweep of an arm under the widening circles, and dived straight down.
+
+And so deep down under water they met for the first time, Steve Packard
+with a sense of annoyance that was almost outright irritation, the girl
+struggling frantically as his right arm closed tight about her.  A
+quick suspicion came to him that she had not fallen but had thrown
+herself downward in some passionate quarrel with life; that she wanted
+to die and would give him scant thanks for the rescue.
+
+This thought was followed by the other that in her access of terror she
+was doing what the drowning person always does--losing her head,
+threatening to bind his arms with her own and drag him down with her.
+
+Struggling half blindly and all silently they rose a little toward the
+surface.  Packard tightened his grip about her body, managed to
+imprison one of her arms against her side, beat at the water with his
+free hand, and so, just as his lungs seemed ready to burst, he brought
+his nostrils into the air.
+
+He drew in a great breath and struck out mightily for the shore,
+seeking a less precipitous bank at the head of a little cove.  As he
+did so, he noted how her struggles had suddenly given over, how she
+floated quietly with him, her free arm even aiding in their progress.
+
+A little later he crawled out of the clear, cold water to a pebbly
+beach, drawing her after him.
+
+And now he understood that his destiny and his own headlong nature had
+again made a consummate fool of him.  The same knowledge was offered
+him freely in a pair of gray eyes which fairly blazed at him.  No
+gratitude there of a maiden heroically succored in the hour of her
+supreme distress; just the leaping anger of a girl with a temper like
+hot fire who had been rudely handled by a stranger.
+
+Her scanty little bathing-suit, bright blue like the discarded cloak,
+the red rubber cap binding the bronze hair--she must have donned the
+ridiculous thing with incredible swiftness while he batted an
+eye--might have been utterly becoming in other eyes than those of Steve
+Packard.  Now that they merely told him that he was a blundering ass,
+he was conscious solely of a desire to pick her up and shake her.
+
+"Gee!" she panted at him with an angry scornfulness which made him
+wince.  "You're about the freshest proposition I ever came across!"
+
+Later, perhaps, he would admit that she was undeniably and most
+amazingly pretty; that the curves of her little white body were
+delightfully perfect; that she had made an armful that at another time
+would have put sheer delirium into a man's blood.
+
+Just now he knew only that in his moment of nothing less than stupidity
+he had angered her and that his own anger though more unreasonable was
+scarcely less heated; that he had made and still made but a sorry
+spectacle; that he was sopping wet and cold and would be shivering in a
+moment like a freezing dog.
+
+"Why did you want to yell like a Comanche Indian when you went in?" he
+demanded rudely, offering the only defense he could put mind or tongue
+to.  "A man would naturally suppose that you were falling."
+
+"You didn't suppose any such thing!" she retorted sharply.  "You saw me
+dive; if you had the brains of a scared rabbit, you'd know that when a
+girl had gone to the trouble to climb into a bathing-suit and then
+jumped into the water she wanted a swim.  And to be left alone," she
+added scathingly.
+
+Packard felt the afternoon breeze through the wet garments which stuck
+so close to him, and shivered.
+
+"If you think," he said, as sharply as she had spoken, "that I just
+jumped into that infernal ice-pond, clothes and all, for the pure joy
+of making your charming acquaintance in some ten feet of water, all I
+can say is that you are by no means lacking a full appreciation of your
+own attractiveness."
+
+She opened her eyes widely at him, lying at his feet where he had
+deposited her.  She had not offered to rise.  But now she sat up,
+drawing her knees into the circle of her clasped arms, tilting her head
+back as she stared up at him.
+
+"You've got your nerve, Mr. Man," she informed him coolly.  "Any time
+that you think I'll stand for a fool man jumping in and spoiling my fun
+for me and then scolding me on top of it, you've got another good-sized
+think coming.  And take it from me, you'll last a good deal longer in
+this neck of the woods if you 'tend to your own business after this and
+keep your paws off other folks' affairs.  Get me that time?"
+
+"I get you all right," grunted Packard.  "And I find your gratitude to
+a man who has just risked his life for you quite touching."
+
+"Gratitude?  Bah!" she told him, leaping suddenly to her feet.  "Risked
+your life for me, did you?"  She laughed jeeringly at that.  "Why, you
+big lummox, I could have yanked you out as easy as turn a somersault if
+you started to drown.  And now suppose you hammer the trail while it's
+open."
+
+He bestowed upon her a glance whose purpose was to wither her.  It
+failed miserably, partly because she was patently not the sort to be
+withered by a look from a mere man, and partly because a violent and
+inopportune shiver shook him from head to foot.
+
+Until now there had been only bright anger in the girl's eyes.
+Suddenly the light there changed; what had begun as a sniff at him
+altered without warning into a highly amused giggle.
+
+"Golly, Mr. Man," she taunted him.  "You're sure some swell picture as
+you stand there, hand on hip and popping your eyes out at me!  Like a
+king in a story-book, only he'd just got a ducking and was trying to
+stare the other fellow down.  Which is one thing you can't do with me."
+
+Her eyes had the adorable trick of seeming to crinkle to a mirth which
+would have been an extremely pleasant phenomenon to witness had she
+been laughing with him instead of at him.  As matters stood, Packard
+was quite prepared to dislike her heartily.
+
+"I'd add to your kind information that the trail is open at both ends,"
+he told her significantly.  "I'm going to find a sunny spot and dry my
+clothes.  No objection, I suppose?"
+
+He clambered up the bank and made his way to the spot whence he had
+dived after her, bent on retrieving his boots and spurs.  Her eyes
+followed him interestedly.  He ignored her and set about extricating a
+spur rowel from the fabric of the bright blue cloak.  Her voice floated
+up to him then, demanding:
+
+"What in the world are you up to now?  Not going to swipe my clothes,
+are you?"
+
+"I'd have the right," he called back over his shoulder, "if I happened
+to need a makeshift dressing-gown.  As it is, however, I am trying to
+get my spur out of the thing."
+
+"You great big brute!" she wailed at him, and here she came running
+along the bank.  "You just dare to tear my cloak and I'll hound you out
+of the country for it!  I drove forty miles to get it and this is the
+first time I ever wore it.  Stupid!"  And she jerked both the garment
+and the spur from him.
+
+The lining was silken, of a deep, rich, golden hue.  And already it was
+torn, although but the tiniest bit in the world, by one of the sharp
+spikes.  Her temper, however, ever ready it seemed, flared out again;
+the crinkling merriment went from her eyes, leaving no trace; the color
+warmed in her cheeks as she cried:
+
+"You're just like all of the rest of your breed, big and awkward,
+crowding in where you don't belong, messing up the face of the earth,
+spoiling things right and left.  I wonder if the good Lord Himself
+knows what he made men for, anyway!"
+
+The offending spur, detached by her quick fingers, described a bright
+arc in the late sunlight, flew far out, dipped in a little leaping
+spurt of spray, and went down quietly in the lake.
+
+"Go jump in and get that, if you are so keen on saving things," she
+mocked him.  "There's only, about fifteen feet of water to dig through."
+
+"You little devil!" he said.
+
+For the spur with its companion had cost him twenty dollars down on the
+Mexican border ten days ago and he had set much store by it.
+
+"Little devil, am I?" she retorted readily.  "You'll know it if you
+don't keep on your side of the road.  Look at that tear!  Just look at
+it!"
+
+She had stepped quite close to him, holding out the cloak, her eyes
+lifted defiantly to his.  He put out a sudden hand and laid it on her
+wet shoulder.  She opened her eyes widely again at the new look in his.
+But even so her regard was utterly fearless.
+
+"Young lady," he said sternly, "so help me God, I've got the biggest
+notion in the world to take you across my knee and give you the
+spanking of your life.  If I did crowd in where I don't belong, as you
+so sweetly put it, it was at least to do you a kindness.  Another time
+I'd know better; I'd sooner do a favor for a wildcat."
+
+"Take your dirty paws off of me," she cried, wrenching away from him.
+"And--spank me, would you?"  The fire leaped higher in her eyes, the
+red in her cheeks gave place to an angrier white.  "If you ever so much
+as dare touch me again----"
+
+She broke off, panting.  Packard laughed at her.
+
+"You'd try to scratch me, I suppose," he jeered; "and then, after the
+fashion of your own sweet sex when you don't have the strength to put a
+thing across, you'd most likely cry!"
+
+"I'd blow your ugly head off your shoulders with a shot-gun," she
+concluded briefly.
+
+And despite the extravagance of the words it was borne in upon
+Packard's understanding that she meant just exactly what she said.
+
+He was getting colder all the time and knew that in a moment his teeth
+would chatter.  So a second time he turned his back on her, gathered up
+his horse's reins, and moved away, seeking a spot in the woods where he
+could get dry and sun his clothes.  And since Packard rage comes
+swiftly and more often than not goes the same way, within five minutes
+over a comforting cigarette he was grinning widely, seeing in a flash
+all of the humor of the situation which had successfully concealed
+itself from him until now.
+
+"And I don't blame her so much, after all," he chuckled.  "Taking a
+nice, lonely dive, to have a fool of a man grab her all of a sudden
+when she was enjoying herself half a dozen feet under water!  It's
+enough to stir up a good healthy temper.  Which, by the Lord, she has!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+MISS BLUE CLOAK KNOWS WHEN SHE'S BEAT
+
+Half an hour later, his clothing wrung out and sun-dried after a
+fashion, Packard dressed, swung up into the saddle, and turned back
+into the trail.  And through the trees, where their rugged trunks made
+an open vista, he saw not two hundred yards away the gay spot of color
+made by the blue cloak.  So she was still here, lingering down the road
+that wound about the lake's shores, when already he had fancied her far
+on her way.  He wondered for the first time where that way led?
+
+He drew rein among the pines, waiting in his turn for her to go on.
+The blue cloak did not move.  He leaned to one side to see better,
+peering around a low-flung cedar bough.  His trail here led to the
+road; he must pass her unless she went on soon.
+
+Beside the vivid hue of her cloak the sunlight streaming through the
+forest showed him another bright, gay color, a streak of red which
+through the underbrush he was at first at a loss to account for.  He
+would have said that she was seated in a low-bodied, red wagon, were it
+not that if such had been the case he must have seen the horses.
+
+"An automobile!" he guessed.
+
+He rode on a score of steps and stopped again.  Sure enough, there she
+sat at the steering-wheel of a long, rakish touring-car, the slump of
+her shoulders vaguely hinting at despair and perhaps a stalled engine.
+His grin widened joyously.  He touched his horse with his one spur,
+assumed an expression of vast indifference, and rode on.  She jerked up
+her head, looked about at him swiftly, gave him her shoulder again.
+
+He rode into the road and came on with tantalizing slowness, knowing
+that she would want to turn again and guessing that she would conquer
+the impulse.  A few paces behind her he stopped again, rolling a fresh
+cigarette and seeming, as he had been before the meeting, the most
+leisurely man in the world.
+
+He saw her lean forward, busied with ignition and starter; he fancied
+that the little breeze brought to him the faintest of guarded
+exclamations.
+
+"The blamed old thing won't go," chuckled Packard with vast
+satisfaction.  "Some car, too.  Boyd-Merril Twin Eight, latest model.
+And dollars to doughnuts I know just what's wrong--and she doesn't!"
+
+She ignored him with such a perfect unconsciousness of his presence in
+the same world with her that he was moved to a keen admiration.
+
+"I'll bet her face is as red as a beet, just the same," was his
+cheerful thought.  "And right here, Steve Packard, is where you don't
+'crowd in' until you're called on."
+
+She straightened up, sitting very erect, her two hands tense upon the
+useless wheel.  He noted the poise of her head and found in it
+something almost queenly.  For a moment they were both very still, he
+watching and feeling his sense pervaded by the glowing sensation that
+all was right with the world, she holding her face averted and keeping
+her thoughts to herself.
+
+Presently she got out and lifted the hood, looking in upon the engine,
+despairing.  But did not glance toward him.  Then she closed the hood
+and returned to her seat, once more attempting to get some sort of
+response from the starting system.  Packard felt himself fairly beaming
+all over.
+
+"I may be a low-lived dog and a deep-dyed villain besides," he was
+frank to admit to himself.  "But right now I'm having the time of my
+life.  And I wouldn't bet two bits which way she's going to jump next,
+either--never having met just her type before."
+
+"Well?" she said abruptly.
+
+She hadn't moved, hadn't so much as turned her head to look at him.  If
+she had done so just then perhaps Packard's extremely good-humored
+smile, a contented, eminently satisfied smile, would not have warmed
+her to him.
+
+"Speak to me?" he asked innocently.
+
+"I did.  Simply because there's nobody else to speak to.  Don't happen
+to know anything about motor-cars, do you?"
+
+It was all very icily enunciated, but had no noticeably freezing effect
+upon the man's mood.
+
+"I sure do," he told her cheerfully.  "Know 'em from front bumper to
+tail-lamp.  Yours is a Boyd-Merril, Twin Eight, this year's model.
+Fox-Whiting starting and lighting system.  Great little car, too, if
+you ask me."
+
+"What I was going to ask you," came the cool little voice, more
+haughtily than ever, "was not what you think of the car but if you--if
+you happened to know how to make the miserable thing go."
+
+"Sure," he replied to the back of her head, with all of his former
+pleasant manner.  "Pull out the ignition button; push down the starter
+pedal with your right foot; throw out the clutch with your left; put
+her into low; let in your clutch slowly; give her a little----"
+
+"Smarty!"  He had counted upon some such interruption, and chuckled
+when it came.  "I know all that."
+
+"Then why don't you do it?" he queried innocently.  "You're right
+square in my way, the road's narrow, and I've got to be moving on."
+
+"I don't do it," she informed that portion of the world which lay
+immediately in front of her slightly elevated nose, "because it won't
+work.  I pulled out the ignition button and--and nothing happened.
+Then I tried to force down the starter pedal and the crazy thing won't
+go down."
+
+"I see," said Packard interestedly.  "Don't know a whole lot about
+cars, do you?"
+
+"The world wasn't made overnight," she said tartly.  "I've had this
+pesky thing a month.  Do you know what's the matter?"
+
+He took his time in replying.  He was so long about it, in fact, that
+Miss Blue Cloak stirred uneasily and finally shot him a questioning
+look over her shoulder, just to make sure, he suspected, that he hadn't
+slipped away and left her.
+
+"Well?" she asked again.
+
+"Speak to me?" he repeated himself, pretending to start from a deep
+abstraction.  "Oh, do I know what's the matter?  Sure!"
+
+She waited a reasonable length of time for him to go on.  He, secure in
+the sense of his own mastery of the situation, waited for her.  Between
+them they allowed it to grow very quiet there in the wood by the lake
+shore.  He saw her glance furtively at the lowering sun.
+
+"If you do know," she said finally and somewhat faintly, but as
+frigidly as ever, "will you tell me or won't you?"
+
+"Why," he said, as though he had not thought of it, "I don't know.  If
+I were really sure that I was needed.  You know it's mighty hard
+telling these days when you stumble upon a damsel in distress whether a
+stranger's aid is welcome or not.  If there's one thing I won't do it's
+shove myself forward when I'm not wanted."
+
+"You're a nasty animal!" she cried hotly.
+
+"For all I know," he resumed in an untroubled tone, "the end of your
+journey may be just around the bend, about a hundred yards off.  And if
+I plunged in to be of assistance I might be suspected of being a fresh
+guy."
+
+"It's half a dozen miles to the ranch-house," she condescended to tell
+him.  "And it's going to get dark in no time.  And if you want to know,
+Mr. Smarty, that's as close as I've ever come or ever will come to
+asking anything of any man that ever lived."
+
+He could have sat there until dark just for the sheer joy of teasing
+her, making her pay a little for her recent treatment of him.  But
+there was a note of finality in her voice which did not escape him; in
+another moment she would jump down and go on on foot and he knew it.
+So at last he rode up to the car, dismounted, and lifted the hood.
+
+"Ignition," he ordered her.
+
+She pulled out the little button again.  His eyes upon hers, his grin
+frank and unconcealed, he took a stone from the road and with it tapped
+gently upon the shaft running from the pump.  Immediately there came
+that little hissing sound she had waited for.
+
+"Starter," he commanded.
+
+And now her foot upon the pedal achieved the desired results; the
+engine responded, humming pleasantly.  He closed the hood and stood
+back eying her with a mingling of amusement and triumph.  Her face
+reddened slowly.  And then, startling him with its unheralded
+unexpectedness, a gay peal of laughter from her made quite another girl
+of her, a dimpling, radiant, altogether adorable and desirable creature.
+
+"Oh, I know when I'm beat!" she cried frankly.  "You've put one across
+on me to-day, Mr. Man.  And since you meant well all along and were
+just simply the blunderheaded man God made you, I guess I have been a
+little cat.  Good luck to you and a worth-while trail to ride."
+
+She blew him a friendly kiss from her brown finger-tips, bent over her
+wheel, and took the first turn in the road at a swiftly acquired speed
+which left Steve Packard behind in dust and growing wonderment.
+
+"And she's been driving only a month," was his softly whistled comment.
+"Reckless little devil!"
+
+Then, in his turn cocking a speculative eye at the sun in the west, he
+rode on, following in the track made by the spinning automobile tires.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+NEWS OF A LEGACY
+
+When Packard came to a forking of the roads he stopped and hesitated.
+The automobile tracks led to the left; he was tempted to follow them.
+And it was his way in the matter of such impulses to yield to
+temptation.  But in this case he finally decided that common sense if
+not downright wisdom pointed in the other direction.
+
+So, albeit a bit reluctantly, he swerved to the right.
+
+"We'll see you some other time, though, Miss Blue Cloak," he pondered.
+"For I have a notion it would be good sport knowing you."
+
+An hour later he made out a lighted window, seen and lost through the
+trees.  Conscious of a man's-sized appetite he galloped up the long
+lane, turned in at a gate sagging wearily upon its hinges, and rode to
+the door of the lighted house.  The first glance showed him that it was
+a long, low, rambling affair resembling in dejectedness the drooping
+gate.  An untidy sort of man in shirt-sleeves and smoking a pipe came
+to the door, kicking into silence his half-dozen dogs.
+
+"What's the chance of something to eat and a place to sleep in the
+barn?" asked Packard.
+
+The rancher waved his pipe widely.
+
+"Help yourself, stranger," he answered, in a voice meant to be
+hospitable but which through long habit had acquired an unpleasantly
+sullen tone.  "You'll find the sleeping all right, but when it comes to
+something to eat you can take it from me you'll find damn' poor
+picking.  Get down, feed your horse, and come in."
+
+When he entered the house Packard was conscious of an oddly bare and
+cheerless atmosphere which at first he was at a loss to explain.  For
+the room was large, amply furnished, cheerfully lighted by a crackling
+fire of dry sticks in the big rock fireplace, and a lamp swung from the
+ceiling.  What the matter was dawned on him gradually: time was when
+this chamber had been richly, even exquisitely, furnished and
+appointed.  Now it presented rather a dejected spectacle of faded
+splendor, not entirely unlike a fine gentleman of the old school fallen
+among bad companions and into tattered ill repute.
+
+The untidy host, more untidy than ever here in the full light, dragged
+his slippered feet across the threadbare carpet to a corner cupboard,
+from which he took a bottle and two glasses.
+
+"We can have a drink anyhow," he said in that dubious tone which so
+harmonized both with himself and his sitting-room.  "After which we'll
+see what's to eat.  Terry fired the cook last week and there's been
+small feasting since."
+
+Packard accepted a moderate drink, the rancher filled his own glass
+generously, and they drank standing.  This ceremony briefly performed
+and chairs dragged comfortably up to the fireplace, Packard's host
+called out loudly:
+
+"Hi, Terry!  There's a man here wants something to eat.  Anything left?"
+
+"If he's hungry," came the cool answer from a room somewhere toward the
+other end of the long house, "why can't he forage for himself?  Wants
+me to bring his rations in there and feed it to him, I suppose!"
+
+Packard lifted his eyebrows humorously.
+
+"Is that Terry?" he asked.
+
+"That's Terry," grumbled the rancher.  "She's in the kitchen now.  And
+if I was you, pardner, and had a real hankering for grub I'd mosey
+right along in there while there's something left."  His eye roved to
+the bottle on the chimneypiece and dropped to the fire.  "I'll trail
+you in a minute."
+
+Here was invitation sufficient, and Packard rose swiftly, went out
+through the door at the end of the room, passed through an untidy
+chamber which no doubt had been intended originally as a dining-room,
+and so came into lamplight again and the presence of Miss Blue Cloak.
+
+He made her a bow and smiled in upon her cheerfully.  She, perched on
+an oilcloth-covered table, her booted feet swinging, a thick sandwich
+in one hand and a steaming cup of coffee in the other, took time to
+look him up and down seriously and to swallow before she answered his
+bow with a quick, bird-like nod.
+
+"Don't mind me," she said briefly, having swallowed again.  "Dig in and
+help yourself."
+
+On the table beside her were bread, butter, a very dry and
+black-looking roast, and a blacker but more tempting coffee-pot.
+
+"I didn't follow you on purpose," said Packard.  "Back there where the
+roads forked I saw that you had turned to the left, so I turned to the
+right."
+
+"All roads lead to Rome," she said around the corner of the big
+sandwich.  "Anyway, it's all right.  I guess I owe you a square meal
+and a night's lodging for being on the job when my car stalled."
+
+"Not to mention for diving into the lake after you," amended Packard.
+
+"I _wouldn't_ mention it if I were you," she retorted.  "Seeing that
+you just made a fool of yourself that time."
+
+She openly sniffed the air as he stepped by her reaching out for
+butcher-knife and roast.  "So you are dad's kind, are you?  Hitting the
+booze every show you get.  The Lord deliver me from his chief blunder.
+Meaning a man."
+
+"He probably will," grinned Packard genially.  "And as for turning up
+your nose at a fellow for taking a drop o' kindness with a hospitable
+host, why, that's all nonsense, you know."
+
+Terry kicked her high heels impudently and vouchsafed him no further
+answer beyond that easy gesture.  Packard made his own sandwich, found
+the salt, poured a tin cup of coffee.
+
+"The sugar's over there."  She jerked her head toward a shelf on which,
+after some searching among a lot of empty and nearly empty cans,
+Packard found it.  "That's all there is and precious little left; help
+yourself but don't forget breakfast comes in the morning."
+
+"This is the old Slade place, isn't it?" Packard asked.
+
+"It was, about the time the big wall was building in China.  Where've
+you been the last couple of hundred years?  It's the Temple place now."
+
+"Then you're Miss Temple?"
+
+"Teresa Arriega for my mother, Temple for my dad," she told him in the
+quick, bright way which already he found characteristic of her.  "Terry
+for myself, if you say it quick."
+
+He had suspected from the beginning that there was Southern blood of
+some strain in her.  Now he studied her frankly, and, just to try her
+out, said carelessly:
+
+"If you weren't so tanned you'd be quite fair; your eyes are gray too.
+Blue-gray when you smile, dark gray when you are angry; and yet you say
+your mother was Mexican----"
+
+"Mexican, your foot!" she flared out at him, her trim little body
+stiffening perceptibly, her chin proudly lifted.  "The Arriegas were
+pure-blooded Castilian, I'd have you understand.  There's no mongrel
+about me."
+
+He drowned his satisfied chuckle with a draft of coffee.
+
+"I'm looking for a job," he said abruptly.  "Happen to know of any of
+the cattle outfits around here that are short-handed?"
+
+"Men are scarce right now," she answered.  "A good cattle-hand is as
+hard to locate as a dodo bird.  You could get a job anywhere if you're
+worth your salt."
+
+"I was thinking," said Packard, "of moseying on to Ranch Number Ten.
+There's a man I used to know--Bill Royce, his name is.  Foreman, isn't
+he?"
+
+"So you know Bill Royce?" countered Terry.  "Well, that's something in
+your favor.  He's a good scout."
+
+"Then he is still foreman?"
+
+"I didn't say so!  No, he isn't.  And I guess he'll never be foreman of
+that outfit or any other again.  He's blind."
+
+Old Bill Royce blind!  Here was a shock, and Packard sat back and
+stared at her speechlessly.  Somehow this was incredible, unthinkable,
+nothing short.  The old cattle-man who had been the hero of his
+boyhood, who had taught him to shoot and ride and swim, who had been so
+vital and so quick and keen of eye--blind?
+
+"What happened to him?" asked Packard presently.
+
+"Suppose you ask him," she retorted.  "If you know him so well.  He is
+still with the outfit.  A man named Blenham is the foreman now.  He's
+old Packard's right-hand bower, you know."
+
+"But Phil Packard is dead.  And----"
+
+"And old 'Hell-Fire' Packard, Phil Packard's father, never will die.
+He's just naturally too low-down mean; the devil himself wouldn't have
+him."
+
+"Terry!" came the voice of the untidy man, meant to be remonstrative
+but chiefly noteworthy for a newly acquired thickness of utterance.
+
+Terry's eyes sparkled and a hot flush came into her cheeks.
+
+"Leave me alone, will you, pa?" she cried sharply.  "I don't owe old
+Packard anything; no, nor Blenham either.  You can walk easy all you
+like, but I'm blamed if I've got to.  If you'd smash your cursed old
+bottle on their heads and take a brace we'd come alive yet."
+
+"Remember we have a guest with us," grumbled Temple from his place by
+the sitting-room fire.
+
+"Oh, shoot!" exclaimed the girl impatiently.  Reaching out for a second
+sandwich she stabbed the kitchen-knife viciously into the roast.  "I've
+a notion to pack up and clear out and let the cut-throat crowd clean
+you to the last copper and pick your bones into the bargain.  When did
+you ever get anywhere by taking your hat off and side-stepping for a
+Packard?  If you're so all-fired strong for remembering, why don't you
+try to remember how it feels to stand on two feet like a man instead of
+crawling on your belly like a worm!"
+
+"My dear!" expostulated Temple.
+
+Terry sniffed and paid no further attention to him.
+
+"Dad was all man once," she said without lowering her voice, making
+clearer than ever that Miss Terry Temple had a way of speaking straight
+out what lay in her mind, caring not at all who heard.  "I'm hoping
+that some day he'll come back.  A real man was dad, a man's man.  But
+that was before the Packards broke him and stepped on him and kicked
+him out of the trail.  And, believe me, the Packards, though they ought
+to be hung to the first tree, are men just the same!"
+
+"So I have heard," admitted the youngest of the defamed house.  "You
+group them altogether?  They're all the same then?"
+
+"Phil Packard's dead," she retorted.  "So we'll let him go at that.
+Old Hell-Fire Packard, his father, is the biggest lawbreaker out of
+jail.  He's the only one left, and from the looks of things he'll keep
+on living and making trouble another hundred years."
+
+"There was another Packard, wasn't there?" he insisted.  "Phil
+Packard's son, the old man's grandson?"
+
+"Never knew him," said Terry.  "A scamp and a scalawag and a tomfool,
+though, if you want to know.  If he wasn't, he'd have stuck on the job
+instead of messing around in the dirty ports of the seven seas while
+his old thief of a grandfather stole his heritage from him."
+
+"How's that?" he asked sharply.  "How do you mean 'stole' it from him?"
+
+"The same way he gobbles up everything else he wants.  Ranch Number Ten
+ought to belong to the fool boy now, oughtn't it?  And here's old
+Packard's pet dog Blenham running the outfit in old Packard's interests
+just the same as if it was his already.  Set a thief to rob a thief,"
+she concluded briefly.
+
+Steve Packard sat bolt upright in his chair.
+
+"I wouldn't mind getting the straight of this," he told her quietly.
+"I thought that Philip Packard had sold the outfit to his father before
+his death."
+
+"He didn't sell it to anybody.  He mortgaged it right up to the hilt to
+the old man.  Then he up and died.  Of course everything he left,
+amounting mostly to a pile of debts, went to his good-for-nothing son."
+
+A light which she could not understand, eager and bright, shone in
+young Packard's eyes.  If what she told him were true, then the old
+home ranch, while commonly looked upon as belonging already to his
+grandfather, was the property legally of Steve Packard.  And
+Blenham--yes, and old Bill Royce--were taking his pay.  Suddenly
+infinite possibilities stretched out before him.
+
+"Come alive!" laughed Terry.  "We were talking about your finding a
+job.  There's one open here for you; first to teach me all you know
+about the insides of my car; second--  What's the matter?  Gone to
+sleep?"
+
+He started.  He had been thinking about Blenham and Bill Royce.  As
+Terry continued to stare wonderingly at him he smiled.
+
+"If you don't mind," he said non-committally, "we'll forget about the
+job for a spell.  I left some stuff back at the Packard ranch that
+belongs to me.  I'm going back for it in the morning.  Maybe I'll go to
+work there after all."
+
+She shrugged distastefully.
+
+"It's a free country," she said curtly.  "Only I can't see your play.
+That is, if you're a square guy and not a crook, Number Ten size.
+You've got a chance to go to work here with a white crowd; if you want
+to tie up with that ornery bunch it's up to you."
+
+"I'll look them over," he said thoughtfully.
+
+"All right; go to it!" she cried with sudden heat.  "I said it was a
+free country, didn't I?  Only you can burn this in your next
+wheat-straw: once you go to riding herd with that gang you needn't come
+around here again.  And you can take Blenham a message for me: Phil
+Packard knifed dad and double-crossed him and made him pretty nearly
+what he is now; old Hell-Fire Packard finished the job.  But just the
+same, the Temple Ranch is still on the map and Terry Temple had rather
+scrap a scoundrel to the finish than shake hands with one.  And one of
+these days dad's going to come alive yet; you'll see."
+
+"I believe," he said as much to himself as to her, "that I'll have to
+have a word with old man Packard."
+
+She stared at him incredulously.  Then she put her head back and
+laughed in high amusement.
+
+"Nobody'd miss guessing that you had your nerve with you, Mr. Lanky
+Stranger," she cried mirthfully.  "But when it comes to tackling
+Hell-Fire Packard with a mouthful of fool questions--  Look here; who
+are you anyway?"
+
+"Nobody much," he answered quietly and just a trifle bitterly.  "Tom
+Fool you named me a while ago.  Or, if you prefer, Steve Packard."
+
+She flipped from her place on the table to stand erect, twin spots of
+red leaping into her cheeks, startling him with the manner in which all
+mirth fled from her eyes, which narrowed and grew hard.
+
+"That would mean old Hell-Fire's grandson?" she asked sharply.
+
+He merely nodded, watching her speculatively.  Her head went still
+higher.  Packard heard her father rise hurriedly and shuffle across the
+floor toward the kitchen.
+
+"You're a worthy chip off the old stump," Terry was saying
+contemptuously.  "You're a darned sneak!"
+
+"Terry!" admonished Temple warningly.
+
+Her stiff little figure remained motionless a moment, never an eyelid
+stirring.  Then she whirled and went out of the room, banging a door
+after her.
+
+"She's high-strung, Mr. Packard," said Temple, slow and heavy and a bit
+uncertain in his articulation.  "High-strung, like her mother.  And at
+times apt to be unreasonable.  Come in with me and have a drink, and
+we'll talk things over."
+
+Packard hesitated.  Then he turned and followed his host back to the
+fireplace.  Suddenly he found himself without further enthusiasm for
+conversation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+TERRY BEFORE BREAKFAST
+
+A gay young voice singing somewhere through the dawn awoke Steve
+Packard and informed him that Terry was up and about.  He lay still a
+moment, listening.  He remembered the song, which, by the way, he had
+not heard for a good many years, the ballad of a cowboy sick and lonely
+in a big city, yearning for the open country.  At times when Terry's
+humming was smothered by the walls of the house, Packard's memory
+strove for the words which his ears failed to catch.  And more often
+than not the words, retrieved from oblivion, were less than worth the
+effort; no poet had builded the chant, which, rather, grown to goodly
+proportions of perhaps a hundred verses, had resulted from a natural
+evolution like a modern Odyssey, or some sprawling vine which was what
+it was because of its environment.  But while lines were faulty and
+rhymes were bad, and the composition never rose above the commonplace,
+and often enough sank below it, the ballad was sincere and meant much
+to those who sang it.  Its pictures were homely.  Steve, catching
+certain fragments and seeking others, got such phrases as:
+
+  "My bed on dry pine-needles, my camp-fire blazin' bright,
+  The smell of dead leaves burnin' through the big wide-open night,"
+
+and with moving but silent lips joined Terry in the triumphant refrain:
+
+  "I'm lonesome-sick for the stars through the pines
+    An' the bawlin' of herds . . . an' the noise
+  Of rocks rattlin' down from a mountain trail . . .
+    An' the hills . . . an' my horse . . . an' the boys.
+  An' I'd rather hear a kiote howl
+    Than be the King of Rome!
+  An' when day comes--if day does come--
+    By cripes, I'm goin' home!
+      . . .  Back home!  Hear me comin', boys?
+      _Yeee_!  I said it: 'Comin' home!'"
+
+
+He sat up in bed.  The fragrance of boiling coffee and frying bacon
+assailed his nostrils pleasurably.  Terry's voice had grown silent.
+Perhaps she was having her breakfast by now?  With rather greater haste
+than the mere call of his morning meal would seem to warrant, he
+dressed, ran his fingers through his hair by way of completing his
+toilet, and, going down a hallway, thrust his head in through the
+kitchen doorway.
+
+"Good morning," he called pleasantly.
+
+Terry was not yet breakfasting.  Down on one knee, poking viciously
+into the fire-box of an extremely old and dilapidated stove, she was
+seeking, after the time-honored way of her sex, to make the fire burn
+better.  Her face was rosy, flushed prettily with the glow from the
+blazing oak wood.  Packard's eyes brightened as he looked at her,
+making a comprehensive survey of the trim little form from the top of
+her bronze hair to the heels of her spick-and-span boots.  About her
+throat, knotted loosely, was a flaming-red silken scarf.  The thought
+struck him that the Temple fortunes, the Temple ranch, the Temple
+master, all were falling or had already fallen into varying states of
+decay, and that alone in the wreckage Terry Temple made a gay spot of
+color, that alone Terry Temple was determined to keep her place in the
+sun.
+
+Terry, having poked a goodly part of the fire out, made a face at what
+remained and got to her feet.
+
+"I've been thinking about you," she said.
+
+"Fine!" said Packard.  "You can tell me while we have our coffee."
+
+But he did not fail to mark that she had given him no ready smile by
+way of welcome, that now she regarded him coolly and critically.  In
+her morning attitude there was little to lead him to hope for a
+free-and-easy chat across a breakfast-table.
+
+"You strike me," said Terry abruptly and emphatically, "as a pretty
+slick proposition."
+
+"Why so?" asked Packard interestedly.
+
+"Because," said Terry.  For a moment he thought that she was going to
+stop there.  But after a thoughtful pause, during which she looked
+straight at him with eyes which were meant to be merely clear and
+judicial but which were just faintly troubled, she went on: "Because
+you're a Packard, to begin with."
+
+"Look here," protested young Packard equably, "I didn't think that of
+you; honestly, I didn't.  How are you and I ever going to get
+anywhere . . . in the way of being friends, I mean . . . if you start
+out by blaming me for what my disreputable old scamp of a grandfather
+does?"
+
+Terry sniffed openly.
+
+"Forget that friendship gag before you think of it, will you?" she said
+quickly.  "Talking nice isn't going to get you anywhere with me and you
+might as well remember that.  It won't buy you anything to start in
+telling me that I've got pretty eyes or a dimple, and I won't stand one
+little minute for your pulling any of that girlie-stuff on me. . . .  I
+said, to begin with, you're a Packard.  That ought to be enough, the
+Lord knows!  But it's not all."
+
+"First thing," he suggested cheerfully, "are you going to ask me to
+have breakfast with you?"
+
+"Yes," she answered briefly.  "Since you are here and since dad had you
+stay all night.  If you were the devil himself, I'd give you something
+to eat."
+
+"Being merely the devil's grandson," grinned Packard, "suppose I tuck
+in and help?  I'll set the table while you do the cooking."
+
+"I don't bother setting any table," said Terry as tartly as she knew
+how.  "Besides, the coffee and bacon are both done and that's all the
+cooking there is.  You know where the bread and butter and sugar are.
+Help yourself.  There isn't any milk."
+
+She poured her own coffee, made a sandwich of bacon and bread, and went
+to sit as he had found her last night, on the table, her feet swinging.
+
+Steve Packard had gone to sleep filled with high hopes last night, and
+had awakened with a fresh, new zest in life this morning.  Like the
+cowboy in the ballad, he had wanted nothing in the world save to be
+back on the range, and he had his wish, or would have it fully in a few
+hours, when he had ridden to Ranch Number Ten.  Fully appreciating
+Terry's prejudices, he had meant to remember that she was "just a kid
+of a girl, you know," and to banter her out of them.  Now he was ready
+to acknowledge that he had failed to give Terry her due; with a sudden
+access of irritation it was borne in upon him that if she was fully
+minded to be stand-offish and unpleasant, he had something more than
+just a kid of a girl to deal with.  Frowning, he sought his tobacco and
+papers.
+
+"Going to eat?" asked Terry carelessly.  "Or not?"
+
+"I don't know . . . yet," he returned, lifting his eyes from his
+cigarette.  "Most certainly not if you don't want me to."
+
+"Ho!" taunted Terry, the bright light of battle in her eyes.  "Climbing
+on your high horse, are you?  Well, then, stay there."
+
+Packard lighted his cigarette and returned her look steadily.
+
+"Kid of a girl, nothing!" he told himself.  And going back to his
+epithet of yesterday, "Little wildcat."
+
+"Then," continued the girl evenly, taking up the conversation where it
+had broken down some time ago, "I'll say what I've got to say.  First,
+because you're a Packard.  Next, because it was pretty slick work, that
+stunt of yours, diving into the lake for me, pretending you didn't know
+who I was, and grabbing the first chance to get acquainted.  Much good
+it'll do you!  Maybe I haven't been through high school and you have
+fussed around at college; just the same, Mr. Steve Packard, Terry
+Temple's not your fool or any other man's!  And, on top of all of your
+other nerve, to try and make me think you didn't know you owned your
+own ranch!  And trying to pump me and corkscrewing away at dad when he
+was full of whiskey. . . .  Pah!  Your kind of he-animal makes me sick."
+
+"You think," he offered stiffly, "that I'm hand and glove with Blenham?
+And, perhaps, that I'm taking orders from my grandfather, trying to put
+one over on you?"
+
+"Thinking's not the right word," she corrected sharply.  "I know."
+
+He shrugged.  As he did so it struck him that there was nothing else
+for him to do.  She had the trick of utter finality.
+
+"And," she called after him as he turned abruptly to leave the room,
+"you can tell old Hell Fire for me that maybe he's got the big bulge on
+the situation right now but that it's bad luck to count your chips
+until the game is over.  There's a come-back left in dad yet, and . . .
+and if you or your hell-roaring old granddad think you can swallow the
+Temple outfit whole, like you've done a lot of other outfits . . ."
+
+Packard went out and slammed the door after him.
+
+"Damn the girl!" he muttered angrily.
+
+Terry, sitting on the table, grew very still, ceased the swinging of
+her feet, and turned to peek cautiously out at him from the kitchen
+window.  Her look was utterly joyous.
+
+"Men are always horrid creatures before they've had their breakfasts,"
+she informed the stillness about her complacently.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HOW STEVE PACKARD CAME HOME
+
+Had Steve Packard ridden straightway back to Ranch Number Ten he would
+have arrived at the ranch headquarters long before noon.  But, once out
+in the still dawn, he rode slowly.  His mind, when he could detach it
+from that irritating Terry Pert, was given over to a searching
+consideration of those conditions which were beginning to dawn on him.
+
+It was clear that his destiny was offering him a new trail to blaze,
+one which drew him on with its lure, tempting him with its vague
+promises.  There was nothing to cause surprise in the fact that the
+ranch was his to have and to hold if he had the skill and the will for
+the job; nor yet in the other fact that the outfit was mortgaged to his
+grandfather; nor, again, was it to be wondered at that the old man was
+already acting as actual owner.  For never had the oldest Packard had
+any use for the subtleties and niceties and confusing technicalities of
+the law.  It was his way to see clearly what he wanted, to make up his
+mind definitely as to a desired result, and then to go after it the
+shortest way.  And that way had never led yet through the law-courts.
+
+These matters were clear.  But as he dwelt upon them they were made
+complex by other considerations hingeing upon him.  Most of all he had
+to take stock of what lay in his own mind and soul, of all that dwelt
+behind his present purpose.
+
+Riding back to Ranch Number Ten, saying, "It is mine and I mean to have
+it," was simple enough.  But for him actually to commit himself to the
+line of action which this step would entail would very obviously
+connote a distinct departure from the familiar, aimless,
+responsibility-free career of Steve Packard.
+
+If he once sat into the game he'd want to stick for a showdown; if he
+started out now bucking old man Packard, he would perhaps wind up in
+the scrap-heap.  It was just as well to think things over before he
+plunged in--which set him musing upon Terry again.
+
+Swerving from yesterday's path, he followed a new trail leading about
+the edge of the Temple ranch and into the southeastern borders of Ranch
+Number Ten.  At a logging-camp well up on the slope of the mountains
+just after he had forded the upper waters of Packard's Creek, he
+breakfasted on warmed-over coffee and greasy hot cakes.
+
+He opened his eyes interestedly as he watched a gang of timberjacks
+cutting into a forest of his pines.
+
+"Old man Packard's crowd?" he asked the camp cook.
+
+"Sure thing," was the cook's careless answer.  Steve Packard rode on,
+grown more thoughtful than before.  But he directed his course this way
+and that on a speculative tour of investigation, seeking to see the
+greater part of the big, sprawling ranch, to note just what had been
+done, just what was being done, before having his talk with Blenham.
+And so the first stars were out before he came once more to the home
+corrals.
+
+
+While Steve was turning down into Packard's Grab from the foot-hills
+the men working for Ranch Number Ten, having eaten their supper, were
+celebrating the end of a hard day's work with tobacco smoke and
+desultory talk.
+
+There were a dozen of them, clear-eyed, iron-muscled, quick-footed to
+the last man of them.  For wherever Packard pay was taken it went into
+the pockets of just such as these, purposeful, self-reliant, men's men
+who could be counted on in a pinch and who, that they might be held in
+the service which required such as they, were paid a better wage than
+other ranches offered.
+
+Young, most of them, too, boisterous when upon occasion their hands
+were idle, devil-may-care scalawags who had earned in many a little
+cattle town up and down the country their title as "that wild gang of
+Packard's," prone to headlong ways and yet dependable.
+
+There are such men; Packard knew it and sought them out and held them
+to him.  The oldest man there, saving Bill Royce only, was Blenham the
+foreman, and Blenham had yet to see his thirty-fifth birthday.
+
+Ten years ago, that is to say before he came into the cattle country
+and found work for Packard, Blenham had been a sergeant in the regular
+army, had seen something of service on the border.  Now, in his
+dealings with the men under him, he brought here all that he had
+learned from a military life.
+
+He held himself aloof, was seldom to be found in the bunk-house, making
+his quarters in the old ranch-house.  He was crisp and final in his
+orders and successful in exacting swift attention when he spoke and
+immediate obedience when he ordered.
+
+Few of his men liked him; he knew this as well as another and cared not
+the snap of his big, blunt fingers.  There was remarkably little of the
+sentimental about Blenham.  He was a capable lieutenant for such as the
+master of the Packard millions, he earned and received his increase in
+wages every year, he got results.
+
+This evening, however, the man's heavy, studied indifference to all
+about him was ruffled.  During the afternoon something had gone wrong
+and no one yet, save "Cookie" Wilson, had an inkling of what had
+plunged the foreman into one of his ill-tempered fits.
+
+To-morrow it would be a ranch topic when Cookie could have had ample
+time to embroider the thin fabric of his surmise; for it had fallen to
+the cook's lot to answer the bunk-house telephone when there had been a
+long-distance message for Blenham--and Wilson recognized old man
+Packard's voice in a fit of rage.
+
+No doubt the foreman of Ranch Number Ten had "slipped up" somewhere,
+and his chief, in a very few words and those of a brand not to be
+misunderstood, had taken him to task.  At any rate Cookie was swelling
+with eager conjecture and Blenham was in an evil mood.  All evening his
+spleen had been rising in his throat, near choking him; now suddenly he
+spewed it upon Bill Royce.
+
+"Royce!" he burst out abruptly.
+
+The blind man was lying upon the edge of his bunk at the far end of the
+room, smoking his pipe.  He stirred uneasily.
+
+"Well?" he asked.  "What is it?"
+
+"Cool old cucumber, ain't you?" jeered Blenham.  "Layin' there like a
+bag of mush while you listen to me.  Damn you, when I talk to you,
+stand up!"
+
+Royce's form stiffened perceptibly and his lips tightened about the
+stem of his pipe.  But before he could shape his rejoinder there came
+an unexpected voice from one of the four men just beginning a game of
+pedro under the swinging lamp, a young voice, impudent, clear-toned,
+almost musical.
+
+"Tell him to go to hell, Bill," was the freely proffered counsel.
+
+Blenham swung about on his heel, his eyes narrowing.
+
+"That you, Barbee?" he demanded sharply.
+
+"Sure it's me," rejoined Barbee with the same cool impudence.  And to
+the man across the table from him, "Deal 'em up, Spots; you an' me is
+goin' to pry these two bum gamblers loose from their four-bit pieces
+real _pronto_ by the good ol' road of high, low, jack, an' the game.
+Come ahead, Spots-ol'-Spotty."
+
+Blenham stared a moment, obviously surprised by this attitude taken by
+young Barbee.
+
+"I'll attend to you when I got nothin' else to do, Barbee," he said
+shortly.  And, giving the whole of his attention again to the man on
+the bunk, "Royce, I said when I talk to you to stand up!"
+
+To the last man of them, even to young Barbee, who had made his
+youthful pretense at an all-embracing interest in the cards, they
+turned to watch Bill Royce and see what he would do.
+
+They saw that Royce lay a moment as he was, stiff and rigid to his
+hands and feet, that his face had gone a fiery red which threw the
+white of the long scar across his nose into bloodless contrast, that
+the most obvious thing in the world was that for the moment his mind
+was torn two ways, dual-purposed, perfectly balanced, so that in the
+grip of his contending passions he was powerless to stir, a picture of
+impotence, like a man paralyzed.
+
+"Blenham," he said presently without moving, his voice uncertain and
+thick and ugly, "Blenham----"
+
+"I said it once," cried Blenham sharply, "an' I said it twice.  Which
+ought to be enough, Bill Royce!  Hear me?"
+
+They all watched interestedly.  Bill Royce moistened his lips and
+presented his pitiful spectacle of a once-strong man on the verge of
+yielding to his master, to the man he hated most on earth.  A smile
+came into Blenham's expectant eyes.
+
+The brief silence was perfect until the youthful Barbee broke it, not
+by speech but by whistling softly, musically, impudently.  And the air
+which Barbee selected at this juncture, though not drawn from the
+classics, served its purpose adequately; the song was a favorite in the
+range-lands, the refrain simple, profane, and sincere.  Translated into
+words Barbee's merry notes were:
+
+"Oh, I don't give a damn for no damn man that don't give a damn for me!"
+
+
+Blenham understood and scowled at him; Bill Royce's hesitant soul may
+have drawn comfort and strength from a sympathy wordlessly expressed.
+At any rate his reply came suddenly now:
+
+"I've took a good deal off'n you, Blenham," he said quietly.  "I'd be
+glad to take all I could.  But a man can't stand everything, no, not
+even for a absent pal.  Like Barbee said, you know where you can go."
+
+Cookie Wilson gasped, his the sole audible comment upon an entirely
+novel situation.  Barbee smiled delightedly.  Blenham continued to
+frown, his scowl subtly altered from fierceness to wonder.
+
+"You'll obey orders," he snapped shortly, "or----"
+
+"I know," replied Royce heavily.  "Go to it.  All you got to do is fire
+me."
+
+And now the pure wonder of the moment was that Blenham did not
+discharge Royce in three words.  It was his turn for hesitation, for
+which there was no explanation forthcoming.  Then, gripped by a rage
+which made him inarticulate,--he whirled upon Barbee.
+
+Yellow-haired Barbee at the table promptly stood up, awaiting no second
+invitation to that look of Blenham's.  Were one staging a morality play
+and in search of the personification of impertinence, he need look no
+farther than this cocksure youth.  He was just at that age when one is
+determined that there shall be no mistake about his status in the
+matters of age and worldly experience; in short, something over
+twenty-one, when the male of the species takes it as the insult of
+insults to be misjudged a boy.  His hair was short--Barbee always kept
+it close cropped--but for all that it persisted in curling, seeking to
+express itself in tight little rings everywhere; his eyes were very
+blue and very innocent, like a young girl's--and he was, all in all,
+just about as good-for-nothing a young rogue as you could find in a ten
+days' ride.  Which is saying rather a good deal when it be understood
+that that ten days' ride may be through the cattle country back of San
+Juan.
+
+"Goin' to eat me alive?" demanded Barbee lightly, "Or roast me first?"
+
+"For two cents," said Blenham slowly, "I'd forget you're just a kid an'
+slap your face!"
+
+Barbee swept one of the fifty-cent pieces from the table and tossed it
+to the foreman.
+
+"You can keep the change out'n that," he said contemptuously.
+
+It was nothing new in the experience of Blenham, could be nothing
+unforeseen for any ranch foreman, to have his authority called into
+question, to have a rebellious spirit defy him.  If he sought to remain
+master, the foreman's answer must be always the same.  And promptly
+given.
+
+"Royce," said Blenham, his hesitation passed, "you're fired.  Barbee,
+I'll take you on right now."
+
+Few-worded was Blenham, a trick learned from his master.  Across the
+room Bill Royce had floundered at last to his feet, crying out mightily:
+
+"Hi!  None o' that, Blenham.  It's my fight, yours an' mine, with
+Barbee jus' buttin' in where he ain't asked.  If you want trouble, take
+a man your size, full-grown.  Blind as I am--and you know the how an'
+the why of it--I'm ready for you.  Yes, ready an' anxious."
+
+Here was diversion and the men in the bunkhouse, drawing back against
+the walls, taking their chairs with them that there might be room for
+whatever went forward, gave their interest unstintedly.  So completely
+that they did not hear Steve Packard singing far out in the night as he
+rode slowly toward the ranch-house:
+
+  "An' I'd rather hear a kiote howl
+    Than be the King of Rome!
+  An' when day comes--if day does come--
+    By cripes, I'm goin' home!
+  Back home!  Hear me comin', boys?
+    Yeee!  I said it.  Comin' home!"
+
+
+But in very brief time Steve Packard's loitering pace was exchanged for
+red-hot haste as the sounds winging outward from the bunk-house met
+him, stilled his singing, and informed him that men were battling in a
+fury which must have something of sheer blood-thirst in it.  He raced
+to the closed door, swung down from the saddle, and threw the door open.
+
+He saw Bill Royce being held by two men, fighting at them while he
+reviled a man whom Steve guessed to be Blenham; he saw Blenham and a
+curly-haired, blue-eyed boy struggling up and down, striking the savage
+blows of rage.  He came just in time to see Blenham drive a big, brutal
+fist into the boy's face and to mark how Barbee fell heavily and for a
+little lay still.
+
+The moment was charged with various emotions, as though with contending
+electrical currents.  Bill Royce, championed by a man he had never so
+much as seen, had given fully of his gratitude and--they meant the same
+thing to Bill Royce--of his love; after to-night he'd go to hell for
+"yellow" Barbee.
+
+Barbee, previsioning defeat at Blenham's hard hand, suffering in his
+youthful pride, had given birth, deep within him, to an undying hatred.
+And Blenham, for his own reasons and after his own fashion, was
+bursting with rage.
+
+"Get up, Barbee," he yelled.  "Get up an', so help me----"
+
+"I'm goin' to kill you, Blenham," said Barbee faintly, lifting himself
+a little, his blue eyes swimming.  "With my hands or with a knife or
+with a gun or anyway; now or to-morrow or some time I'm goin' to kill
+you."
+
+"They all heard you," Blenham spat out furiously.  "You're a fool,
+Barbee.  Goin' to get up?  Ever goin' to get up?"
+
+"Turn me loose, boys," muttered Bill Royce.  "I've waited long enough;
+I've stood enough.  I been like an ol' woman.  Jus' let me an' Blenham
+finish this."
+
+They had, none of them, so much as noted Steve Packard's entrance.
+Now, however, he forced them to take stock of him.
+
+"Bill Royce," he said sharply, "keep your shirt on.  Barbee, you do the
+same.  Blenham, you talk with me."
+
+"You?" jeered Blenham.  "You?  Who are you?"
+
+"I'm the man on the job right now," answered Packard crisply.  "And
+from now on, I'm running the Ranch Number Ten, if you want to know.  If
+you want to know anything else, why then you don't happen to be foreman
+any longer.  You're fired!  As for foreman under me--my old pardner,
+Bill Royce, blind or not blind, has his old job back."
+
+Bill Royce grew rigid.
+
+"You ain't--you ain't Stevie come back?" he whispered.  "You ain't
+Stevie!"
+
+With three strides Packard reached him, finding Bill Royce's hand with
+his.
+
+"Right you are, Bill Royce," he cried warmly as at last his and Royce's
+hands locked hard.
+
+"I'm fired, you say!" Blenham was storming, his eyes wide.  "Fired?
+Who says so, I want to know?"
+
+"I say so," returned Packard shortly.
+
+"You?" shouted Blenham.  "If you mean ol' man Packard has sent you to
+take my place just because--  It's a lie; I don't believe it."
+
+"This outfit doesn't happen to belong to old man Packard--yet," said
+Steve coolly.  "Does it, Royce?"
+
+"Not by a jugful!" answered the blind man joyously.  "An' it never will
+now, Steve!  Not now."
+
+Blenham looked mystified.  Rubbing his skinned knuckles he glared from
+Steve to Royce, then to the other faces, no less puzzled than his own.
+
+"Nobody can fire me but ol' man Packard," he muttered heavily, though
+his tone was troubled.  "Without you got an order from him, all signed
+an' ready for me to read----"
+
+"What I have," cut in Steve crisply, "is the bulge on the situation,
+Blenham.  Ranch Number Ten doesn't belong to the old man; it is the
+property of his grandson, whose name is Steve Packard.  Which also
+happens to be my name."
+
+Blenham sneered.
+
+"I don't believe it," he snapped.  "Expect me to pull my freight at the
+say-so of the first stranger that blows in an' invites me to hand him
+my job?"  He laughed into the newcomer's face.
+
+Packard studied him a moment curiously, instinctively aware that the
+time might come when it would be well to have taken stock correctly of
+his grandfather's lieutenant.  Then, before replying, he looked at the
+faces of the other men.  When he spoke it was to them.
+
+"Boys," he said quietly, "this outfit belongs to me.  I am Steve
+Packard, the son of Philip Packard, who owned Number Ten Ranch and who
+mortgaged it but did not sell it to his father--my grandfather.  I've
+just got back home; I mean to have what is mine; I am going to pay the
+mortgage somehow.  I haven't jumped in with my sleeves rolled up for
+trouble either; had Blenham been a white man instead of a brute and a
+bully he might have kept his job under me.  But I guess you all know
+the sort of life he has been handing Royce here.  Bill taught me how to
+ride and shoot and fight and swim; pretty well everything I know that's
+worth knowing.  Since I was a kid he's been the best friend I ever had.
+Anything else you boys would like to know?"
+
+Barbee had risen slowly from the floor.
+
+"Packard's son or the devil's," he said quickly, his eyes never leaving
+Blenham, "I'm with you."
+
+The man whom, over the card-table, Barbee had addressed as Spotty and
+whose nickname had obviously been gained for him by the peculiar tufts
+of white hair in a young, tousled head of very dark brown, cleared his
+throat and so drew all eyes to himself at his side of the room.
+
+"Bill Royce bein' blind, if you could only prove somehow who you are--"
+he suggested, tone and expression plainly indicating his willingness,
+even eagerness, to be convinced.
+
+"Even if I can't see him," said Royce, his own voice eager, "I know!
+An' I can prove it for my part by a couple of little questions--if you
+boys will take my word for it?"
+
+"Shoot," said Spotty.  "No man's called you liar yet, Bill."
+
+"Then, Stevie," said Royce, just a shade of anxiety in his look as his
+sightless eyes roved here and there, "answer me this: What was the
+first horse you ever rode?"
+
+"A mare," said Steve.  "Black Molly."
+
+"Right!" and Royce's voice rang triumphantly.  "Next: Who nailed the
+board over the door?  The ol' cedar board?"
+
+"I did.  Just before I went away."
+
+"An'," continued Royce, his voice lowered a trifle, "an' what did you
+say about it, Stevie?  I was to know----"
+
+"Coach him up!  Tell him what to say, why don't you?" jeered Blenham.
+
+"I don't think I need to," replied Royce quietly.  "Do I, Steve?"
+
+"I was pretty much of a kid then, Bill," said Packard, a half-smile
+coming into his eyes for the first time, a smile oddly gentle.  "I had
+been reading one of the Arabian Nights tales; that's what put it into
+my head."
+
+"Go ahead, Steve; go ahead!"
+
+"I said that I was going to seek my fortune up and down the world; that
+the board above the door would be a sign if all went well with me.
+That as long as I lived it would be there; if I died it would fall."
+
+There was a little, breathless silence.  It was broken by Bill Royce's
+joyous laughter as Bill Royce's big hand smote his thigh.
+
+"Right again, Steve!  An' the ol' board's still there.  Go look at it;
+it's still there."
+
+Again all eyes sought Blenham.  For a moment he stood uncertain,
+looking about him.  Then abruptly he swept up his hat and went out.
+And Barbee's laughter, like an evil echo of Royce's, followed him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+BANK NOTES AND A BLIND MAN
+
+"He'd as soon set fire to the hay-barns as not," said Royce.  "Better
+watch him, Steve."
+
+And so Steve, stepping outside, watched Blenham, who had gone swiftly
+toward the ranch-house and who now swung about sharply and stopped dead
+in his tracks.
+
+"He's up to something, Bill," conceded Packard.  And called quietly to
+Blenham: "Every step you take on this ranch, I'm right along with you,
+Blenham."
+
+Whereupon Blenham, his hesitation over, turned abruptly and went down
+to the corral, saddled, and rode away.
+
+On the heels of the irate foreman's wordless departure Steve Packard
+and Bill Royce went together to the old ranch-house, where, settled
+comfortably in two big arm-chairs, they talked far into the night.  A
+sharp glance about him as he lighted a lamp on the table showed Packard
+dust and disuse everywhere excepting the few untidy signs of Blenham's
+recent occupancy.
+
+An old saddle sprawled loosely upon the living-room floor, littered
+about with bits of leather and buckles; from a nail hung a rusty,
+long-rowelled Mexican spur; on the hearth-stone were many cigarette
+stumps and an occasional cigar-end.  An open door showed a tumbled bed,
+the covers trailing to the floor.
+
+"I'd give a year off my life for a good look at you, Steve," said Royce
+a trifle wistfully.  "Let's see--thirty-five now, ain't you?"
+
+"Right," answered Packard.
+
+"An' big?" asked Royce.   "Six foot or better?"
+
+"A shade better.  About an inch and a half."
+
+"Not heavy, though?  Kind of lean an' long, like Phil Packard before
+you?"
+
+Packard nodded; then, with Royce's sightless eyes upon him, he said
+hastily:
+
+"Right again, Bill; kind of lean and long.  You'd know me."
+
+"Sure, I would!" cried Royce eagerly.  "A man don't change so all-fired
+much in a dozen years; don't I remember just how you looked when you
+cut loose to see the world!  Ain't made your pile, have you, Steve?"
+
+Packard laughed carelessly.
+
+"I'm lord and master of a good horse, saddle, bridle, and seventy-odd
+bucks," he said lightly.  "Not much of a pile, Bill."
+
+"An' Number Ten Ranch," added Royce quickly.
+
+"And Number Ten Ranch," Packard agreed.  "If we can get away with it."
+
+"Meaning what?  How get away with it?"
+
+"It's mortgaged to the hilt, it seems.  I don't know for how much yet.
+The mortgage and a lot of accrued interest has to be paid off.  Just
+how big a job we've got to find out."
+
+"Seen your grandfather yet?"
+
+"No.  I should have looked him up, I suppose, before I fired Blenham.
+But, being made of flesh and blood----"
+
+"I know, I know."  And Royce filled his lungs with a big sigh.  "Bein'
+a Packard, you didn't wait all year to get where you was goin'.  But
+there'll be plenty of red tape that can't be cut through; that'll have
+to be all untangled an' untied.  Unless your grandfather'll do the
+right thing by you an' call all ol' bets off an' give you a free hand
+an' a fresh start?"
+
+"All of which you rather doubt, eh, Bill?"
+
+Royce nodded gloomily.
+
+"I guess we've gone at things sort of back-end-to," he said
+regretfully.  "You'd ought to have seen him first, hadn't you?  An'
+then you kicked his pet dawg in the slats when you canned Blenham.  The
+old man's right apt to be sore, Steve."
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised," agreed Steve.  "Who are the Temples, Bill?"
+
+"Who tol' you about the Temples?" came the quick counter-question.
+
+"Nobody.  I stayed at their place last night."
+
+Royce grunted.
+
+"Didn't take you all year to find her, did it?" he offered bluntly.
+
+"Who?" asked Packard in futile innocence.
+
+"Terry Temple.  The finest girl this side the pearly gates an' the
+pretties'.  What kind of a man have you growned to be with the women,
+Steve?"
+
+"No ladies' man, if that's what's worrying you, old pardner.  I don't
+know a dozen girls in the world.  I just asked to know about these
+people because they're right next-door to us and because they're
+newcomers since my time."
+
+Again Royce grunted, choosing his own explanation of Packard's
+interest.  But, answering the question put to him, he replied briefly:
+
+"That little Terry-girl can have anything I got; her mother was some
+class, too, they tell me.  I dope it up she just died of shame when she
+come to know what sort she'd picked for a runnin' mate.  An' as for
+him, he's a twisty-minded jelly-fish.  He's absolutely no good.  An',
+if I ain't mistaken some considerable, you'll come to know him real
+well before long.  Watch him, Steve."
+
+"Well," said Packard as Royce broke off, sensing that this was not all
+to be said of Temple; "let's have it.  What else about him?"
+
+But Royce shook his head slowly, while his big, thick fingers filled
+his pipe.
+
+"We ain't got all night to jus' squat here an' gossip about our
+neighbors," he said presently.  "There's other things to be said before
+things can be done.  First rattle, an' to get goin', I'm much obliged
+for that little bluff you threw Blenham's way about me being your
+foreman.  What you need an' what you got to have is a man with both
+eyes wide open.  Oh, I know, Steve," as Packard started to speak.
+"You'd offer me the job if both my legs an' arms was gone, too.  But it
+don't go."
+
+"I'm going to need a man right away," argued Steve.  "I'll have to do a
+lot of running around, I suppose, looking up the law, arranging for
+belated payments, and so forth.  I don't want to leave the ranch
+without a head.  You know the men, you know the outfit."
+
+But Royce, though his lips twitched, was firm.
+
+"I don't know the men any too well either," he said.  "They're all your
+grandfather's hirin'.  But they're all live an' they all know the game.
+I won't swear as to how far you can trust any one of 'em; but you'll
+have to find that out for yourself as we go on."
+
+"Name one of them for me," was Packard's quiet way of accepting his old
+foreman's ultimatum.  "I'll put him on at least temporarily."
+
+"There's Yellow Barbee," suggested Royce.  "Somethin' of a kid, maybe
+kind of wild an' harum-scarum, maybe not worth much.  But he ain't a
+Blenham man an' he did me a good turn."
+
+Already Packard was on his feet, going to the door.
+
+"Barbee!" he shouted.  "Oh, Barbee!"
+
+The bunk-house door opened, emitting its stream of light.
+
+"Call me?" came Barbee's cool young voice, impudent now as always.
+
+"Yes, come here a minute, will you?"
+
+Barbee came, his wide hat far back upon his tight little curls, his
+swagger pronounced, his sweet blue eyes shining softly--his lips
+battered and bruised and already swelling.
+
+"Come in and shut the door," said Packard.
+
+Barbee entered and stepped across the room to lounge with his elbow on
+the chimney-piece, looking curiously from Packard to Royce.
+
+"I'm here to run this outfit myself, Barbee," Packard told him while
+returning the youth's regard steadily.  "But I need a foreman to keep
+things going when I'm obliged to be away.  I gave the job to Royce.  He
+won't have it.  He suggests you."
+
+Barbee opened his eyes a trifle wider.  Also the quick flush running up
+into his brown cheeks made him look more boyish than ever, giving him
+almost a cherubic air.  But for all that he managed to appear tolerably
+unmoved, quite as though this were not the first time he had been
+offered such a position.
+
+"How much is in it?" was what Barbee said, with vast indifference.
+
+Steve hesitated.  Then he frowned.  And finally he laughed.
+
+"You've got me there," he admitted frankly.  "All the money I've got in
+the world to-night is right here."  He spilled the contents of his
+pocket upon a table.  "There's about seventy-five bucks.  Unless I can
+turn a trick somewhere before pay-day all you boys will have to take
+your pro rata out of that."
+
+Bill Royce shifted nervously in his chair, opened his mouth, then
+closed it wordlessly.  Barbee shrugged elaborately.
+
+"I'll take a chance," he said.  "It would be worth it if I lost; jus'
+to put one across on Blenham."
+
+"All right," and still Packard eyed young Barbee keenly, wondering just
+how much ability lay hidden under that somewhat unsatisfactory
+exterior.  "You can go back to the boys now and tell them that you're
+boss when I'm not on hand.  Before they go to work in the morning you
+show up here again and we'll talk a lot of things over."
+
+Barbee ducked his head in token of acquiescence and perhaps to hide the
+glitter in his eyes, and walked on his heels to the door.  Packard's
+voice arrested him there.
+
+"Just one thing, Barbee: I don't want any trouble started.  Not with
+Blenham or with any of old man Packard's men.  I know how you feel, but
+if you work for me you'll have to let me be the one who starts things.
+Understand?"
+
+The new foreman paused irresolutely.  Then, without turning so that
+Packard might see his face, and with no spoken reply, he ducked his
+head again and went out, slamming the door after him.
+
+"I ain't sure he's the right man for the job, Steve," began Royce a
+trifle anxiously.  "An' I ain't sure whether he's square or crooked.
+But I don't know the rest of the men any better an'----"
+
+"I'll watch him, Bill.  And, as I've said already, I'm here to do most
+of the foreman act myself.  We'll give Barbee his chance."
+
+He came back to the table from whose top there winked up at him the few
+gold and silver coins which spelled his working capital, and stood
+looking at them quizzically.
+
+"I got a yarn to spin, Stevie," came thoughtfully from Royce with a
+great puff of smoke.  "You better listen in on it now--while we're
+alone."
+
+Packard returned to his chair, made his own smoke, and said quietly:
+
+"Go to it, Bill.  I'm listening."
+
+"Barbee's gone, ain't he?  An' the door shut?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then pull up close so's I won't have to talk loud an' I'll get it out
+of my system: Before your father died he wasn't makin' much money, not
+as much as he was spendin'.  He'd tied into some minin'-stock game that
+he didn't savvy any too well, an' for a long time all I'd been clearin'
+here he'd been droppin' outside.
+
+"An' the deeper he got in the hole the wilder he played the game: there
+was times when I didn't believe he cared a tinker's damn what happened.
+Whenever he needed any cash all he had to do was soak another plaster
+on the ranch, borrow again from his father.  An' ol' Number Ten is
+plastered thick now, Steve; right square up to the hilt.
+
+"Well, when Phil Packard died he did it like he'd done everything else,
+like he had lived, makin' a man think he was in a hurry to get a job
+over an' done with.  Ridin' horseback one week an' the nex' week
+sendin' for me in there."  He jerked his head toward a remote room of
+the big house.  "An' he talked to me then about you."
+
+Packard waited for him to go on, offering no comment.  Royce, hunched
+over in his chair, straightened up a little, shook himself, and
+continued:
+
+"He had drawed some money out'n the bank, all he had left.  I dunno
+what for, but anyways he had it under his pillow alongside his ol'
+Colt.  An' he give it to me, sayin' he was caught sudden an' unexpected
+by his death, an' for me to take care of it an' see that you got it
+when you come back.  It was in greenbacks, a little roll no bigger'n
+your thumb, an' when I counted 'em I near dropped dead.  Ten little
+slips of paper, Steve, an' each good for one thousan' bucks!  Ten
+thousan' dollars did Phil Packard slip me that night not a half-hour
+before he went over.  For you.  An' I got 'em for you, Steve; I got 'em
+safe for you."
+
+His big shoulders rose and fell in a deep sigh; he ran a toil-hardened
+hand across his forehead.  Packard opened his lips as though to speak,
+but was silent as Royce continued:
+
+"I took the money, Steve, an' went outside for a smoke, an' my hands
+was shakin' like I was cold!  Ten thousan' bucks in my tail pocket!  It
+was a dark night an' I didn't lose nineteen secon's hidin' the wad in a
+good safe place.  Which," slowly, "was the las' time I ever saw it!"
+
+"I thought you said----"
+
+"I got it safe?  I have.  But I ain't ever seen anything since that
+night, Steve.  The night your dad died, the night I hid the money, was
+the night I went blind."
+
+"You haven't told me about that yet, Bill," said Packard gently.
+
+"No; but I'm goin' to now.  It's part of the yarn I got to spin
+to-night.  Like I said I took the wad--your father had slipped it back
+in a flat sort of pocketbook--an' went outside.  It was night already
+an' dark.  Ten thousan' bucks for me to keep safe for you!"
+
+Again he ran his hand across his forehead.
+
+"I knew where there was a rock in the corner foundation of the house
+that I could work loose; where if I put the greenbacks they wouldn't
+spoil if it rained or even if the house burned down.  I stuck 'em in
+there, got the rock back like it was before, made sure nobody saw me,
+an' went off by myself for a smoke.
+
+"'Cause why did I take that chance?  I didn't take no chances at all, I
+tell you, Steve!  How did I know, your father gettin' delirious at the
+finish which came downright quick, but he'd give the game away?  An' on
+the ranch then there was men that would do mos' anything for ten
+thousan', give 'em the show.
+
+"Your gran'father had come over an' he had brought Blenham with him an'
+his mechanic, Guy Little; an' there was a couple of new men in the
+outfit I'd picked up myself that I knew was tough gents.
+
+"No!  I didn't take no chances, seein' the money was yours an' not mine
+to fool with.  I stuck it in the wall an' I sneaked off an' for three
+hours I squatted there in the dark with my gun in my hand, waitin' an'
+watchin'.  Which was playing as safe as a man could, wasn't it, Steve?"
+
+Packard got up and came to Royce's side, putting his hand gently on the
+foreman's shoulder.
+
+"It strikes me you've done rather a good deal for me, Bill," he said
+quite simply.
+
+"Maybe," said Royce thoughtfully.  "But no more'n one pardner ought to
+do for another; no more'n you'd do for me, Stevie.  Don't I know you?
+Give you the chance you'd do as much for me; eh, boy?  Well, here's the
+rest of the story: Your dad was dead: ol' Hell-Fire was blowin' his
+nose so you'd hear it a mile an' I was feelin' weak an' sick-like,
+knowin' all of a sudden that Phil Packard had been damn' good to me an'
+wantin' to tell him so now it was too late.  Late an' dark as it was I
+went down to the bunk-house, tol' the boys to stick aroun' for orders
+in the mornin', saddled my horse and beat it for a quiet place where I
+could think.  I never wanted to think so much in my life, Steve.
+Remember the ol' cabin by the big timber over on the east side?"
+
+"The old McKittrick place?  Yes."
+
+"Well, I went there to make a fire in the ol' fireplace an' sit an'
+think things over.  But I got to tell you about a feller name of Johnny
+Mills.  You didn't know him; he's workin' for the Brocky Lane outfit
+now.  Well, Johnny was as good a cow-man as you want, but you always
+had to watch him that he didn't slip off to go quail-huntin'.  With a
+shot-gun he was the best wing-shot I ever heard a man tell about.
+
+"He used to sneak for the McKittrick cabin where he kep' an ol'
+muzzle-loadin' shot-gun, an' shot quail aroun' them springs up there
+when he'd ought to be workin'.  Then he'd come in an' brag, tellin' how
+he'd never missed a shot.  The boys, jus' to tease Johnny, had gone to
+the cabin that very day an' drawed his shot out, jus' leavin' the
+powder alone so Johnny would think he'd missed when he pulled the
+trigger an' no birdies dropped.
+
+"See what I'm drivin' at?  I tied my horse an' started along the little
+trail through the wild-holly bushes to the cabin.  Somebody was waitin'
+for me an' give me both barrels square in the face.  That's when an'
+how my lights went out, Steve."
+
+It came as a shock, and Packard paled; Royce had been so long making
+his explanations and then put the actual catastrophe so baldly that for
+a moment his hearer sat speechless.  Presently--
+
+"Know who did it, Bill?" he asked.
+
+"If I knew--for sure--I'd go get him!  But I don't know; not for sure."
+His big hands clenched until they fairly trembled with their own
+tenseness.  "It's tough to go blind, Steve!"
+
+His hands relaxed; he sat still, staring into that black nothingness
+which always engulfed him.  When he spoke again it was drearily,
+hopelessly, like a man communing with his own sorrow, oblivious of a
+listener:
+
+"Yes, it's fair hell to be blind.  If there's anything worse I'd like
+to know what it might be.  To be walkin' along in the dark, always in
+the dark--to stumble an' fall an' hear a man laugh--to pitch head firs'
+over a box that had been slipped quiet in your way----"
+
+"Blenham did that sort of thing?" demanded Packard sharply.
+
+It would have done Bill Royce good to see the look in his eyes then.
+Royce nodded.
+
+"Blenham did whatever he could think of," he muttered colorlessly.
+"An' he could think of a good many things.  Just the same--maybe some
+day----"
+
+"And yet you stayed on, Bill?" when Royce's voice stopped.
+
+"I'd promised your dad I'd be here--with the coin--when you come back.
+He knew an' I knew you might blow in an' blow out an' never get word
+unless I was right here all the time.  An' ol' man Packard, after I was
+blind I went to him an' he promised I could stick as long as I just
+obeyed orders.  Which, I've done, no matter what they was.
+
+"But the end's come now; ain't it, Steve, ol' pardner?  But to get this
+tale tol' an' the money in your hands: I didn't know who'd tried to do
+for me, but I guessed it must have been some one who'd found out
+somehow about the ten thousan' an' thought I had it on me.  When I come
+to at the cabin an' firs' thing tried to get a chaw of tobacco I foun'
+my pockets all turned wrong side out.  It might have been Johnny Mills
+himself; he didn't know about the gun bein' fooled with; it might have
+been Blenham; it might have been Guy Little; it might have been
+somebody else.  But I've thought all along an' I pray God I was right
+an' that some day I'll know, that it was Blenham."
+
+He rose suddenly.
+
+"Come ahead, Steve," he said, his voice matter of fact as of old.
+"It's up to you to ride herd on your own simoleons now."
+
+"You've left it in the same place?  In the rock foundation-wall?"
+
+"Yes.  I couldn't find a safer place."
+
+"And you haven't been back to it all these months?"
+
+"Not until las' Saturday night.  It was jus' six months then.  I
+figgered it out I'd make sure once every six months.  I went in the
+middle of the night an' made sure nobody followed me, Steve.  Come
+ahead."
+
+Packard slipped his arm through Royce's and they went side by side.
+The night was filled with stars; there was no moon.  The wall, as they
+came around the corner of the house, shone palely here and there where
+a white surface glinted vaguely through the shadows.
+
+"Nobody aroun', is there, Steve?" whispered Royce.
+
+"Nobody," Packard assured him.  "Where is it, Bill?"
+
+Royce's hands, groping with the wall, rested at last upon a knob of
+stone near the base of the foundation.  He tugged; the stone, rudely
+squared, came away, leaving a gaping hole.  Royce thrust his hand in,
+searched briefly, and in a moment brought out a flat wallet clutched
+tightly.
+
+"Yours, Steve!" he said then, a quick, palpitating note of pure joy in
+his cry.  "Blind as I was, I put it over for you!  Here's ten thousan',
+Steve.  An' the chance to get ol' Number Ten back."
+
+Packard was taking the wallet proffered him.  Suddenly Royce jerked it
+back.
+
+"Let me make sure again," he said hastily.  "Let me be dead sure I've
+made good."
+
+He fumbled with the wallet, opened the flap, drew out the contents, a
+neat pack of folded bank-notes.  He counted slowly.
+
+"Ten of 'em," he announced triumphantly as he gave the wallet over to
+its proper owner.
+
+Packard took them and they went back to the house.  The rays of the
+lamp met them; through the open door, back to the living-room, they
+walked side by side.  The table between them, they sat down.  Packard
+put the wallet down, spread out the ten bank-notes.
+
+"Bill," he said, and there was a queer note in his voice, "Bill, you've
+gone through hell for me.  Don't I know it?  And you say I'd do as much
+for you?  Are you sure of it, Bill?"
+
+Royce laughed and rubbed his hands together.
+
+"Dead sure, Stevie," he said.
+
+Packard's eyes dropped to the table.  Before him were the ten crisp
+bank-notes.  Each was for one dollar.  Ten dollars in all.  His
+heritage, saved to him by Bill Royce.
+
+"Bill, old man," he said slowly, "you've taught me how to play the
+game.  Pray God I can be as white with a pardner as you have been."
+
+And, crumpling the notes with a sudden gesture, he thrust them into his
+pocket.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE OLD MOUNTAIN LION COMES DOWN FROM THE NORTH
+
+It was perhaps eight o'clock, the morning blue, cloudless, and still.
+Packard had conferred briefly with Barbee; the Ranch Number Ten men had
+gone about their work.  Steve and Bill Royce, riding side by side, had
+mounted one of the flat, treeless hills in the upper valley and were
+now sitting silent while Royce fumbled with his pipe and Steve sent a
+long, eager look down across the open meadow-lands dotted with grazing
+cattle.
+
+Suddenly their two horses and the other horses browsing in a lower
+field, jerked up their heads, all ears pricked forward.  And yet Steve
+had heard no sound to mar the perfect serenity of the young day.  He
+turned his head a little, listening.
+
+Then, from some remote distance there floated to him a sound strangely
+incongruous here in the early stillness, a subdued screech or scream, a
+wild, clamorous, shrieking noise which for the life of him he could not
+catalogue.
+
+It was faint because it came across so great a distance and yet it was
+clear; it was not the throbbing cry of a mountain lion, not the scream
+of a horse stricken with its death, nothing that he had ever heard, and
+yet it suggested both of these sounds.
+
+"Bill!" he began.
+
+"I heard it," Royce muttered.  "An' I've heard it before!  In a
+minute----"
+
+Royce broke off.  The sound, stilled a second, came again, seeming
+already much closer and more hideous.  Steve's horse snorted and
+plunged; some of the colts in the pasture flung up their heels and fled
+with streaming manes and tails.  Royce calmly filled and lighted his
+pipe.
+
+Stillness again for perhaps ten or twenty seconds.  Steve, about to
+demand an explanation from his companion, stared as once more came the
+shrieking noise.
+
+"You can hear the blame thing ten miles," grunted Royce.  "It's only
+about half that far away now.  Keep your eye glued on the road across
+the valley where it comes out'n Blue Bird Canon."
+
+And then Steve understood.  Into the clear air across the valley rose a
+growing cloud of dust; through it, out of the canon's shadows and into
+the sunlight, shot a glistening automobile, hardly more than a bright
+streak as it sped along the curving down-grade.
+
+"Terry Temple?" gasped young Packard.  Royce merely grunted again.
+
+"Jus' you watch," was all he said.
+
+And, needing no invitation, Packard watched.  The motor-car's siren--he
+had never heard another like it, knew that such a thing would not be
+tolerated in any of the world's traffic centres--sounded again a long,
+wailing note which went across the valley in billowing echoes.
+
+Then it grew silent as, with the last of the dangerous curves behind
+it, the long-bodied roadster swung into the valley.  Packard, an
+experienced driver himself, with his own share of reckless blood,
+opened his mouth and stared.
+
+It was hard to believe that the big, spinning wheels were on the ground
+at all; the machine seemed more like an aeroplane content with skimming
+the earth but hungry for speed.  Only the way in which it plunged and
+lurched and swerved and plunged again testified to highly inflated
+tires battling with ruts and chuck-holes.
+
+"The fool!" he cried as the car negotiated a turn on two wheels with
+never a sign of lessened speed.  "He'll turn turtle.  He's doing sixty
+miles an hour right now.  And on these roads----"
+
+"More likely doin' seventy-five," grunted Royce.  "Can do ten better'n
+that.  Out on the highway he's done a clean hundred.  That car, my
+boy----"
+
+"He's going into the ditch!" exclaimed Steve excitedly.
+
+The car, racing on, was already near enough for Steve to make out its
+two passengers, a man bent over the steering-wheel, another man, or
+boy, for the figure was small, clinging wildly to his place on the
+running-board, seeming always in imminent danger of being thrown off.
+
+"He's drunk!" snapped Packard angrily.  "Of all blind idiots!"
+
+Another strident blast from the horn, that sent staid old cows
+scurrying this way and that to get out of the way, and the car swerved
+from the road and took to the open field, headed straight toward the
+hill where the two horsemen were.  Jerking his horse about, Steve rode
+down to meet the new arrivals.  And then----
+
+"My God!  It's my grandfather!  He's gone mad, Bill Royce!"
+
+"No madder'n usual," said Royce.
+
+The car came to a sudden stop.  The man on the running-board--he had a
+man's face, keen and sharp-eyed and eager, and the body of a slight
+boy--jumped down from his place and in a flash disappeared under the
+engine.  The man at the wheel straightened up and got down, stretching
+his legs.  Steve, swinging down from his saddle, and coming forward,
+measured him with wondering eyes.
+
+And he was a man for men to look at, was old man Packard.  Full of
+years, he was no less full of vigor, hale and stalwart and breathing
+power.  A great white beard, cut square, fell across his full chest;
+his white mustache was curled upward now as fiercely as fifty years ago
+when he had been a man for women to look at, too.
+
+He was dressed as Steve had always seen him, in black corduroy
+breeches, high black boots, broad black hat--a man standing upward of
+six feet, carrying himself as straight as a ramrod, his chest as
+powerful as a blacksmith's bellows, the calf of his leg as thick as
+many a man's thigh; big, hard hands, the fingers twisted by toil; the
+face weatherbeaten like an old sea captain's, with eyes like the frozen
+blue of a clear winter sky.
+
+His voice when he spoke boomed out suddenly, deep and rich and hearty.
+
+"Stephen?" he demanded.
+
+Steve said "Yes" and put out his hand, his eyes shining, the surprising
+realization upon him that he was tremendously glad to see his father's
+father once more.  The old man took the proffered hand into a
+hard-locked grip and for a moment held it, while, the other hand on his
+grandson's shoulder, he looked steadily into Steve's eyes.
+
+"What sort of a man have they made of you, boy?" he asked bluntly.
+"There's the makings of fool, crook an' white man in all of us.  What
+for a man are you?"
+
+Steve flushed a little under the direct, piercing look, but said
+steadily--
+
+"Not a crook, I hope."
+
+"That's something, if it ain't everything," snorted the old man as,
+withdrawing his hand, he found and lighted a long stogie.  "Blenham
+tells me you fired him las' night?"
+
+Young Packard nodded, watching his grandfather's face for the first
+sign of opposition.  But just now the old man's face told nothing.
+
+"Thinking of runnin' the outfit yourself, Stephen?" came the next
+question quietly.
+
+"Yes.  I had intended looking in on you in a day or so to talk matters
+over.  I understand that my father left everything to me and that it is
+pretty heavily mortgaged to you."
+
+"Uhuh.  I let Phil have a right smart bit of money on Number Ten firs'
+an' las', my boy.  Don't want to pay it off this mornin', do you?"
+
+Steve laughed.
+
+"I'm broke, Grandy," he said lightly, unconsciously adopting the old
+title for the man who had made him love him and hate him a score of
+times.  "My working capital, estimated last night, runs about
+seventy-five dollars.  That wouldn't quite turn the trick, would it?"
+
+The old man's eyes narrowed.
+
+"You mean that seventy-five dollars is all you've got to show for
+twelve years?" he asked sharply.
+
+Again, hardly understanding why, Steve flushed.  Was a man to be
+ashamed that he had not amassed wealth, especially when there had never
+been in him the sustained desire for gold?  He owed no man a cent, he
+made his own way, he asked no favors--and yet there was a glint of
+defiance in his eye, a hint of defiance in his tone, when he replied
+briefly.
+
+"That's all.  I haven't measured life in dollars and cents."
+
+"Then you've missed a damn' good measure for it, my son!  I ain't
+sayin' it's the only one, but it'll do firs' class.  But you needn't
+get scared I've gone into the preaching business. . . .  An' with that
+seventy-five dollars you're startin' out to run a big cow outfit like
+this, are you?"
+
+There was a gleam of mockery in the clear blue eyes which Steve gave no
+sign of seeing.
+
+"I've got a big job on my hands and I know it," he said quietly.  "But
+I'm going to see it through."
+
+"There's no question about the size of the job!  It's life-size, man's
+size--Number Ten size, if you want to put it that way.  It wants a real
+man to shove it across.  Know just how much you're mortgaged for?"
+
+"No.  I was going to ask you."
+
+"Close to fifty thousan' dollars, countin' back interest, unpaid.
+More'n you ever saw in a day, I reckon."
+
+Steve shrugged.  This to hide his first inclination to whistle.  Fifty
+thousand--why, he didn't know Number Ten ranch was worth that much
+money.  But it must be worth a good deal more if his grandfather had
+advanced so much on it.
+
+"It is a nice little pile," he admitted carelessly.
+
+The old man grunted, thrust his hands into his pockets, and drew deeply
+at his stogie.  Steve rolled a cigarette.  In the silence falling upon
+them they could hear the sound of the mechanician's wrench.
+
+"Anything wrong with the car?" asked Steve for the sake of breaking
+unpleasant silence.
+
+"Not that I know of.  He's jus' takin' a peek to make sure, I guess.
+That's what he's for.  He knows I got to get back to my place in a
+couple of shakes."
+
+Steve smiled; by wagon road his grandfather's ranch home was fifty
+miles to the northward.
+
+"You won't think of going back before noon."
+
+"Won't I?  But I will, though, son; Blenham's sticking aroun', waitin'
+for my say-so what he'll do nex'."  He snapped open a big watch and
+stared at it a moment with pursed lips.  "I'll be back home in jus' one
+hour an' a half.  All I got is fifteen minutes to talk with you this
+mornin'."
+
+"You mean that you can drive those fifty miles in an hour and a
+quarter!"
+
+"Have done it in less; if I was in a hurry I'd do it in an hour flat.
+But allowin' for time out I want fifteen minutes more'n that.  And now,
+if we're goin' to get anywhere----"
+
+He stopped suddenly and stood toying with his big watch passing it back
+and forth through the loop he made of its heavy chain, his gaze steady
+and earnest and searching upon his grandson.
+
+"Stephen," he said abruptly, "I ain't playin' any favorites in my ol'
+age.  An' I ain't givin' away big chunks of money hit or miss.  You
+wasn't countin' on anything like that, was you?"
+
+"No, I wasn't," announced Steve quickly.  "I remember your old theory;
+that a man should make his own way unaided, that----"
+
+"That whatever he got he's got to get with his one head an' one set of
+han's.  Now, the things I got to say I'll spit out one at the time:
+Firs', I'd like to have you come visit me for a spell at my place.
+Will you do it?  To-day, to-morrow, any time you feel like it."
+
+"Yes; I'll be glad to."
+
+"That's good.  Nex', not even if you was the right man for the job you
+can't save this ranch now; it's too late, there's to much to dig up in
+too short a time.  I've got my hooks in deep an' whenever that happens
+I don't let go.  I want you to quit before you get started."
+
+Steve looked his surprise.
+
+"Surely," he said wonderingly, "you don't want me to give you the ranch
+just because you happen to hold the mortgages on it?"
+
+"Business is business, Stephen," said the old man sternly.  "Sometimes,
+between Packards, business is hell.  It'd be that for you.  I've
+started out to get this outfit an' I'd get it.  An' doin' it I'd be
+wastin' my time besides breakin' you all to smithereens.  Better drop
+it."
+
+Steve had hardly expected this.  But he answered calmly, even lightly.
+
+"I think I'd like a try at holding it."
+
+"That's two things," old man Packard said crisply.  "Number three is
+this here: Blenham tells, me you've put Royce in as foreman under you?"
+
+"I offered him the place.  He could have it yet if he wanted it.  But
+he refused.  I've passed the job on to a man named Barbee."
+
+"Barbee!" cried the old man.  "Barbee!  That yellow canary-bird?
+Meaning him?"
+
+"Yes," retorted Steve a trifle stiffly.  "Anything wrong with him?"
+
+"I didn't roll them fifty miles to talk about jay-birds an'
+canary-birds an' such," growled his grandfather.  "But here's one thing
+I've got to say: This ranch is goin' to be mine real soon; that's in
+the cards, face up.  It's as good as mine now.  I've been runnin' it
+myself for six months.  I want it right, hear me?  What do you know
+about running a big outfit?  What does a kid without whiskers like
+Barbee know about it?  Think I want it all run down in the heel when it
+comes to me?  No, sir!  I don't.  Blenham knows the lay of the land,
+Blenham knows my ways, Blenham knows how to run things.  I want you to
+put Blenham back on the job!"
+
+Steve bit his lip, holding back a hot reply.
+
+"Grandfather," he said slowly, "suppose we take a little more time in
+getting squared around?  I want to do what's right; I know that you
+want to do what's fair and square.  I am willing to consult you about
+ranch matters; I'll come to you for advice, if you'll let me; I'll try
+to keep the ranch up to time and"--with a smile--"in my hands and out
+of yours.  That's a good sporting proposition.  But as for Blenham----"
+
+"Put him back as foreman and I'll talk fair with you.  I want Blenham
+back here, Stephen.  Understand that?"
+
+"And," cried Steve a trifle heatedly at last, "I tell you that I am
+going to run the ranch myself.  And that I don't like Blenham."
+
+"Damn it," cried the old man violently, "hear the boy!  Don't like
+Blenham, huh?  Goin' to run the ranch yourself, huh?  Why, I tell you
+it's as good as mine right now!  How are you goin' to pay your men, how
+are you goin' to buy grub for 'em, where are you goin' to find
+runnin'-expense money?  Go an' tell folks you're mortgaged to me for
+fifty thousan' dollars an' see how much they'll stake you for on top of
+that.  Or come over my way an' try to borrow some more, if you think
+I'm an easy guy.  Why, Steve Packard, you--you're a tomfool!"
+
+"Thanks," said Steve dryly.  "I've heard that before."
+
+"An' you'll hear it again, by the Lord!  In ten languages if you'll
+find men talkin' that many lingos.  Here I come chasin' all this way to
+be decent to you, to see if there ain't some way to help you out----"
+
+"Help me out of my property," amended Steve.  "I can't remember
+anything else you offered to do for me!"
+
+"I said it once," shouted his grandfather, his two big fists suddenly
+clinched and lifted threateningly; "you're a howlin' young ass!  That's
+what for a man you've turned out to be, Stephen Packard.  Come here
+empty-handed an' try to buck me, would you?  Me who has busted better
+men than you all my life, me who has got my hooks in you deep already,
+me who ain't no pulin' ol' dodderin' softy to turn over to a lazy,
+shiftless vagabond all I've piled up year after year.  Buck me, would
+you?  Tuck in an' fire my men, butt on my affairs--  Why, you impudent
+young puppy-dog, you: I'll make you stick your tail between your legs
+an' howl like a kiote before I'm done with you!"
+
+Steve looked at him hopelessly; he might have expected this all along
+though he had hoped for amity at least.  If there were to be a conflict
+of purpose he could have wished that it be conducted in friendly
+fashion.  But when did Hell-Fire Packard ever clasp hands with the man
+he opposed in anything, when did he ever see a business rival without
+cloven hoof, horns, and spiked tail?
+
+"I am sorry you look at it that way, Grandy.  It is only natural that I
+should seek to hold what is mine."
+
+"Then hold your tongue, you young fool!" blazed out the old man.  "But
+don't ask me to hold my hand!  I'm goin' after you tooth and big
+toe-nail!  If Ranch Number Ten ain't mine in all partic'lars before
+you're a year older I want to know why!"
+
+"I think," said the grandson, fighting with himself for calmness and
+quiet speech, "that any further business I can take up with your
+lawyer.  Past due interest----"
+
+"Lawyer?" thundered Packard senior.  "Since when did I ever have call
+for law an' lawyers in my play?  Think I'm a crook, sir?  Mean to
+insinuate I'm a crook?"
+
+"I mean nothing of the kind.  A mortgage is a legal matter, the payment
+of interest and principal----"
+
+"Guy Little!" called the old man.  "Guy Little!  Goin' to stay under
+that car all day?"
+
+The mechanician promptly appeared, hands and face greasy and black and
+took his place on the running-board.
+
+"All ready, sir," he announced imperturbably.
+
+With half-a-dozen strides his master reached the car; in as many
+seconds the powerful engine was throbbing.  The screaming horn gave
+warning, the quiet herds in the valley heeded, lifted their heads and
+stood at attention, ready to scamper this way or that as need arose.
+The wheels turned, the car jolted over the inequalities presented by
+the field, swerved sharply, turned, gathered speed and whizzed away
+toward the valley road.
+
+
+Three times before they shot back into the mouth of Blue Bird Canon the
+mechanician fancied that his employer had spoken; each time listening,
+he failed to catch any other sound than that made by the engine and
+speeding wheels.  Once he said, "Sir?" and got only silence for an
+answer.
+
+He shook his head and wondered; it was not Packard's way to mumble to
+himself.  And again, ready to jump for his life as the big car took a
+dangerous turn, his eyes glued to the sheer bank a few inches from the
+singing tires, he caught a sound through the blast of the sparton which
+surely must have come from the driver's lips.
+
+"What say?" yelled Guy Little.
+
+No answer.  He caught a fleeting glimpse of a farmer at the head of his
+two plunging horses where the man had hurriedly got them out of the way
+and up the flank of the mountain.  They raced on.  And again, surely
+Packard had said something.
+
+"Talkin' to me?" called Little.
+
+Then, for just a wee fraction of a second, Packard drew his eyes from
+the road and his look met the mechanician's.  The old man's eyes were
+shining strangely.
+
+"Damn it, Guy Little," he boomed out boisterously, "can't a man laugh
+when he feels that-away?"
+
+And it suddenly dawned upon Guy Little that ever since they had left
+Ranch Number Ten the old man had been chuckling delightedly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+IN RED CREEK TOWN
+
+The little town of Red Creek had an individuality all its own.  It
+might have prided itself, had it any civic sense whatever, upon its
+aloofness.  It stood apart from the rest of the world, at a safe
+distance from any of its rival settlements, even drawn apart as though
+distrustfully from its own railroad station which baked and blistered
+in the sun a good half-mile to the west.  Grown up here haphazardly
+long before the "Gap" had been won through by the "iron trail," it
+ignored the beckoning of the glistening rails and refused to extend
+itself toward the traffic artery.
+
+More than all this, Red Creek gave the impression, not in the least
+incorrect, of falling apart into two watchful sections which eyed each
+other suspiciously, being cynically and unsociably inclined.  Its main
+street was as wide as Van Ness Avenue and down the middle of it, like a
+border line between two hostile camps, sprawled a stream which shared
+its name with the town.
+
+The banks here and there were the brick-red of a soil whose chief
+mineral was iron; here and there were screened by willows.  There were
+two insecure-looking bridges across which men went infrequently.
+
+For the spirit which had brooded over the birth of Red Creek when a
+sheepman from the north and a cow-man from the south had set their
+shacks opposite each other, lived on now; long after the old feuds were
+dead and the whole of the grazing lands had been won over to the cattle
+raisers, a new basis for quarrels had offered itself at Red Creek's
+need.
+
+Much of this Steve Packard knew, since it was so in his time, before he
+had gone wandering; much he had learned from Barbee in a long talk with
+him before riding the twenty-five miles into the village.  Old Man
+Packard had drawn to himself a host of retainers since his interests
+were big, his hired-men many, his wages generous.  And, throughout the
+countryside across which he cast his shadow, he had cultivated and
+grown a goodly crop of enemies, men with whom he had contended, men
+whom he had branded sweepingly as liars and thieves and cutthroats, men
+whose mortgages he had taken, men whom, in the big game which he
+played, he had broken.  The northern half of Red Creek was usually and
+significantly known as Packard's Town; the southern half sold liquor
+and merchandise, offered food and lodging, to men who harbored few
+friendly feelings for Packard's "crowd."
+
+Hence, in Red Creek were two saloons, confronting each other across the
+red scar of the creek; two stores, two lunch-counters, two blacksmith
+shops, each eying its rival jealously.  At this time the post-office
+had been secured by the Packard faction; the opposition snorted
+contempt and called attention to the fact that the constable resided
+with them.  Thus honors were even.
+
+
+Steve Packard rode into town in the late afternoon, his motive
+clear-cut, his need urgent.  If Blenham had stolen his ten thousand
+dollars for which he had so imperative a call now, then Blenham had
+been the one who had replaced the large bank-notes with the small;
+there was the chance that Blenham, just a week ago to-night, had gotten
+the dollar bills in Red Creek.  If such were the case Packard meant to
+know it.
+
+"There are things, Barbee," he had said bluntly, "which I can't tell
+you yet; I don't know you well enough.  But this I can say: I am out to
+get Blenham's tag."
+
+"So'm I," said Barbee.
+
+"That's one reason you've got the job you're holding down right now.
+Here's one point though, which it's up to you to know; I very much
+suspect that for reasons of his own Blenham hasn't set foot for the
+last time on Ranch Number Ten.  He'll come back; he'll come snooping
+around at night; he'll perhaps have a way of knowing the first night
+I'm away and come then.  There's something he left there that he wants.
+At least that is the way I'm stringing my bet.  And while I am away
+you're foreman, Barbee."
+
+A flickering light danced in Barbee's blue eyes.
+
+"Orders from you, if Blenham shows up at night----"
+
+"To throw a gun on him and run him out!  The quickest way.  To-night I
+want you to squat out under a tree and keep awake--all night.  For
+which you can have two days off if you want."
+
+"If I thought he'd show," and the boy's voice was little more than an
+eager whisper, "I couldn't sleep if I tried!"
+
+Then Packard had spoken a little about Red Creek, asking his few
+questions and had learned that Blenham had his friends in "Packard's
+Town" where Dan Hodges of the Ace of Diamonds saloon was an old pal,
+that "Whitey" Wimble of the Old Trusty saloon across the street hated
+both Hodges and Blenham like poison.
+
+"Us boys," added Barbee, "always hung out at the Ace of Diamonds, bein'
+Packard's men.  After now, when I go on a rampage, I'm goin' to make
+frien's across the street.  Friends sometimes comes in handy in Red
+Creek," he added smilingly.
+
+
+The road, as one comes into Red Creek from the east, divides at the
+first bridge, one fork becoming the northern half of the intersected
+street, the other the southern half.  Steve Packard, filling his eyes
+with the two rows of similar shacks, hesitated briefly.
+
+Until now he had always gone to the Packard side; when a boy he had
+regarded the rival section with high contempt, looking upon it as
+inferior, sneering at it as a thoroughbred might lift lip at an
+unworthy mongrel.  The prejudice was old and deep-rooted; he felt a
+subtle sense of shame as though the eyes of the world were upon him,
+watching to see him turn toward the "low-down skunks an' varmints"
+which his grandfather had named these denizens of the defamed section.
+
+The hesitation was brief; he reined his horse impatiently to the left,
+riding straight toward the flaunting sign upon the lofty false front of
+the Old Trusty saloon.  But short as was his indecision it had not
+ended before he had glimpsed at the far end of the street the
+incongruous lines of an automobile--red racing type.
+
+"Boyd-Merril.  Twin Eight," thought Packard.  "So we'll meet on the
+same side after all, Miss Terry Pert!"
+
+There were seeds of content in the thought.  If it were to be range war
+between him and his grandfather, then since obviously the Temples had
+already been drawn into contention with the old man Packard, it was
+just as well the fates decreed that he and Terry should be on the same
+side of the fence, the same side of the fight, the same side of Red
+Creek.
+
+He tickled his horse with a light spur; despite the manner of their
+last encounter he could look forward with something akin to eagerness
+to another meeting.  For, he told himself carelessly, she amused him
+vastly.
+
+But the meeting was not just yet.  He saw Terry, jauntily, even saucily
+dressed, as she came out of the store and jumped into her car, marked
+how the bright sunlight winked from her high boots, how it flamed upon
+her gay red scarf, how it glinted from a burnished steel buckle in her
+hat band.  As bright as a sunbeam herself, loving gay colors about her,
+across the distance she fairly shone and twinkled.
+
+There was a faint shadow of regret in his eyes as she let in the clutch
+and whizzed away.  She was headed down the street, her back to him,
+driving toward the remote railroad station.  Off to the north he saw a
+growing plume of black smoke.
+
+"Going away?" he wondered.  "Or just meeting some one?"
+
+But he had come into Red Creek on a business in no way connected with
+Terry Temple.
+
+He had figured it out that Blenham, if it had been Blenham who had
+chanced on Bill Royce's secret and no longer ago than last Saturday
+night, would have wasted no time in acquiring the one-dollar bills for
+his trick of substitution; that if he had come for them to Red Creek
+that same night, after post-office and stores were closed, he would
+have sought them at one of the two saloons; that, since currency is at
+all times scarce in cattle towns in the West, he might have had to go
+to both saloons for them.
+
+Packard began investigations at the Old Trusty saloon whose doors stood
+invitingly open to the faint afternoon breeze.
+
+In the long room half-a-dozen idle men looked up at him with mild
+interest, withdrawing their eyes briefly from solitaire or newspaper or
+cribbage game or whatever had been holding their careless attention as
+he entered.
+
+A glance at them showed him no familiar face.  He turned to the bar.
+
+Behind it a man was polishing glasses with quick, skilful hands.  Steve
+knew him at once for Whitey Wimble.  He was a pronounced albino,
+unhealthy-looking, with overlarge, thin ears, small pale eyes, and
+teeth that looked like chalk.  Steve nodded to him and spun a dollar on
+the bar.
+
+"Have something," he suggested.
+
+Wimble returned his nod, left off his polishing to shove forward a
+couple of the glistening glasses, and produced a bottle from behind him.
+
+"Regards," he said apathetically, taking his whiskey with the
+enthusiasm and expression of a man observing his doctor's orders.
+"Stranger in Red Creek?"
+
+"I haven't been here," Steve answered, "for several years.  I never saw
+the town any quieter.  Used to be a rather gay little place, didn't it?"
+
+"It's early yet," said Whitey, going back to his interrupted task.
+"Bein' Saturday, the boys from the ranches will be showin' up before
+long.  Then it ain't always so quiet."
+
+Packard made his cigarette, lighted it, and then said casually: "How
+are you fixed for dollar bills in your strong-box?"
+
+"Nary," returned Whitey Wimble without troubling himself to look into
+his till.  "We don't see overmuch rag money in Red Creek."
+
+"Guess that's so," admitted Steve.  "They do come in handy, though,
+sometimes; when you want to send a dollar in a letter or something of
+that kind."
+
+"That's a fac', too; never thought of that."  Which, since he never
+wrote or received letters, was no doubt true.
+
+"Men around here don't have much use for paper money, do they?"
+continued Packard carelessly, his interest seeming to centre in his
+cigarette smoke.  "I'd bet a man the drinks nobody else has asked you
+for a dollar bill for the last six months."
+
+"You'd lose," said Whitey.  "I had three of 'em in the drawer for a
+coon's age; feller asked me for 'em jus' the other night."
+
+"Yes?"  He masked his eagerness as he thrust a quarter forward.  "The
+drink's on me then.  Let me have a cigar."
+
+Whitey also took a cigar, indicating friendliwise the better box.
+
+"Who was it asked you for the paper money?" Steve went on.  "He might
+have one he doesn't need."
+
+"It was Stumpy Collins.  The bootblack across the street."
+
+"I'll look him up; yesterday he had them, you say?"
+
+Wimble shook his head, gave the matter his thought a moment, and said:
+
+"It was las' Saturday night; I remember 'cause there was a right smart
+crowd in an' I was busy an' Stumpy kep' pesterin' me until I 'tended to
+him.  He won't have nothin' lef by this, though; it ain't Stumpy's way
+to save his money long.  Firs' time I ever knowed him to have three
+dollars all at once."
+
+From the Old Trusty Steve went across the street, leaving his horse in
+front of Wimble's door where there was a big poplar and a grateful
+shade.  Crossing the second of the two bridges he turned his eyes
+toward the railroad station; the red touring-car stood forth
+brilliantly in the sunshine, a freight train was just pulling in, Terry
+was not to be seen.
+
+"She'll eat before she starts back home," he thought, hastening his
+stride on to Hodges's place, the Ace of Diamonds.  "I'll see her at the
+lunch-counter."
+
+Tucked in beside the Ace of Diamonds was a bootblack stand, a crazy,
+home-made affair with dusty seat.  The wielder of the brush and polish
+was nowhere in evidence.   Steve passed and turned in at the saloon
+door, wishing to come to Hodges, Blenham's pal.  For it required little
+imagination to suspect that it had been Hodges at Blenham's behest, or
+Blenham himself, who had sent Stumpy across the street to the Old
+Trusty.
+
+Here, as in Wimble's place, a few men loitered idly; here as there the
+proprietor stood behind his own bar.  Hodges, a short, squat man with a
+prize-fighter's throat, chest, and shoulders and a wide, thin-lipped
+mouth, leaned forward in dirty shirt-sleeves, chewing at a moist
+cigar-stump.
+
+"Hello, stranger," he offered offhandedly.  "What's the word?"
+
+"Know Blenham, don't you?" asked Steve quietly.  "Works for old man
+Packard."
+
+"Sure, I know him.  What about him?"
+
+"Seen him lately?"
+
+"Ten minutes ago.  Why?  Want him?"
+
+Packard had not counted on this, having no idea that Blenham was in
+town.  He hesitated, then said quickly:
+
+"Hasn't left yet, has he?  Where is he now?"
+
+"Down to the depot.  Trailin' a skirt.  An' some skirt, too, take it
+from me."
+
+He laughed.
+
+Steve wanted suddenly to slap the broad, ugly face.  Since, however, he
+could formulate no logically sufficient reason for the act, he said
+instead:
+
+"Maybe I'll see him before I pull out.  If I don't, ask him if he lost
+a wad like this?"
+
+Fleetingly he flashed the little roll of banknotes before Hodges's eyes.
+
+"Greenbacks?" asked Hodges.  "How much?"
+
+Packard laughed.
+
+"Not so all-fired much," he said lightly.  "But enough to buy a hat!"
+
+"If hats are sellin' ten dollars or under?" ventured Hodges.
+
+Packard affected to look surprised.
+
+"What do you know about how much is in this roll?" he demanded
+innocently.
+
+"One-dollar bills?" said Hodges.  "Ten of 'em?"
+
+"You don't look like a mind-reader."
+
+"Well, you're right about the wad bein' Blenham's.  Leave it with me,
+if you want.  I'll see he gets it.  There ain't enough there for a man
+to steal," he added reassuringly.
+
+"How do you know it's Blenham's?  If he told you that he had lost it
+he'd have told you where.  What's the answer; where did I pick this up?"
+
+"Blenham didn't say he los' nothin'.  But I know it's his because he
+got most of them bills from me."
+
+"Tell me when," and Packard held the roll in a tight-shut hand, "and
+I'll leave them with you."
+
+"Las' Saturday night," said Hodges, after a brief moment of reflection.
+
+Packard tossed the little roll to the bar.
+
+"There's the money.  Tell Blenham I thought it was his!"
+
+He turned to the door, his blood suddenly stirred with certainty:
+Blenham had stolen the ten thousand dollars, and the theft had been
+committed no longer ago than last Saturday night.  Just a week--there
+was the chance----
+
+"Hey, there," called Hodges.  "Who'll I say lef this?  What name,
+stranger?"
+
+Steve turned and regarded him coolly.
+
+"Tell him Steve Packard called.  Steve Packard, boss of Ranch Number
+Ten."
+
+And Dan Hodges, dull wit that he was, felt that something was wrong.
+The look in the stranger's eyes had altered swiftly, the eyes had grown
+hard.  Steve went out.  As he reached the sidewalk he glimpsed a red
+automobile racing townward from the station.  Behind it, riding in its
+dust, came Blenham.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"IT'S MY FIGHT AND HIS.  LET HIM GO!"
+
+Steve Packard, walking swiftly, reached the west bridge just before the
+front tires of Terry's car thudded on the heavy planks.  He glimpsed
+Blenham jogging along behind her and knew that Blenham had seen him.
+
+But his eyes were for Terry now.  She, too, had recognized him with but
+a few yards separating them.  She gave him a blast of her horn
+warningly, and, slowing down no more than was necessary for the sharp
+turn, came on across the bridge.  He read it in her eye that it would
+be an abiding joy for Miss Terry if she could send him scampering out
+of her way; the horn as much as said: "You step aside or I'll run you
+down!"
+
+With no intention of going under the wheels, Steve waited until the
+last moment and then jumped.  But not to the side as Terry had
+anticipated.  Obeying his impulse and taking his chance, he sprang up
+to her running-board as she whizzed over the bouncing planks of the
+bridge, grasping the door of her car to steady himself.  The feat
+safely accomplished, he grinned up into Terry's startled eyes.
+
+"We meet again," he laughed sociably.  "Howdy!"
+
+Her lips tight-pressed, she gave her attention for a moment to her
+wheel and the rutty road in front of her.  Her cheeks were red and grew
+redder.  Perhaps a dozen men, here and there upon the street, had seen.
+She had meant them to see; it would have tickled her no little to have
+had them note Steve Packard flying wildly to the side of the road while
+she shot by.  She had not counted upon him doing anything else.
+
+"Smarty!" she cried hotly.
+
+"Smart enough to climb out from under when an automobile driven by a
+manslaughter artist comes along," he chuckled, sensing an advantage and
+drawing a deep enjoyment from it.  "Don't you know, young lady, you've
+got to be careful sometimes?  Now, if you had run over me----"
+
+"Serve you right," sniffed Terry.
+
+"Yes, but think!  Running over a man who hasn't had time to take his
+spurs off yet, why you stood all kinds of chances getting a puncture!
+You don't want to forget things like that."
+
+Terry bit her lip, stepped on the throttle, swung across the street,
+made a reckless turn, and brought up in front of the lunch-counter.
+
+"Do you know," remarked Packard lightly, ignoring the fact that she had
+answered him with only the contempt of her silence, "you remind me of
+my grandfather.  Fact!  You two have the same little trick of driving.
+Wonder what would happen if you and he met on a narrow road?"
+
+"At least," said Terry, eying him belligerently, "he is a man, if he is
+a scoundrel.  Not just a hobo!"
+
+"Oh, I didn't mean to call you a scoundrel!  Nor yet to say that you
+struck me as mannish.  Of course----"
+
+"Oh, you make me sick!" cried Terry.  And she flashed away from him,
+going into the lunch-room.
+
+He followed her with speculative eyes.  Then he glanced across the
+street.  Blenham had dismounted in front of the Ace of Diamonds and was
+watching.  As Packard turned Blenham went into Hodges's saloon.
+
+"Wonder what he'll have to say when Hodges hands him his roll?" mused
+Packard.
+
+Well, he had accomplished his purpose.  He had done all that he had
+hoped to do in Red Creek this afternoon, had assured himself that his
+suspicions against Blenham were justified by the fact and that the
+theft was only a week old.  He went back slowly to his horse in front
+of the Old Trusty.  But his eyes were frowning thoughtfully.
+
+What would be Blenham's next move?  What would Blenham do, what would
+he say when Hodges gave him Packard's message?  Might he, in an
+unguarded moment, give a hint toward the answer of that other question
+which now had become the only consideration: "Were the larger banknotes
+still hidden at Ranch Number Ten or had Blenham already removed them?"
+
+Instead of mounting to ride away, Packard hung his spurs upon his
+saddlehorn and turned again into Whitey Wimble's place.
+
+The late afternoon faded into dusk, the first stars came out, Whitey
+Wimble lighted his lamps.  Steve, advised of the fact by the purr of a
+motor, knew when Terry left the lunch-room and drove to the store for a
+visit with the storekeeper's wife.  Was she going to remain in town
+overnight?  It began to look as though she were.
+
+Across the street Hodges came out and lighted the big lamps at each
+side of his doorway.  A cowboy swung down from his horse and went in,
+his spurs winking in the lamplight as though there were jewels upon
+them.  A buckboard pulled up and two other men went in after him.  A
+voice in sudden laughter boomed out.  Saturday night had come.  As
+Whitey Wimble had predicted, the boys were showing up and Red Creek
+stood ready to lose something of its brooding afternoon quiet.
+
+Once again Packard crossed the bridge and made his way along the
+echoing wooden sidewalk to the Ace of Diamonds.  A dozen saddle-horses
+were tied at the hitching-rail.  Among them was Blenham's white-footed
+bay.  Up and down the street glowing cigarette ends like fireflies came
+and went.  In front of the saloon a number of men made a good-natured,
+tongue-free crowd, most of whom had had their first drinks and were
+beginning to liven up as in duty bound on a Saturday night.
+
+A four-horse wagon came rattling into town from the east to pour out
+its contents, big, husky men, at Hodges's door.  Among them Packard
+recognized one man.  He was the lumber-camp cook from whom he had
+gotten coffee and hotcakes the other day, that morning after he had
+refused to accept Terry's cool invitation to breakfast.
+
+"I'll have to look in on those fellows tomorrow," he thought as they
+shouldered past, boisterous and eager.  "Grandy's sure had his nerve
+cutting my timber with never so much as a by-your-leave."
+
+Their foreman was with them; one glance singled him out.  He was of
+that type chosen always by old man Packard to head any one of the
+Packard units, a sort of confident mastery in his very stride, the
+biggest man of them, unkempt and heavy, with a brutal face and hard
+eyes.  Joe Woods, his name.  Packard had already heard of him, a rowdy
+and a rough-neck but a capable timberjack to the calloused fingers of
+him.  He followed the men into the saloon.
+
+At his place behind the long bar was Hodges, busy filling imperative
+orders, taking in the money which he counted as good as his once it
+left the paymaster's pocket.  But it struck Packard that the bartender
+did not appear happy; his face was flushed and hot, his eyes looked
+troubled.  Now and then he flashed a quick look at Blenham who stood
+leaning against the bar at the far end, twisting an empty whiskey-glass
+slowly in his big hand, staring frowningly at nothing.
+
+"Hodges is a fool and he has just been told so!" was Steve's answer to
+the situation.
+
+"Hi, Blenham!" called big Joe Woods.  "Have a drink."
+
+"No," growled Blenham, deep down in his throat.  "I don't want it.
+I----"
+
+His eyes, lifted to the lumber-camp boss, passed on and rested on Steve
+Packard.  He broke off abruptly, his look changing, probing, seeming
+full of question.
+
+"Get the money I gave Hodges for you?" asked Packard, coming into the
+room.  "The ten one-dollar bills that you left behind you?"
+
+"They wasn't mine," said Blenham quickly, his hand hard about the
+whiskey glass, his manner vaguely nervous.  "I tol' Dan to give 'em
+back to you."
+
+Steve smiled.
+
+"Funny," he said carelessly.  "Hodges said----"
+
+"I made a mistake," called Hodges sharply.  "I got Blenham mixed up
+with some other guy.  I don't know nothin' about this here."  He
+slammed the little roll down on the bar.  "Come get it, if you want
+it."  Packard promptly stepped forward, taking the money.
+
+"I figured there was a chance to make ten dollars, easy money, if I
+just walked across the street for it," he said, looking pleasantly from
+Hodges to Blenham.  "Sure, I want it.  It's luck-money; didn't you
+know?  You see, when a man loses anything he loses some of his luck
+with it; when another man gets it, he gets the luck along with it.
+Thanks, Blenham."
+
+Blenham made no answer.  His eyes were bright with anger and yet
+troubled with uncertainty.  The uncertainty was there to be recognized
+by him who looked keenly for it.  Blenham did not know just which way
+to jump.  From that fact Steve drew a deep satisfaction.  For there
+would have been no reason for indecision if Blenham knew that he had
+those other, bigger bank-notes, safe.
+
+At the rear of the long room a man was dealing cards for
+seven-and-a-half.  As though to demonstrate the truth of his boast
+about "luck-money" Steve stepped to the table, the roll of bills in his
+hand.  He was dealt a card.  Without turning it up to look at it he
+shoved it under the ten banknotes.
+
+"Standing?" said the dealer.
+
+Steve nodded.
+
+"Playing my luck," he answered.
+
+The dealer turned lack-lustre eyes upon Steve's card, then upon his own
+which he turned up.  It was the four of clubs.
+
+"I've the hunch that will beat you, pardner," he said listlessly.  "But
+I'll come again."
+
+He turned another card, a deuce.
+
+"That'll about beat you," he suggested.  He leaned forward for Steve's
+card.  "Unless you've got a seven in the hole."
+
+And a seven it was; the bright red seven of hearts.  The dealer paid,
+ten dollars to Steve's ten.
+
+"Come again?" he asked.
+
+"Not to-night," returned Packard.  "I took just the one flutter to show
+Blenham."
+
+He turned and saw that Blenham had already slipped quietly out of the
+room.  Dan Hodges, his face a fiery red, was just coming back from the
+card-room.  With him was the big timber boss.
+
+"Tin-horn!" shouted Joe Woods at Packard.  "Quitter!"
+
+A quick joy spurted up in Steve Packard's heart; he was right about
+Blenham.  Blenham, filled with anxiety, had gone already, would be
+rushing back to Ranch Number Ten to make sure if the ten thousand
+dollars were safe or had been discovered already by the rightful owner.
+He had slipped away hurriedly but, after the fashion of a careful,
+practical man, had taken time to confer with Dan Hodges and had
+commissioned Joe Woods to hold Packard here.  And so, though he could
+not remember of having ever run away from a fight before, Steve Packard
+was strongly of that mind right now.
+
+"Joe Woods, I believe?" he said coolly, his mind busy with the new
+problem of a new situation.  "Boss of the timber crew on the east side
+of Number Ten?  I was planning on riding out to-morrow for a word with
+you, Woods."
+
+"So?" cried Woods.  "What's the matter with havin' that word to-night?"
+
+"Haven't time," was the simple rejoinder.  "I'm about due across the
+street now; at Whitey Wimble's place."
+
+"Which is where you belong," growled Woods, his under jaw thrust
+forward, his whole attitude charged with quarrelsome intent.  "Over at
+the White Rat's with the rest of the Willies!"
+
+The ever-ready Packard temper was getting into Steve's head, beating in
+his temples, pounding along his pulses.  He had never had a man bait
+him like that before.  But he strove to remember Blenham only, to take
+stock of the fact that this was a bit of Blenham's game, and that any
+trouble with another than Blenham was to be avoided at this juncture.
+So, though the color was rising into his face and a little flicker of
+fire came into his eyes, he said briefly:
+
+"Then I'd better go across, hadn't I?  See you in the morning, Woods."
+
+But there is always the word to whip the hot blood into the coolest
+head, to snare a man's caution out of him and inject fury in its stead,
+and Joe Woods, a downright man and never a subtle, put his tongue to
+it.  On the instant Packard gave over thought of such side issues as a
+man named Blenham and hidden bank-notes.
+
+He cried out inarticulately and leaped forward and struck.  Joe Woods
+reeled under the first blow full in the face, staggered under the
+second, and was borne back into the tight-jammed crowd of his followers.
+
+The men about him and Packard withdrew this way and that, leaving empty
+floor space to accommodate the two pairs of shuffling boots.  Joe Woods
+wiped his lips with the back of a big, hairy hand, saw traces of blood,
+and charged.  The sound of blows given and taken and of little grunts
+and of scraping feet were for a space the only sounds heard in Hodges's
+saloon.
+
+[Illustration: The men about him and Packard withdrew this way and
+that, leaving empty floor space.]
+
+Packard's attack had been swift and sure and not without a certain
+skill; against it Woods opposed all he had, ponderous strength,
+slow-moving, brutal force, broad-backed, deep-chested endurance.  But
+from the first it was clear to all who watched and was suspected by
+Woods himself that he had chosen the wrong man.
+
+Steve was taller, had the longer reach, was gifted by the gods with a
+supple strength no whit less than the bearish power of the timber boss.
+With ten blows struck, with both men rocking dizzily, it was patently
+Steve Packard's fight.  But a dull, dogged persistence was in Joe
+Woods's eyes as again he shook his head and charged.
+
+Steve struck for the stomach and landed--hard.  Woods doubled up; the
+sweat came in drops upon his forehead; his face went suddenly a sick
+white.  But the light in his eyes, as again he lifted his head, was
+unaltered.
+
+"He can lick me--I know it!  He can lick me--I know it!" he muttered
+and kept muttering.  "But, by God, he's got to do it!"
+
+And Steve did it and men looked on queerly, appraising him anew.  He
+took Woods's blows when he must and felt the pain go stabbing through
+his body; but he stood up and struck back and forced the fight
+steadily, crowding his adversary relentlessly, seeming always to strike
+swifter and harder.
+
+It was a bleeding fist driven into Joe Woods's throbbing throat,
+followed by the other fist, going piston-like, at Joe Woods's stomach,
+that ended the fight.
+
+The bigger man crumpled and went down slowly like one of his own trees
+just toppling, and lay staring up into Packard's face with dull eyes.
+Steve stepped over him, going to the door.
+
+"I'll see you in the morning, Woods," he panted.
+
+But again boots were shuffling on the floor and already several men,
+Dan Hodges among them, were between him and the door.  It dawned upon
+him that Blenham must have given emphatic orders and that Blenham had
+the trick of exacting obedience.
+
+"Hold him here," shouted Hodges, and being a man of little spirit he
+withdrew hastily under Steve's eyes, thrusting another man in front of
+him.  "Keep him for the sheriff.  Startin' a fight in my place--it's
+disturbin' the peace, that's what it is!  I won't stand it!"
+
+Packard drew back two or three paces, his eyes narrowing.  At that
+instant he was sure of what he saw in the faces of at least three of
+the men confronting him; they were going to rush him together.
+
+But now Joe Woods was on his feet again.  Packard drew still further
+back, getting the wall behind him.  And then came a diversion.  It was
+Joe Woods speaking heavily:
+
+"I fought him fair an' he licked me.  Think I'm the kind of a she-man
+as stands for you guys buttin' in on my fight?  Stand back an' let him
+go!"
+
+"Blenham said--" screamed Hodges.
+
+"Damn Blenham an' you, too," growled Woods.  "It's my fight an' his.
+Let him go!"
+
+They let him go, drawing apart slowly.  With watchful eyes Steve passed
+down the little lane they made.  At the door he turned, saying briefly:
+
+"I'll see you in the morning, Woods!"
+
+Then he went out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A RIDE WITH TERRY
+
+Returning at once to the Old Trusty, on the way passing Terry's car
+which still stood in front of the store, Steve Packard asked for the
+use of a telephone.  Whitey nodded toward the office, a little room
+thinly partitioned off from the larger.  A moment later Barbee's voice
+was answering from Ranch Number Ten.
+
+"He's on the way, Barbee," said Steve quickly.  "Left Red Creek just a
+few minutes ago.  I'll trail him.  Give him the chance to prowl around
+a little; try and find what he's after.  But don't let him get away
+with it!  Understand?  Shoot the legs out from under him if you have
+to.  I'll give you a month's pay for the night's work if you nail him
+with the goods on."
+
+Clicking up the receiver he went out on the street again, giving no
+heed to the many glances which followed him.  They knew who he was;
+they were speculating on him.  "Ol' man Packard's gran'son," he heard
+one man say.
+
+In the thick darkness lying under the poplar tree it was several
+minutes before he was certain that his horse was gone.  He had tethered
+the animal himself; there was no dangling bit of rope to indicate a
+broken tie-rope.  Blenham, the practical, had simply taken thought of
+detail.
+
+"Not missing a single bet, is Blenham," he thought savagely.
+
+He swung about and reentered the saloon.  A buzz of talk up and down
+the long room promptly died away as again the eyes of many men
+travelled his way.  It struck him that they had all been talking of
+him; he knew that they must have marked those signs which Joe Woods's
+fists had left on his face; he stood a moment looking in on them,
+conscious for the first time of his rapidly swelling right eye, seeking
+to estimate what these men made of him.
+
+It seemed to him that the one emotion he glimpsed on all hands and in
+varying degrees, was distrust.  Little cause for surprise there: he was
+a Packard and this was not the Packard side of Red Creek.
+
+"Somebody's put me on foot," he announced crisply.  "I left my horse
+outside, tied.  It's gone now.  Know anything about it, any of you
+boys?"
+
+They looked their interest.  Hereabouts one man did not trifle with
+another man's horse.  But there was no answer to his direct question.
+
+"I've got to be riding," he went on quietly.  "Who can lend me a
+saddle-horse for the night?  I'll pay double what it's worth."
+
+Whitey Wimble gave his bar a long swipe with his wet towel.
+
+"If you're askin' favors, seems to me you're on the wrong side the
+street, ain't you, stranger?"
+
+"Meaning I am a Packard?"
+
+"You got me the firs' time.  That's Packard's Town over yonder.  Your
+crowd----"
+
+"Look at my eye!" then said Steve quickly.
+
+A big man with a thin little voice at the far end of the room giggled.
+
+"I seen it already," said Wimble.
+
+"Know Joe Woods?  Well, he's got another just like it.  Know Blenham?
+Blenham sicked him on me!  Know old man Packard?  He's sicking Blenham
+on me.  Want to know what I want a horse for?  Blenham's got a head
+start and I want to overhaul him!  To tell him he's a crook and a
+thief.  Now is this side of Red Creek open to me or is it shut?  What's
+the answer, Whitey Wimble?"
+
+Wimble appeared both impressed and yet hesitant.  Here was a Packard to
+deal with and Whitey Wimble when taking over the destiny of the Old
+Trusty had been set clear in the matter that he had a ripe, old feud to
+maintain; and still, looking at it the other way, here was a man who
+carried the sign of Joe Woods's fist upon his bruised face, who
+announced that he was out to get Blenham, that there was open trouble
+between him and old man Packard.
+
+Whitey Wimble, beginning by looking puzzled, wound up by turning a
+distressed face toward Steve.
+
+"It's kind of a fine point," he suggested finally.  "Now, come right
+down to it, it sort of looks to me----"
+
+"Fine point!" cried Steve hotly, a sudden anger growing within him as
+he thought how Blenham had played the game all along the line, how
+Blenham might well prove too shrewd for a boy like Barbee, how a set of
+prejudiced fools here in the Old Trusty by denying him the loan of a
+horse might seriously be aiding Blenham whom none of them had any love
+for.  "Why, damn it, man, haven't I told you that Blenham has just put
+a raw deal across on me, that he's coming close to getting away with
+it, that all I ask is a horse to run him down?  Who's going to let me
+have one?  I'm in a hurry!"
+
+Never until now did he realize how strong a factor in the life of the
+community was the prejudice against his blood.  On every hand he saw
+doubt, clouded eyes, distrust.  Plainly many a man there held him for a
+liar; would even go so far, it was possible, as to suggest later that
+Steve Packard had meant to steal the horse he asked for.  Steve stared
+about him a moment, his back stiffening.  Then, with a little grunt of
+disgust, he strode across the room.
+
+"At least," he flung over his shoulder at Whitey Wimble, "I am going to
+use your telephone again!"
+
+Without waiting for an answer and caring not the snap of his fingers
+what that answer might be, he went to the telephone, jerking down the
+receiver, saying brusquely to the operator:
+
+"Ranch Number Ten, please.  In a hurry."
+
+He waited impatiently and, it seemed to him, an inexcusably long time.
+Finally the operator said after the aloof manner of telephone girls:
+
+"I am ringing them."
+
+And again----
+
+"I am ringing them."
+
+And then----
+
+"They do not answer."
+
+And at last, and then only when Steve made emphatic that there must be
+some one at the Number Ten bunk-house at this hour, the girl said:
+
+"Wait a minute."
+
+And after that:
+
+"There seems to be something the matter with the line.  I can't raise
+any of the ranch-houses out that way.  We'll send a man out in the
+morning."
+
+So he couldn't even warn Barbee that Blenham had made good his
+head-start; that Blenham was plainly of one mind to-night; that it was
+up to young Barbee to keep his eyes open and his gun cocked.  He began
+to understand why his grandfather had made Blenham one of his
+right-hand men; he had the cool mind and the way of acting quickly
+which makes for success.
+
+"I got a horse for you, pardner," said a slow voice as Packard came out
+of the office.  "A cayuse as can't be beat for legs an' lungs.  Come
+ahead."
+
+Steve looked at him eagerly.  He was a little fellow, leather-cheeked,
+keen-eyed, leisurely; a stranger, obviously a cowboy.
+
+"I work for Brocky Lane," offered the stranger as they went out
+together.  "Know him, don't you?"
+
+"I did a dozen years ago," answered Steve absently.  "Where's your
+horse?"
+
+"You're Steve Packard, ain't you?  You done Brocky a favor when you was
+a kid, didn't you?  Brocky told me.  Brocky's done me a favor.  I'm
+doin' you a favor.  That squares us up all 'round.  Like a circle, all
+in a ring, sort of; get me?"
+
+"Yes," agreed Steve, feeling vaguely that the cowman had unknowingly
+touched upon a problem in higher mathematics.  He slipped a hand into
+his pocket.
+
+But the friend whom an old, long-forgotten kindness raised now for him
+at his need, shook his head, would have none of Packard's money, and
+led the way to a shed behind the saloon.  Out of the darkness he
+brought a tall, wall-eyed roan, quickly saddled and bridled and handed
+over to Steve.
+
+"Heeled?" came solicitously from the little man as Steve swung up into
+the saddle.
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, Blenham is.  He goes that way all the time.  An' he's a right
+good shot, the boys say.  If there's some real sour blood stirred up
+between him an' you there's no use bein' a plumb fool, is there?  The
+store's apt to be open yet; there's a firs'-class double-barrel
+shot-gun, secon'-hand but as good as new, in the window.  Only seven
+dollars an' a half."
+
+"I'll send the horse over to Brocky's to-morrow," called Steve.  "And
+as for being square--call on me at any time for the next favor.  So
+long."
+
+"So long," responded the slow-voiced man.
+
+Steve swung out toward the east, curbing his mount's eagerness,
+settling himself in the saddle for a couple of hours of hard riding.
+Slowly he would warm up the big roan, letting him out gradually,
+steadily.  Already he sensed that in truth here was "a cayuse hard to
+beat for legs an' lungs."  And Blenham's head-start was but a matter of
+minutes, half an hour at most.
+
+But before he had ridden fifty yards Steve whirled his horse and rode
+back, going straight to the store.  After all, since Blenham was
+playing a game in which the stakes were no less than ten thousand
+dollars, since Blenham was without doubt the man who had sought to kill
+Bill Royce six months ago for the very same money, since Blenham always
+"went heeled and was a right good shot," why then, as Brocky Lane's
+cowboy put it, "there was no use bein' a plumb fool."  And to ride a
+hundred yards or so and buy a Colt .45 and a box of cartridges required
+but a moment.
+
+In the store the long shelves upon one side held dry-goods, while upon
+the opposite shelves a miscellany of groceries was displayed; toward
+the rear was the storekeeper's assortment of hardware near a counter
+piled high with sweaters, boots, chaparejos, all jumbled hopelessly.
+At the flank of this confusion was a show-case containing a rather fair
+line of side-arms.  Steve, his eye finding what it sought, went
+straight to the back of the house.  And then, looking through an open
+door which gave entrance to the living-room of the storekeeper's
+family, his glance met Terry's.  She was rising to her feet, drawing on
+her gauntlets.
+
+"That's your train now," a woman's voice was saying.
+
+Packard heard the whistling of a distant engine.  He lifted his hat,
+she promptly whirled about, giving him her back to look at.
+
+"Here's what I want," said Steve as the storekeeper came to his side.
+"That .45, and a box of cartridges."
+
+Terry turned again quickly and he surprised a little look of interest
+in her slightly widened eyes.  A man doesn't buy a gun and a box of
+cartridges at this time of night unless he has a use for them.  Packard
+took up his new purchases, went out, swung again into the saddle, and
+clattered down the street.
+
+The night was bright with stars, clear and sweet.  Presently, with only
+a handful of miles behind him, the moon rose above the distant ridge,
+at the full, glorious and generous of light.  He loosened his reins a
+little, gave the big roan his head, and swept on through the
+ghostly-lighted country.
+
+Now and then, remarking some old remembered landmark, he glanced from
+it to his watch; more than once, having slipped his watch again into
+his pocket, he leaned forward and patted the horse's neck.
+
+Then--he had done a little more than half the distance and was riding
+through the thick shadows of Laurel Canon, which marks the beginning of
+the long grade--the unforeseen occurred; the unlooked-for which, he
+knew now, he would have fully expected, had he not counted always upon
+Blenham playing a lone hand.
+
+In the middle of the inky blotch made by the laurels standing up
+against the moon there was a spot through which the moon-rays found
+their way, making a pool of light.  As Packard rode into this bright
+area he heard a rifle-shot, startlingly loud; saw the spit of flame
+from just yonder, perhaps ten feet, certainly not more than twenty feet
+away; felt the big roan plunge under him, race on unsteadily, and sink.
+
+He slipped out of the saddle as the horse crashed down in the bushes at
+the side of the road, and as he did so emptied his revolver into the
+shadows whence had come the rifle-shot.  But he knew that he was a fool
+to hope to hit; the man had had time to select his spot, to screen his
+own body with a boulder or fallen log, to leave open behind him a way
+to safety and darkness.
+
+"Not Blenham himself but one of his crowd did that," muttered Packard
+as he turned back to the fallen horse.  "Just to set me on foot again.
+He isn't up to murder when he sees another way.  And for ten dollars he
+could hire one of his hangers-on to kill a horse."
+
+Well, it was just another trick for Blenham.  On foot now he must make
+what time he could to the Pinchot farm, some three or four miles
+further on, demand a horse there, and pray that Barbee was equal to his
+task.  But first he must not leave the big roan to suffer needlessly
+and hopelessly.
+
+He struck a match and made a flaring torch of a little wisp of dry
+grass.  Loving a good horse as he did, he felt a sudden and utterly new
+sort of hatred of Blenham go rushing along his blood.
+
+It was with a deep sigh of relief that he straightened up when he saw
+that either chance or a remarkable skill with a rifle had saved Brocky
+Lane's roan from any protracted pain.
+
+Packard pushed on, seeking to make what time he could, breaking into a
+jog-trot time and again upon a down-slope, conserving wind and strength
+for the up-hill climbs, keeping in the shadows for the most part but
+taking his chance over and over in the moonlit open.
+
+Yet it was being borne in upon him that it was useless to hurry now;
+that Blenham had made of his advantage a safe lead; that he might as
+well slow down, make a cigarette, take his time.  And still, being the
+sort of man he was, he kept doggedly on, telling himself that a race is
+anybody's race until the tape is broken; that Blenham might be having
+his own troubles somewhere ahead; that quitting did no good and that it
+is not good to be a "quitter."  But he had little enough hope of coming
+up again with Blenham that night.
+
+And then, when he had been on foot not more than twenty minutes, a
+faint, even, drumming sound swelling steadily through the night
+somewhere behind him put a new, quick stir in his blood.  He stopped,
+stood almost breathless a moment, listening.
+
+The smooth drumming grew louder; suddenly topping a rise the two
+headlights of an automobile flashed into his eyes.  Terry Temple, her
+errand done in Red Creek, was racing homeward.
+
+"And I'll beat Blenham to it yet!" cried Steve.
+
+Where the moonlight streamed brightest and whitest across the road he
+sprang out so that she could not fail to see him, tossing up both arms
+in signal to her to stop.  Her headlights blinded him one moment; he
+heard the warning blast of her horn; he entertained briefly the
+suspicion that she was going to refuse to stop.
+
+Incredible--and yet he had not thought of her own likely emotions.  To
+have a man leap out into the road in front of her, all unexpectedly,
+waving his arms and calling on her to stop--  Why, she'd think herself
+fallen into the hands of a highwayman!
+
+She was coming on, straight on, her horn emitting one long, sustained
+shriek of menace.  Packard ground his teeth; either she did not
+recognize him and was bound upon getting by him, or she did recognize
+him and was accepting her opportunity to emphasize her attitude toward
+him.
+
+In any case she was going by, she in whom lay his sole hope to come to
+grips with Blenham.  If he let her evade he might as well quit, quit in
+utter disgust with the world.
+
+With the world?  Disgust with himself, that he had let Blenham beat
+him, that he wasn't much of a man, that his old grandfather was right
+about him.  Her car was rushing down upon him; if he let it pass, why,
+he'd be letting, not only a girl laugh at him, but he'd be letting his
+chance rush by him.  His chance that loomed up bigger than the oncoming
+machine and more real; his chance not for to-night alone but for ever
+after.
+
+For if Blenham beat him to-night and his grandfather beat him again
+later on, he knew that he would pass away from the country about Ranch
+Number Ten, that he would give over all sustained effort to make
+something of his life, that he would go back to drifting, rounding out
+his days after the fashion of the last twelve years.  It was while
+Terry's car was speeding toward him that all of this ran through his
+mind.
+
+There was the possibility that, knowing who he was, Terry would try to
+bluff him out of the road, counting confidently upon his leaping to
+safety at the last moment; there was the other possibility that she
+mistook his motives and would run him down in a sort of panic of
+self-defense.
+
+Packard, with his rather clear-cut conception of the girl's character
+to steer by, saw the one way to master the situation.  Whirling about,
+his back to her now, he broke into a run, speeding along the road in
+front of her.  As he ran the hard lines about his mouth softened into a
+rare grin: he'd have her guessing for a minute, anyway.  And by the
+time she got through guessing----
+
+He had duplicated his feat of the afternoon at the bridge in Red Creek.
+Terry, in her first astonishment that the man should turn and run
+straight on in front of her, slowed down, hesitation in her mind.  What
+was he up to?  Then there came sudden shadows in a narrow part of the
+road, a sharp turn, the absolute necessity of slowing down just a
+trifle more, and then----
+
+"It's all right; go ahead!" called Packard lightly.  He was standing on
+her running-board.
+
+She had thrown off her hat to the cool of the evening.  As they passed
+out from the shadows he could see her eyes.  He pushed back his own hat
+and Terry saw his eyes.  For a moment, while the car sped on, neither
+spoke.
+
+Looking at her he had glimpsed wonder, an annoyance that was swiftly
+growing into anger, and a certain assurance that Miss Terry Temple
+fully intended to remember this day and to square accounts with Stephen
+Packard.
+
+Returning his look, Terry had seen but one emotion in his eyes: pure
+triumph.  She could not know how the man of him, having but just now
+succeeded in this first task he had set himself, felt a sudden
+confidence of the future.
+
+"If I had let you go by," said Packard quietly, "I should have felt
+that I had let my destiny pass me!"
+
+"Don't you start in getting fresh just because it's moonlight!"
+
+Steve looked puzzled, understood, put back his head and laughed
+joyously.  Then, his face suddenly serious again, he considered her
+speculatively.  Now for the first time he became aware that Terry was
+already carrying a passenger.  A small man, Japanese, immaculate, and
+frightened so that his teeth were chattering.
+
+He was Iki, who had come into Red Creek this evening by train and due
+to cook for the Temple ranch.  Just now he was screwed up in his place,
+ready to jump if Steve moved his way, his purse clutched in his plump
+hand, half offered already.  Steve beamed upon him, then turned his
+eyes, still speculative, upon Terry.
+
+"Do you care to tell me," said Terry tartly, "why you're always getting
+in my way?  Think you're smart, climbing aboard like a monkey?  You've
+done the trick twice; do I have to look out for you every time I take
+the car out?"
+
+"I just happen to be in a hurry," said Packard.  "And going your way.
+Somebody shot my horse back there for me."
+
+Her eyes grew actually round; Iki shivered audibly.  But in the girl's
+case the emotion aroused by Packard's words was short-lived.  Why
+should a man shoot the horse under Steve Packard?  Disbelief reshaped
+her eyes; she cried out at him as her foot went down on the accelerator:
+
+"Think I'm the kind to believe all the yarns you can tell?  If you want
+to know what I think, Steve Packard--you're a liar!"
+
+He laughed, well content with the moment and the situation, well
+content with his unwilling companion just as she was.
+
+"And do you know that what I told you this afternoon was true?" he
+countered cheerfully.  "You're just like my blazing old Grandy!
+Instead of being my grandfather he ought to be yours.  By golly, Miss
+Terry Pert," teasing the blood higher into her cheeks with his
+laughter, "that might be arranged, too!  Mightn't it?  You and I----"
+
+"Oh!" cried Terry, and he had no doubts about her meaning what she
+said.  "Oh, I hate you!  Yes, worse than I hate old Hell-Fire: he keeps
+out of my trail, anyway.  And you, you big bully, you woman-fighter,
+you--you----"
+
+Just in time he guessed her purpose and threw out his hand across her
+steering-wheel and grasped her right hand.  The car swerved dangerously
+a moment, then came back to its steady course as Steve's other hand
+closed over Terry's left.  Slowly, putting his greater strength gently
+against hers, he took her automatic from her.
+
+"Thirty-eight calibre?"  he  said  coolly.  "There's nothing little
+about your way of doing things, is there?  And you meant to drill a
+hole through me, I'm bound!"
+
+Terry's face gleamed white in the pale light; and he knew from the look
+in her eyes as they seemed fairly to clash with his, that it was the
+white of sheer rage.
+
+"I'd just as lief blow your head off as shoot a rattlesnake," she
+announced crisply.
+
+"I believe you," he grunted.  "Just the same, if you'd only----"
+
+"Oh, shut up!" she cried, shaking his hand free from hers on the wheel
+and driving on recklessly.
+
+"I would like to mention," came an uncertain voice from a very pale
+Japanese, "that I must walk on my feet.  I am most regretful----"
+
+"Oh, shut up!" cried Terry.  "Shut up!"
+
+And for the rest of the ride both Iki and Steve Packard were silent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE TEMPTING OF YELLOW BARBEE
+
+"Here's where I get down," said Steve after a very long silence during
+which he watched Terry's pretty, puckered face while Terry, gripping
+her wheel, recklessly assumed the responsibilities of their three
+lives, hurling the car on through the moonlit night.
+
+Iki, breathing every now and then a long quivering sigh and forgetting
+to breathe betweenwhiles, held on tightly with both hands.
+
+"Here's where I get down," said Steve again.  Here the road followed
+the line of his north fence; less than a mile to the southward he could
+see a light like a fallen star, gleaming cheerfully through the trees.
+
+He sensed rather than saw a quick stiffening of Terry's already tense
+little body; fancied that the car was steadily taking on greater speed,
+read Terry's purpose in a flash.  If he forced her to carry him, why
+then she would take him as far out of his way as possible.
+
+"Terry Temple!" he cried sharply, leaning in a little toward her.
+"What's the matter with you anyway?  What if we're not friends exactly?
+I never did you any harm, did I?  Why, good Lord, girl, when a man
+tells you his horse has been shot under him; when he is trying to
+overhaul the crook at the bottom of the whole mess whom you hate as
+well as I do--  Oh, I mean Blenham and you know it----"
+
+"Liar!" cried Terry, flashing her eyes at him, and back to the road
+alternately white with the moon and black with shadows.  "Liar on two
+counts!  Didn't I see your horse this afternoon?  Tied in front of
+Wimble's whiskey joint?  Oh, it's where I'd expect him!  Well--and you
+needn't think I looked to see or cared, either--when I came by just
+now, leaving town, I saw your horse standing there yet.  So you
+needn't----"
+
+"That couldn't be," muttered Steve.  "And yet--  Anyhow, I've got to
+get off here.  Will you stop, please?"
+
+"No, I won't stop please!  Nobody asked you to ride that I know of.
+Get off the same way you got on!"
+
+Packard realized two things very clearly then:
+
+If he jumped with the car going at its present speed he would probably
+break his neck; if he gave any considerable time to arguing the matter
+with her he would be carried as far in five minutes as he could walk in
+an hour.
+
+"I mean business to-night," he told her bluntly.  "If you don't slow
+down before I count ten I am going to lean out a little--like this--and
+shoot a hole in your tire.  Then, if you keep on, I'll shoot a hole in
+the other tire.  Understand?"
+
+Terry laughed mockingly.
+
+"You wouldn't dare!" she told him serenely.  "That would be some kind
+of a crime; they could put you in jail for it.  You'd be scared to."
+
+"One, two, three, four, five," he counted briskly.
+
+"I would seek to interrupt to advise, oh, Miss Lady!" chattered Iki.
+"His voice has the sound of bloodthirstiness."
+
+"Six, seven, eight, nine--ten," counted Packard.
+
+Terry sniffed.  He leaned out, she saw the glint of the moon upon his
+revolver.
+
+She threw out her clutch and jammed down both brakes, hard.  Steve
+swung out and down to the ground.  The car, as though it had gained
+fresh power from the fact of being freed of his weight, shot forward,
+stopped again.
+
+"Not exactly friends?" cried Terry, and he marked a new trembling in
+her voice.  "I should say not.  You--you darned snake, you!"
+
+And she was gone, spinning along into the night, hidden from him by the
+first hill around whose base the road curved.  He stared after her a
+moment, shrugged, turned his back, and strode rapidly toward the Ranch
+Number Ten corrals.
+
+He had planned correctly; he had correctly measured Blenham's impulses
+and desires.  Further, he had come in time, just in time.
+
+The light was in the ranch-house.  Though but little after eleven
+o'clock it was dark within the bunk-house, the men long ago asleep.
+But Barbee was awake, his wits about him; his voice and Blenham's, both
+quiet, met Steve's ears as he slipped about the corner of the house,
+coming under the window where the light was.
+
+Blenham was talking now.  He sat loosely in a chair, his hands one upon
+the other, idle in his lap.  Barbee, his eyes narrowed and watchful,
+stood at the far side of the room.  On the floor, near his feet, was a
+revolver; from its position Steve guessed that Barbee had just kicked
+it safely out of Blenham's reach.  Barbee's own gun was in the boy's
+hand.
+
+"You're a pretty foxy kid, Barbee," Blenham was saying tonelessly.
+"You got the drop on me; you're the firs' man as ever did that little
+trick.  Yes; you're a pretty foxy kid!"
+
+Barbee shrugged and spat and answered Blenham with a curse and a
+grunted:
+
+"Nobody's askin' your opinion, Blenham."
+
+But Steve saw and Blenham must have seen the gleam of triumph in
+Barbee's eye.
+
+"What are you goin' to do with me?" asked Blenham presently.
+
+"Nothin'," replied Barbee.  "Jus' keep you where I got you until Steve
+Packard comes back.  Which ought to be mos' any time now."
+
+"He'll be late," said Blenham.  "He won't be here for two or three
+hours.  Suppose while we wait, let's me an' you talk!" he said sharply,
+sitting forward in his chair.
+
+"Well?" said Barbee.  "Talk an' be damned to you, Blenham.  Only you
+don't talk yourself out'n the hole you're in right now.  An', I promise
+you, you make a quick jump for a get-away, an' I'll shoot you dead."
+
+"I know," Blenham nodded.  "You'd do it.  But I ain't goin' to try any
+fool thing like that.  I'm jus' goin'--  Like I said to you, let's
+talk.  What's Packard payin' you for this night's work?"
+
+"He's no tightwad, if that's what you're drivin' at.  I'd of done
+to-night's job an' glad of the chance an' you know it, Blenham, an'
+never asked pay for it.  But I'm drawin' down a whole month's pay
+extra, if I've got you like you are when he comes in."
+
+Blenham laughed softly.  Then he moved the hands resting in his lap.
+Packard saw that they were folded loosely about an old leather wallet.
+
+"He's sure payin' you generous, Barbee," jeered Blenham.  "You know it!
+Why, look here: This is yours an' more to trail it if you jus' pocket
+your gun an' let me go!  I ain't askin' much an' I'm payin' my way.
+Look it over, kid!"
+
+Packard saw how he stripped a bank-note from a thin sheaf of its
+fellows; how he tossed it toward Barbee.  It fell to the floor; a
+little draft set it drifting; Blenham set his foot upon it.
+
+"Look at it!" he snapped, for the first time giving sign of the strain
+he was laboring under.  "It's yours--if you ain't a fool."
+
+Barbee, not to be tricked were this some ruse to snare his attention,
+said crisply:
+
+"Put you' han's up while I get it!"
+
+Blenham obeyed; Barbee stooped swiftly, all the while with eyes riveted
+on his prisoner.  Then, the muzzle of his gun raised another inch, he
+looked at what he held.  When he looked back at Blenham his eyes were
+round, his mouth stood a little open.
+
+"My God!" he gasped.  "It's a thousan' dollars!"
+
+"Yes," said Blenham quietly.  "It's a thousan' dollars.  That's quite a
+little wad, Barbee; it's more, anyhow, than an extra month's wages,
+ain't it?  An' it's yours if you want it!  Think of the times you can
+go on, think of the way you could make Red Creek open its eyes!  An'
+there's more to come if you take that an' let me go an' jus' watch my
+play an' take a chance with me when I say so.  What's the word, Barbee?"
+
+Packard, having held back thus long, remained motionless, glimpsing
+unexpectedly something of Barbee's soul; watching a little human drama,
+become spectator to the battle royal of the two contending factions
+which made up a man's self.
+
+It seemed to him that young Barbee was pale and grew paler; that a
+shiver ran through him; that he was, for the moment, like one drugged.
+And, side by side, two emotions, both primal and unmistakable, peered
+out of his eyes: a savage hatred of Blenham, a leaping greed of gold.
+
+Thus for a little forgetting his own interest in this scene, Packard
+watched, wondering what the outcome would be.  Blenham tempted.  Barbee
+hesitated.
+
+"Right here in my hand," Blenham was saying coldly, "are nine more like
+that, Barbee.  Ten thousan' dollars in all.  One thousan' to go to you
+for jus' keepin' out of my way.  I said once you're a foxy kid.  Now
+let's see if you are.  Tie to a man like me that's out to make a pile,
+a damn big pile, Barbee--or hang to a fool like Steve Packard an' take
+his pay in dribbles an' let him be the one that gathers in all the big
+kale.  Him an' me when I get things goin' right; him an' me with you
+jus' gettin' the scraps.  Which is it?  Eh, kid?  Which way're you
+goin'?"
+
+Barbee held the bank-note in his left hand; slowly his calloused
+fingers closed tightly about it, crumpling it, clutching it as though
+they would never release it.  And then slowly the fingers opened so
+that the wrinkled bit of paper lay in his palm under his eyes.  Barbee
+ran his tongue back and forth between his dry lips.  Steve, staring in
+at him through the window, saw in his eyes the two lights, that of
+hate, that of covetousness; they burned side by side as a yellow candle
+and a red might have done.
+
+Which way would Barbee go?  Did Barbee know?  Blenham did not; Steve
+did not.  Suddenly, seeing how the two fires flickered in Barbee's
+eyes, Steve cried out within himself:
+
+"It's unfair!  It's asking too much of Barbee!"
+
+And aloud, shoving the nose of a Colt .45 through the window-pane which
+splintered noisily:
+
+"Hands up there, Blenham!  Good boy, Barbee.  You've got him, all
+right!  Watch him while I slip in."
+
+Blenham jumped to his feet, threw out his arms, and cursed savagely.
+Then, grown abruptly quiet, he dropped back into his chair, his two big
+hands loose about the wallet hidden under them.  Steve threw a leg over
+the window-sill and came in, his gun ready, his eyes taking stock of
+Barbee while they appeared to be for Blenham only.  And Barbee, white
+now as he had never been until now, shivered, filled his lungs with a
+long sigh, and fell back a couple of paces, staring at Steve, at
+Blenham, but most of all at the thing in his hand.
+
+"You put it across, Barbee!" cried Steve heartily.
+
+He reached forward and snatched the wallet from Blenham's knee.
+Blenham's big hands, clenching slowly, fell to his sides; Blenham's
+eyes, sullen and evil, clung steadily to Packard's.
+
+"You've saved me my inheritance to-night; you've helped save me my
+ranch.  You've helped me square the game with a dirty dog named
+Blenham!"
+
+Like a dog Blenham showed his teeth.  His drawn face was stamped in the
+image of fury.
+
+"You're a sweet picture of a dead game sport," he growled, shifting
+nervously in his chair.  "I ain't got a gun; you an' Barbee have; go
+ahead an' call me all the names you like!"
+
+Steve counted the bank-notes in the wallet.  Blenham had spoken truly;
+there were nine one-thousand-dollar bills.  He put out his hand to
+Barbee for the tenth.  Barbee, staring strangely like one rudely
+awakened from sleep and not yet certain of his surroundings, let the
+bank-note go.  His eyes, leaving it at last to rest steadily on
+Blenham, looked red and ugly.  Packard slipped the wallet into his
+shirt.
+
+"Barbee," he said quietly, while he busied his eyes with Blenham's
+slightest movement, "this money was left to me by my father.  He gave
+it to Bill Royce to keep for me.  You know all that Bill has stood from
+Blenham; now you know why.  There's quite a load of scoundrelism dumped
+off at Blenham's door.  And, thanks to you, we've got the dead wood on
+him at last!"
+
+"What are you goin' to do with him?"  Barbee, speaking for the first
+time since Steve's entrance, was husky-voiced.  Blenham shifted again
+in his chair; now there was only cold hatred in the boy's look.  "We'd
+ought to be able to put him in the pen for a good long time."
+
+Blenham laughed jeeringly.
+
+"Try it!" he blustered.  "See what you can prove, actually prove to a
+jury an' a judge!  Try it!  You go to the law an' see----"
+
+"To hell with the law!" cut in Steve, and though his voice was not
+lifted for the imprecation Blenham shot a quick, startled look at him.
+
+And both Blenham and Barbee, listening wonderingly, understood that
+here was a Packard talking; that in the shoes of the grandson, even
+now, there might be standing the big bulk of the uncompromising
+grandfather.
+
+"What do I want with the law now?  Blenham would wriggle out, I
+suppose; or he would get a light sentence and trim that down to nothing
+with good behavior.  No, Blenham, if you ever go to jail it will be
+somebody's else doing; not mine.  Is it just jail for the man who shot
+down my old pardner in cold blood, just for the sake of a handful of
+money?  Is it to be just jail for the man who has made Bill Royce's
+life a hell for six months?  Just jail for the brute who had a horse
+shot under me to-night?  Why, damn you--" and at last his voice broke
+through the ice of restraint and rang out angrily, full of menace--"do
+you think I'm going to let you go out of my hands into the hands of
+judge and jury after all you've done?"
+
+Blenham sprang up, drawing back.  The muzzle of Steve's .45 followed
+him threateningly.
+
+"Barbee," said Packard, his voice once more under control, "go to the
+bunk-house and send Bill Royce here.  Don't wake the other boys.  Then
+you come back here with him.  And bring a whip with you."
+
+"A whip?" repeated Barbee.
+
+"Yes; a whip.  Any kind you can lay your hands to in a hurry; quirt or
+buggy-whip or bull-whip!"
+
+Blenham watched Barbee go.  Then, drawn back into a corner of the room,
+sullen and vigilant, he stood biting nervously at a big, clenched,
+hairy fist.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+IN A DARK ROOM
+
+Bill Royce, hastily and but half dressed, came promptly to the house,
+stumbling along at Barbee's heels.  Blenham, his silence and
+watchfulness unbroken, still chewed at his fist.  Barbee brought a
+heavy blacksnake in his hand.
+
+"Barbee says you want me, Steve?" said Royce from the threshold.  "An'
+that Blenham's here?"
+
+"Yes, Bill," Steve answered.  And to Barbee, "Close the door behind
+you.  Lock it.  Give me the key.  Now fasten the shutters across both
+windows."
+
+Barbee obeyed silently.  Blenham's eyes followed him, seeming
+fascinated by the whip in Barbee's hand.
+
+"Listen a minute, Bill," said Steve when Barbee had done.  "I want to
+tell you something."
+
+And, as briefly as might be, he told Royce of the ten dollar bills
+substituted for the real legacy, of the results of his evening in Red
+Creek, of Barbee's trapping Blenham, of the recovery of the ten
+thousand dollars, of a horse shot dead on the Red Creek road.
+
+"Then," said Royce at the end of it, his mind catching eagerly one
+outstanding fact, "I was right, Steve?  An' it was Blenham as gave me
+both barrels of Johnny Mills's shot-gun?  It was Blenham for sure,
+wasn't it, Steve?"
+
+"Yes, Bill.  It was Blenham."
+
+"An'--an' Blenham's right across there now?  It's him I can hear
+breathin', Steve?"
+
+"Yes, Bill."
+
+"An'--an' what for did you sen' for me, Steve?  What are you goin' to
+do to him?"
+
+Packard beckoned to Barbee.  The boy came quickly to his side, giving
+him the blacksnake.  Steve laid it across Bill Royce's hand.
+
+"I'm going to give him a taste of that, Bill," he said.  "And I wanted
+you here.  You can't see it; but before I am through with him, you can
+hear it!"
+
+"Goin' to tie him up an' whip him, Steve?  That it?"
+
+"Pack of low-bred mongrel pups!" cried Blenham wrathfully, for the
+first time breaking his silence.  "Sneakin', low-lived curs an'
+cowards!"
+
+"That it, Steve?" persisted Royce.  "Goin' to tie him up an' give him a
+whippin' with a blacksnake?"
+
+"I am going to whip him--for your sake, Bill," answered Steve sternly.
+
+He threw off his coat, tossing it behind him.
+
+"Get the chairs and table out of the way, Barbee!  No, I am not going
+to tie him up; that isn't necessary, Bill.  I can handle him with my
+hands without tying him; I am going to do it.  And then I am going to
+take the whip and lay it across him until his hide is in strips--or
+until he begs to be let go.  Ready, Blenham?"
+
+"Mean that?" snarled Blenham, a new look in his eye.  "Mean you're
+goin' to give me an even break?"
+
+But Bill Royce, fairly trembling with an eagerness strange to him, had
+clutched at Steve's arm, had found it, was holding him back, crying out
+excitedly:
+
+"You're a good pal, Stevie; you're the best pal as ever was an' I know
+it!  Didn't I always know you'd be like this?  But can't you see,
+Stevie, can't you see it ain't enough another man should lick him, even
+when that man's my pardner, even when it's Stevie himself doin' it!
+Ain't I been waitin' an' waitin' to get my hands on him!"
+
+Blenham, a little comforted by Steve's words, jeered openly now.
+
+"Come on, Blind Billy," he taunted.  "An' when I've throwed you into
+the junk pile I'll take on your friends!  One at the time--you know how
+the sayin' goes!"
+
+Steve was shaking Royce's hand from his arm.
+
+"Let me do this for you, Bill," he said firmly.  "It's only fair.  If
+you could see, it would be different."
+
+But Royce clung on desperately, crying out insistently:
+
+"Blind as I am I can lick him!  I know I can lick him!  Ain't I done it
+in my sleep a dozen times, a dozen ways?  Ain't I always promised
+myself sometime I'd get him in my two hands, I'd feel him wriggle an'
+squirm?  This is my fight, Steve, an'--Blenham, where are you?"
+
+"Here!" cried Blenham.  "An' gettin' tired of waitin'!"
+
+Royce plunged toward him.  But Steve Packard caught his old friend
+about the body, holding him back a moment.
+
+"Easy, Bill," he said gently.  "Easy.  I was wrong, you are right.
+It's your fight.  But take your time.  Get your coat off.  Barbee,
+stand by that window there; if Blenham tries to get out stop him.  I'll
+stand here.  All ready, Bill?"
+
+"Ready!" cried Royce, his voice a roar of eagerness.
+
+"All ready, Blenham?"
+
+"Ain't I said it?" jeered Blenham.
+
+"Then--" and suddenly Steve had snatched up the lamp, blowing down the
+chimney and plunging the room into thick darkness--"go to it!  The
+light is out, Bill!  The room is pitch-black.  You're as well off as he
+is.  And now, old pardner.  Now!"
+
+It was suddenly very still in the room; the thick, impenetrable
+darkness seemed almost a palpable curtain screening what went forward;
+the silence was for a little literally breathless.
+
+Then there came the first faint, tell-tale sound, the slow, tortured
+creaking of a board as a man put his weight upon it.  Through the
+darkness, across the room, Bill Royce was going slowly, questing the
+man who, surprised by the action of Steve's which had reduced his
+advantage over a blind man, held to his corner.  And then, stranger
+sound still through that tense silence, came Bill Royce's low laugh.
+
+"Good boy, Steve," he said softly.  "I'd never thought of that!  In the
+dark Blenham's as blind as me!  How do you like it, Blenham?  How'd you
+like to have it this way all the time?"
+
+Blenham's only answer lay in his leaping forward, out from his corner,
+and striking; Royce's answer to that was another quiet laugh.  He had
+slipped aside; Blenham had flailed at the thin air; Royce, grown still
+again, knew one of the moments of sheer joy which had been his during
+these last weary months.
+
+Packard and Barbee, frowning unavailingly toward each little noise,
+could only guess at what went forward so few inches from them.  A
+scraping foot might be either Royce's or Blenham's; a long, deep sigh
+or quick breathing now here, now there, might emanate from either man.
+The strange thing, thought both Barbee and Packard, was that even ten
+seconds could pass without these two men at each other's throats.
+
+But, a supreme moment his at last, Bill Royce found himself grown
+miserly in its expenditure; he would dribble the golden seconds through
+his fingers, he would draw out the experience, tasting its joy fully.
+
+For the moment his blindness was no greater than Blenham's; for a
+little Blenham would grope and wonder and hesitate and grow tense after
+the fashion the blind man knew so well.  And then at the end, when an
+end could no longer be delayed, Bill Royce would mete out the
+long-delayed punishment.
+
+But, since the natures of both men were downright, since their hatreds
+were outright, since there was little of finesse in either and a great
+impatience stirring both, Royce's playing with Blenham was short.
+
+There came a sudden shuffling of feet--and Royce's laugh; a blow
+landing heavily--and Royce's laugh; another blow, a grunt, and a panted
+curse from Blenham--and Royce's laugh.
+
+And then only a scraping of feet up and down, back and forth along the
+bare floor, the thudding of heavy shoulders into an unexpected wall,
+the impact of fist against body.  In the utter darkness the two men
+gripped each other, struck, swayed together, staggered apart, only to
+come together again to strike harder, more merciless blows.
+
+Packard and Barbee now held their breaths while the others panted
+freely; both Packard and Barbee, stepping quickly now this way and now
+that as the battling forms swayed up and down, sought to gauge what was
+happening by the sounds which came to their ears.
+
+Muttered imprecations, scuffling feet in a rude dance of rage, another
+heavy, thudding blow, a coughing curse.  Whose?  Blenham's, since after
+it came Bill Royce's laugh.  Another blow, fresh pounding and scraping
+of boots--blow on top of blow, curse on top of curse--a man falling
+heavily----
+
+Who was down?  Royce of Blenham?
+
+"Bill!" called Packard.  "Bill!"
+
+No answer save that of two big bodies rolling together on the floor.
+Both were down, Royce and Blenham.  Both were fighting, wordless and
+infuriated.  Who was on top?
+
+No man on top long, no man under the other more than a second.  The
+rolling bodies struck against Packard's leg and he drew back, giving
+them room.  The dust puffing up from the floor filled his nostrils.
+The room was becoming unendurably close, sickeningly close.  The sweat
+must be streaming from both men by now.  Packard sniffed, fancying the
+acrid smell of fresh blood.  The big bulks rolled and threshed and
+whipped here and there----
+
+"Hell!"
+
+It was a cry of mingled rage and pain; it came bursting explosively
+from Blenham's lips.  Royce's laugh followed it; Packard shivered.
+
+"Bill!" he cried.  "Bill!"
+
+Royce did not answer; perhaps for the very good reason that he did not
+hear.  There were other matters now engaging his attention solely and
+exclusively.  The fighting fury, the hate frenzy was riding him and he
+in turn was riding his enemy.  Cool sanity and hot blood-lust do not
+find places side by side in the same brain.  A second time came the
+horrible cry from Blenham.  Packard struck a match hastily and lighted
+the lamp.
+
+Packard and Barbee together dragged Royce away, letting Blenham lie
+there.  Both men were naked to their waists, their shirts and
+undershirts in rags and strips hanging grotesquely about their hips;
+Royce looked like some hideously painted burlesque of a ballet-dancer
+in a comic skirt.  Only there was nothing of burlesque or comedy in his
+face.
+
+Packard, glancing from him down to the tortured body of Blenham that
+breathed jerkily, noisily, turned with a sudden revulsion of feeling
+and hurled the heavy blacksnake away from him.  He had not fancied the
+sharp smell of fresh blood.
+
+"I got him!" said Royce shakily.  "With my two hands, I got him!
+Didn't I, Stevie?"
+
+"Better than you know, Bill!" muttered Packard.  "Better than you know."
+
+The thing had been an accident, at least in so far as Bill Royce's
+intent was concerned.  Packard knew that; he knew that his old pardner
+fought hard, fought mercilessly, but fought fair.  But in a larger
+sense was it an accident?  Or rather a mere retributive punishment
+decreed by an eternal justice?  There in the pitch dark, for no man to
+see the how of it, this is perhaps what had happened:
+
+There had been the old, long-rowelled Mexican spur hanging on the wall;
+Royce's shoulder or Blenham's had knocked it down; their feet had
+pushed it out to the middle of the floor.  They had fallen, together,
+heavily; they had rolled.  Blenham had gone over on his face, Royce's
+hands worrying him.  The spur----
+
+But it mattered little how it had come about.  The result was the
+thing.  Blenham would never see with his right eye again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+AT THE LUMBER CAMP
+
+They did what they could for Blenham--which was but little--and let him
+go when he was ready.  Before daylight he had ridden away, dead white,
+sick-looking, and wordless save for his parting words in a strangely
+quiet voice--
+
+"I'll get all three of you for this, s'elp me!"
+
+They had bound his head up in a strip torn from an old sheet; the last
+they saw of him in the uncertain light was this bandage, rising and
+falling slowly as his horse bore him away.
+
+Blenham gone, Barbee and Bill Royce went down to the bunk-house again,
+slipping in quietly.  Steve Packard, alone in the ranch-house, sat
+smoking his pipe for half an hour.  Then he went to bed, the bank-notes
+still in his shirt, his gun under his pillow.
+
+Twice last night he had said to Joe Woods, the lumber-camp boss, "I'll
+see you in the morning."
+
+Morning come, Steve breakfasted early, saddled his horse, and turned
+out across the fields to meet the rising sun.  And it seemed to his
+fancies, set a-tingle in the early dawn freshness, that the rising sun,
+ancient symbol of youth and vigor and hope with triumph's wings, was
+coming to meet him.
+
+At this period of the day, especially when he rides and is alone and
+the forests thicken all about him, man is prone to confidence.  It had
+been a simple matter, so he looked upon it now, to have discovered the
+truth of the substituted bills last night; as simple a matter had been
+his winning at seven-and-a-half or his whipping big Joe Woods or his
+recovery of the lost legacy.
+
+Blenham, or rather an agent of Blenham, had killed his horse; what
+then?  His destiny had stepped forward; Terry had come; he had whizzed
+back to the ranch in her car and on time.
+
+What if the ranch were mortgaged and to the hardest man in seven
+counties?  What though his grandfather had obviously fallen supine
+before the old man's tempting sin, which is avarice, and was bound to
+break him?  Was fate not playing him for her favorite?
+
+To Steve Packard, riding to meet the sun and to keep his promise to the
+lumber boss, the world just now was an exceedingly bright and lovely
+place; in this hour of a leaping optimism he could even picture Terry
+Temple in a companionably laughing mood.
+
+So early did he take to saddle that the fag end of the dawn was still
+sweet in the air when he passed under the great limbs of the stragglers
+of the forests clothing his eastern hill-slopes.  He noted how between
+the widely separated boles the grass was thick and rich and untrampled;
+reserved against the time of need.  There was no stock here yet.
+
+He passed on, swung into the little-used trail which brought him first
+to the McKittrick cabin where a double-barrelled shot-gun six months
+ago had brought Bill Royce his blindness; then to the lumber-camp a
+mile further on.  Both were on the bank of Packard's Creek; the flume
+constructed by Joe Woods's men followed the line of the stream.
+
+The new sun in his eyes, Steve drew his hat low down on his forehead
+and looked curiously about him.  The timberjacks had come only
+recently; so much was obvious.  They had come to stay; that was as
+plainly to be seen.  Rough slabs of green timber, still drying and
+twisting and splitting as it did so, had been knocked together rudely
+to make a long, low building where cook and cookstove and a two-plank
+table indicated both kitchen and dining-room.
+
+A half-dozen other shacks and lean-tos, seen here and there through the
+trees, completed the camp.  Great fallen trees--they were taking only
+the full-grown timber--looking helpless and hopeless, lay this way and
+that like broken giants, majestically resigned to the conqueror's axe.
+
+Here in the peace and quiet of the pinking day this inroad of
+commercialism struck Steve suddenly both as slaughter and sacrilege;
+among the stalwart standing patriarchs and their bowed brethren he sat
+his horse staring frowningly at the little ugly clutter of buildings
+housing the invaders.
+
+"My beloved old granddad had his nerve with him," he grunted as he rode
+on into the tiny settlement.  "As usual!"
+
+The cook, yawning, bleary-eyed, unthinkably tousled, was just
+bestirring himself.  Steve saw his back and a trailing suspender as he
+went into the cook-shed carrying some kindling-wood in one hand and a
+bucket of water in the other.  It was only when Packard, having ridden
+to his door and looked in, startled the cook into swinging about, that
+the dull-eyed signs of a night of dissipation showed in the other's
+face.
+
+"Up late last night, I'll bet," laughed Steve, easing himself in the
+saddle.  The cook made a face unmistakably eloquent of a bad taste in
+his mouth and went down on his knees before his stove, settling slowly
+like a man with stiff, rheumatic joints or else a head which he did not
+intend to jar.
+
+"Drunk las' night," he growled, settling back on his haunches as his
+fire caught.  "A man that'll get drunk is a damn' fool.  I'm t'rough
+wid it."
+
+"Where's Woods?" asked Steve.  "Up yet?"
+
+"Yes, rot him, he's up.  He's always up.  He's--holy smoke, I got a
+head!"
+
+"Where is he?" demanded Packard.
+
+The cook rose gently and for a moment clasped his head with both hands.
+Then he immersed it gradually in his bucket of icy water.  After which,
+drying himself with a dirty towel and setting the bucket of water on
+his stove, he turned red-rimmed eyes upon Steve.
+
+"You're the guy I fed the other mornin', ain't you?" he asked.
+
+Steve nodded.
+
+"More'n which," continued the cook, "you're the guy as licked Woodsy
+las' night in Red Crick?"
+
+Again Steve nodded.
+
+"An' again you're claimin' to run the ranch here?  An' to own it?  An'
+to be ol' Hell-Fire's gran'son?"
+
+"I asked you where Woods was," Packard reminded him sharply.  The cook
+threw up his hand as though to ward off a blow.
+
+"Whatcha yellin' in my ear for?" he moaned dismally.  "Want to split my
+head off?  Woodsy's over yonder; talkin' with a man name of Blenham.
+Ever hear of him?"
+
+"Over yonder" plainly meant just across the creek where there was a
+little flat open space among the trees in which stood one of the larger
+shanties.  Steve saw a stove-pipe sticking out crookedly through the
+shed roof; noted a thin spear of smoke.  He spurred across the stream
+and to the timber boss's quarters.
+
+Woods heard him and came out into the brightening morning, drawing the
+door closed behind him.  His eyes, like the cook's though to a lesser
+degree, showed indications of a wild night in town.  Steve guessed that
+he hadn't undressed all night; that he was not entirely sober just now
+though he carried himself steadily and spoke well enough.
+
+"I thought you'd show," said Woods quietly, his big hands down in his
+pockets, his shoulders against the wall.
+
+"What is Blenham doing here?" Steve asked.
+
+Woods narrowed his eyes in a speculative frown.
+
+"He's damn' near dead.  He's waitin' for me to get one of the boys to
+hitch up an' haul him to a doctor.  He says you an' two other guys
+gouged his eye out for him."
+
+"He's a liar," announced Packard angrily.  "The thing was an accident.
+It was a fair fight between him and Bill Royce.  Blenham fell on an old
+spur.  I promised you I'd be here this morning, Woods."
+
+"Yes," said Woods.  "I expected you."
+
+"You were square with me last night," went on Packard quietly.  "I
+appreciate the fact.  If ever I can do you a favor, just say so.  So
+much for that part of it.  Next: Maybe you've heard I'm the owner of
+Ranch Number Ten?  And that I'm running it myself?  I've come over to
+tell you this morning that we're knocking off work here.  I don't want
+any more timber down."
+
+There came a little twitching at the corner of Woods's broad mouth.  He
+made no answer.
+
+"Hear me?" snapped Steve.
+
+"Sure I hear you," said Woods insolently.  "So does Blenham; he's right
+inside where he can hear.  I guess it's him you want to talk with.  I'm
+takin' my orders off'n Blenham an' nobody else."
+
+"I've talked already with Blenham.  I've told him not to set his hoofs
+on my ranch again after to-day.  Since he's pretty badly hurt I'll let
+you haul him to the doctor but I don't want him hauled back.  Further,
+I want work stopped here right now.  The men will be having breakfast
+in a few minutes.  After breakfast you can explain to them and let them
+go."
+
+Woods shrugged.
+
+"My orders, hot out'n Blenham's mouth, is to stick on the job here an'
+saw wood," he said colorlessly.  "I'm takin' my pay off'n him an' I'm
+doin' what he says."
+
+There seemed only a careless indifference in his gesture as he partly
+turned his back, staring up-stream; but the slight movement served to
+show Packard that Woods carried a gun on his hip, in plain sight.
+Well, Woods himself had said--"I expected you!"
+
+Last night and for a definite purpose Steve had armed himself; this
+morning, setting out on this errand, he had tossed the revolver into a
+table drawer at the ranch-house.  He had never been a gunman; if
+circumstance dictated that he must go armed, well and good.  But his
+brows contracted angrily at the display of Woods's readiness for
+gun-play.
+
+"Look here, you Joe Woods!" he cried out.  "And listen, too, you
+Blenham!  I'm no trouble-seeker; I know it's a dead easy thing to start
+a row that will see more than one man dead before it's ended, and
+what's the use?  But I mean to have what is mine in spite of you and
+Hell-Fire Packard and the devil!  The right of the whole deal is as
+plain as one and one: This is my outfit, if it is mortgaged; nobody
+excepting me has any business ordering my timber cut.  And I say that
+it's not going to be cut.  If there is any trouble it's up to you
+fellows."
+
+From Blenham in the cabin came no sound; Woods, having glanced swiftly
+at Packard's angry face, again stared up-stream.
+
+For a little Steve Packard gnawed at his lip, caught in an eddy of
+helpless rage.  Never an answer from Blenham, never an answer from
+Woods; angry already, their silences maddened him.  Across the creek he
+saw the cook standing in his kitchen door, listening and smiling in
+sickly fashion; two or three of the men, coming out for their
+breakfasts, were watching him.
+
+They were an ugly, red-eyed bunch, he thought as he swept them with his
+flashing eyes; they'd fight like dogs for the joy of fighting; soon or
+late, if Blenham persisted, he'd have the job on his hands of throwing
+them off his land.  Of course he could go "higher up"; he could appeal
+to his grandfather.
+
+He could, but in his present mood he had no intention of doing any such
+thing.  His grandfather, before now, should have withdrawn these men.
+
+"Don't ask me to hold my hand!" the old man had shouted at him.  "I'm
+goin' after you tooth an' big toe-nail!"
+
+Well, if the old man wanted trouble and range war----
+
+His blood was rushing swift and hot through his veins; his mind working
+feverishly.  One man alone against the crowd of them, he could do
+nothing.  But he could ride back to the ranch, gather up a dozen men,
+put guns into their hands, be back here in the matter of a couple of
+hours.
+
+He saw the timberjacks as one by one they came out into the clearing by
+the cook's shack; counted them as they went in.  The thought of a
+morning cup of coffee was attracting them; among the faces turned
+briefly his way he recognized several he had seen last night in the Ace
+of Diamonds saloon.  He saw two of them hitching up the big wagon,
+evidently the only conveyance in the camp.  They were getting ready to
+take Blenham.
+
+Suddenly a new light flashed into Steve's eyes; he turned his head
+abruptly that Joe Woods should not see.
+
+"How many men have you got here, Woods?" he asked.
+
+Wondering at the question Woods answered it:
+
+"Fourteen; startin' a new camp across the ridge."
+
+Steve had counted nine men go into the cook's shed; with the cook there
+were ten; the two with the horses made twelve.  There should be two
+more.  He waited.  Meanwhile, secretly so that Woods might not guess
+what he was doing or see the busy hand, he loosened his latigo, seeming
+merely to slouch in his saddle; while he made a half-dozen random
+remarks which set Woods wondering still further, he got his cinch
+loose.  Another man had gone into the kitchen.  Thirteen.
+
+"Fourteen counting you?" he asked Woods.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Then they were all accounted for; two with the horses; eleven in the
+shed; Joe Woods in front of him.
+
+"My cinch is loose," said Packard and dismounted, throwing the stirrup
+up across the saddle out of his way, his fingers going to the latigo
+which he had just loosened.
+
+Woods watched him idly.  Then suddenly both men looked toward the
+kitchen.  The door had been slammed shut; there was a fairly hideous
+racket as of all of the cook's pots and pans falling together; after it
+a boom of laughter, and finally the cook's voice lifted querulously.
+Woods grinned.  Unruffled by Packard's presence he said casually:
+
+"Cookie mos' usually has the hell of a head after a night like las'
+night.  The boys knows it an' has a little fun with him!"
+
+The two men harnessing the horses had evidently guessed as did Woods
+what was happening in the cook's domain; at any rate, they hastily tied
+the horses and hurried to see.  Packard, still busied with his latigo,
+saw them and watched them until the door had shut behind them.
+
+His horse stood between him and Woods.  He tickled the animal in the
+flank; it spun about, pulling back, plunging, drawing Woods's eyes.
+And the next thing which Woods clearly understood was that Steve
+Packard was upon him, that one of Packard's hands was at his throat,
+that the other had gone for the gun on Woods's hip and had gotten it.
+
+"Back into your shack!" commanded Packard, jabbing the muzzle of
+Woods's big automatic hard into Woods's ribs.  "Quick!"
+
+To himself just now Steve had said: "One man against the crowd of them,
+he could do nothing!"  Just exactly what Woods would be thinking; what
+Blenham inside would be thinking; just exactly what the rest of the men
+thought since they turned their backs on him and forgot him in their
+sport of badgering the cook.
+
+What he was doing now was what he would term, did he hear of another
+man attempting it, "A fool thing to do!"  And yet he had told himself
+many a time that a man stood a fair chance to get away with the
+unexpected if he hit quick and hard and kept his wits about him.
+
+Woods, taken thoroughly aback, allowed himself to be driven again into
+his cabin.  Packard followed and closed the door.  Within was Blenham,
+lying on Woods's bunk, his head still swathed, a half-empty whiskey
+bottle on the floor at his side.  With one watery eye he looked from
+one to the other of the two men bursting in on him.
+
+"Blenham," cried Packard, standing over him while he was careful not to
+lose sight of Joe Woods's working face, "I want work stopped here and
+this crowd of men off the ranch.  You heard what I said outside, didn't
+you?"
+
+Blenham answered heavily:
+
+"Woods, don't you pay no attention to what this man says.  You keep
+your men on the job.  An' if you got another drop of whiskey----"
+
+"The bottle's where you put it," retorted Woods.  "Under your pillow."
+
+Blenham rolled on his side, slipping his hand under his pillow.  All
+the time his one red eye shone evilly on Steve, who, his wits about
+him, stepped back into the corner whence he might at the same time
+watch Woods and that hand of Blenham's which was making its stupid
+little play of seeking a bottle.
+
+"Take it out by the neck, Blenham," said Steve sternly.  "Take it out
+by the neck and pass it to me, butt end first!  _Sabe_?  I'm guessing
+the kind of drink you'd like to set up."
+
+Blenham's one eye and Steve's two clashed; Woods watched interestedly.
+He even laughed as at last, with an exclamation which was as much a
+groan as a curse, Blenham jerked out his gun and flung it down on his
+quilt.  Steve took it up and shoved it into his pocket.
+
+"There's jus' a han'ful of men over to the cookhouse," said Woods
+humorously.  "Havin' stuck up me an' Blenham you oughtn't to have no
+trouble over there!"
+
+"How many men?" demanded Steve quietly.  "Thirteen, if I counted right,
+eh, Woods?  That's no kind of a number to pin your hopes on!  And now
+listen; I'll cut it short: If there is any trouble this morning, if any
+man gets hurt, remember that this is my land, that you jaspers are
+trespassing, that I am simply defending my property.  In other words,
+you're in wrong.  You'll be skating on pretty thin ice if you just
+plead later on that you were obeying orders from Blenham; follow
+Blenham long enough and you'll get to the pen.  Now, I'm going outside.
+You and Blenham stay in here until I call for you.  I'll shut the door;
+you leave it shut.  Take time to roll yourself a smoke and think things
+over before you start anything, Joe Woods."
+
+Then swiftly he whipped open the door, stepped out, and snapped it shut
+after him.
+
+"I'm taking a chance," he muttered, his eyes hard, his jaw set and
+thrust forward.  "A good long chance.  But that's the way to play the
+game!"
+
+The door of the cook's shed, facing him from across the creek, was
+still closed.  Steve moved a dozen paces down-stream; now he could
+command Woods's cabin with the tail of his eye, look straight into the
+kitchen when the door opened, keep an eye upon the one little square
+window.
+
+"It's all in the cards," he told himself grimly.  "A man can win a jack
+pot on a pair of deuces, if he plays the game right!"
+
+At this point Packard's Creek is narrow; the distance between the spot
+where he stood and the door of the cook-shed was not over forty feet.
+He shifted Woods's gun to his left hand, taking into his right
+Blenham's old-style revolver which was more to his fancy.  Then, to get
+matters under way in as emphatic a manner as he knew how, he sent a
+bullet crashing through the cook's roof.
+
+The murmur of voices died away suddenly; it was intensely still for a
+moment; then there was a scrambling, a scraping of heavy boots and
+dragging benches, and the cook's door snapped back against the outside
+wall, the opening filled with hulking forms, as men crowded to see what
+was happening.  What they saw was the nose of Blenham's gun in Steve's
+hand.
+
+"Back up there," shouted Packard.  "Stand still while you listen to me."
+
+They hesitated, wondering.  A man growled something, his voice
+deep-throated and truculent.  Another man laughed.  The forms filling
+the doorway began a slow bulging outward as other forms behind crowded
+upon them.
+
+Within Woods's cabin there was a little noise.
+
+"You men are leaving to-day," said Steve hastily.  "Just as fast as you
+can pull your freight.  Blenham and Woods are going with you.  All told
+there are above a dozen of you and only one of me.  But I've got
+Woods's gun and Blenham's and I happen to mean business.  This is my
+outfit; if you fellows start anything and there is trouble, why you're
+on the wrong side of the fence.  Besides, you're apt to get hurt.
+Blenham and Woods are quitting cold; so far as I can see you boys would
+be a pack of fools to make more of a stand than they are doing."
+
+The man who had laughed and who now thrust his face forward through his
+companions, grinned widely and announced:
+
+"We mightn't worry none about where Blenham an' Joe get off.  But we
+ain't had our breakfasts yet!"
+
+"You don't get any breakfast on my land!" said Steve sharply, more
+afraid just now of having to do with good nature than with anger.
+
+For if the dozen men there simply laughed and stepped out and
+dispersed, his hands would be tied; he couldn't shoot down a lot of
+joking men and he knew it.  And they would know it.
+
+"You're on your way right now!  You, there!"  This to a big,
+stoop-shouldered young giant in the fore, blue-eyed, straw-haired,
+northern-looking.  "Step out this way, Sandy!  And step lively."
+
+The northerner shrugged and looked belligerent.  Steve moistened his
+lips.
+
+"You can't bluff me--" began the northerner.
+
+And Steve knew that, having gone this far, he could not stop at
+bluffing.  And he knew that he must not seem to hesitate.
+
+"I can shoot as straight as most men," he said smoothly.  "But
+sometimes I miss an inch or two at this distance.  You men who don't
+want to take any unnecessary chances had better give Sandy a little
+more elbow-room!"
+
+The stoop-shouldered man squared himself a little, jerked up his head,
+took on a fresh air of defiance.  Slowly Steve lifted the muzzle of his
+gun--slowly a man drew back from the northerner, a man fell away to the
+right, a man drew a hasty pace back at the left.  He was left standing
+in the middle of the open doorway.  He shifted a little, doubled his
+fists at his sides, twisted his head.
+
+Again a noise from Woods's cabin.  Steve saw that the door had quietly
+opened six inches.  There was a quick movement within; the door was
+flung wide open.  Woods was standing in the opening, a rifle in his
+hands, the barrel trained on Steve's chest.  Steve saw the look in
+Woods's eye, whirled and fired first.  The rifle bullet cut whistling
+high through the air; Woods dropped the rifle and reeled and went down
+under the impact of a leaden missile from a forty-five calibre
+revolver.  The rifle lay just outside now.
+
+The squat young giant with the blue eyes and shock head of hair had not
+stirred.  His mouth was open; his face was stupidly expressionless.
+
+"Throw up your hands and step outside!" Steve called to him roughly.
+
+The man started, looked swiftly about him, stepped forward, lifting his
+big hands.  They were still clenched but opened slowly and loosely as
+they went above his head.
+
+"Turn your back this way," commanded Steve, feeling his mastery of the
+moment and knowing that he must drive his advantage swiftly.  "Belly to
+the wall.  That's it.  Next!"
+
+A man, the man who had twice laughed, stepped forward eagerly.  He
+needed no invitation to lift his hands, nor yet to go to the other's
+side, his face to the wall.  His eyes were bulging a little; they were
+fixed not on Steve Packard but on the body of Joe Woods.  The timber
+boss lay across the threshold, half in, half out, twisting a little
+where he lay.
+
+Now, one after another, speaking in low voices or not at all, the
+timber crew came out into the stillness of the new day.  Steve counted
+them as they appeared, always keeping the tail of his eye on Woods's
+door, always realizing that Blenham was still to be dealt with, always
+watchful of the small square window in the cook's shed.  Once he saw a
+face there; he called out warningly and the face hastily withdrew.
+
+At last they were outside, thirteen men with their backs to him, their
+hands lifted.  Stepping backward Steve went to Woods's cabin.
+
+"Come out, Blenham," he called curtly.
+
+Blenham cursed him but came.  Stepping over Woods's body he said
+threateningly:
+
+"Killed him, have you?  You'll swing for that."
+
+"Stand where you are, Blenham."  He wondered dully if he had killed
+Woods.  He considered the matter almost impersonally just now; the game
+wasn't yet played, cards were out, the mind must be cool, the eye
+quick.  "You two boys on the end come over here and help me with Woods."
+
+Again Woods's big body twisted; it even turned half over now, and Woods
+sat up.  His hand went to his shoulder; Steve saw the hand go red.
+Woods's face was white and drawn with pain.  His eyes went to the rifle
+at his feet.  Steve stepped forward, took the thing up, tossed it back
+into the cabin.  Woods swayed, pitched a little forward, caught
+himself, steadied himself with a hand on the door-jamb, and shakily
+drew himself to his feet.  Steve marvelled at him.
+
+"If you like, Woods," he said quietly, "I'll have you taken over to my
+place and will send for a doctor for you."
+
+"Aw, hell, I ain't hurt bad," said Woods.
+
+Steve saw how his brows contracted as he spoke.  The red hand was laid
+rather hurriedly on the shoulder of one of the two men whom Steve had
+summoned across the creek.
+
+Blenham turned away and went down-stream, toward the big wagon.  Woods
+followed, walking slowly and painfully, leaning now and again on his
+support.
+
+As Steve called to them the men lined up along the wall of the cook's
+shed, turned, and, their hands still lifted, went down-stream.  One
+after another they climbed up into the wagon.  Two or three laughed;
+for the most part there were only black faces and growing anger.  Many
+of them had drunk much and slept little last night; not a man of them
+but missed his coffee.
+
+Packard caught up his horse's reins and swung into the saddle calling
+out:
+
+"I don't know anything you're waiting for.  Climb into the seat,
+somebody.  Get started.  Blenham and Woods both need a doctor.  And you
+needn't come back for anything you left; I'll have all your junk boxed
+and hauled into Red Creek this afternoon."
+
+A man gathered up the four reins and climbed to the high seat.  The
+brake was snapped back, the horses danced, set their necks into their
+collars, and the wheels turned.  Behind them Steve Packard, still
+watchful, rode to escort them to a satisfactory distance beyond the
+border of his property.
+
+
+Terry Temple out in front of the dilapidated Temple home was amusing
+herself with a pair of field-glasses.  Her big wolf-hound had just
+temporarily laid aside his customary dignity and was chasing a rabbit.
+Terry had her binoculars focussed on a distant field, curious as to the
+outcome.
+
+Suddenly she lost this interest.  Far down the road she glimpsed a big
+wagon; it was filled with standing men.  She altered her focus.
+
+"Dad!" she called quickly.  "Oh, dad!  Come here!"
+
+Her father came out on the porch.
+
+"What do you want?" he asked irritably.
+
+Terry came running to him, flushed with her excitement, and shoved the
+glasses up to his eyes.  Temple dodged, fussed with the focussing
+apparatus, lowered the glasses, and blinked down the road.
+
+"It's just a wagon, ain't it?" he demanded.  "Looks like----"
+
+Again she snatched the binoculars.
+
+"A lot of men are standing up," she announced.  "That's the team from
+the Packard logging-camp, There's a man sitting on the front seat with
+the driver and he's got a rag around his head.  There's some sort of a
+bed made in the bottom of the wagon; a man's lying down.  I actually
+believe, Dad Temple----"
+
+She broke off in a strange little gasp.  Behind the wagon a man rode on
+horseback; the sun glinted on a revolver in his hand.  They came closer.
+
+"It's Blenham on the front seat with a bandage around his head!" she
+cried.  "He's hurt!  And--dad, that man back there is Steve Packard!
+And he's driving that crowd off his ranch, as sure as you are Jim
+Temple and I'm Teresa Arriega Temple!"
+
+Temple started.
+
+"What's that?" he demanded with a genuine show of interest.
+
+Together they stared down the road.  On came the wagon and the rider
+behind it.  Slowly the look in Terry's eyes altered.  In a moment they
+were fairly dancing.  And then, causing her father to stare at her
+curiously, she broke out into peal after peal of delicious laughter.
+
+"Steve Packard," she cried out, her exclamation meant for her own ears
+alone and reaching no further than those of her newly imported Japanese
+cook who was peering out of his kitchen window just behind her, "I
+believe you're a white man after all!  And a gentleman and a sport!
+Dad, he's nabbed the whole crowd of them and put them on the run.  By
+glory, it looks to me like a man has turned up!  Maybe he was telling
+me the truth last night."
+
+The wagon came on, drew abreast of the Temple gate, passed by.  Temple
+stared in what looked like consternation.  Steve, following the wagon,
+came abreast of the gate, stopped, watched the four horses draw their
+freight around the next bend in the road, accounted his work done, and
+turned toward the Temples.
+
+"Good morning," he called cheerily, highly content with life just at
+this moment.  "Fine day, isn't it?"
+
+Terry looked at him coolly.  Then she turned her back and went into the
+house.  Iki, the new cook, looked at her wonderingly.
+
+"To me it appears most probable certain," said the astute Oriental
+within his soul, "that inhabitants of these wilderness places have much
+madness within their brains."
+
+Steve swung his horse back into the road and set his face toward his
+own ranch.
+
+"Darn the girl," he muttered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE MAN-BREAKER AT HOME
+
+In a short time the cattle country had come to know a good deal of
+Steve Packard, son of the late Philip Packard, grandson of Old Man
+Packard, variously known.  Red Creek gossiped within its limits and
+sent forth word of a quarrel of some sort with Blenham, a winning game
+of seven-and-a-half, a fight with big Joe Woods.  Red Creek was
+inclined to set the seal of approval on this new Packard, for Red
+Creek, on both sides of its quarrelsome street, stood ready to say that
+a man was a man even when it might go gunning for him.
+
+As the days went by Packard's fame grew.  There were tales that in a
+savage melee with Blenham he had eliminated that capable individual's
+right eye; and though there were those who had had it from some of the
+Ranch Number Ten boys that Blenham's loss was the result of an
+accident, still it remained unquestioned that Blenham had suffered
+injury at Packard's ranch and had been driven forth from it.
+
+Then, Packard had followed Blenham to the logging-camp; he had tackled
+the crowd headed by Joe Woods; he had come remarkably close to killing
+Woods; he had broken up the camp and sent the timberjacks on their way.
+He had had a horse killed under him; he had quarrelled with his
+grandfather; he was standing on his own feet.  In brief--
+
+"He's a sure enough, out an' out Packard!" they said of him.
+
+To be sure, while there were men who spoke well of him there were
+others, perhaps as many, who spoke ill.  There were the barkeeper of
+the Ace of Diamonds, Joe Woods, Blenham; they had their friends and
+hangers-on.  On the other hand, offsetting these, there were old
+friends whom Steve had not seen for twelve or more years.
+
+Such was Brocky Lane whose cowboy had loaned Steve a horse which had
+been killed on the Red Creek road.  Young Packard promptly paid for the
+animal and resumed auld lang syne with the hearty, generous Brocky Lane.
+
+What men had to say of him came last of all to Steve.  But some fifty
+miles to the north of Ranch Number Ten, on the far-flung acres of the
+biggest stock-ranch in the State, there was another Packard to whom
+rumors came swiftly.  And this was because the old grandfather went far
+out of his way upon every opportunity to learn of his grandson's
+activities.
+
+"What for a man is he growed up to be, anyhow?" was what Hell-Fire
+Packard was interested in ascertaining.
+
+When the old man wanted to get anywhere he ordered out his car and Guy
+Little.  When he wanted information he sent for Guy Little.  The
+undersized mechanician was gifted with eyes which could see, ears which
+could hear, and a tongue which could set matters clear; he must have
+been unusually keen to have retained his position in the old man's
+household for the matter of five or six years.
+
+To his employer he had come once upon a time, half-starved and weary, a
+look of dread in his eyes which had the way of turning swiftly over his
+shoulder; the old man had had from the beginning the more than
+suspicion that the little fellow was a fugitive from the law and in a
+hurry at that.
+
+He had immediately taken him in and given him succor and comfort.  The
+poor devil fumbled for a name and was so obviously making himself a new
+one that Packard dubbed him Guy Little on the spot, simply because, he
+explained, he was such a little guy.  And thereafter the two grew in
+friendship.
+
+Guy Little's first coming had been opportune.  The old man had only
+recently bought his first touring-car; in haste to be gone somewhere
+his motor failed to respond to his first coaxing and subsequent bursts
+of violent rage.  While he was cursing it, reviling it, shaking his
+fist at it, and vowing he'd set a keg of giant powder under the thing
+and blow it clean to blue blazes, Guy Little ran a loving hand over it,
+stroked its mane, so to speak, whispered in its ear, and set the engine
+purring.  Old Man Packard nodded; they two, big-bodied millionaire and
+dwarfed waif, needed each other.
+
+"Climb on the runnin'-board, Guy Little," he said right then.  "You go
+wherever I go."  And later he came to say of his mechanician, "Him?
+Why, man, he can take four ol' wagon wheels an' a can of gasoline an'
+make the damn' thing go.  He's all automobile brains, that's what Guy
+Little is!"
+
+On the Big Bend ranch, the old man's largest and favorite of several
+kindred holdings, an outfit which flung its twenty thousand acres this
+way and that among the Little Hills and on either side of the upper
+waters of the stream which eventually gave its name to Red Creek, the
+oldest of the name of Packard had summoned Guy Little.
+
+It was some ten days after the stopping of all activity in the Ranch
+Number Ten lumbercamp.  He had been sitting alone in his library,
+smoking a pipe, and staring out of his window and across his fields.
+Suddenly he sprang to his feet, went to his door, and shouted down the
+long hall:
+
+"Ho, there!  Guy Little!"
+
+The house was big; rooms had been added now and then at intervals
+during the last thirty or forty years; the master's library was of
+generous dimensions and could have stabled a herd of fifty horses.
+This chamber was in the southwest corner of the rambling edifice; Guy
+Little's quarters were diagonally across the building.  But Packard
+asked no tinkling electric bell; as usual he was content to stick his
+head out into the hall and yell in that big, booming voice of his:
+
+"Ho, there!  Guy Little, come here!"
+
+Having voiced his command he went back to his deep leather chair and
+refilled his pipe.  It was the time of early dusk; not yet were the
+coal-oil lamps lighted; shadows were lengthening and merging out in the
+rolling fields.  Packard's eyes, withdrawn from the outdoors, wandered
+along his tall and seldom-used book-shelves, fell to the one worn
+volume on the table beside him, went hastily to the door.  Down the
+hall came the sound of quick boot-heels.  He took up the single volume
+and thrust it out of sight under the leather cushion of his chair.  The
+mechanician was in the room before he could get his pipe lighted.
+
+"You called, m'lord?"
+
+Guy Little stood drawn up to make the most of his very inconsiderable
+height, eyes straight ahead, hands at sides, chin elevated and
+stationary.  Nothing was plainer than that he aped the burlesqued
+English butler--unless it be that it was even more obvious that in his
+chosen role he was a ridiculous failure.  There never was the man less
+designed by nature for the part than Guy Little.
+
+And yet he insisted; in the beginning of his relationship with his
+employer, his soul swelling with gratitude, his imagination touched by
+the splendors into which his fate had led him, awed by the dominant
+Packard, he had wanted always upon an occasion like this to demand
+stiffly:
+
+"You rang, your majesty?"
+
+Packard had cursed and threatened and brow-beaten him down to----
+
+"You called, m'lord?"
+
+But not even old Hell-Fire Packard could get him any further.
+
+"Yes, I called," grunted the old man.  "I hollered my head off at you.
+I want to know what you foun' out.  Let's have it."
+
+Guy Little made his little butler-bow.
+
+"Your word is law, m'lord," he said, once more rigid and unbending.
+
+Although Packard knew this very well without being told and had known
+it a good many years before Guy Little had been born, and although Guy
+Little had repeated the phrase time without number, the old man
+accepted it peacefully as a necessary though utterly damnable
+introduction.
+
+"It's like this," continued the mechanician.  "Not knowin' what you
+thought an' not even knowin' what you wanted to think, an' figgerin' to
+play safe, I've picked up the dope all over.  Which is sayin' I bought
+drinks on both sides the street, whiskey at Whitey Wimble's joint an'
+more of the same at Dan Hodges's.  An' I foun' out several things,
+m'lord.  If it is your wish----"
+
+"Spit 'em out, Guy Little!  What for a man is he?"
+
+"Firs'," said Guy Little, shifting his feet the fraction of an inch so
+that his chin bore directly upon Packard, "he's a scrapper.  He beat up
+Joe Woods, a bigger man than him; later he took part in some sort of a
+party durin' which, like is beknown to you, somebody gouged Blenham's
+eye out; after that, single-handed, he cleaned out your lumber-camp,
+fifteen men countin' Blenham.  Tally one, he's a scrapper."
+
+For an instant it seemed that all of the light there was in the swiftly
+darkening room had centred in the blue eyes under the old man's bushy
+white brows.  He drew deeply upon his pipe.
+
+"Go on, Guy Little," he ordered.  "What more?  Spit it out, man."
+
+"Nex'," reported the little man, "he's a born gambler.  If he wasn't he
+wouldn't of tied into a game of buckin' you; he wouldn't of played
+seven-an'-a-half like he did in at the Ace of Diamonds; he wouldn't of
+took them long chances tacklin' Woodsy's timberjacks before breakfas'.
+Scrapper an' gambler.  That's tally one an' two."
+
+The old man frowned heavily, his teeth remaining tight clamped on his
+pipestem as he cried sharply:
+
+"That's it!  You've said it: gambler!  Drat the boy, I knowed he had it
+in his blood.  An' it'll ruin him, ruin him.  Guy Little, as it would
+ruin any man.  We got to get that fool gamblin' spirit out'n him.  A
+man that's always takin' chances never gets anywhere; take a chance an'
+you ain't got a chance!  That's the way of it, Guy Little!  Go on,
+though.  What else about him?"
+
+"He's a good sport," went on the news-gatherer, "an' he don't ask no
+help from nobody.  He stan's on his two feet like a man, m'lord.  When
+he sees a row ahead he don't go to the law with it; no, m'lord; no
+indeed, m'lord.  He says 'Hell with the law!'  Like a man would, like
+me an' you . . . an' he kills his own rats himself."
+
+"That's the Packard of him!  For, by God, Guy Little, he is a Packard
+even if he has got a wrong start!  Rich man's son--silver-spoon
+stuff--why, it would spoil a better man than you ever saw!  Didn't I
+spoil my son Phil that-a-way?  Didn't Phil start out spoilin' his son
+Stephen that same way?  But he's a Packard--an'--an'----"
+
+"An' what, m'lord?"
+
+The old man's fist fell heavily on the arm of his chair.
+
+"An' I'm still hopin' he's goin' to be a damn' good Packard at that!
+But you go on, Guy Little.  What else?"
+
+"Sorta reckless, he is," resumed Guy Little.  "But that's purty near
+the same thing as havin' the gamblin' spirit, ain't it?  Nex' an'
+final, m'lord, he's got what you might call an eye for a good-lookin'
+girl."
+
+"The devil you say, Guy Little!"  The old man, beginning to settle in
+his chair, sat bolt upright.  "Is some female woman tryin' to get her
+hooks in my gran'son already?  Name her to me, sir!"
+
+"Name of Temple," said Little.  "Terry Temple as they call her, an' a
+sure good-lookin' party, if you ask me!  Classy from eyes to ankles an'
+when it comes to----"
+
+"Hold on, Guy Little!" exploded old man Packard, leaping to his feet,
+towering high above the little man, who looked up at him with an
+earnest and placid expression.  "That wench, that she-devil, that
+Jezebel!  Settin' her traps for my boy Stephen, is she?  Why, man
+alive, she ain't fit to scrape the corral-mud off'n his boots.  She's a
+low-down, deceitful jade, that's what she is, sired by a
+sheep-stealin', throat-cuttin', ornery, no-'count, worthless cuss!  The
+whole pack of them Temples, he an' she of 'em, big an' little of 'em,
+ought to be strung up on the firs' tree!  The low-down bunch of little
+prairie dawgs, tryin' to trap a Packard with puttin' a putty-faced fool
+girl in their snare.  I say, Guy Little, I'll make the whole crowd of
+'em hunt their holes!"
+
+And he hurled his pipe from him so that on the hearthstone it broke
+into many pieces.
+
+Now that was a long speech for old man Packard and Guy Little listened
+interestedly.  At the end, when the old man went growling back to his
+chair, the mechanician took up his tale.
+
+"She's purty, though," he maintained.  "Like a picture!"
+
+"Doll-faced," snorted the old man, who had not the least idea what
+Terry Temple looked like, not having laid his eyes on her for the
+matter of years.  "Dumpy, pudgy, squidge-nosed little fool.  I'll run
+both her and her thief of a father out of the country."
+
+"An'," continued Guy Little, "I didn't exac'ly' say, m'lord, as how
+this Terry Temple party was after him.  I said as how he was after her!
+That is, as how, roundin' out what I know about him, he's got a eye for
+a fine-lookin' lady.  Which, against argyment, I maintain that Terry
+Temple girl is."
+
+"Guy Little," cried Packard sharply, "you're a fool!  Maybe you know
+all there is about motor-cars an' gasoline.  When it comes to females
+you're a fool."
+
+"Ah, m'lord, not so!" protested Guy Little, a gleam in his eye like a
+faint flicker from a dead fire.  "There was a time--before I set these
+hoofs of mine into the wanderin' trail--when----"
+
+The rest might best be left entirely to the imagination and there he
+left it.  But the old man was all untouched by his henchman's utterance
+and innuendoed boast for the simple reason that he had heard nothing of
+it.
+
+"Those Temple hounds," he muttered, staring at Guy Little who stared
+butlerishly back, "are leeches, parasites, cursed bloodsuckers and
+hangers-on.  They think I'm goin' to take this boy in an' give him all
+I got; they think they see a chance to marry him into their rotten
+crowd an' slip one over on me this way!  That simperin', gigglin' fool
+of a girl try an' hook my gran'son!  I'll show 'em, Guy Little; I'll
+show the whole cussed pack of 'em!  I'll exterminate 'em, root an'
+branch an' withered leaf!  By the Lord, but I'll go get 'em!"
+
+"He'll do it," nodded Guy Little, addressing the invisible third party
+in order not to directly interrupt his patron's flow of words.
+
+But for a little the old man was silent, running his calloused fingers
+nervously through his beard, frowning into the dusk thickening over the
+world outside.  When he spoke again it was softly, thoughtfully, almost
+tenderly.  And the words were these:
+
+"Break a fool an' make a man, Guy Little!  That's what we're goin' to
+do for Stephen Packard.  He's always had too much money, had life too
+easy.  We'll jus' nacherally bust him all to pieces; we'll learn him
+the big lesson of life; we'll make a man out'n him yet.  An' when
+that's done, Guy Little, when that time comes--  Go send Blenham here,"
+he broke off with sharp abruptness.
+
+Guy Little achieved his stage bow and departed.  The door only half
+closed behind him, he was shouting at the top of his voice:
+
+"Hey, Blenham!  Oh, Blenham!  On the jump.  Packard wants you!"
+
+The door slammed behind him.  His back once turned on "m'lord," Guy
+Little did not wait to get out of earshot to become less butler than
+human sparrow.
+
+Blenham needed but the one summons and that might almost have been
+whispered.  He was fidgeting in his own room, waiting for this moment,
+knowing that he was to receive definite instructions concerning Stephen
+Packard.  Over his right eye was a patch; his face was still a sickly
+pallor; his one good eye burned with a sullen flame which never went
+out.
+
+Guy Little was the one human being in the world with whom the old man
+talked freely, to whom he unburdened himself.  With his chief
+lieutenant Blenham he was, as with other men, short, crisp-worded,
+curt.  Now, seeming to take no stock of Blenham's disfigurement, in a
+dozen snapping sentences he issued his orders.
+
+Their gist was plain.  Blenham was to go the limit to accomplish two
+purposes: the minor one of making the world a dreary place for certain
+scoundrels, name of Temple; the major one of utterly breaking Steve
+Packard.  When Blenham went out and to his own room again the sullen
+fire in his good eye burned more brightly, as though with fresh fuel.
+
+A little later Guy Little returned, lighted the lamps, made a small
+fire in the big fireplace, and ignoring the presence of his master,
+went to stand in front of the high book-shelves.  After a long time he
+got the step-ladder and placed it, climbed to the top, and squatted
+there in front of his favorite section.  Ultimately he drew down a
+volume with many colored illustrations; it was a tale of love, its
+_mise en scene_ the mansions of the lords and ladies whose adventures
+occurred in that atmosphere of romance which had captivated the soul of
+Guy Little.
+
+When he climbed down and sought the big chair in which he would curl up
+to read and chew countless sticks of gum, chewing fast when the action
+hurried, slowly when there was the dramatic pause, stopping often with
+mouth wide open when tense and breathless interest held him, he
+discovered that the old man had gone out.
+
+Guy Little pursed his lips.  Then he went to the recently vacated
+leather chair.  Not to sit in it; merely to draw out the little volume
+from under the cushion.
+
+"'Lyrics from Tennyson,'" he read aloud.  "What the devil are them
+things?"
+
+He turned the pages.
+
+"Pomes!" he grunted in disgust.
+
+Whereupon he carried his own book to his own chair.  But, beginning to
+turn the pages, he stopped and looked up wonderingly.
+
+"Funny ol' duck," he mused.  "Here I've knowed him all these years an'
+I never guessed he read pomes!"
+
+He shook his head, admitted to himself that the "ol' duck" was a keen
+ol' cuss, returned to his book, began stripping the paper from the
+first stick of gum, and knew no more of what went on about him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+AT THE FALLEN LOG
+
+Since the hill ranch operated by the Temples and the Packard Ranch
+Number Ten had over two miles of common border-line, it was unavoidable
+that Steve and Terry should meet frequently.  Truly unavoidable since
+further they were both young, Terry as pretty as the proverbial
+picture, Steve the type to stick somehow in such a girl's mind.  She
+turned up her nose at him; she gave him a fine view of her back; but in
+riding her father's range she let her eyes travel curiously across the
+line.
+
+For his part Steve, seeing where some of his calves had invaded Temple
+property, followed the errant calves himself instead of sending one of
+his men.  And as he rode he was apt to forget his strayed cattle as he
+watched through the trees for a fluttering, gay-hued scarf.
+
+Certainly of girls and women he had known she was the most refreshing;
+certainly she was the prettiest after an undeniably saucy style.  And
+life here of late, with Blenham and Woods gone and unheard from, was a
+quiet, uneventful affair.
+
+Terry, for her part, told herself and any one else who cared to listen,
+that he was a Packard, hence to be distrusted, avoided, considered as
+beneath a white person's notice.  His breed were all crooked.  Sired
+and grandsired by precious scoundrels, he was but what was to be
+expected.  And yet----
+
+For "yets" and "ifs" and "howevers" had already begun to intrude,
+befogging many a consideration hitherto clear as cut glass.  He had not
+lied about a horse being shot under him; he had been party to Blenham's
+departure from the ranch; he had been man enough in Red Creek to whip
+Joe Woods; and, single-handed, he had driven a crew of rough-and-ready
+timberjacks off his property.
+
+Further, it was undeniable that he had a good-natured grin, that his
+eyes though inclined either to be stern or else to laugh at her, were
+frank and steady, that he made a figure that fitted well in the eye of
+a girl like Terry Temple.
+
+"Oh, the Packards are men," said Terry begrudgingly, "even if they are
+pirates!"
+
+This to her father and, it is to be suspected, for her father's sake.
+For, despite the girl's valiantly repeated hope that Temple "would come
+back yet" and be again the man he once was, he seemed in fact to grow
+more shiftless day after day, communing long over his fireplace with
+his drink, passing from one degree to another of untidiness.  He made
+her "feel just like screaming and running around the house breaking
+things" at times.
+
+"You are impatient, my dear," said Temple as one speaking to a very
+young child.  "And there are matters which you don't understand; which
+I cannot even discuss with you.  But," and he winked very slyly, less
+at Terry than just in a general acknowledgment of his own acumen, "you
+just wait a spell!  I've got somethin' up my sleeve--somethin' that----
+Oh, you just wait, my dear!"
+
+Terry sniffed.
+
+"I ought to be pretty good at waiting by now," she told him, little
+impressed.  "And if you have anything up your sleeve besides the flabby
+arm of a do-nothing, then it must be another bottle of whiskey!  You
+can't flim-flam me, dad, and you ought to know it."
+
+She whisked out of the house, her face reddened with vexation, a sudden
+moisture in her eyes.  It took all of the fortitude she could summon
+into her dauntless little bosom to maintain after days like this that
+there was still a "come-back" left in her father.
+
+In an hour made fragrant by the resinous odors of the upland pines and
+the freshly liberated perfumes of the little white evening flowers
+thick in the meadows, Terry on her favorite horse went flashing through
+the long shadows of the late afternoon, riding as Terry always rode
+when her breast was tumultuous and her temper rising.
+
+The recently imported Japanese cook and houseboy peered out after her
+from his kitchen window, his eyes actually losing their Oriental cast
+and growing round; a trick, this, of Iki's whenever Terry came into his
+view.
+
+"Part bird," mused Iki, "part flower, big part wild devil-girl!  Oof!
+Nice to look at, but for wife Japonee girl more better.  Think so."
+
+Little by little as she rode, letting her horse out until she fairly
+raced through the fields and into the woods beyond, the pitiful picture
+of her father faded from her mind.  As the vision dimmed of Temple's
+shoddiness in his worn-out slippers another image formed in Terry's
+mind; an image which was there more than the girl had as yet come to
+realize.
+
+Yes, as types the Packards were all right; how many times had she
+admitted that to herself?  But as individuals . . .  Oh, how she hated
+them!  And to-day, for some reason not clearly defined in Terry's
+consciousness, she found it convenient to assure herself with new
+emphasis that she hated and despised the Packards with a growing
+detestation, and from this point to go on and inform Miss Teresa Temple
+exactly why she looked on those of the Packard blood just as she did.
+
+She summoned a host of reasons, set them in ranks like so many soldiers
+to wage war for her, marshalled and deployed and reviewed and
+dress-paraded them, and found them all eminently satisfactory
+mercenaries.
+
+There was one reason which she thrust into the background, seeking to
+keep it hidden behind the serried ranks of its brothers-in-arms.  And
+yet it insisted in mutinous fashion on pushing to the fore.  Seeking to
+consider the Packards en masse, as a curse rather than as individuals,
+she found that she was remembering Steve Packard rather vividly.
+
+In the outward seeming Steve Packard was a gentleman; he had that vague
+something called culture; he bore himself with the assurance and ease
+of one who knew the world; he had been to college--and Terry knew
+nothing more of school than was to be learned at a country high school.
+Steve's father had "broken" her father financially; had such not been
+the fact Terry herself would have had her own college diploma on her
+wall; Terry would have known something more of the world than she now
+knew; she would have been "a lady."
+
+"Oh, pickles!" cried Terry aloud, bringing her runaway thoughts to a
+sharp halt.  "What difference does it make if he knows Latin and I
+don't?  And a hot specimen of a 'lady' I'd make anyhow!"
+
+Over a ridge she flew, the low sun glistening from her spurs and the
+polished surfaces of her boot-tops, down into the dusk-filled fragrance
+of a woodsy canon, into the mouth of a silent trail, around a wide
+curve, and to her own favorite spot of all these woods.  A nook of
+haunting charm with its sprawling stream, its big-boled and widely
+scattered trees, its grass and flowers.  "Mossy Dell," she called it,
+having borrowed the name from an old romance read in breathless fashion
+in her room.
+
+Slipping out of her saddle and leaving her horse to browse if such
+pastime suited him, Terry went through the trees and down along the
+flashing creek, humming softly, her voice confused with the gurgle of
+the noisy little stream, her eyes at last growing content.
+
+She was half smiling at some shadowy thought before she had gone twenty
+paces; she tossed off her hat and let it lie, meaning to come back for
+it later; she unfastened the scarf about her neck, baring her white
+throat to the hour's cool invitation, she let her bronze-brown hair
+down in two loose, curling braids across her shoulders, toying with the
+ends as she went.
+
+Coming here at troubled moments altered the girl's mood very much as an
+hour in a quiet cathedral may soothe the soul of the orthodox.
+
+A little further on, lying across the stream and just around another
+bend, was a great fallen cedar, its giant trunk eight or ten feet
+through at the base.  Approximately it marked the border-line between
+the Temple Ranch and Ranch Number Ten; it was quite as though the
+wilderness itself had cast down the big tree across an old trail to
+indicate a line which must not be crossed.
+
+Upon the top of this supine woodland monarch Terry was accustomed to
+sit, her back against one of the big limbs, her heels kicking at the
+mossy sides, while she glanced back and forth from Temple property to
+Packard land and told herself how much finer was her side than the
+other.
+
+Just where the tree had fallen the creek-bed was rocky and uneven; the
+water eddied and whirled and plunged noisily into its pools.  Terry,
+clambering up from her side of the big log, heard only the shouting of
+the brook.  She grasped the dead branches, pulled herself up, slipped a
+little, got a new foothold; Terry's head, her face flushed rosily, her
+eyes never brighter, popped up on one side of the log just in time with
+the tick of her destiny's clock.
+
+[Illustration: Terry's head, her face flushed rosily, her eyes never
+brighter, popped up on one side of the log.]
+
+That is to say just as Steve Packard, climbing up from the other side,
+thrust his head up above the top.  An astonished grunt from Steve who
+in the first start of the encounter came close to falling backward; a
+little choking ejaculation from Terry whose eyes widened
+wonderfully--and the two of them settled silently into their places on
+the cedar and stared at each other.  Some three or four feet only lay
+between the brim of Steve's hat and Terry's upturned nose.
+
+"Well?" demanded Terry stiffly.
+
+"Well?" countered Steve.
+
+He regarded her very gravely.  He had never had a girl materialize this
+way out of space and his own thoughts.  This sudden confronting savored
+of the supernatural; for the moment it set him aback and he was content
+to stare wonderingly into the sweet gray eyes so near his own and to
+take note of the curve of her lips, the redness of them, the dimple
+which, though departed now and, he felt, in hiding, had left a hint of
+itself behind in its hasty flight.
+
+"If there's one thing I hate worse than a potato-bug," said Terry,
+"it's a fresh guy!  Think you're funny, don't you?"
+
+"Fresh?  Funny?"
+
+He lifted his eyebrows.  And then, her suspicion clear to him, his
+gravity departed the way Terry's dimple had gone and he put back his
+head and laughed.  Laughed while the girl with deepening color and
+darkening eyes looked at him indignantly.
+
+"Think I did that on purpose?" he cried in vast good nature.  "That I
+was spying on you?  That I waited until you started to climb up here
+and that then I popped my head up just at the same time?  All on
+purpose?"
+
+"That's just exactly what I do think!" Terry told him hotly.  "You--you
+big smarty!  Everywhere I go, have you got to keep showing up?"
+
+"I'll tell you something," said Steve.  "If I had climbed up here just
+to give you a little surprise party; if I had known you were there and
+that I could have poked my head up just as you did yours--know what I
+would have done?"
+
+"What?" Terry in her curiosity condescended to ask.
+
+"I'd have kissed the prettiest girl I ever saw!" he chuckled.  "Honest
+to grandma!  That's just what I'd have done.  As it was, you half
+scared me out of my wits; I came as close as you please to going over
+backward and breaking my neck."
+
+"Not as close as I please.  And as for kissing me, Long Steve Packard,
+you just try that on sometime when you want your face slapped good and
+hard and a bullet pumped into you besides!"
+
+"Mean it?" grinned Steve.
+
+"I most certainly do," she retorted emphatically.
+
+"Offered merely as information?" he wanted to know.  "Or as a dare?  Or
+an invitation?"
+
+When she did not reply at once but contented herself by putting a deal
+of eloquence into a look--which, by the way, had no visible effect upon
+his rising good humor--he went on to remark:
+
+"If you just slapped my face it would be worth it.  If you just shot me
+through the finger-nail or something like that, it would be worth it
+still."  He examined her critically.  "Even if you plugged me square
+through the thumb----"
+
+"If you don't know it," she informed him aloofly, "you are trespassing
+right now where you are not wanted.  The sooner you trail your big feet
+off Temple land the better I'll like it!"
+
+"Temple land?  Since when was a tree considered as land, Miss Teresa
+Arriega Temple?"
+
+"Think that's funny?" she scoffed.
+
+"And besides," he continued, "the tree is on Packard property.  See
+that old pine stump over yonder?  And that big rock there?  Those
+things mark the boundary-line and you'll notice we're on my side!"
+
+Terry's temper flamed higher in her eyes, flashed hotter in her cheeks.
+
+"We are not!  And you know we are not!  The line runs yonder, just
+beyond that big white rock on the creek-bank.  And you are a good ten
+feet on my side.  Where, if you please, you are not wanted."
+
+"That isn't a pretty enough thought to bear repetition," he offered
+genially.  "Look here, Terry Temple, what's the use----"
+
+"Are you going?  Or do you intend just to squat there like a toad and
+spoil the view for me?"
+
+"Toads are fat animals," he corrected her.  "I'm not.   More like a
+bullfrog, if you like.  What am I going to do?  Why, just squat, I
+guess."
+
+As he leaned back against the limb which offered its support to his
+shoulders Terry noted that he wore in full sight at his side the heavy
+Colt he had bought the other night in Red Creek.  A new habit, with
+Steve Packard.
+
+"Gunman, are you?" she jeered.  "I might have known it.  Gunmen are all
+cowards."
+
+He sighed.
+
+"You can be the most irritating young lady I ever met.  And why?  What
+have I ever done to you--besides save you from drowning?  Since we are
+neighbors, why not be good friends?  By the way, where do you carry
+your gun?"
+
+"It's different with a girl," she said bluntly.  "There's some excuse
+for her.  With the kind that's filling the woods lately she's apt to
+need it."
+
+"And you wouldn't be afraid to use it?"
+
+"I'm not here to chin with you all day," observed Terry coolly.  "And
+you haven't told me what you're doing on my land."
+
+"Your land?" he demanded.
+
+"On my side of the line, then."
+
+He considered the question.
+
+"I'm here to meet some one," he answered finally.
+
+"I like your nerve!  Arranging to meet your friends here!  Steve
+Packard, you are the--the--the----"
+
+"Go on," he prompted.  "You'll need a cuss-word now; any other finish
+will sound flat."
+
+"--the _Packardest_ Packard I ever heard of!" she concluded.  "You and
+your friend----"
+
+"No more my friend than he is yours," he said, interrupting her.  "An
+individual named Blenham.  And I'm not here so much to meet him
+as--let's say to head him off."
+
+Terry set it down that, since it was next to impossible at any time for
+a Packard to speak the truth, he was just lying to her for the sake of
+the devious exercise.  As she was on the point of saying emphatically
+when Steve said "Sh!" and pointed.  She heard a breaking of brush and
+saw the horns of a steer; the animal was coming into the trail from the
+Packard side.
+
+"You just watch," whispered Steve.  "And sit right still.  It won't do
+you any harm to know what's going on."
+
+The big steer broke through into the trail, stopped and sniffed, and
+then came on up the stream.   Behind came another and another, emerging
+from the shadows, passing through the swiftly fading light of the open,
+gone again into the shadows that lay over the wooded Temple acreage.
+In all nine big fat steers.  And behind them, sitting loosely in his
+saddle, came Blenham.
+
+Only when the last steer had crossed the line did Steve rise suddenly,
+standing upright on the great log, his hands on his hips.  Terry
+looking up into his face saw that all of the good humor had gone from
+it and that there was something ominous in the darkening of his eyes.
+
+"Hold on, Blenham!" he called.
+
+Blenham drew a quick rein.
+
+"That you, Packard?" he asked quietly.
+
+"It is," answered Steve briefly.  "On the job, too, Blenham.  All the
+time."
+
+Blenham laughed.
+
+"So it seems," he said, his look like his tone eloquent of an innuendo
+which embraced Terry evilly.  "If you're invitin' me to join your
+little party, I ain't got the time.  Thanks jus' the same."
+
+Since one's consciousness may harbor several clear-cut impressions
+simultaneously, Steve Packard, while he was thinking of other matters,
+felt that never until this moment had he hated Blenham properly; no,
+nor respected him as it would be the part of wisdom to do.
+
+The man's glance running over Terry Temple's girlishness was like the
+crawling of a slug over a wild flower and supplied a new and perhaps
+the key-note to Blenham's ugliness.  It was borne in upon Steve that
+his grandfather's lieutenant was bad, absolutely bad; that, old adages
+to the contrary notwithstanding, here was a character with not a hint
+of redemption in it; after the Packard outright way, this youngest
+Packard was ready to condemn out of hand.
+
+And further, to all of this Steve marked how Blenham had drawn a quick
+rein but had shown no tremor of uneasiness; had considered that though
+the man had been taken completely by surprise he had given no sign of
+being startled, but had answered a sharp summons with a cool, quiet
+voice.  So, summing it up, here was one to be hated and watched.
+
+"What are you doing on my land, Blenham?" asked Steve sharply.  "And
+where are you driving those steers?"
+
+Blenham eased himself in his saddle, drew his broad hat lower over his
+eyes; thus he partly hid the patch which he had worn since he came from
+the doctor's hands.
+
+"I ain't on your land any more," he returned.  "An' as for them
+steers--what's it to you, anyhow?"
+
+Open defiance was one thing Steve had not looked for.
+
+"Looking for more trouble yet, Blenham?" he asked briefly.
+
+Blenham shrugged.
+
+"I'm tendin' to business," he said slowly.  "No, I'm not lookin' for
+trouble--yet.  Since you want to know, I'm hazin' them cow-brutes the
+shortes' way off'n Number Ten an' on to the North Trail.  I'm puttin'
+'em on the trot to the Big Bend ranch where they happen to belong."
+
+Steve lifted his brows, for the moment wondering.  Blenham was not
+waiting for pitch dark to move these steers; he manifested no alarm at
+being discovered; now he calmly admitted that he was driving them to
+old man Packard's ranch where they belonged.  It was possible that he
+was right.
+
+In the few weeks that he had been back Steve had not had the time to
+know every head on his wide-scattered acreage; as the steers had
+trotted through the shadows and into the open his eyes had been less
+for them than for the coming of Blenham and he was not sure of the
+brands.
+
+He felt that Terry's eyes, as Terry sat very still on her log, were
+steadily upon him.
+
+"Blenham," he said curtly, "I don't know whose cattle those are.  But I
+do know this much: If they are mine I am going to have them back; if
+they are not mine I am going to have them back just the same."
+
+"How do you make that out?" demanded Blenham.
+
+"I make out that neither you nor any other man has any business driving
+stock off my range without consulting me first."
+
+"They're Big Bend cows," muttered Blenham.  "The ol' man's orders----"
+
+"Curse the old man's orders!" Steve's voice rang out angrily.  "If he
+can't be decent to me, can't he at least let me alone?  Need he send
+you here to do business with me?  If you want orders, Blenham, you just
+take these from me: Ride back to the old man on Big Bend ranch and tell
+him that what stock is on my ranch I keep here until he can prove it is
+his!  Understand?  If he can prove that these steers belong to him--and
+I don't believe he can and you can tell him that, too--why then, let
+him send me the money to pay for their pasturage and he can have them.
+And in the meantime, Mr. Blenham, get out and be damned to you!"
+
+For the moment Steve lost all thought of Terry sitting very still so
+close to him, his mind filled with his grandfather and his
+grandfather's chosen tool.  So when he thought that he heard the
+suspicion of a stifled giggle, a highly amused and vastly delighted
+little giggle, he was for the instant of the opinion that Blenham was
+laughing at him.
+
+But the intruder was all seriousness.  He sat motionless, his glance
+stony, his thought veiled, his one good eye giving no more hint of his
+purpose than did the patch over the other eye.  In the end he shrugged.
+
+"My orders," he said finally, "was simply to haze them steers back to
+the Big Bend.  The ol' man didn't say nothin' about startin' anything
+if you got unreasonable."  Again he shrugged elaborately.  "I'll come
+again if he says so," he concluded and, jabbing his spurs viciously
+into his horse's flanks, his sole sign of irritation, Blenham rode away
+through the woods.
+
+"He let go too easy," murmured Terry.  "He's got a card in the hole
+yet."
+
+Her eyes followed the departing rider, she pursed her lips after him.
+
+Steve turned and looked down upon her.
+
+"I hope you don't mind if I trespass to the extent of riding after
+those steers?" he offered.  "I want to drive them back and at the same
+time I don't mind making sure that Blenham is still on his way."
+
+Terry regarded him long and searchingly.
+
+"Go ahead," she said at last.  And, as though an explanation were
+necessary, she continued: "There's just one animal I hate worse than I
+do a Packard!  For once the fence is down between you and Temple land,
+Steve Packard."
+
+"Let's keep it down!" he said impulsively.  "You and I----"
+
+"No, thanks!"  Terry rose swiftly to her feet, balancing on her log,
+reminding him oddly of a bright bird about to take flight.  "You just
+remember that there's just one animal I hate _almost_ as much as I do
+Blenham; and that that's a Packard."
+
+And so she jumped down from the log and left him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+TERRY DEFIES BLENHAM
+
+Blenham must have ridden late into the night.  For at a very early hour
+the next morning he was at the Big Bend ranch fifty miles to the north
+and reporting to his employer.  Early as it was, the old man had
+breakfasted, and now the wide black hat far back on his head, the spurs
+on his big boots, bespoke his readiness to be riding.
+
+At times he stood stock-still, his hands on his hips, staring down at
+Blenham's lesser stature; at other times and in a deep, thoughtful
+silence he strode back and forth in the great barn-like library, his
+spurs jingling.
+
+"Why, burn it, man," he exploded once during the fore part of the
+interview, "the boy is a Packard!  I'm proud of him.  We're going to
+make a real man out of Stephen yet.  Haven't I said the words a dozen
+times: 'Break a fool an' make a man!'  I'm tellin' you, the las'
+Packard to be spoiled by havin' too much easy money has lived an' died.
+All we got to do with Stephen is put him on foot; set him down in the
+good ol'-fashioned dirt where he's got to work for what he gets, an'
+he'll come through.  Same as I did.  Yessir!"
+
+Blenham waited for his signal to continue his report, and when he got
+it, a look and a nod, he resumed, face, voice, and eye alike
+expressionless of any personal interest in the matter.
+
+"You know them nine big steers as strayed from here some time ago?  I
+tol' you about 'em two or three weeks ago?  Well, I found 'em like I
+said I would, all nine of 'em, an' on Ranch Number Ten."
+
+"It's quite a way for cattle to stray," said the old man sharply.
+Blenham shrugged carelessly.
+
+"Oh, I dunno," he returned lightly.  "I've knowed 'em to go fu'ther
+than that.  Well, I made a pass to haze 'em on back this way an' young
+Packard blocks my play."
+
+The old man's eye brightened.
+
+"What did he say?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"He said," said Blenham, picking at his hat-band, "as how if the stock
+was yours which he didn't believe he'd hold 'em until you sent over
+enough coin to pay for their feed.  He said as how, if you couldn't be
+decent you better anyhow leave him alone.  He said hell with both of
+us."
+
+"He did?" cried old Packard.  "He said that, Blenham?"
+
+"He did," answered Blenham with a quick, curious, sidewise glance.
+
+Packard's big hand was lifted and came down mightily upon his thigh as,
+suddenly released, the old man's voice boomed out in a great peal of
+laughter.
+
+"Ho!" he cried, shouting out the words to be heard far out across the
+open meadow.  "Say to hell with me, does he?  Holds my stock for
+pasture money, does he?  Defies me to do my worst, him a young,
+penniless whippersnapper, me a millionaire an' a man-breaker!  Why,
+curse it, he's a man already, Blenham!  He's a Packard to his backbone,
+I tell you!  By the Lord, I've a notion to jump into my car and go get
+the boy!"
+
+A troubled shadow came and went swiftly across Blenham's face, not to
+be seen by the old man who was staring out of his window.  All of the
+craft there was in the ranch foreman rose to the surface.
+
+"Yes," he agreed quietly, "he's got the makin's in him.  He ain't
+scared of the devil himself, which is one right good earmark.  He's
+independent, which is another good sign.  Why, when I runs across him
+an' that Temple girl out in the woods----"
+
+"What's that!" snapped the old man, though he had heard well enough.
+"Do you mean to tell me----"
+
+"They was sittin' on top a big log," said Blenham tonelessly.
+"Confidential lookin', you know.  I won't say he was holdin' her hands,
+an' at the same time I won't say he wasn't.  An' I won't say he'd jus'
+kissed her, two seconds before I rode aroun' a bend in the trail."  One
+of his ponderous shrugs and a grimace concluded his meaning.  Then he
+laughed.  "Nor I wouldn't say he hadn't.  But, like I was tellin'
+you----"
+
+"You were tellin' me," growled the old man, "that that scoundrel of a
+Temple's fool of a girl is tryin' her hand at spellbindin' my gran'son
+Stephen!  The dirty little saphead--  Look here, Blenham; you've got
+more gumption than most: tell me how far things have gone an' what
+Temple's game is.  Guy Little has been tellin' me the same sort of
+thing."
+
+"There ain't much to tell," answered Blenham.  "That is, that a man
+couldn't guess without bein' told.  He's your gran'son; even with a
+scrap on between you an' him, still blood is thicker'n water an' some
+day, maybe, you'll pass on to him all you got.  Leastways, there's a
+chance, an' also he oughta fit pretty snug in a girl's eye.  Fu'ther to
+all that, it's jus' the same ol' story.  A feller an' a girl, an' the
+girl with a fine figger an' a fine pair of eyes which, bein' a
+she-girl, she knows how to use.  Seein' as you ask the question, I
+guess I could answer it by jus' sayin' that the Temples are makin' the
+one move they'd be sure to make."
+
+The senior Packard's scowl had known fame as long as fifty years ago;
+never was it blacker than right now.  For a little he stood still
+glaring at the floor.  Blenham watched him covertly, a look of craft in
+the one good eye.
+
+"Better go over an' see Temple right away," said Packard presently.
+"He won't be able to pay up his next instalment.  Tell him I'm goin' to
+foreclose an' drive him out.  While you're at it you can show him the
+plum foolishness of sickin' his idiot girl on Stephen.  How it won't
+bring 'em any good an' will jus' get me out on his trail red-hot.
+He'll understand."  And the stern old mouth set into lines of which
+Blenham read the full and emphatic meaning.  "Go on: anything else to
+report?"
+
+After his fashion in business matters he had pondered deeply but
+briefly upon this interference of Terry, had planned, had instructed
+his agent, and now turned to whatever might next demand his attention
+in connection with his campaign against and for Steve Packard.  And
+Blenham, deeming that he had scored a certain point, moved straight on
+to another.
+
+"He said--an' she watched an' listened an' giggled--as how he was in
+right an' you was in wrong; as how the law was on his side an' he'd
+stick it out; how he could take the whole ruction into court an' beat
+you; how----"
+
+Old Hell-Fire Packard stared at him, mumbling heavily:
+
+"He said that?  Stephen, my gran'son said that?"
+
+"Yes," lied Blenham glibly.  "Them was his words.  An', not knowin' a
+whole lot about law an' such----"
+
+He ended there, knowing that his words went unheeded.  The look upon
+the old man's face changed slowly from one of pure amazement to one of
+pain, grief, disappointment.  Stephen, his gran'son, threatened to go
+to law!  It was unthinkable that any one save a thief and an out-right
+scoundrel, such by the way as were all of his business rivals and the
+men who refused to tote and carry at his bidding, should make a threat
+like that; worse than unthinkable, utterly, depravedly disgraceful that
+one of the house of Packard should resort to such devious and damnable
+practices.  For an instant Blenham thought that tears were actually
+gathering in the weary old eyes.
+
+But the emotion which came first was gone in a scurry before a sudden
+windy rage.  The face which had been graven with humiliation and
+chagrin went fiery red; the big hands clenched and were uplifted; the
+great booming voice trembled to the shouted words:
+
+"Let him; burn him, let him!  I can break the fool quicker that way
+than any other; don't he know it takes money, money without end, for
+the perjurin', trickery, slippery law sharks that'll bleed a man, aye,
+suck out his life-blood an' then spit him out like the pulp of an
+orange?  Infernal young puppy-dawg!  See what it's done for him
+already, this rich-man's-son business.  To think that one of my blood,
+my own gran'son, should go to law!  Why, by high heaven, Blenham, the
+thing's downright disgraceful!"
+
+Swiftly, deftly, employing a remark like a surgeon's lancet, Blenham
+offered:
+
+"I have the hunch that Temple girl put it in his head."
+
+"You're right!"  This new suggestion required no weighing and fine
+balancing.  You could attribute no villainy whatever to one of the old
+man's enemies that he would not admit the extreme likelihood of your
+being right.  "Stephen ain't that sort; she's got him by the nose, hell
+take her!  She's drivin' him to it, an' it's Temple drivin' her.  An'
+it's up to you an' me to drive him clean out'n this corner of the
+universe.  Which we can do without goin' to the law!" he interjected
+scornfully.  "I reckon you understan', don't you, Blenham?"
+
+Blenham nodded and put on his hat.
+
+"I'm to hound him from the start to finish; until we drive him an' her
+out the country.  An' I'm to pound at your gran'son too an' at the same
+time until we bust him wide open.  That right?"
+
+"Right an' go to it!" cried Packard.
+
+Blenham saluted as he might have done were he still a sergeant down on
+the border, wheeled and went out.  Five minutes later he was riding
+again toward the south.  And now the look on his face was one of near
+triumph.  For at last the time had come when the old man had given
+outright the instructions which could make many things possible.
+
+That same day, about noon, Terry Temple, flashing across country in her
+car, met Blenham on the country road.  She was going toward Red Creek,
+her errand urgent as were always the errands of Terry.  Half a mile
+away she knew him, first by the white stocking of his favorite mare,
+second by his big bulk and the way it sat the saddle.
+
+So, quite like the old Packard whom she so heartily detested, she gave
+him the horn and never an inch of the road which was none too wide.
+Blenham, his mouth working, jerked his horse out of the way, down over
+the edge of the slope, and cursed after her as she passed him.
+
+Terry, in Red Creek, went straight to the store and to a shelf in a far
+and dusty corner where were all of the purchasable books of the
+village.  A thumb in her mouth, a frown in her eyes, she regarded them
+long and soberly.
+
+In the end she severed the Gordian knot by taking an even dozen
+volumes.  There were a grammar, an ancient history, some composition
+books, and, most important of all, a treatise upon social usages.
+
+How to write letters, what R. S. V. P. meant, "Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so
+request and so forth," how a lady should greet a gentleman friend--in
+short, an answer to all possible questions of right and wrong ways of
+appearing in polite society.  With her purchases stowed away in a
+cracker-box Terry turned again toward the ranch.
+
+In the ordinary course of events Terry should have returned to her home
+well ahead of Blenham.  But this afternoon she made a wide, circling
+detour to chat briefly with Rod Norton's young wife at the Rancho de
+las Flores, and so came under the Temple oaks after dusk.
+
+As she turned in at the gate she saw Blenham's horse standing tied down
+by the stable.  Terry's eyes opened wonderingly and a little flush came
+into her cheeks.  Plainly Blenham was closeted with her father.  Terry
+bit her lip, gathered her books in her arms, and hastened toward the
+house.
+
+The bawling of a mother cow and a baby calf, separated by a corral
+fence, had quite drowned out the purr of her motor; her step as usual
+was light upon the porch.  The first that Temple and Blenham knew of
+her coming was her form in the doorway, her face turned curiously upon
+them.
+
+And in that instant, while all three stood motionless, Terry saw and
+wondered at a look of understanding which had flashed between her own
+father and the despised representative of a hated race.  Further she
+noted how the glass in Temple's hand was still lifted, as was the glass
+in Blenham's, the whiskey still undrunk, winking at her in the pale
+lamplight.
+
+"Isn't your eternal drinking bad enough without your asking such as
+that to drink with you?" she asked quietly.  Very, very quietly for
+Miss Terry Temple.
+
+Her father shifted a trifle uneasily.  Blenham watched her intently,
+admiringly after a gross fashion and yet a bit contemptuously.  Blenham
+could put a look like that into his eye; to him a girl was a thing that
+might be both sneered at and coveted.
+
+"My dear," said Temple, striving for clear enunciation and in the end
+achieving it heavily, "I am glad you came.  I want you to listen.  We
+must act wisely.  We must not misjudge Mr. Blenham."
+
+While Terry remained silent, looking from one to the other of the two
+men.  Temple drank his whiskey hastily, furtively, snatching the second
+when her gaze had gone to Blenham.
+
+"What's the game?" asked Terry in a moment.
+
+She set her books down upon the table at her side, put out her hand to
+the back of a chair, and like the men remained standing.
+
+Temple looked to Blenham, who merely shrugged his thick shoulders and
+sipped at his whiskey, as though it had been a light wine and very soft
+to an appreciative palate.  In some vague way the act was vastly
+insolent.  Temple appeared uncertain, no uncommon thing with him; then,
+going to set his emptied glass down he put an elbow on the mantel,
+dropped his head, and spoke in a low, mumbling voice:
+
+"The game?  It's what it always was, Terry girl; what it always will
+be.  The game of the ear of corn and the millstones; the game of the
+unfortunate under the iron heel."
+
+"Unfortunate!"  cried Terry in disgust.  "Pooh!"
+
+"Listen to me," commanded her father.  "You ask: What's the game? and
+I'm telling you."  His head was up now; Terry noted a new look in his
+eyes, as he hurried on.  "It's just the game of life, after all.  The
+war of those who have everything against those who have nothing; of men
+like Old Hell-Fire Packard against men like me.  A game to be won more
+often than not through the sheer force of massed money that squeezes
+the life out of the under dog--but to be lost when the moneyed fool,
+curse him, runs up against a team like Blenham and me!"
+
+"Blenham and you?" she repeated.  "You and Blenham?  You mean to tell
+me that you are chipping in with him?"
+
+Blenham turned his whiskey-glass slowly in his great thick fingers.
+His eye shone with its crafty light; his lips were parted a little as
+though they held themselves in readiness for a swift interruption if
+Temple said the wrong thing or went too far.
+
+"You are prejudiced," said Temple.  "You always have been.  Just
+because Blenham here has represented Packard, and Packard----"
+
+"Is an old thief!" she cried passionately.  "And worse!  As Packard's
+_Man Friday_ Blenham doesn't exactly make a hit with me!"
+
+"Come, come," exclaimed Temple.  "Curb your tongue, Teresa, my dear.
+If you will only listen----"
+
+"Shoot then and get it over."
+
+Terry sank into her chair, clasped her gauntleted hands about a pair of
+plump knees which drew Blenham's gaze approvingly, and set her white
+teeth to nibbling impatiently at her under lip as though setting a
+command upon it for silence.
+
+"Let's have it, Dad."
+
+"That's sensible," mumbled Temple.  "You always were a smart girl,
+Teresa, when you cared to be.  Let's see; where had I got?  Oh, yes;
+speaking of Blenham chipping in with us, as you put it."
+
+"With _you_!" corrected Terry briefly.
+
+"We're mortgaged to old man Packard," continued Temple, somewhat hasty
+about it now that he had fairly plunged into the current of what he had
+to say, as though the water were cold and he was anxious to clamber out
+upon the far side.  "Not much in a way; a good deal when you figure on
+how tight money is and how little we've seen of it these last few
+years.  Now, Packard sends Blenham across with a message; he's going to
+foreclose; he is going to drive us out; to ruin us.  That is Packard's
+word."
+
+Terry stiffened in her chair; her chin rose a little in the air; her
+eyes brightened; the color in her cheeks deepened.  That was her only
+answer to Packard's ultimatum as quoted to her father by Blenham and by
+Temple to her.  Knowing that there was still more to come, she sat
+still, her clasped hands tightening about her knees.  Blenham, as still
+as she, was sipping at his whiskey.
+
+"But Blenham is a white man."
+
+Temple attempted to say it with the force of conviction, but Terry
+merely sniffed, and Temple himself failed somewhat to put his heart
+into his words.  He hurried on, repeating:
+
+"Yes, a white man.  And he's got a little money of his own that he's
+been tucking away all these years of working for Packard.  He comes
+over this evening, Teresa, my dear, and makes us a--curse it, a
+generous offer.  You see, as things are, we are bound to lose the whole
+place, lock, stock, and barrel, to Packard; you don't want to do that,
+do you?"
+
+"Go on," said Terry.  Her face was suddenly as white as the hands from
+which she was swiftly, nervously stripping her gauntlets.  "Just what
+is Blenham's generous offer, Dad?"
+
+"It's one of two things."
+
+He hesitated and licked his lips.  Terry's heart sank lower yet; it
+took him so long to set the thing into words!  "You see, as Old Man
+Packard's foreman and agent he comes to tell us that he is ordered to
+foreclose; to break us utterly.  As a friend to us he says----"
+
+"For God's sake!" cried Terry sharply.  "What does he say?"
+
+"He will pay us a thousand dollars to let him take over everything!  He
+will assume the mortgage; he will scrap it out with old Packard; he
+will clear the title; and, if we get where we want the ranch back some
+time, he will let us buy him out for just what he has put in it."
+
+Terry looked at him gravely.
+
+"In words of one syllable," she said quietly, "Blenham plans to give
+you one thousand dollars; then to pay to old Packard the seven thousand
+you owe him; and for this amount of eight thousand to grab an outfit
+that is worth twenty thousand if it's worth a nickel!  That's his
+generous offer, is it?"
+
+"My dear----"
+
+"Don't my dear me!" she snapped impatiently.  "Just go on and get the
+whole idiotic thing out of your system.  What else?"
+
+"That's all.  As I have said already, as things are we are bound to
+lose everything to Packard.  Blenham steps up and offers us a
+thousand----"
+
+"I should think he would step up!  Lively!  Well, I can't stop you, can
+I?  You don't have to have my consent to make a laughing-stock out of
+yourself?  Have you signed up with Blenham already?"
+
+Temple sought to assume an air of dignity which went poorly with his
+ragged slippers and bleary eye.
+
+"Blenham has his money in a safe in Red Creek.  There will be papers to
+be signed.  We are going there now.  I--I am sorry you take it this
+way, Teresa."
+
+Then she sprang to her feet, her two hands clenched, her eyes blazing.
+
+"And I," she cried hotly, "am sorry.  Oh, I am ashamed! that one of the
+name of Temple should sink so low as to hobnob with a cur and a
+scoundrel, a cheat, a liar, and all that Blenham is, and that you and I
+and the whole country know he is!  I'd rather see Old Hell-Fire Packard
+break you and grind you under foot than see you stand there and drink
+with that thing!"
+
+And that there should be no mistake her finger shot out, pointing at
+Blenham.
+
+"Terry!" commanded her father, "be silent.  You don't know what you are
+saying!"
+
+"Don't I, though!  I--I----"
+
+Blenham laughed as she broke off, laughed again as he stood watching
+how she was breathing rapidly.
+
+"Pretty puss," he said impudently, "you need them pink-an'-white nails
+of your'n trimmed."
+
+"Don't you dare say a word to me," she flung at him.  "Not a word."
+
+"Not a single little word, eh?"  He tossed off his whiskey, dropped the
+empty glass to the floor behind him, and came a quick stride toward
+her, an ugly leer twisting at the corner of his mouth, his one eye
+burning.  "I've got your ol' man where I want him; he knows it an' I
+an' you know it.  An' when I like I can have you where I want you, too.
+Understan'?"
+
+He had taken another step toward her.  The sudden thought leaped up in
+her mind that he and her father had had many drinks together before her
+arrival.  She drew back slowly.  Temple, seeing that for the moment all
+attention had been drawn from him, reached out for a bottle on the far
+end of the mantel.
+
+Then suddenly and without another word being spoken Terry was
+galvanized into action.  Blenham was coming on toward her and she saw
+the look in his eye.  She whipped back; her breath caught in her
+throat; the color ran out of her cheeks.  She glanced wildly toward her
+father; his fingers were closing about the neck of a bottle when they
+should have been at the neck of a man.
+
+Terry whipped up a book from the table--it was a volume answering many
+a question about how to act in society but without any mention of such
+a situation as now had arisen--and flung it straight into Blenham's
+hectic face.  Then she slipped through the door behind her, slammed it,
+and ran out, down the porch and into the night.  Behind her she heard
+Blenham's heavy, spurred boots and Blenham's curse.
+
+"If he comes on I will kill him!"
+
+She was at her car; her revolver was in her hand.  She saw Blenham come
+outside.  A moment he seemed to hesitate, his big bulk outlined against
+the door's rectangle of light.  Then she heard him laugh and saw him
+return to the room.  She came back slowly, tiptoe, to stand under the
+window.
+
+"You can drive the girl's car, can't you?" Blenham was asking.  And
+when Temple admitted that he could: "Let's pile in an' be on our way.
+Like I said, you close with me tonight or I won't touch the thing."
+
+Then again Terry ran back to her car.  She sprang in, started her
+engine, opened the throttle as she let in the clutch, and making a wide
+circle shot up the road, out the gate, and away into the darkness.
+
+"I'll take this pot yet, Mr. Cutthroat Blenham!" she was crying within
+herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+AND CALLS ON STEVE
+
+Though a tempest brewed in her soul and her blood grew turbulent with
+it, Terry did not hesitate from the first second.  Just the other day
+upon a certain historic log had she not said:
+
+"I hate Blenham worse than a Packard!"
+
+True, she had gone on to intimate that the youngest of the house of
+Packard was scarcely more to her liking than was the detested foreman.
+But--  Well, if Steve didn't know, at least Terry did, that that remark
+was uttered purely for its rhetorical effect.
+
+"He's been a pretty decent scout from the jump," Terry admitted
+serenely to herself as she threw her car into high and went streaking
+through the pale moonlight.  Then she smiled, the first quick smile to
+come and go since she had hurled a book in Blenham's face.  "A pretty
+decent scout from the jump!"
+
+He had literally jumped into her life, going after her quite as
+though----
+
+"Oh, shucks!" laughed Terry.  "It's the moonlight!"
+
+There came a certain sharp turn in the road where even she must slow
+down.  Here Terry came to a dead stop, not so much in hesitation as
+because she was conscious of a departure from the old trails and felt
+deeply that the act might be filled with significance.  For when she
+had made the turn she would have crossed the old dead line, she would
+have passed the boundary and invaded Packard property.
+
+"Well," thought Terry, "when you are between the devil and the deep sea
+what are you going to do?"
+
+So she let in her clutch, opened her throttle, sounded her horn purely
+by way of defiance, and when next she stopped it was at the very door
+of the old ranch-house where Steve Packard should be found at this
+early hour of the evening.
+
+The men in the bunk-house had heard her coming, and to the last man of
+them pushed to the door to see who it might be.  Their first thought,
+of course, would be that the old mountain-lion, Steve's grandfather,
+had come roaring down from his place in the north.  Terry tossed up her
+head so that they might see and know and marvel and speculate and do
+and say anything which pleased them.  Having crossed her Rubicon, she
+didn't care the snap of her pretty fingers who knew.
+
+"I want Steve Packard," she called to them.  "Where is he?"
+
+It was young Barbee who answered, Barbee of the innocent blue eyes.
+
+"In the ranch-house, Miss Terry," he said.  And he came forward,
+patting his hair into place, hitching at his belt, smiling at her after
+his most successful lady-killing fashion.  "Sure I won't do?"
+
+"You?"  Terry laughed.  "When I'm looking for a man I'm not going to
+stop for a boy, Barbee dear!"
+
+And she jumped down and knocked loudly at Steve's door, while the men
+at the bunk-house laughed joyously and Barbee cursed under his breath.
+
+Steve, supposing that it was one of his own men grown suddenly formal,
+did not take his stockinged feet down from his table or his pipe from
+his lips as he called shortly--
+
+"Come in!"
+
+And Terry asked no second invitation.  In she went, slamming the door
+after her so that those who gawked at the bunk-house entrance might
+gawk in vain.
+
+And now Steve Packard achieved in one flashing second the removal of
+his feet from the table, the shifting of his pipe from his teeth, the
+swift buttoning of his shirt across his chest.  And as he stared at her
+he gasped:
+
+"I'll be----"
+
+"Say it!" laughed Terry.  "Well, I'm here.  Came on business.  There's
+a hole in the toe of your sock," she ended with a flash of malice, as
+she noted how, embarrassed for the first time since she had known him,
+he was trying to hide a pair of man-sized feet behind his table.
+
+[Illustration: "Say it!" laughed Terry.  "Well, I'm here.  Came on
+business."]
+
+Steve grew violently red.  Terry laughed deliciously.
+
+"I--I didn't know----"
+
+"Of course you didn't," she agreed.  "Now, I'm in something of a rush
+of the red streak variety, but in a little book of mine I have read
+that a young gentleman receiving a young lady caller after dark should
+have his hair combed, his shirt buttoned, and at least a pair of
+slippers on.  I'll give you three minutes."
+
+Packard looked at her wonderingly.  Then, without an answer, he strode
+by her and to the window.  The shade he flipped up so that anyone who
+cared to might look into the room.  Next he went to the door and called:
+
+"Bill, oh, Bill Royce.  Come up here.  Here's some one who wants a word
+with you!"
+
+Terry Temple's face went a burning, burning red.  There came the
+impulse to put both arms about this big shirt-sleeved, tousled Packard
+man and squeeze him hard--and at the end of it pinch him harder.  For
+in Terry's soul was understanding, and he both delighted her and shamed
+her.
+
+But when Steve came back and slipped his feet into his boots and sat
+down across the table from her, Terry's face told him nothing.
+
+"You're a funny guy, Steve Packard," she admitted thoughtfully.
+
+"That's nothing," grinned Steve, by now quite himself again.  "So are
+you!"
+
+She had come from the Temple ranch without any hat; her hair had
+tumbled down long ago and now framed her vivacious face most adorably.
+Adorably, that is, to a man's mind; other women are not always agreed
+upon such matters.  At any rate, Steve watched with both admiration and
+regret in his eyes as Terry shook out the loose bronze tresses and
+began to bring neat order out of bewilderingly becoming chaos.  Her
+mouth was full of pins when Bill Royce came in.  But still she could
+whisper tantalizingly--
+
+"If you picked on Bill for a chaperon because he's blind----"
+
+Royce stopped in the doorway.
+
+"That you, Terry Temple?" he asked.  "An' you wanted me?  What's up?"
+
+"I came to have a talk with Steve Packard," answered Terry promptly.
+
+She got up and took Royce's hands between hers and led him to a chair
+before she relinquished them.  And before she went back to her own
+place she had said swiftly:
+
+"I haven't seen you since you licked Blenham.  I--I am glad you got
+your chance, Bill."
+
+"Thank you, Miss Terry," said Royce quietly.  "I sorta evened up things
+with him.  Not quite.  But sorta.  Then you didn't want me?"
+
+"Not this trip, Bill.  It's just a play of Mr. Packard's here.  He
+didn't like to have it known that I had him all alone here; afraid it
+might compromise him, you know."
+
+She giggled.
+
+"Or queer him with his girl, mos' likely!" chuckled Royce.
+
+Whereat Steve glowered and Terry looked startled.
+
+"You're both talking nonsense," said Packard.  He reached out for his
+pipe but dropped it again to the table without lighting it.  "If there
+is anything I can do for you, Miss Temple----"
+
+He saw how the look in her eyes altered.  Nothing less than an errand
+of transcendent importance could have brought her here and he knew it.
+And now, in quick, eager words she told him:
+
+"Blenham has almost put one across on us.  Our outfit is mortgaged to
+your old thief of a grandfather for a miserable seven thousand dollars.
+Old Packard sent Blenham over to tell dad he is going to shove us out.
+Blenham plays foxy and offers dad a thousand dollars for the mortgage.
+Oh, I don't understand just how to say it, but Blenham has a few
+thousand dollars he has saved and stolen here and there, and he means
+to grab the Temple ranch for a total of eight thousand dollars; seven
+thousand to old Packard, one thousand to dad----"
+
+"But surely----"
+
+"Surely nothing!  Dad's half full of whiskey as usual, and a thousand
+dollars looks as big to him as a full moon.  Besides, he's sure of
+losing to old Hell-Fire sooner or later."
+
+"And you want me----"
+
+"If you've got any money or can raise any," said Terry crisply, "I'm
+offering you a good proposition.  The same Blenham is after.  The ranch
+is worth a whole lot better than twenty thousand dollars.  My
+proposition is--  But can you raise eight thousand?"
+
+Steve regarded her a moment speculatively.  Then, quite after the way
+of Steve Packard, he slipped his hand into his shirt and brought out a
+sheaf of banknotes and tossed them to her across the table.
+
+"I'm not a bloodsucker," he said quietly.  "Take what you like; I'll
+stake you to the wad."
+
+Terry looked, counted--and gasped.
+
+"Ten thousand!" she cried.  "Good Lord, Steve Packard!  Ten
+thousand--and you'd lend me----"
+
+"To pay off a mortgage to my grandfather, yes," he answered soberly,
+quite conscious of what he was doing and of its recklessness and,
+perhaps, idiocy.  "And to beat Blenham."
+
+She jumped up and ran around the table to put her two hands on his
+shoulders and shake him.
+
+"You're a God-blessed brick, Steve Packard!" she cried ringingly.  "But
+I'm not a bloodsucker, either.  If you're a dead game sport--  Well,
+that's what I'd rather be than anything else you can put a name to.
+Lace your boots, get into a hat, shove that in your pocket."  And she
+slipped the roll of bills into his hand.  "By now dad and Blenham will
+be on the road to Red Creek; we'll beat them to it, have a lawyer and
+some papers all ready, and when they show up we'll just take dad out of
+Blenham's hands."
+
+"I don't quite get you," said Steve.  "If you won't borrow the
+money----"
+
+"I'll make dad sell out to you for eight thousand; he pockets one
+thousand and with the other seven your money-grabbing, pestiferous old
+granddad is paid off.  Then you and I frame a deal between us----"
+
+"Partners!" ejaculated Bill Royce.  "Glory to be!  Steve Packard an'
+Terry Temple pardners----"
+
+"Don't you see?"  Terry was excitedly tugging at Steve's arm.  "Come
+on; come alive.  We're going to play freeze-out with Hell-Fire Packard
+and his right-hand bower, both.  And we're going to keep dad from doing
+a fool thing.  And we're going to--  Oh, come on, can't you?"
+
+Steve got up and stood looking down at her curiously.  Then he laughed
+and turned away for his coat and hat.
+
+"Lead on; I'm trailing you," he said briefly.
+
+Bill Royce rubbed his hands and chuckled.
+
+"Even if I ain't got eyes," he mused, "there's some things I can see
+real clear."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+"IF HE KNOWS--DOES SHE?"
+
+There seemed no particular need for haste.  And yet Terry ran eagerly
+to her car, and Steve hurried after her with long strides while the men
+down at the bunkhouse surmised and looked to Bill Royce for a measure
+of explanation.  Steve was not beyond the age of enthusiasm; Terry was
+all atingle.  Life was shaping itself to an adventure.
+
+And so, though it appeared that all of the time in the world was theirs
+for loitering--for it should be a simple matter to come to Red Creek
+well in advance of Blenham and his dupe--Terry yielded to her
+excitement, Steve yielded out of hand to the lure of Terry, and, quite
+gay about it, they sped away through the moonlight.   While Terry,
+driver, perforce kept her eyes busied with the road, Steve Packard
+leaned back in his seat and contented himself with the vision of his
+fellow adventurer.
+
+"Terry Temple," he told her emphatically and utterly sincerely, "you
+are absolutely the prettiest thing I ever saw."
+
+"I'm not a thing," said Terry.  "And besides, I know it already.
+And----"
+
+Then it was that they got their first puncture; a worn tire cut through
+by a sharp fragment of rock so that they heard the air gush out
+windily.  Terry jammed on her brakes.  Steve jumped out and made hasty
+examination.
+
+"Looks like a man had gone after it with a hand-ax," he announced
+cheerfully.  "Good thing you've got a spare."
+
+Terry flung down from her seat impatiently.
+
+"I need some new tires," she said, as she from one side and he from the
+other began seeking in the tool-box under the seat for jack and wrench.
+"That spare is soft, too, and half worn through; I'll bet we get more
+than one puncture before the job's done.  But it's mounted, anyway."
+
+Steve went down on his knee and began jacking the car up; Terry
+standing over him was busy with her wrench loosening the lugs at the
+rim.  Then, while he made the exchange and tightened the nuts, she
+strapped the punctured tire in its carrier and slipped back into her
+seat.  As Steve got in beside her he marked how speculatively her eyes
+were busied with the road.
+
+"We've got them behind us, haven't we?" he asked.
+
+Terry nodded quickly.
+
+"Yes.  We've got the head start and they're on horseback.  It's no
+trick to beat them to it.  But--  Oh, I saw a look on Blenham's face
+to-night!  He's bad, Steve Packard; all bad; the kind that stops at
+nothing!  And somehow, somehow he's got a strangle-hold on poor old dad
+and is making him do this.  We've got the head start, we can beat them
+to Red Creek, but----"
+
+"But you don't like the idea of leaving your father alone in Blenham's
+company to-night?" he finished for her.  "Is that it?"
+
+Again she nodded.  He could see her teeth set to nibbling at her lips.
+
+"Then," he suggested, "why go to Red Creek at all?  Why not turn back
+here and stop them?  You can take Mr. Temple back home with you.  I
+imagine that between the two of us we can make Blenham understand he is
+not wanted this time."
+
+"I was thinking of that," said Terry.
+
+And where the Ranch Number Ten road runs into the country road, Terry
+turned to the right, headed again toward her own home.
+
+When, with Steve at her heels, she ran up on the porch it was to be met
+by Iki, the Japanese cook, his eyes shining wildly.
+
+"Where's my father?" she asked, and Iki waving his hands excitedly
+answered:
+
+"Departed with rapid haste and many curse-words from his gentleman
+friend.  The master could not make a stop for one little more drink of
+whiskey.  The other strike and vomit threats and say: 'Most surely will
+I cause that you tarry long time in jail-side.'  Saying likewise: 'I
+got you by the long hair like I want you and yes-by-God, like some day
+soon I get your lovely daughter!'  Only he say the latter with
+unpleasant words of----"
+
+Terry was shaking him by both shoulders.
+
+"Where did they go?" she demanded.  "How long ago?"
+
+"On horses, running swiftly," gibbered Iki.  "Ten minutes,
+maybe--perhaps twenty or thirty.  Who can tell the time when----"
+
+"Why didn't we meet them?" asked Steve of Terry.  "If they are really
+headed for Red Creek?"
+
+"They are taking all of the short-cuts there are," she answered
+promptly.  "They'll take a cow-trail through the ranch, cut across the
+lower end of your place, and come into the old road just beyond.
+Blenham's all fox; he has guessed that I am out to put a spoke in his
+wheel somehow.  He won't be wasting any perfectly good moonlight.  Come
+on!"  And again she was running to the car.  "We'll overhaul them just
+the same.
+
+"I believe you," grunted Steve, once more seated beside her, the engine
+drumming, the wheels spinning.  "You don't know what a speed law is, do
+you?"
+
+"Speed law?" she repeated absently, her eyes on the next dark turn in
+the road.  "What's that?"
+
+He chuckled and settled back in his seat.  His eyes, like the girl's,
+were watchfully bent upon the gloom-filled angle which Terry must
+negotiate before the way straightened out again before her.  Her
+headlights cut through the shadows; Terry's little body stiffened a bit
+and her hands tensed on her wheel; her flying speed was lessened an
+almost negligible trifle; she made the turn and opened the throttle.
+Steve nodded approvingly.
+
+For the greater part they were silent.  He had never seen her in a mood
+like to-night's.  He read in her face, in her eyes, in the carriage of
+her body, one and the same thing; and that was a complex something made
+of the several emotions of determination, sorrow, and fiery anger.
+
+He read her thought readily; it was clear that she made no attempt to
+conceal it: She was going to consummate a certain deal, she was grieved
+and ashamed for her father, she remembered the "look on Blenham's face
+to-night," and again and again her fury shot its red tide into her
+cheeks.
+
+"Blenham put his dirty hands on her," was Steve's thought; "or tried
+to."
+
+And he found that his own pulses drummed the hotter as he let his
+imagination conjure up a picture for him, Blenham's big, knotted hands
+upon the daintiness that was Terry.  In that moment it seemed to him
+that he had been drawn home across the seas to help mete out punishment
+to a man: a man who had stricken old Bill Royce, and who now dared look
+evilly upon Terry Temple.
+
+Then came their second puncture, an ugly gash like the first caused by
+a flinty fragment of rock driven against the worn outer casing.
+
+"I ordered new tires a month ago," said Terry by way of explanation, as
+she and Steve in the road together set about remedying the trouble.
+
+While he was getting the inner-tube out, squatting in front of her car
+so as to work in the glow from her headlights, she was rummaging
+through her repair kit.
+
+"These rocky roads, you know, and the way I drive."
+
+He laughed.  "The way she drove!"  That meant, "Like the devil!" as he
+would put it.  Over rocky roads, racing right up to a turn, jamming on
+her brakes when she must slow down a little; swinging about a sharp
+bend so that her car slid and her tires dragged; in short getting all
+of the speed out of her motor that she could possibly extract from it,
+regardless and coolly contemptuous of skuffed tires and other trifles.
+
+Finding the cut in the inner-tube was simple enough; the moonlight
+alone would have shown it.  He held it up for her to look at and she
+shook her head and sighed.  But making the patch so that it would hold
+was another matter; and pumping up the tire when the job was done was
+still another, and required time and ate up all of Terry's rather
+inconsiderable amount of patience.
+
+"A little more luck like this," she cried as once more they took to the
+road, "and Blenham will put one over on us yet!"
+
+It was borne in upon Steve that Terry's fears might prove to be only
+too well founded.  The time she had taken to drive to him at his ranch,
+the time lost in returning to her home and in changing tires and
+mending a puncture, had been put to better use by Blenham.  True, he
+was on horseback while they motored.  And yet, for a score or so of
+miles, a determined, brutally merciless man upon a horse may render an
+account of himself.
+
+But while they both speculated they sped on.  They came to the spot
+where the "old road" turned into the new; Blenham and Temple were to be
+seen nowhere though here the country was flat and but sparsely
+timbered, and the moon pricked out all objects distinctly.
+
+And so on and on, beginning to wonder at last, asking themselves if
+Blenham and Temple had drawn out of the road somewhere, hiding in the
+shadows, to let them go by?  But finally only when they were climbing
+the last winding grade with Red Creek but a couple of miles away, they
+saw the two horsemen.
+
+Terry's car swung about a curve in the road her headlights for a brief
+instant aiding the moon in garishly illuminating a scene to be
+remembered.  Blenham had turned in his saddle, startled perhaps by the
+sound of the oncoming car or by the gleam of the headlights; his
+uplifted quirt fell heavily upon the sides of his running horse; rose
+and fell again upon the rump of Temple's mount, and the two men, their
+horses leaping under them, were gone over the ridge and down upon the
+far side.
+
+In a few moments, from the crest of the ridge, they made out the two
+running forms on the road below.  Blenham was still frantically beating
+his horse and Temple's.  Terry's horn blared; her car leaped; and
+Blenham, cursing loudly, jerked his horse back on its haunches and well
+out of the road.  With wheels locked, Terry slid to a standstill.
+
+"Pile in, dad," she said coolly, ignoring Blenham.  "Steve Packard and
+I will take you into Red Creek.  Packard is ready to make you a better
+proposition than Blenham's.  Turn your horse loose; he'll go home, and
+pile in with us."
+
+"He'll do nothing of the kind!" shouted Blenham, his voice husky with
+his fury.  "Just you try that on Temple, an'--  He'll do nothing of the
+kind," he concluded heavily, his mien eloquent of threat.
+
+"We know you think you've got some kind of a strangle-hold on him,
+Blenham," cut in Terry crisply.  "But even if you have, dad is a white
+man and--dad!  What is the matter?"
+
+Temple slipped from his saddle and stood shaking visibly, his face dead
+white, his eyes staring.  Even in the moonlight they could all see the
+big drops of sweat on his forehead, glistening as they trickled down.
+He put out his hand to support himself by gripping at his saddle,
+missed blindly, staggered, and began slowly collapsing where he stood
+as though his bones were little by little melting within him.  Blenham
+laughed harshly.
+
+"Drunker'n a boiled owl," he grunted.  "But jus' the same sober enough
+to know----"
+
+"Dad!" cried Terry a second time, out in the road beside him now, her
+arms belting his slacking body.  "It isn't just that.  You----"
+
+"Sick," moaned Temple weakly.  "God knows--he's been hounding me to
+death--I don't know--I wanted to stop, to rest back there but--I'm
+afraid that----"
+
+He broke off panting.  Steve jumped out and slipped his own arms about
+the wilting form.
+
+"Let me get him into the car," he said gently.  And when he had lifted
+Temple and placed him in the seat he added quietly: "You'd better hurry
+on I think.  Get a doctor for him.  I'll follow on his horse."
+
+Terry flashed him a look of gratitude, took her place at the wheel and
+started down grade.  Her father at her side continued to settle in his
+place as long as Steve kept him in sight.
+
+"Well?" growled Blenham, his voice ugly and baffled and throaty with
+his rage.  "You butt in again, do you?"
+
+Steve swung up into the saddle just now vacated by Temple.
+
+"Yes," he retorted coolly.  "And I'm in to stay, too, if you want to
+know, Blenham.  To the finish."
+
+With only the width of a narrow road between them they stared at each
+other.  Then Blenham jeered:
+
+"Oho!  It's the skirt, huh?  Stuck on her yourself, are you?"
+
+Steve frowned, but met his piercing look with level contempt.
+
+"Your language is inelegant, friend Blenham," he said slowly.  "Like
+yourself it is better withdrawn from public notice.  As to your
+meaning--why, by thunder, I half believe you are right!  And I hadn't
+thought of it!"
+
+Blenham caught In one of his rare bursts of heady rage shook his fist
+high above his head and cried out savagely:
+
+"I'll beat you yet, the both of you!  See if I don't.  Yes you an' your
+crowd an' him an' her an'----"
+
+"Don't take on too many all at once," suggested Steve.
+
+Only the tail of his eye was on Blenham; he was looking wonderingly and
+a bit wistfully down the moonlit, empty road.
+
+"I got him where I want him right now," snarled Blenham.  "An'
+her--I'll have her, too, where I want her!  An', inside less time than
+you'd think I'll have----"
+
+But he clamped his big mouth tight shut, glared at Steve a moment and
+then, striking with spur and quirt together, so that his frightened
+horse leaped out frantically, he was gone down the road after Temple
+and Terry.
+
+As Steve followed a smile was in his eyes, a smile slowly parting his
+lips.
+
+"The scoundrel was right!" he mused.  "And I hadn't even thought of it.
+Now how the devil do you suppose he knew?"
+
+And then, before he had gone a dozen yards a curious, puzzled,
+uncertain look come into his face.
+
+"If he knows," was his perplexity, "Does she?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+TERRY CONFRONTS HELL-FIRE PACKARD
+
+"Father's got it in his head he is going to die!" cried Terry.  "He
+sha'n't.  I won't let him!"
+
+Steve Packard, riding into Red Creek, met Terry coming out.  She was
+just starting, her car gathering speed; seeing him she drew down
+abruptly.
+
+"I left him at the store," she added breathlessly.  "He is sick.  They
+are friends there; they'll take care of him.  He knows you are coming;
+he has promised to do business with you and shut Blenham out of the
+running.  You are to hurry before Blenham gets there--he's across the
+street at the saloon already.  After his money, I guess; next thing,
+unless you block his play, he'll be standing over poor old dad's bed,
+bullyragging him.  Come alive, Steve Packard, and beat him to it."
+
+And with the last words she had started her car, after Terry's way of
+starting anything, with a leap.  Steve reined in after her, urging his
+horse to a gallop for the first time, calling out sharply:
+
+"But you--where are you going?  Why----"
+
+"After Doctor Bridges," Terry called back.  "The fool is over at your
+old thief of a grandfather's, playing chess!  The telephone won't----"
+
+He could merely speculate as to just what the telephone would not do.
+Terry was gone, was already at the fork of the roads, turning
+northward, hasting alone on a forty-mile drive over lonely roads and
+into the very lair of the old mountain-lion himself.  Steve whistled
+softly.
+
+"I wish she had invited me to go along," he grunted.
+
+But, instead she had commissioned him otherwise.  So, though his eyes
+were regretful he rode on to the store.  A backward glance showed him a
+diminishing red tail-light disporting itself like some new species of
+firefly gone quite mad; it was twisting this way and that as the road
+invited; it fairly emulated the gyrations of a corkscrew what with the
+added motion necessitated by the deep ruts and chuck-holes over and
+into which the spinning tires were thudding.
+
+Then the shoulder of a hill, a clump of brush, and Terry and her car
+were gone from him, swallowed up in the night and silence.  He looked
+at his watch.  It was twenty minutes after eight.  She had forty miles
+ahead of her, a return of forty miles.
+
+"It will take her two hours each way," he muttered, "unless she means
+to pile her car up in a ditch somewhere.  Four hours for the trip.
+That means I won't see her until well after midnight."
+
+And then he grinned a shade sheepishly; Blenham was right.  He had
+thought of those four hours as though they had been four years.
+
+But for her part Terry had no intention of being four hours driving a
+round trip of any eighty miles that she knew of; she had never done
+such a thing before and could see no cause for beginning to-night.
+True, the roads were none too good at best, downright bad often enough.
+
+Well, that was just the sort of thing she was used to.  And to-night
+there was need for haste.  Great haste, thought the girl anxiously, as
+she remembered the look on her father's face when she and the
+storekeeper's wife had gotten him into bed.
+
+"I'll have the roads all to myself; that's one good thing."
+
+She settled herself in her seat, preparing for a tense hour.  She, too,
+had marked the time; it had been on the verge of twenty minutes after
+eight as she left the store.  "What right has the only doctor in the
+country to play chess, anyway?  And with old Hell-Fire Packard at that?
+Two precious old rascals they are, I'll be bound.  But a rascal of a
+doctor is better than no doctor at all, and--  Ah, a good, open bit of
+road!"
+
+The car leaped to fresh speed under her.  She glanced at her
+speedometer; the needle was wavering between twenty-seven and thirty
+miles.  She narrowed her eyes upon the road; it invited; she shoved the
+throttle on her wheel a little further open; thirty miles,
+thirty-three, thirty-five--forty, forty-five--there she kept it for a
+moment--only a moment it seemed to her breathless impatience.  For next
+came a series of curves where her road, rising, went over the first
+ridge of hills and where on either hand danger lurked.
+
+Beyond the ridge the road straightened out suddenly.  Better time now:
+twenty-five miles, thirty, thirty-five--and then, down in the valley,
+forty-five miles, fifty, fifty-five--her horn blaring, sending far and
+wide its defiant, warning echoes, her headlights flashing across trees,
+fences, patches of brush, and rolling hills--sixty miles.
+
+"If my tires only stick it out--they ought to--this road hasn't a sharp
+rock on it."
+
+But from sixty miles she must pull down sharply.  Far ahead something
+was across the road; perhaps only a shadow, perhaps a tangible barrier;
+she didn't know these roads any too well.
+
+She cut off her power, jammed on foot and emergency brakes, and so came
+to a stop just in time.  Here a fence stretched across the road; the
+tall gate throwing its black shadows on the white moonlit soil was not
+five feet from her hood when she stopped.
+
+She jumped down, threw the gate wide open, propped it back with a stone
+knowing full well how the farmers and cattlemen hereabouts builded
+their gates to shut automatically, drove through in such haste that she
+grazed the gate itself and so jarred it into closing behind her, and
+was again glancing from road to speedometer--twenty-five, thirty-five,
+a turn to negotiate, seen far ahead, dropping back to twenty-five, to
+twenty.  A straight, alluring stretch--twenty-five, thirty-five,
+forty-five, fifty, fifty-five, sixty, sixty-two, sixty-three--the far
+rim of the valley, another line of hills black under the stars--fifty
+again and down to twenty-five, to twenty and horn blowing as she sped
+into the mouth of the first canon.
+
+And again, when at last she was down in Old Man Packard's valley and
+within hailing distance of his misshapen monster of a house, she set
+her horn to blaring like the martial trumpet of an invading army.
+Cattle and horses along her road awoke from their dozing in the
+moonlight, perhaps leaped to the conclusion that it was old Hell-Fire
+himself in their midst, flung their tails aloft and scampered to right
+and left, and Terry's car stood in front of Packard's door.
+
+Right square in front of the door so that Terry herself could jump from
+her running-board and so that her front wheels were planted firmly in
+the old man's choice bed of roses.  There were two flat tires,
+punctured on the way; two ruined, battered rims; her tank still held
+perhaps a gallon of gasoline.  But she had arrived.
+
+Before she leaped out Terry had glanced at her clock; she had made the
+trip of forty miles in exactly fifty-three minutes.  Considering the
+state of the roads----
+
+"Not bad," admitted Terry.
+
+Then with a final clarion call of her horn she had presented herself at
+Packard's door.  She had got a few of the wildest blown wisps of brown
+hair back where they belonged before the door opened.  She heard
+hurrying feet and prepared herself by a visible stiffening for the
+coming of the arch villain himself.  There was a sense of
+disappointment when she saw that it was only the dwarfed henchman come
+in the master's stead.  Guy Little stared at her in pure surprise.
+
+"Terry Temple, ain't it?" gasped the mechanician.  "For the love of
+Pete!"
+
+"I want Doctor Bridges," said Terry quickly.  "He's here, isn't he?"
+
+Guy Little instead of making a prompt and direct answer presented as
+puzzled a countenance as the girl ever saw.  He was in slippers and
+shirtsleeves; he had a large volume which in his hands appeared little
+less than huge; his hair was as badly tousled as Terry's own;  his eyes
+were frankly bewildered.  Terry spoke again impatiently:
+
+"Answer me and don't gawk at me!  Is the doctor here?"
+
+"For the love of Pete!" was quite all that Guy Little offered in
+response.
+
+She sniffed and pushed by him, standing in the hallway and for the
+first time in her life fairly in the lion's den.  She looked about her
+with lively interest.
+
+"Say," said Little then.  "Hold on a minute."
+
+He came quietly close to her, his slipper-feet falling soundlessly.
+
+"Doc Bridges is in there with the ol' man."  He jerked his head toward
+the big library and living-room whose door stood closed in their faces.
+"They're playin' chess.  Unless your sick man's dyin' I guess you
+better wait until they get through.  Even if he is dyin'----"
+
+"I'll do nothing of the kind!" retorted Terry emphatically.  "When I've
+raced all the way from Red Creek, banging my car all up, risking my
+precious life every jump of the way, doing the trip in fifty-three
+minutes do you think that------"
+
+"Hey?" cried Guy Little.  "How's that?  How many minutes?
+Fifty-three, you said, didn't you?  Fifty-three minutes from Red Crick
+to here?  Hey?"
+
+"Is the man crazy?" demanded Terry.  "Didn't I say I did?  I could have
+done it in less, too, only with a flat tire and----"
+
+"Hey?" repeated Guy Little, over and over.  "You done that?  Hey?  You
+say----"
+
+"I say," cut in Terry starting toward the closed door, "that there is a
+man sick and a doctor wanted."
+
+"Oh, can that part of it!" cried Little, coming after her again in his
+excitement.  "Chuck it!  Forget it!  The thing is that you made the run
+from there to here--an' in the night time--an' with tire trouble
+an'----"
+
+"Doctor Bridges----"
+
+"Is in there.  Like I said.  Playin' chess with the ol' man.  You don't
+know what that means.  I do.  Mos' usually, askin' a lady's pardon for
+the way of sayin' it, it means Hell.  Capital H.  An' to-night the ol'
+man has got the door locked an' he's two games behind an' he's sore as
+a hoot-owl an' he says that anybody as breaks in on his play is--  No,
+I can't say it; not in the presence of a lady.  There's times when the
+ol' man is so awful vi'lent he's purty near vile about it.  Get me?"
+
+"Guy Little, you just stand aside!"  Terry's eyes blazed into his as
+she threw out a hand to thrust his back.  "I came for the doctor and
+I'm going to get him."
+
+Guy Little merely shook his head.
+
+"You don't know the ol' man," he said quietly.  "An' I do.  I'm the
+only man, woman or child livin' as does know him.  You stan' aside."
+
+He stepped quickly by her and rapped at the door.  When only silence
+greeted him he rapped again.  Now suddenly, explosively, came Old Man
+Packard's voice, fairly quivering with rage as the old man shouted:
+
+"If that's you, Guy Little, I'll beat your head off'n your fool body!
+Get out an' go away an' go fast!"
+
+"It's important, your majesty," returned Guy Little's voice
+imperturbably.
+
+He rubbed one slippered toe against his calf and winked at Terry,
+looking vastly innocent and boyish.
+
+"I'm pullin' for you," he whispered.  "There's jus' one way to do it."
+Aloud he repeated.  "It's important, your majesty.  An' there's a lady
+here."
+
+"Lady?" shouted the old man, his voice fairly breaking with the emotion
+that went into it.  "Lady?  In my house?  What do you mean?"  Then,
+without waiting for an answer, "I don't care who she is or what she is
+or what the two of you want.  Get out!  This fool pill-roller in here
+thinks he can beat me playin' chess; you're in league with him to
+distract me, you traitor!"
+
+Guy Little smiled broadly and winked again.
+
+"Ain't he got the manner of a dook?" he whispered admiringly.  And to
+his employer, "Say, Packard, it's the little Temple girl.  Terry
+Temple, you know.  An'----"
+
+Even Terry started and drew back a quick step from the closed door.
+She did not know that a man's voice could pierce to one's soul like
+that.
+
+"An'," went on Guy Little hurriedly, knowing that he must rush his
+words now if he got them out at all, "she's jus' drove all the way from
+Red Crick--in a Boyd-Merrill, Twin Eight car--had tire trouble on the
+road--an' done the trip in fifty-three minutes!"
+
+He got it all out.  A deep silence shut down after his words.  A
+silence during which a man's eyes might have opened and stared, during
+which a man's mouth too might have opened and closed wordlessly, during
+which a man's brain might estimate what this meant, to drive forty
+miles in fifty-three minutes over such roads as lay between the Packard
+ranch and Red Creek.
+
+"It's a lie!" shouted Packard.  "She couldn't do it."
+
+"I want Doctor Bridges----"
+
+"Sh!" Guy Little cut her short.  "I got the ol' boy on the run.  Leave
+it to me."  And aloud once more: "She done it.  She can prove it.
+An'----"
+
+There came a snort of fury from the locked room followed by the noise
+of a chess-board and set of men hurled across the room and by an old
+man's voice shouting fiercely:
+
+"It's a cursed frame-up.  Bridges, you're a scoundrel and I can beat
+you any three games out of five and I'll bet you ten thousan' dollars
+on it, any time!  An' as for that thief of a Temple's squidge-faced
+girl--  Come in.  Damn it all, come in and be done with it!"
+
+And as he unlocked the door with a hand that shook and flung it wide
+open he and Terry Temple confronted each other for the first time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+A GATE AND A RECORD SMASHED
+
+The man never yet lived and knew old man Packard who would have
+suggested that he was not a good and thorough-going hater.  His enemy
+and all of his enemy's household, wife and child, maid-servant and
+man-servant were all as the spawn of Satan.
+
+Now he stood back, his face flushed, his two hands on his hips, his
+beard thrust forward belligerently and fairly seeming to bristle.
+Terry Temple, her heart beating like mad all of a sudden and for no
+reason which she would admit to herself, lifted her head and stepped
+across the threshold defiantly.  For a very tense moment the two of
+them, old man and young girl, stared at each other.
+
+Doctor Bridges still sat at the chess-table, his mouth dropping open,
+his expression one of pure consternation; Guy Little stood in the
+doorway just behind Terry, rubbing a slippered toe against his leg and
+watching interestedly.
+
+"So you're Temple's girl, are you?" snorted the old man.  "Well, I
+might have guessed it!"
+
+And the manner of the statement, rather than the words themselves, was
+very uncomplimentary to Miss Teresa Arriega Temple.
+
+And, as a mere matter of fact--and old man Packard knew it well enough
+down in his soul--he would have guessed nothing of the sort.  So long
+had he held her in withering contempt, just because of her relationship
+to her father, so long had he invested her with all thinkably
+distasteful attributes, so long had he in his out-of-hand way named her
+squidge-nosed, putty-faced, pig-eyed, and so on, that in due course he
+had really formed his own image of her.
+
+And now, suddenly confronted by the most amazingly pretty girl he had
+ever seen, he managed to snort that she was just what he knew she
+was--and in the snorting no one knew better than old man Packard that,
+as he could have put it himself, "He lied like a horse-thief!"
+
+Terry had seen him once when she was a very little girl.  He had been
+pointed out to her by one of her father's cowboys who, for reasons of
+his own, heartily hated and a little feared the old man.  Since then
+the girl's lively imagination had created a most unseemly brute out of
+the enemy of her house, a beetle-browed, ugly-mouthed, facially-hideous
+being little short of a monstrosity.
+
+And now Terry's fine feminine perception begrudgingly was forced to set
+about constructing a new picture.  The old man, black-hearted villain
+that he was, was the most upstanding, heroic figure of a man that she
+had ever seen.
+
+Beside him Doctor Bridges was a spectacle of physical degeneracy while
+Guy Little became a grotesque dwarf.  The grandfather was much like the
+grandson, and--though she vowed to like him the less for it--was in his
+statuesque, leonine way quite the handsomest man she had ever looked on.
+
+Perhaps it was at just the same instant that each realized that rather
+too great an interest had been permitted to go into a long, searching
+look.  For Terry suddenly affected a look of supreme contempt while the
+old man jerked his eyes away, transferring his regard to the serene Guy
+Little.
+
+"You said, Guy Little----"
+
+"Yes, sir, I said it!"  Guy Little nodded vigorously.  "Them forty
+miles in fifty-three minutes.  In the dark.  An' with tire trouble.
+It's a record.  The best you ever done it in was fifty-seven minutes.
+She beat you four minutes.  Her!"
+
+He indicated Terry.
+
+"Doctor Bridges--" began Terry.
+
+"It's a lie!" cried the old man, smashing the table top with a clenched
+fist.  "I don't care who says it; she couldn't do it!  No girl could;
+no Temple could.  It ain't so!"
+
+"Call me a liar?" cried Terry, a sudden flaming, surging, hot current
+in her cheeks, her eyes blazing.  "You are a horrid old man.  I always
+knew you were a horrid old man and you are a lot horrider than I
+thought you were.  And--you just call me a liar again, Hell-Fire
+Packard, and I'll slap your face for you!"
+
+For a moment, gripped by his ever-ready rage, the old man stood
+towering over her, looking down with blazing eyes into eyes which
+blazed back, a little tremor visibly shaking him as though he were
+tempted almost beyond resistance to lay his hands on her and punish her
+impudence.  A bright, almost eager, fearlessness shone in her eyes.
+
+"I dare you," said Terry.  "Old man that you are, I'll slap you so that
+you'd know who it is you're insulting.  Pirate!" she flung at him.
+"And land-hog--  Oh!
+
+"Doctor Bridges, you are to come with me right now."  She had flung
+about giving her shoulder to Packard's inspection.  "We must hurry back
+to Red Creek."
+
+"Say, Packard," chimed in Guy Little.  "Her car's all shot to pieces.
+An' her gas is all gone.  An' her ol' man is awful sick in Red Creek
+an' needin' a doc in a hurry--or not any.  You understan'----"
+
+"What's it got to do with me?" boomed Hell-Fire Packard.  "What do I
+care whether her old thief of a father dies to-night or next week?
+What do I----"
+
+"Aw, rats," grunted Guy Little.  "What's eatin' you, Packard?  Listen
+to me: She says how she done it in fifty-three minutes an' you can't do
+it any better'n fifty-seven; how you ain't no dead-game sport noways;
+how she's short of change but would bet a man fifty dollars you
+couldn't an' wouldn't."
+
+"She said them things?" roared the old man.
+
+"I--" began Terry.
+
+"She did!" answered Guy Little hastily and loudly.  "She did!"
+
+"Bridges," snapped old Packard, "grab your hat an' black poison bag an'
+be ready in two minutes."  Packard was on his way to the door.  "Guy
+Little, you get my car at the front door--quick!  An' as for you--"  He
+was at the door and half turned to stare angrily into Terry's
+eyes--"You can do what you please.  I'm goin' to take the only
+pill-slinger in the country to the worst ol' thief I ever heard a man
+tell about."
+
+"I'm going back with you," said Terry briefly.
+
+Old man Packard shrugged.  Then he laughed.
+
+"If you ain't scared," he grunted, "to ride alongside a man as swears,
+so help him God, in spite of smash-bang-an'-be-damn', is goin' to make
+that little run back to Red Creek--in less'n fifty minutes!"
+
+"Mind you," said old man Packard at the front door, his eye stony as it
+marked how Terry's car stood among his choice roses, "I ain't doin'
+this because I got any use for a Temple, he or she.  Especially she.
+You jus' get that in your head, young lady.  An' before we start let me
+tell you one more thing: You keep your two han's off'n my gran'son!"
+
+"What!" gasped Terry.
+
+"I said it," he fairly snorted.  "Come on there, Guy Little, with that
+car.  Ready there, Bridges, you ol' fool?  Pile in."
+
+He took his seat at the wheel, his old black hat pushed far back on his
+head, his eye already on the clock in the dash.  Terry slipped ahead of
+Doctor Bridges and took her seat at the old man's side.
+
+"You said--just what?" she demanded icily.
+
+"I said," he cried savagely, "as I know how you been chasin' my fool of
+a gran'son Stephen, an' as how you got to stop it.  I won't have you
+makin' a bigger fool out'n him than he already is."
+
+Terry sat rigid, speechless, grown suddenly cold.  For once in her life
+no ready answer sprang to her lips.
+
+Then Hell-Fire Packard had started his engine, sounded his horn, and
+they were on their way.  And Terry, because no words would come, put
+her head back and laughed in a way that, as she knew perfectly well,
+would madden him.
+
+The drive from Hell-Fire Packard's front door to the store in Red Creek
+was made in some few negligible seconds over forty-eight minutes.  The
+three occupants of the car reached town alive.  Never in her life after
+that night would Terry Temple doubt that there was a Providence which
+at critical times took into its hands the destinies of men.
+
+There had been never a word spoken until they had come to the gate
+which had closed behind Terry on the way out.  Old man Packard had
+looked at speedometer, clock and obstruction.  Terry had seen his hands
+tighten on his wheel.
+
+"Set tight an' hang on," he had commanded sharply.
+
+The big front tires and bumper struck the gate; there was a wild flying
+of splinters and at sixty miles an hour they went through and on to Red
+Creek.
+
+"The old devil!" whispered Terry within herself.  "The old devil!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+PACKARD WRATH AND TEMPLE RAGE
+
+No far-sighted, inspired prophet's services were needed to predict a
+rather stormy scene upon the arrival of old Hell-Fire Packard and Miss
+Terry Temple at the place of the storekeeper of Red Creek.  It was to
+be expected that Steve Packard would be on hand; that he would be
+impatiently awaiting the drum of a racing motor; that he would be on
+the sidewalk to greet Temple's daughter.
+
+"Terry!" he called.  "So soon?"
+
+He couldn't have made a worse beginning had he pondered the matter long
+and diabolically.  Blenham had been right and Steve had had ample time
+to admit the fact utterly and completely; now there was a ringing note
+in his voice, the effect of which, falling upon his grandfather's ears,
+might be likened with no great stretch of imagination to that of a
+spark in a keg of gunpowder.
+
+The old man's brakes, applied emphatically, brought his car to a
+standstill.
+
+"Look at that clock!" was his first remark, at once apprising Steve of
+his relative's presence and hinting, by means of its no uncertain tone,
+at an unpleasant situation on hand or about to burst upon them.  "Made
+it in fifty-three minutes, did you?  Well, I done it in less'n
+forty-nine!  What have you got to say about that?"
+
+But Terry ignored him and jumped down, her hand impulsively laid on
+Steve's arm.  Thus she, in her turn, may be said to have added another
+spark to young Packard's in the powder keg.
+
+"How's dad?" she asked quickly.
+
+Steve patted the hand on his arm and either Terry did not notice the
+act or did not mind.  Old man Packard both noted and minded.  His grunt
+was to be heard above Doctor Bridges's devout "Thank God, we're here!"
+as the physician stepped stiffly to the sidewalk.
+
+"Better," said Steve.  "I think he's going to be all right after all.
+I hope so.  He----"
+
+"Blenham?" she asked insistently.  "He didn't put one over on you?  The
+mortgage----"
+
+Steve tapped his breast pocket.
+
+"The papers have been signed; we got a notary; everything is shipshape.
+Go in; I'll tell you all about it later."
+
+He turned toward the car and the stiffened figure of the man gripping
+the wheel with tense, hard hands.
+
+"Grandy----"
+
+"Grandy, your foot!" boomed old Packard suddenly, one hand jerked away
+to be clenched into a lifted fist.  "An' _Terry_!  My God!"
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Steve.  "I don't understand."
+
+"I mean," shouted Packard senior, his voice shaking with emotion, "that
+no mouth in the world is big enough to hold them two words the same
+night!  If you want to chum with any Temple livin', he-Temple or
+she-Temple, if, sir, you intend to go 'round slobberin' over the
+low-down enemies of your own father an' father's father, why, sir, then
+I'm Mr. Packard to you and the likes of you!"
+
+Still was Steve mystified.
+
+"I thought," he muttered, "that since you two came together, since you
+yourself have driven her in----"
+
+"If I, sir," thundered his grandfather, "have chosen to bring that
+petticoated wildcat there an' that ol' pill-slinger from my place to
+Red Creek in a shake less'n forty-nine minutes--jus' to show her that
+anything on God's earth done by a Temple can be better done by a
+Packard--you got to go to thinkin' things, have you?  Why, sir, so help
+me, sir, I've a notion to jump down right now an' give you the
+horsewhippin' of your life!"
+
+Steve, in spite of himself, chuckled.  Terry, reassured about her
+father, giggled.  Both sounds were audible; the two, mingled, were
+entirely too much to be borne.
+
+"You--you disgrace to an honorable name," the old man called bitterly
+and wrathfully.  "You----"
+
+He broke off, hesitated, glared from Steve at the car's side to Terry
+already on the steps of the store, and concluded something more quietly
+though not a whit less furiously for all that: "You speak of papers
+signed.  You don't mean you're actually havin' any kind of business
+dealin's, frien'ly dealin's, with the Temples?"
+
+"Blenham brought word you were foreclosing on Temple; he had some sort
+of a crooked scheme to cheat Temple out of his land.  I have just
+framed a deal whereby I put up the money to pay you your mortgage
+and----"
+
+"You?  _You_, Stephen Packard?"
+
+"Yes," said Steve, wondering whether the old man were the more moved
+because of the shock of finding his nephew able to pay off so large a
+sum or because of the "frien'ly dealin's with the Temples."
+
+There was a brief silence.  Doctor Bridges mounted the steps; he and
+Terry were going in.  Then again Hell-Fire Packard's voice burst out
+violently and Terry stopped short, her hands going suddenly to her
+breast.  Her face, could they have noted in the pale light, was flaming
+scarlet.
+
+"That hussy, that jade, that Jezebel!" came the ringing denunciation.
+"The tricky, shameless, penurious, graspin' unprincipled little
+she-devil!  She's after you, my boy, after you hard.  An', you poor
+miserable blind worm of a fool, you ain't got the sense to see it!
+Everybody knows it; the whole country's talkin' about it; how Temple's
+baitin' his trap with her an' she's baitin' her trap with herself
+an'----"
+
+"Grandfather!" cried Steve, his own face flushing under the scathing
+torrent.  "You don't know what you are saying!"
+
+"I know what he's saying."
+
+Terry, her hands still tight pressed to her breast, came slowly down
+the steps.  Though but a moment had passed her face was now dead white
+in the moonlight.
+
+"You are saying," and her eyes shone straight up into the old man's,
+"that I am setting a trap for your grandson?  That I, Teresa Arriega
+Temple, would for an instant consider a Packard, the son and the
+grandson of a Packard, as worthy of shining my boots for me?  Why, I
+spit upon the two of you!"
+
+She whirled and was gone into the house.  Steve instead of watching her
+going kept his eyes hard upon his grandfather's face.  Now that the
+door closed he said quietly:
+
+"Grandfather, we have seen rather little, of each other.  I think we
+had better see even less from now on.  You have insulted that girl in a
+way that makes me want to climb into your car and drag you down--and
+beat you half to death!"
+
+His restraint was melting under the fire of his passion; his voice grew
+less quiet and began to tremble.
+
+"I am going to make that girl the next Mrs. Packard or know the reason
+why!"
+
+"Defy me, do you?  Defy me an' go an' run with a pack of thieves
+an'----"
+
+"That's enough!" shouted Steve.  "I am going right straight and ask
+her----"
+
+"Ask her an' hell swallow you!" came the vociferous permission from the
+infuriated old man.  "But remember one thing: Blenham has slipped up
+to-night, maybe, an' let you an' her an' her lyin', thievin',
+scoundrelly father steal a march on me.  But it's the last one; mark
+that!  Blenham gets his orders straight from me to-night; he goes after
+you to break you, smash you, literally pull you to pieces root an'
+branch--an' with me an' Blenham workin' on the job night an' day,
+stoppin' at nothin'.  Hear me?  I mean it!"  His two fists were now
+lifted high above his head.  "Stoppin' at nothin' I'll step on you an'
+your Temple frien's like you was a nest of caterpillars.  You hear me,
+Stephen!"
+
+But Stephen, his lips tight pressed as he fought with himself to keep
+his hands off his own father's father, turned and went the way Terry
+had gone.
+
+"You hear me, Stephen.  There's nothin' I'll stop at to smash you!"
+
+So his grandfather's voice followed him mightily.  But young Packard
+had already set his thought upon another matter.  Before him in the
+tiny living-room of the ramshackle store building a kerosene lamp was
+burning palely and lying upon an old sofa, face down, shaken with sobs
+was Terry.
+
+"Terry!" he called softly.  "Your father isn't----"
+
+He thought that she had not heard.  He came closer and laid his hand
+gently--there was a deep tenderness even in the action--upon her
+shoulder.  But Terry had heard and now flung his hand violently aside
+and sprang to her feet, her eyes blazing angrily into his.
+
+"My father is asleep.  Doctor Bridges rather thinks there is nothing
+very much the matter with him," she remarked crisply.  "I am sorry I
+troubled you in any way, Mr. Packard.  You say you arranged matters
+with dad?  Well, I want you to tear up the papers; I'll see that your
+money is returned to you."
+
+"Terry!" he muttered.
+
+Then she flared out hotly, her two small hands clenched at her sides,
+her chin lifted, her voice a new voice in his ears, bitter and hostile.
+
+"Don't you Terry me, Steve Packard!  Now or ever again.  I am sorry
+that I ever saw you; I am ashamed that I ever spoke to you.  I had
+rather be dead or--yes, I'd rather be in Blenham's arms than have you
+look at me!"
+
+"Good Lord!" ejaculated Steve, utterly at sea.  "I don't understand."
+
+"You don't have to," snapped Terry.  "All you've got to know is that I
+won't have anything further in any way whatever to do with you.  I
+won't have you helping us with our mortgage; I won't have you advancing
+money to us; I won't stand one little minute for any of your--your
+wretched interference with our affairs!  If you think you can--can butt
+in on our side of any fight in the world----"
+
+She ended abruptly, beginning to flounder, panting so that the swift
+rise and fall of her breast was an outward token of inward emotion.
+Steve Packard stared and flushed hotly and began to feel his own anger
+mount quickly.
+
+"Butt in on your affairs!" he snorted after a fashion more than vaguely
+reminiscent of his grandfather.  "I like that!  As if I'd have come a
+step without your invitation."
+
+And so he blurted out the one thing he should have left unsaid, the
+thing which already rankled in Terry's proud heart.  She had asked him
+to come; she had in a way suggested a--a sort of partnership.
+
+"Oh! how I hate you!" cried Terry.  "You--you Packard!"
+
+"If there's some crime, some string of crimes that I have committed----"
+
+"Will you tear up those papers?  I'll get you back your money.  Will
+you tear up those papers?"
+
+"Will you explain what's gone wrong?"
+
+"I will not."
+
+He shrugged exasperatingly.
+
+"I'll keep the papers," he returned stonily.  "I put over rather a good
+deal to-night, come to think of it."
+
+He put on his hat, jamming it down tight, and half turned to go.
+
+"When you want to talk ranch matters over with me--come to my
+ranch-house, little pardner!"
+
+"Oh!" cried Terry.  "Oh!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE HAND OF BLENHAM
+
+"Each man's life is what he shapes it for himself."
+
+"A stupid, bare-faced, platitudinous lie!"
+
+Steve Packard, grown irritable here of late, flung the offending book
+through an open window and got to his feet.
+
+"A man's life is what the evil little gods of chance make it, curse
+them.  Or what a fool of a girl tangles and twists it into."
+
+He shook himself viciously and went to his door, staring out across the
+hills vaguely moulded under the stars.
+
+Life was just a very unsatisfactory sort of a proposition.  It was a
+game that wasn't worth the players' serious attention, a game all of
+chance and not in the least of skill, and not even interesting!  So, in
+the sombre depths of his soul Steve Packard admitted freely.  And,
+until a certain night only some six months ago, he had never divined
+this great truth.
+
+That night Blenham had sneered, "Stuck on her yourself, are you?" and
+Steve had recognized a vital fact inelegantly expressed; that night
+Terry Temple had appeared to him more than just a "good little sport";
+that night he had somewhat brusquely considered the sweet femininity of
+her under her assumed surface of _diablerie_ and had found her
+infinitely desirable; that same night Terry, for no reason in the world
+that Steve Packard could discover, had suddenly congealed into a thing
+of ice that had never since thawed save only briefly before burning
+fits of wrath.
+
+Two hours after he had admitted to himself that he loved her she
+informed him with all of the emphasis she could summon for the occasion
+that she hated him.  And life hadn't been what he had made it at all.
+
+The papers which Temple had signed were still in existence, safely
+deposited in a bank in San Juan.  Steve had paid off the Temple
+mortgage to his grandfather; he had paid Temple a thousand dollars in
+cash; thereby he had acquired a half interest in the Temple ranch.
+That had all been quite in accordance with Terry's suggestions and
+entirely satisfactory.
+
+Not being a thief, Steve counted upon relinquishing his right to his
+half at any time that Temple paid back just what had been advanced.
+But it became evident very soon that Temple would never pay back
+anything.  Though Doctor Bridges found nothing very much the matter
+with him, nevertheless Temple died less than two weeks later.
+
+During those two weeks Steve had not seen Terry.  With word of the
+girl's bereavement, however, he had gone immediately to her.  She
+looked at him curiously, saying quietly that the boys were doing all
+that was necessary and had asked him to go.
+
+Then, after another two weeks, he had ridden again to the Temple ranch.
+He found it deserted, doors and windows shut, dead leaves thick in the
+path.  His heart sank and thereafter knocked hard at his ribs; Terry
+was gone and had said nothing to him.  He turned and went home, bitter
+and angry and hurt.
+
+Where had she gone?  He didn't know; he told himself he didn't care;
+certainly he would bite his tongue out before he would ask any of her
+friends.  But he knew within himself that he did care as he had cared
+about nothing else in the world; and he asked himself a thousand times:
+
+"Where has Terry gone?"
+
+For the world was not right without her; the sunlight was thin; the
+season of bursting buds was but a pale, lack-lustre imitation of
+spring.  And as the long, hot days dragged by and the verdure died on
+hill and plain and dusty mountainside, he asked himself "When will she
+come back to us?"
+
+Long after every one else had heard and forgotten the story, or at
+least had given over all thinking upon it, Steve heard how Terry had
+drawn against the last of the inconsiderable legacy left her long ago
+by her Spanish mother, and had gone to San Juan.
+
+She had friends there; the banker's wife, Mrs. Engle and her
+fluffy-haired daughter, Florrie, had opened their arms to her and made
+her tarry with them until the family made their annual trip East.  Then
+Terry had gone with them.
+
+And never a word to Steve Packard.  He cursed himself, tried to curse
+her, and found that he couldn't quite make a go of it, and settled down
+to good, hard work and the job of forgetting what a pair of gray eyes
+looked like and how two certain red lips smiled and the tinkly notes of
+a laughing voice.
+
+In the good, hard work of stock ranching he succeeded more than well;
+in the other task he set himself he failed utterly.  Never, when alone
+out on the range a shadow fell across, did he fail to look up quickly
+with his lips half forming to the word, "Terry!"  And, after all this
+time, still no word from her, no word of her.
+
+Eight thousand dollars he had paid to Temple.  The remaining two
+thousand of his father's heritage he had turned over promptly to his
+grandfather to apply on his own indebtedness.  He had consulted with
+Bill Royce and Barbee and had cut down his crew of men, thereby
+curtailing expenses.
+
+He had sold a few head of beef cattle and banked the money for the
+men's wages and current expenses.  By the same means he had managed to
+keep abreast of his interest payments to old man Packard and had even
+paid off a little more of the principal.  Then, catching the market
+right "going and coming," he had bought a lot of young cattle from an
+overstocked ranch adjoining, and had made a second profitable sale a
+month later.
+
+Finally, to indicate that he was still in the game and playing it to
+win, consequently overlooking never a bet, he had cashed in pretty
+fortunately on a section of his timber-land.
+
+The Rollston mills were just opening upon the other side of the
+mountains; he showed the firm's buyer a stretch of his big timber and
+closed the deal to their common satisfaction.  And with every deal of
+this sort old man Packard felt his grip being pried loose from Ranch
+Number Ten.
+
+From the beginning Steve had been puzzled to know what to do with the
+Temple outfit.  Terry had paid off the men and had let them go; the
+stock on the place she had left, and without a word, to Steve's care.
+Since the place was well stocked, chiefly with young cattle, there was
+enough here to demand the attention which so busy a man as Steve
+Packard could not give.
+
+He talked matters over with Bill Royce and in the end sent both Bill
+and Barbee to the Temple place, riding over once or twice a week
+himself to see how matters went.
+
+And so the months dragged by.  Twice, swearing to himself that he was
+doing so only because the management of the business made it absolutely
+necessary, Steve wrote to Terry.  He got no answer.  He did not even
+know if she had received his notes.  The first he had signed, by the
+way, "Yours very truly, Steve."  The second ended "Respectfully, S.
+Packard."
+
+
+"Terry's havin' the time of her life," Bill Royce startled him by
+announcing one day out of a clear sky.
+
+"How do you know?" asked Steve sharply.
+
+"Oh, she writes letters to her frien's," said Royce.  "One of the boys
+brought word from the Norton place.  Terry wrote her an' wrote some
+folks in Red Creek an' wrote the Lanes an'----"
+
+"Appears to be quite a letter-writer," remarked Steve stiffly.  "And
+she's having the time of her life, is she?"
+
+"Sure," said Royce innocently.  "Why not?  The boys are bettin' she's
+dead gone on some young down-East jasper an' that maybe she'll be
+married in no time.  What do you think, huh, Steve?"
+
+"Where is she?" demanded Steve, very brusque about it.
+
+"Blessed if I know," admitted Royce.  "Chicago, I think.  Or New York.
+Or Pennsylvany.  One of them towns.  Shucks.  She'd ought to come on
+home where she belongs."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Steve.
+
+But in Royce's ears the voice didn't ring quite true.  It was meant to
+be careless in the extreme and--no, it didn't ring quite true.
+
+Hot, cloudless skies as the season dragged on, dry, burning fields
+under a blazing sun, the cattle seeking shade wherever it was to be
+had, crowding at the water-holes, browsing early and late and
+frequenting the cooler canons during the heat of the days.  And nights
+of stars and a vast silence and emptiness.
+
+A girl had come, had for a little posed laughing outlined against the
+window of a man's soul, had flashed her unforgettable gray eyes at him
+and had gone.  And so, and just because of her, the blistering hills
+seemed but ugly, lonely miles, the nights under a full moon were just
+the more silent and empty.
+
+But Steve Packard held on, grown grim and determined.  He had entered
+the game, lightly enough he had demanded his stack of chips, now he
+would stay for the show-down.  Either he would clear his ranch of its
+mortgage and thus make clear to his meddlesome old grandparent that he
+was a man grown and no mere boy to be disciplined and badgered
+willy-nilly, or else his meddlesome old grandparent would in truth
+"smash" him.
+
+In either case there would be the end soon.  For, win or lose, Steve,
+tired of the game, would draw out and set his back to Ranch Number Ten
+and the country about it and go back to the old rudderless life of
+vagabondage.  Just because a girl had come, had tarried, and then had
+gone.
+
+So, though the game had long ago lost its zest, Steve Packard like any
+other thoroughbred played on for a finish.  Now and then, but seldom,
+he saw Blenham.  Often, in little, annoying, mean ways Blenham made
+himself felt.  Early in the season Steve's riders had found three of
+his steers dead on the outskirts of the range; a rifle bullet had done
+for each one of them.
+
+Since old man Packard had promised to stop at nothing, since Blenham
+was full of venom, Steve never for a moment doubted whose hand had
+fired the three shots.  But he merely called his cowboys together, told
+them what had happened, ordered them to keep their eyes open and their
+guns oiled, and hoped and longed for the time when he himself could
+come upon Blenham busied with some act like this.
+
+There were other episodes which he attributed to Blenham though he must
+admit in each case that anything in the vaguest way approaching a proof
+was lacking.  Just before he closed the deal with the lumber company
+that had taken over his timber tract a forest fire had broken out.
+Luck and a fortuitous shifting of the wind had saved him from a heavy
+loss.
+
+Incidents, these and others of their kind, to fill Steve Packard with
+rage; but Blenham's supreme blows--Blenham's and old man
+Packard's--were reserved for late in the dry season when they fell
+hardest.
+
+A growing shortage of feed and the necessity for cash for the
+forthcoming substantial sum to be paid on the mortgage held by his
+grandfather, combined with the fact that his lean acres were
+overstocked, drove Steve in search of a market late in the summer.
+Bill Royce shook his head and raised his objections.
+
+"Everybody else is doin' the same thing an' at the same time," he said
+lugubriously.  "Which'll mean the market all glutted up so's you won't
+get no kind of figger.  If you could only hold on till next spring."
+
+But Steve merely said--
+
+"Oh, well, Bill, it's all in a lifetime," and shaped his plans for a
+sale.
+
+And within ten days there came an offer which startled him.  It was
+from the big buyers, Doan, Rockwell, and Haight, who, their
+communication said, knew his line of stock thoroughly and were prepared
+to pay the top prices for all he had.  He estimated swiftly and sent a
+man hurrying into town with a message to go by wire; he would round up
+between a hundred and fifty and two hundred head and would have them in
+San Juan when desired.
+
+"Old Doan's a sport and a wise boy, both," announced Steve triumphantly
+when he made the news known to Bill Royce.  "He knows high-grade stuff
+and he's willing to pay the price."  He narrowed his eyes
+speculatively.  "We'll scare up close to two hundred head, William.
+And they'll bring us just about twenty thousand.  Maybe a thousand or
+so above that.  And, Bill, did you ever know the time when twenty
+thousand dollars would look more like twenty thousand full moons just
+showing up over the skyline?"
+
+Bill's grin reflected Steve's lively satisfaction.  Now there would be
+the money for old Hell-Fire Packard's next payment, there would be a
+long respite from him, there would be ample feed for the rest of the
+cattle.  Steve might even spend a part of the money for a herd of
+calves to be had dirt-cheap just now from the Biddle Morris dairy
+outfit, down near San Juan.
+
+The prospect was exceedingly bright; just as though in truth a string
+of full moons were shining down upon them.  And still there was the
+shadow, even at this time, the shadow cast by Terry's absence and
+silence.  If she were only here to rejoice with them.
+
+Steve snorted his disgust with himself, got on a horse and went
+streaking across the fields, riding hard as was a habit here of late,
+yelling an order to Barbee as he went.  Barbee's innocent blue eyes
+followed him thoughtfully: then Barbee shrugged and spat and thereafter
+called to his men to "get busy."  The round-up began immediately.
+
+Then came a handful of long, hot, feverishly busy days.  Strayed steers
+carrying the Number Ten brand were hazed back to the big fenced-in
+meadows from the mountain slopes, were counted and held, in an
+ever-swelling herd.  There was little rest for the men, who, shifted
+from one sweating horse to another, rode late and early.
+
+Word came from Doan setting the date for the delivery in San Juan.
+Steve wired his satisfaction with the arrangement, undertaking to have
+the cattle in the stock pens just out of the town two or three days
+before Doan's coming.  And no one knew better than did Steve Packard
+the true size of the job he had on his hands at this time of year and
+with a herd of close to two hundred wild steers.
+
+The drive began one morning in the dark long before the dawn.  Steve
+estimated that he could make the Rio Frio the first night and had
+arranged beforehand with the Talbot boys for the night's pasturage.
+The second day would find them on the edge of the bad lands; his wagons
+hauling baled hay were to push on ahead and be waiting at the only
+sufficient water-holes to be found within a number of miles.  San Juan
+in four days was the schedule.
+
+"We'll lose weight all along the road," he conceded.  "But it can't be
+helped.  And a couple of day's rest and lots of feed and water in San
+Juan before Doan shows up will put back a part of the lost weight."
+
+He had made allowances for a hard drive.  Nevertheless the actuality
+was a sterner matter than he had foreseen.  All along the way the feed
+was scant.  Water was low in the holes, Rio Frio for the first time in
+years was a mere series of shallow pools.  The blazing heat was such
+that men and horses and steers all suffered terribly.
+
+At the end of the second day he ordered a full dozen of the less hardy
+of his beasts cut out from the herd and turned into a neighboring
+range; it was questionable if they would have been able to drag on the
+two remaining days and even had they done so they would have brought no
+top price from the buyer.
+
+The drive was made on schedule time.  Circumstances not only permitted
+but insisted.  There were no places for loitering, there were only the
+major water-holes upon which Steve had counted, the distances between
+them regulating each day's progress.  And so the stock was in San Juan
+a full two days before the time for Doan's coming.
+
+For Steve the two days dragged heavily.  He camped with his herd on the
+edge of the settlement, allowing the boys to disport themselves as they
+saw fit a large part of the time, himself having little desire for the
+bad whiskey and crooked gaming of La Casa Blanca.
+
+Tuesday morning Doan was to arrive.  Steve met the stage and one glance
+showed him that Doan was not on it.  He asked the driver if he knew
+anything of Doan and the man shook his head.  Steve supposed that he
+was coming up from the railroad by auto and so idled about the town all
+forenoon, waiting.
+
+By midday, when Doan still failed to put in an appearance, Steve had
+grown impatient.  By the middle of the afternoon his impatience gave
+place to anger.  He had kept his appointment bringing his herds over a
+hard trail, and Doan with nothing to do but travel luxuriously, had
+failed him.
+
+But it was not until the stage came in Wednesday morning and again
+brought no Doan and no word of Doan that Steve telephoned a message to
+the nearest Western Union office at Bidwell demanding to know what the
+trouble was.  Not only was he on heavy expenses; his mood never had
+been one to take kindly to the long waiting game.  And yet he was
+forced to wait all that day and all the next day with no word from Doan.
+
+He telegraphed again Wednesday night, a third time Thursday morning.
+No answers came.  But a little before noon, Thursday, Doan came.  Came
+by automobile from the railroad, a man with him.  Steve saw them as
+they drove into town; he noted Doan's thin face and his tall form in
+the gray linen duster; then he marked the man with him.  The man was
+Blenham.
+
+Steve, raw-nerved through these long hours of inaction and uncertainty,
+pushed straightway to Doan bent upon demanding an explanation.  He got
+an inkling of one from an unexpected quarter, Blenham's lips.
+
+"We sure appreciate this, Mr. Doan," Blenham said, getting down and
+offering his hand to the cattle-buyer.  "Count on me an' ol' man
+Packard doin' you a favor any time.  So long."
+
+And casting to Steve a look of blended triumph and venom he hurried
+down to the stable and his horse.
+
+"Mr. Doan," said Steve bluntly, "what in hell's name do you mean by
+treating me this way?"
+
+Doan turned his thin impassive face with the hawk-eyes toward young
+Packard.
+
+"Who do you happen to be?" he asked coolly.
+
+"I'm Steve Packard from Ranch Number Ten.  And I've got a herd of
+steers out here that's been waiting for you some time now."
+
+"Oh, yes," said Doan, still very cool.  "Got my wire, didn't you,
+saying that I was unavoidably detained?"
+
+"I did not!" snapped Steve.  "Detained by what?  Blenham?"
+
+"Strange," murmured Doan.
+
+He got down from his car and stretched his long legs.
+
+"I've had a new secretary, Mr. Packard.  I found out that he drank.  He
+has been discharged.  Hem.  Let me see: you've got about fifty steers,
+haven't you?"
+
+"I've got a hundred and eighty-six," Steve said sharply, staring at
+Doan's inscrutable face and wondering just what was up.
+
+"A hundred and eighty-six!" Doan shook his head.  "I couldn't take that
+many on just now; I've made other plans.  Unless, of course, you are in
+a position to tempt me to buy by making me a very attractive figure!"
+
+Steve came a sudden step nearer, his eyes blazing, his two fists
+clenched.
+
+"What's this game of yours?" he demanded.  "Out with it.  What are you
+up to?  You wired me an offer of ten to twelve cents, twelve and a half
+for the fancy."
+
+"What!" cried Doan.  "Why, my dear fellow, you must have lost your
+senses!  With the market the way it is now I don't have to pay more
+than seven and eight cents."
+
+Steve waited for no more.  His days of waiting were past.  He drew
+back, swung from the shoulder and struck with all of his might.  His
+fist against Doan's chin hurled the lean body of the cattle-buyer half
+across the street.
+
+"Barbee," said Steve quietly, "round up the boys.  We start our herd
+back in ten minutes."
+
+And Barbee, taking stock of Steve's white face, went hastily on his
+errand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+STEVE RIDES BY THE TEMPLE PLACE
+
+"Dear me, Mr. Man!  How savage you do look!"
+
+Steve started and whirled.  No; this time he was not dreaming.  It was
+Terry.
+
+Terry laughed lightly, deliciously.  She had grown prettier.  She had
+learned a new way to smile.  No, it was just the old way, after all.
+But she had discovered a new way to do her hair, an amazingly charming
+way.  Her lips were redder than ever before; her eyes were gayer and
+grayer and softer and sweeter.  Her voice tinkled with new, thrilling
+music.  She was just exactly perfect in Steve Packard's eyes.
+
+"You're super," said Steve.  "You're superlative.  You haven't done a
+thing all these long, weary months except grow more devilishly
+attractive."
+
+"Are you as savage as you looked?" she asked swiftly.
+
+For a brief instant he turned his eyes away from her and gazed after a
+herd that was moving slowly toward the north, Barbee and the other boys
+heading again toward the home range.  But, no matter what rage and
+sullen chagrin lay in his heart, his eyes, returning to Terry, showed
+that already her coming had worked its change.  He appeared almost
+content.
+
+"Are you going to shake hands?" he asked.
+
+"Shall I?" she asked.  "We are to be good friends after all?"
+
+"Or, are you going to kiss me?"
+
+Terry arched her brows at him.  But there was a live fire in her eyes
+and a crimsoning tide under her lovely skin.
+
+"Smarty!" cried the old Terry.  "Just try getting fresh with me and
+you'll get your face slapped!"
+
+Whereupon Steve's laughter boomed out joyously.
+
+"It's Terry come home again!" he announced to the open meadow about
+them.  "Terry herself."
+
+Was it Terry herself?  She seemed strangely embarrassed all of a
+sudden.  Just why?  Terry didn't know.
+
+"We are going out in my car," she said hurriedly.  It seemed that she
+must hasten to make some safe remark each time that his eyes, busied
+with her, rested upon her eyes.  "We'll be at the ranch long before you
+get your cows home.  You may come to see me--if you please to."
+
+"Who is we?" he asked.
+
+"Oh," said Terry, "that means Mrs. Randall who is going to be cook and
+chaperon."
+
+San Juan dozed in the late afternoon heat.  The corrals were between
+them and the quiet street.  He threw out his arms, caught Terry in them
+and kissed her.  And Terry, whipping back, slapped his face.
+
+"You--you----" she panted, her face scarlet.
+
+He touched tenderly with his finger-tips the place where her hand had
+struck him.
+
+"I'll be over to call on you and Mrs. Randall," he said.  "Real soon."
+
+
+Now as Steve Packard rode slowly after his cowboys and a diminishing
+herd, the dust-filled air, dry and hot as it was, seemed sweet and
+caressing to his temples, his eyes mused happily.  Blenham had just
+worsted him, Blenham had tricked him, had put him to the heavy expense
+of the long drive, had knocked his steers up for him, had laughed at
+him.
+
+Very well; tally for Blenham.  A matter to be considered in due time.
+A body blow, perhaps, but then what in God's good world is a strong
+body for if not to buffet and be buffeted?  He and Blenham would come
+to grips again, soon or late, and in some way still hidden by the
+future matters would finally adjust themselves.
+
+All considerations with which only some dim future was concerned.  Just
+now, in the living, breathing, quivering present there was room for but
+the one thought: Terry had come back to him.
+
+Yes.  Terry had come back to him.  And he had kissed her.  And she had
+slapped him.  He smiled and again his finger-tips went their way
+tenderly to his cheek.  He had kissed her because he loved her, meaning
+her no harm, offering her no insult.  She had slapped him because she
+was Terry, and because she couldn't very well help it.  Not because she
+did not love him!
+
+Somewhere in the world, off in some misty distance, there was a man
+named Blenham, a trickery, treacherous, cruel hound of a man.  He would
+require attention presently.  Just now----
+
+"You've come back to me!" whispered Steve Packard.
+
+And he sighed and shook himself and wished longingly that the return
+drive were over and that he had a bath and a shave and were just
+calling at the Temple ranch.
+
+Though presently he overhauled his men Steve rode all that day pretty
+well apart, maintaining a thoughtful silence which Barbee and the
+others supposed had to do solely with the failure of his plans for a
+good market.  His men knew that he had banked pretty heavily on this
+deal; and that now again he would be confronted by the old problem of
+finding sufficient feed to pull his herds through.
+
+Hay was scarce and high and would need to be hauled far, making its
+final cost virtually prohibitive.  The herders, grumbling among
+themselves, were for the most part of the opinion that he should have
+accepted his defeat at Blenham's hands and sold to Doan at a sacrifice
+figure.
+
+That night they camped at the Bitter Springs, making but a brief stop
+to water and feed and rest the road-weary cattle.  Then in the night
+and moving slowly they pushed on planning to get to the next
+water-holes before the heat of another day.  And now Steve, giving his
+orders to Barbee, left them and struck out ahead.
+
+There was small need of accommodating his impatience to the sluggish
+progress of the leg-dragging brutes and there were matters to be
+arranged.  Further, it was his intention to have a talk with Terry
+Temple just as soon as might be.
+
+That day Terry's automobile with shrieking horn swept on by him.  He
+caught a glimpse of two veils, a brown and a black; the car's top was
+up.  Terry appeared not to see him.
+
+"She hasn't lost a speck of her impudence!"
+
+He frowned after her departing car, praying in his heart for a puncture
+or a stalled engine.  She deserved as much for the way in which she
+tooted her infernal horn.  But his prayer went unanswered and his
+displeasure vanished presently as he pushed on steadily in her wake,
+eager to come to the end of his ride.
+
+But he must never entirely forget the panting herd straggling on far
+behind him, choking and coughing in its own dust.  He must arrange
+somewhere, somehow for pasturage.  So he made a detour and looked in on
+Brocky Lane first, then on Rod Norton.  Both old friends were glad to
+see him and gave him hard brown hands in grips that were good to feel.
+
+But they merely shook their heads when he mentioned his errand.  Lane
+had sold a few head last week; Norton was afraid that he would have to
+make a sacrifice sale himself.  They would do anything that they could
+but it was only too clear that they could not give him that which they
+themselves did not have and could not get.
+
+"Old man Packard," offered Norton bluntly, "is the only man I can think
+of who has pasture to rent.  Drop Off Valley, just up in the mountains
+back of your place."
+
+Steve laughed shortly and swung up into his saddle.
+
+"So long, Nort," he said colorlessly  "The old man would burn his grass
+off before he'd let me have it."
+
+And he rode on, two problems in his mind, both growing more difficult
+as he drew nearer the home ranch.  Problem One: Just what was Terry
+going to say?  Problem Two: How was he going to pull his stock through?
+
+As though he did not already have enough on his hands, Bill Royce
+greeted him at the home ranch-house with the significant word--
+
+"Trouble!"
+
+"I know it," grunted Packard, swinging down stiffly from his saddle.
+"What kind this time, Bill?"
+
+"Blenham-brand, I'd reckon," said Bill angrily.  Steve noted that both
+of the old hand's cheeks were flushed hotly.  "Barbee telephoned in
+about four hours ago.  Seven steers dead, some more sick.  An'," the
+explanation coming quickly, "Barbee's got the hunch Blenham had rode on
+ahead an' had poisoned the water-holes an'----"
+
+"Damn him!" cried Steve, a sudden fury seeming to leap out upon him and
+take him by the throat.  "Am I to stand everything from that man and
+from my old fiend of a grandfather?  It's this and that and any other
+thing they want to turn loose and here I stick like a cursed
+toad-stool, doing nothing for want of proof!  Proof," he snorted
+disgustedly.  "Bill Royce, let's quit waiting for anything but just go
+get the trouble-seeking outfit!"
+
+"Which sounds good to me," retorted Royce eagerly.
+
+And yet when his rage cooled a bit Steve ground his teeth in his
+impotence.  He must wait until Barbee came with what God chose to leave
+him of his steers, he must hear the foreman's account and decide
+whether Blenham were really at the bottom of this or if it were just
+his way and his men's to blame all things upon Blenham.
+
+"The first thing, Bill," he said when he had turned his tired horse
+loose in the pasture, "is to decide what we are going to do with what
+cattle Blenham hasn't poisoned for us.  We are fed off pretty short
+down at this end.  I'll ride over to the Temple place and see if we
+can't arrange with Miss Terry to run a few head there."
+
+"Yes," said Royce dryly.  "I'd hurry if I was you, Steve.  But, say!"
+He slapped his leg and jerked up his head.  "How about the old Indian
+Valley, Drop Off Valley, as they call it now?"
+
+"Gone crazy, Bill?  When did my grandfather ever show any inclination
+to help out?"
+
+Then Royce, thoroughly excited, explained.  Andy Sprague from beyond
+the ridge had ridden by only yesterday afternoon.  If Royce had only
+known at that time that Steve was bringing back the cattle from San
+Juan he would have arranged with Andy.  For the man had said that he
+had just bought Drop Off Valley from old Packard; that he wouldn't want
+the range this year as he had only recently sold close.  He would rent
+and reasonably.
+
+"There's close on a couple of thousan' acres in there; there's plenty
+water an' enough good grass to run two or three hundred head easy until
+your feed comes in again down this way.  Nail him, Steve; for the love
+of Mike, nail Andy Sprague quick before the crooked little cuss finds
+out jus' how bad you need the pasture an' sticks you accordin'.  Go
+nail him, Steve."
+
+And Steve, seeing hope like a brightening flush of a new day, hurried
+to the corrals and a fresh horse.  He was going straight after Andy
+Sprague.  But----
+
+"Guess I'll ride by the Temple place," he said carelessly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+DOWN FROM THE SKY!
+
+Drop Off Valley, its name won to it by its salient feature, was but a
+long, narrow, and very high plateau in the mountains lying to the east
+of Ranch Number Ten.  It was well watered from springs at the upper end
+which wandered the entire length of the tract and spilled down the
+cliffs which cut in abrupt fashion across the lower end, making a
+natural and fearsome boundary.
+
+From this portion of the "valley" one might kick a stone a sheer and
+dizzy distance down into the head-waters of Indian Creek, which
+indicated the beginning of the narrow pass which led through the
+mountains and to the misty blue hills of Old Mexico.
+
+Here in the abundant, rich, dry feed wandered upward of two hundred
+head of Ranch Number Ten and Temple Ranch cattle, mingling freely, the
+herds of one outfit carrying their brands in and out of the herds of
+the other.  A sign and a token that at last a certain dead-line had
+ceased to exist.
+
+Steve had found Andy Sprague, as crooked a little man as he looked to
+be according to Bill Royce and others who should know, and had arranged
+with him for the leasing of the mountain pasturage.  Less than a week
+later Sprague was back saying that he had seen Hell-Fire Packard and
+that that old mountain-lion had roared at him terribly, had threatened
+him with utter ruin if ever again he helped out Steve Packard and had
+bade him carry a message.
+
+"Tell that smart young fool of a gran'son of mine," was the word
+Sprague gave Steve, "that right now I'm gettin' ready to polish him off
+final.  Tell him what I done to him, blockin' his sale in San Juan,
+wasn't a patch on what I can do; tell him he'll lose more steers than
+he ever los' before.  Tell him if he don't want to get hisself all
+mussed up in this deal he'd better come over to my place an' throw up
+his han's.  I'm gettin' mad!"
+
+Before having these words from Andy Sprague's twisted mouth Steve
+Packard had been puzzled to explain two matters: According to count, on
+one hand there were too few cattle by perhaps a score while on another
+hand there were too many by at least a half dozen.  And, though Terry
+Temple was directly concerned, he had said nothing to her.
+
+The first mystifying suggestion that some strange juggling of stock had
+been going on came to him just before he had driven the hundred and
+eighty-six steers to San Juan.  Rounding up his own stock and cutting
+it out from Temple stock, he had had the opportunity to check up
+carefully in Terry's interests.
+
+Calves, cows, steers, and horses, he knew to the head just what Terry
+numbered them.  And in the round-up, going over his figures carefully,
+he had found that wearing the Temple brand there were six steers more
+than there should be.  A matter of some five or six hundred dollars.
+
+Were it only the financial end of it Steve would have thought little of
+the matter.  But, going over the herd animal by animal, he made a
+discovery which shocked him.  He found six big steers in the lot which
+wore fairly recently burned Temple brands--crudely scrawled over the
+brands of the Big Bend ranch, old man Packard's favorite outfit in the
+north.
+
+It was impossible to know just how long ago a searing-hot iron had
+altered the range indication of ownership; Steve could merely stare and
+wonder and finally hazard a guess.  Temple had been hard-driven; he had
+succumbed to temptation and opportunity as he had to whiskey and many
+other things.  Seeing life obliquely he had no doubt told himself that
+he was squaring accounts.  So, in the end, Steve was inclined to
+believe.
+
+Just what to do he did not know.  It seemed best to him to bide his
+time, to keep his eyes open, to hope for the way out of an embarrassing
+situation.  He would willingly have made restitution himself, to save
+Terry from knowing and to save her name from the smudge which old man
+Packard would eagerly put upon it were he offered the opportunity.  And
+right here was the trouble; he did not care to let his grandfather know
+what had happened.
+
+While striving with this matter the other was brought to his attention.
+Also at the time of the round-up Barbee reported a black-and-white
+steer missing, the prize of the beef herd, said Barbee.  Strayed into
+some far out-of-the-way canon, perhaps.  But as the days went by other
+cattle, finally totalling a score, were reported missing.  And Steve
+remembered how one evening he and Terry from a log had watched Blenham
+driving off a string of steers.
+
+"My beloved grandfather has no love for the courts of law," mused Steve
+many a time.  "And he knows that in that I am like him.  So to his way
+of thinking it's just Packard eat Packard and the rest of the world
+'Hands Off.'  And so he is going the limit.  Well, I guess that's as
+good a way as any other."
+
+The day came when Steve put his cattle into Drop Off Valley.  The
+herds, his and Terry's, were counted twice, once as they filed through
+the gate of the round-up corrals, again as they were turned into the
+upland range.  Two hundred and thirty-four head.
+
+"Two hundred and thirty-four head where I defy Blenham or the devil
+himself to steal a single one of them," said Steve positively.
+
+For though there were no fences here nature had raised sufficient
+barriers in the way of the sheer Drop Off Chasm cutting across the
+southern end of the plateau and in rocky, uninviting and all but
+impassable mountain peaks on north and east and a section of the
+western boundary.
+
+It seemed the simplest matter in the world here with but ordinary
+diligence and vigilance on the part of his cowboys to make good Steve's
+vow.  Therefore, with Barbee in charge of the men here and under
+instructions to keep the eyes of trusted night riders always open,
+Steve thought to have heard the last of cattle losses.
+
+The steers were to be counted every day if Barbee thought necessary; so
+much Steve had said coolly, merely for the emphasis of the words.
+Barbee had looked at him curiously, making no rejoinder and going about
+his business with a puzzled look on his face.
+
+A week later Barbee reported to Steve down at Ranch Number Ten.
+
+"Five steers gone," he said succinctly, his eyes hard and expectant,
+challenging his employer's.
+
+"Gone?" repeated Steve.  "Where?  And when?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Barbee.  "I missed 'em four days ago.  I
+wouldn't believe they'd gone for good.  I didn't see how they could of
+gone.  I've looked for 'em ever since; I've rode into an' out of every
+canon an' pass; I've been everywhere they could go.  But--they're gone.
+Five big steers."
+
+For a moment their eyes, Steve's as hard as Barbee's, held steady and
+unwinking in a deeply probing gaze.
+
+"Barbee," said Steve after a little, "remember the night Blenham tried
+to bribe you with a thousand-dollar bill?"
+
+Barbee flushed and nodded.
+
+"I get you," he said quietly.  "Think he's bought me up, maybe?"
+
+"I don't know what to think.  But this much is clear; If you are on the
+level it's up to you to see that I don't lose any more stock.  And it's
+also up to you to find where those five steers went.  And get them
+back.  Every single hoof of them."
+
+That night Steve himself spent in Drop Off Valley, a rifle over his
+arm.  He had ordered his men to carry guns, and if Blenham or another
+man were detected driving off his cattle, to shoot and to shoot to kill.
+
+But the next day he returned to the home ranch.  He trusted his
+cowboys--all but Barbee, and in Barbee's case he was not sure what to
+think--and it was only too clear to him that there were enough men
+there to cope with the situation without his interference.  Two days
+later Barbee reported to him again.
+
+The boy's face was haggard and drawn, his eyes burned sullenly.
+
+"Six head more gone!" he announced defiantly.  His look said plainly:
+"What are you going to say about it?  They're gone."
+
+"So you've turned cattle-thief, have you, Barbee?" was what Steve said.
+
+A sickly flush stained Barbee's hollow cheeks.
+
+"No!" he snapped hotly.  "I ain't.  But----"
+
+He swung on his heel and started to the door.  Steve called him back.
+
+"What are you going to do, Barbee?"
+
+"I'm goin' an' get Blenham," said Barbee between his teeth.  "I been
+wantin' him a long time.  Now this is his work an' he makes it look
+like it's mine.  I'm goin' an' get him."
+
+"If it is Blenham," Steve offered coldly, "and if you are playing
+square with me, how does it happen that he can get away with a thing
+like this?  Right under your nose--and you not know?  It sounds--  You
+know how it sounds, Barbee."
+
+"I don't know how he does it," growled Barbee.  "I don't know how a man
+could run off a string of cows like that in them mountains an' not
+leave no tracks.  Why, there ain't half-a-dozen places where they could
+be drove out'n the valley an' through the cliffs, an' I been watchin'
+every one of them places myself all night an' keepin' the other boys
+ridin' until they're saddle-weary.  An'--an' six head more gone----"
+
+"You're either a clever little actor, Mr. Barbee," muttered Steve
+sharply, "or you are straight, and I'm hanged if I know which.  Just
+leave Blenham alone for a while; go back to your job."
+
+Barbee, his spurs dragging disconsolately, went out.  Steve saw how the
+boy's shoulders slumped and again asked himself if Barbee were acting
+or if Blenham were simply too sharp for him?  In the end he decided
+that he had better move his headquarters to Drop Off Valley.
+
+That same day there came a cowboy riding from the Big Bend ranch
+bringing a brief note from Steve's grandfather.  It ran:
+
+
+DEAR STEPHEN: Better not go too far, my boy.  Eye for an eye is
+first-class gospel.  And there ain't no game yet I ever been bluffed
+out on.  Guess you understand.
+
+PACKARD.
+
+
+Steve didn't altogether understand but the messenger could add nothing
+save that the old man was chuckling with Blenham when he gave the
+message.  Steve, in no mood to hear of his grandfather's high good
+humor, tore the letter to bits, distributed them upon the afternoon
+wind and told the lean cowboy that he could tell Grandfather Packard
+and Blenham to go straight to everlasting blazes.  The cowboy laughed
+and rode away.
+
+
+Steve, riding slowly through the lengthening shadows falling through
+the pines of the mountain slopes before one comes to Drop Off Valley,
+was overtaken by Terry Temple riding furiously.  Terry's horse was
+dripping with sweat; Terry's face was troubled; there was a look almost
+of terror in her eyes.
+
+"Steve Packard," she cried out as she came abreast of him and they
+stared into each other's eyes in the dusk under the big trees.  "Tell
+me everything you know about those stolen steers!  Everything."
+
+So she knew, too?  Yet he had cautioned Barbee not to talk and to
+instruct the other boys to keep their mouths shut until such time as
+they could understand this hand being played in the dark.
+
+"Who told you?" he asked quickly.
+
+"I saw them!" she told him, her spirit shining like fire in her eyes.
+"The whole six of them.  I knew they were not our cattle.  I saw how
+the brands had been worked, clumsily worked.  Oh, my God, Steve
+Packard, what does it mean?"
+
+Now it flashed upon him.  Terry was not speaking of the cattle lost
+from the upland valley; she referred to those half-dozen big steers
+roaming on the Temple ranch whose brands had been crudely altered from
+the sign of the Big Bend outfit to the sign of her father's.  Slowly
+the red blood of shame, shame for her, crept up into his cheeks, dusky
+under his tan.
+
+"Terry," he began lamely.
+
+But she halted him with the word, her ear catching the subtle note of
+sympathy, her hand upflung, her temper flaring out that he, of all men,
+should think shame of her blood.
+
+"My father was never a thief!" she cried hotly, her voice ringing clear
+and certain.  "Not that, Steve Packard.  Don't you dare say that!  And
+yet--  You saw them, you knew, and you didn't say a word to me, to
+anybody?"
+
+"I didn't know what to say or what to do,", he explained gently.  "I
+thought it best just to wait, to hope for the sense of all this
+infernal jumble.  I hoped----"
+
+"You big fool!" she called him with all due emphasis.  "Just like all
+of the rest of your blundering sex.  If the good Lord had stopped with
+the job of making Adam, his whole creation wouldn't have been worth the
+snap of my thumb and finger."
+
+"It isn't, anyway," said Steve.  "I wouldn't swap your little finger
+for a king's gold crown----"
+
+"Moonshine," cut in Terry.  "Listen to me, Steve Packard: You saw those
+swapped brands and you kept your mouth shut."
+
+"It is generally considered----"
+
+"I said to listen to me!  You didn't say a word to me because you
+believed my dad was a cattle-thief!"
+
+Steve, despite himself, shifted uneasily in his saddle and finally
+dropped his eyes.  Terry sat there staring at him fixedly, her own eyes
+wide open and again harboring that look that was almost fear.
+
+"You--you--Oh, Steve Packard!  This is contemptible of you!"
+
+Then he lifted his eyes and looked at her solely enough.
+
+"Terry Temple," he said very gently, "I pray God that you are right and
+that I am wrong.  I did not know, I only saw what I saw, and wondered
+and kept my mouth shut.  But--listen to me now, Terry Temple.  You are
+not the one to dodge an issue, no matter how hard it is to face it.
+Tell me: If your father did not shift those brands, then who did?  And
+why?  Don't you see that is what it amounts to, that is what we've got
+to answer?"
+
+"Blenham!" she told him swiftly, hardly waiting for him to finish.
+"Blenham, under orders.  Orders from your precious old thief of a
+grandfather!"
+
+He smiled back at her, hoping to coax an answering smile to her lips
+and into her troubled eyes.  But she only shook her head and went on
+steadily.
+
+"Recrimination of a sort----"
+
+"Recrimination is quite some word, no matter what it means," sniffed
+Terry.  "But we can leave it out.  In words of one syllable, your old
+thief of a grandfather ordered his pet dog and sub-thief to go tie
+something on poor old dad.  And you fell for it!  You ought to go to a
+school for the simple-minded."
+
+"Just what," demanded Steve equably, "do you suppose a play like that
+would win for anybody?  Any time my old thief of a grandfather, as you
+call him, hands an enemy of his several hundred dollars in beef cattle,
+why, just please wake me up."
+
+"A play like that is just what old Hell-Fire would be up to right about
+now," she told him positively.  "You have been proving something too
+much for him to swallow whole and boots on; your chipping in with us
+that time you took the mortgage over made him hungrier than ever to
+gobble up the crowd of us.  So he plays the dirty trick of making it
+appear my father is a cattle-thief."
+
+"Blenham might do a trick like that.  My grandfather wouldn't.  That
+is, I don't think he would."
+
+"Better hedge!  Wouldn't he, though!  He's always been as mean as
+gar-broth; the older he gets the meaner and nastier he is.  He'd do
+anything to double-cross a Temple and you know it.  It's one crooked
+play; there'll be more like it.  Just you see, Steve Packard.  And the
+next one--at least if it concerns me--you see that you let me know
+about it instead of going around like a dumb man."
+
+Then he blurted out word of the recent losses from Drop Off Valley.
+For her herds mingled there with his and a part of the losses were to
+be borne by her.
+
+"I'm on my way there now," he concluded.  "I've an idea----"
+
+"You haven't!" she interrupted.  "Steve Packard, I don't believe you
+ever had an idea in your life.  Don't you know--don't you know what's
+going with those steers up there?"
+
+"Do you?"
+
+"You just bet your life I do!  It's that crook of a Yellow Barbee, in
+cahoots with that crook of a Blenham who's taking orders from that
+crook of an old Hell-Fire Packard!  Can't you see their play?"
+
+"I rather think I can.  But I don't happen to be as positive about the
+unknown as you do."
+
+"You're just a man," said Terry.  "That's why.  And now you are on your
+way to the feeding-grounds up there, to come in and say, 'Here I am,
+Barbee, come to watch you and see that you don't steal any more stock
+for me to-night.'  That the idea?"
+
+Steve laughed.
+
+"Not exactly.  I had intended leaving my horse before I got to the rim
+of the valley and going on on foot, not telling everybody what I was
+about."
+
+"And you'd come to the rim of the valley either by Hell Gate pass or
+through the old Indian Trail, wouldn't you?  And Barbee or Blenham
+would see that both ways were watched."
+
+"You seem to know the trails rather well," he began, but she merely
+broke in:
+
+"That's not all I know about this neck of the woods, either, Steve
+Packard.  Maybe it's lucky for you and for me too that you told me all
+this.  I'll take you into Drop Off Valley to-night, and Blenham and
+Yellow Barbee can watch all they please and never guess we're there.
+For there's a way up that not even Blenham knows and where they will
+never look for us.  Come on, Steve Packard; use a spur."
+
+She shot by him, leading the way.
+
+So Steve and Terry rode through the forests, passing from the dull
+fringe of the day into the calm glory of the night, feeling the air
+grow cooler and sweeter against their faces, sensing the shutting-in
+about them of the gentle serenity of the wilderness.  They followed
+little-travelled trails where she rode ahead and he, following close at
+her horse's heels, was glad each time that an open space beyond or a
+ridge crested showed him her form pricked clearly against the sky.
+
+They spoke less and less as they went on.  Deeper grew the silences
+into which they made their way, with only the gush of a mountain brook
+or the fluttering of a startled bird or the rustle of dead leaves under
+some alert little wild thing, just these sounds occasionally and ever
+the soft thud of shod hoofs on leaf mould and loose soil.
+
+The stars multiplied swiftly, grew in brilliancy.  But down here close
+to the face of the earth where the shadows were, the dark was
+impenetrable.
+
+For many a mile Terry led the way through the forests.  Steve was on
+the verge of suggesting that she had lost her way, when she turned off
+to the right and down a long slope in so decided a fashion that he
+closed his lips to his suspicion.
+
+She knew where she was going; as he once again saw her body against a
+patch of sky--she had gone down the slope and climbed a ridge
+ahead--and as he noted her carriage and the poise of a chin for the
+instant clearly outlined, he knew that she was sure of herself.  Well,
+she was that sort of a girl; she might have confidence in herself and a
+man might place his confidence with hers.
+
+So at last Terry brought him down into a creek-bed and the bottom on a
+steep-sided canon.  He merely said, "I'll take your word for it!" when
+she told him that this was the deep-cleft ravine which lay like a gash
+at the base of the sheer Drop Off Cliffs.
+
+Yonder, perhaps a mile ahead and yet prominently asserting itself to
+their view because of a certain widening and straightening of the canon
+here, a bold head of cliffs stood out like a monster carving in ebony.
+Up there, at the top of these cliffs, was the southern end of Drop Off
+Valley.
+
+"And it is up those cliffs that we are going," Terry announced when,
+having drawn nearer, they stopped again to gaze upward.  "There's a
+trail climbing straight up from the bed of the pass; a trail to go
+hand-and-foot style.  Once on top we'll be among Barbee's herds, Barbee
+guessing nothing of our coming since he'll be busy watching the other
+ways in.  And--  Look!"
+
+They were close together and she gripped his arm in her sudden
+amazement while she threw out one hand pointing.  He heard her little
+gasp; he looked upward; an astonished ejaculation broke from his own
+lips.  A breathless moment and already the thing, appearing from the
+black nothingness, silhouetted but a moment against the sky, was gone
+and he vaguely saw Terry's face turned toward him while they sought to
+find each other's eyes and know if each had seen what the other had
+glimpsed.
+
+"It's impossible!" he muttered.  "We are imagining things."
+
+"Wait!" said Terry.  "Maybe after all----"
+
+They waited impatiently, their blood atingle.  And in a very few
+moments there was, seeming absurd and impossible, a repetition of the
+vision which had so startled them: a black form at the head of the
+cliffs, the field of star-strewn sky back of it limning it into vivid
+distinctness--the ebon bulk of a steer moving straight out from the top
+of the precipice, straight out a half-dozen feet into nothingness of
+empty space, then slowly descending through the air, gone silently in
+the deeper shadows of the canon below!
+
+"Block and tackle!" muttered Steve abruptly.  "A small steel cable.
+Two or three men up there; a man on horseback down below.  And while
+Barbee and the boys guard the other end----"
+
+"Blenham puts one across on us down here!" Terry finished it for him.
+
+"Only here's where we put one over on Blenham," rejoined Steve hotly.
+He threw a cartridge into his rifle-barrel and spurred ahead of her.
+"You stay here, Terry.  I----"
+
+"Will I?" Terry retorted with animation.  "Not on your life, Steve
+Packard!  If this is the beginning of Blenham's finish--  Well, I'm in
+on it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE STAMPEDE
+
+Terry had sensed something of the truth.  In its way here was the
+beginning of the end of many things.  Before she and Steve Packard,
+making what haste was possible in the thick dark and with what silence
+was allowed them, had gone a score of paces deeper into the canon, the
+crack of a rifle shouted its reverberating message of menace back and
+forth in the rocky ravine, a spurt of flame showed where the rifleman
+stood upon a pinnacle of rock almost directly above their heads and
+there came the further sounds of men's startled voices and the
+scampering of horses' hoofs, fleeing southward through the pass.
+
+"They had lookouts all along!" cried Steve over his shoulder,
+discarding caution and secrecy and throwing his rifle to his shoulder.
+"Better hold back, Terry!"
+
+He fired, accepted the precarious chances offered him by an uneven and
+unknown trail in the dark and raced on deeper and deeper into the long
+chasm.  It seemed to him that he had glimpsed something moving at the
+top of the cliffs just about the place whence Blenham's men had lowered
+the steers.  He asked no question but threw up his gun-barrel and fired
+again.
+
+From straight in front of him there came back to his ears the clang and
+thud of iron horseshoes upon granite, the rattle of rocks along the
+trail; now and again he saw a spark struck out underfoot.  Then, far
+ahead as the canon widened suddenly and a little thinning of the
+darkness resulted, he made out dim, running forms, and again he fired
+from his own leaping horse.
+
+A flying bullet might find a target and it might not; at any rate the
+sound of the shots volleyed and boomed echoingly between the stone
+wails imprisoning them, and Barbee or one of Barbee's men should hear.
+Steve was estimating hopefully as he dashed on after the fugitives and
+as Terry dashed on after him, that the men at the top of the cliffs
+would not try to come down now, not knowing who or how many the
+attackers were, but would seek escape above.
+
+Then, if his cowboys heard and rode toward the cliffs, it was all in
+the cards that they might intercept at least a couple of Blenham's
+tools.
+
+A running form almost at his side drew his attention briefly, and all
+but drew hot, questing lead after it.  Then he made out that it was but
+one of the stolen steers, abandoned now; he pressed by, firing time
+after time into the canon ahead of him.  And behind him he heard
+Terry's voice, eager and fearless, crying out:
+
+"Good boy, Steve Packard!  We'll get 'em yet!"
+
+A spurt of flame from far ahead and close to the wall of the canon, the
+crack of another rifle, long drawn out, and the whine of a bullet
+singing its vicious way overhead, and again Steve fired, answering shot
+with shot.  He heard a man shout and fired in the direction of the
+voice.  And then the only sounds rising from the narrow gorge were
+those of running horses and the accompanying noises of rattling stones.
+
+Now the way was again tortuous, pitch-black, boulder-strewn.  Steve
+slowed down rather than break his horse's legs or his own neck, not
+knowing whether to turn to right or left.  In a moment of uncertainty
+he felt and heard Terry push ahead of him.  He heard her hurrying on
+and followed, shouting to her to come back.  Ten minutes later, out of
+the pass now and upon a low-lying ridge whence he could look across the
+hills billowing away darkly toward the southland, he came up with her
+again.
+
+"They got off that way."  She pointed south.  "Saw one figure and maybe
+two going down the slope.  There's no use following.  The way is too
+open and it's too dark.  They've got away after all."
+
+"For to-night," said Steve.  "But maybe the fellows at the top of the
+cliffs----"
+
+"I'll show you the way up," said Terry.
+
+So without delaying they turned back and came presently under Drop Off
+Cliffs again.  Here they left their horses and, Terry showing the way,
+found the old path up the precipice.  Along many a narrow shelf of rock
+they went, over many a gigantic granite splinter where foothold was
+precarious enough, up many a steep climb.  But in their present mood
+they would have achieved even a more difficult and more hazardous task
+with eagerness and assurance.  Twenty minutes brought them to the top.
+
+"Who's that?" shouted a sudden voice as Steve's hat came up out of the
+void.  "Hands up!"
+
+"That you, Barbee?" grunted Steve.  "Hands up?  I'd drop a clean
+hundred feet if I did a fool trick like that.  Did they get away?  The
+men up here?"
+
+He wriggled up to the top, lay on his stomach and gave a hand to Terry,
+drew her to lie a moment breathless at his side and then again turned
+to Barbee.  There was another man with him and both were looking
+wonderingly at Steve and Terry.
+
+"I never heard a man say," muttered the astounded Barbee, "that there
+was stair-steps up here!  For a man an' girl to come up----"
+
+"And for our cows to go down!" cried Steve, on his feet now and coming
+to Barbee's side.  "You heard everything, Barbee?  You know what has
+happened?"
+
+"Yes," said Barbee.  "A hundred yards over that way--" he pointed along
+the cliff's edge--"where a twisted cedar-tree stands in a little
+washout, not hardly to be noticed unless you're on the lookout for it,
+they had their pulleys hitched an' a long steel cable.  It was easy
+shootin', come to think of it.  Jus' rope a cow, cinch her up tight
+with two big straps they had all ready, slip a hook through the
+belly-band, an' lower away!  Pretty smooth, huh?"
+
+"And they all got away?"
+
+"No, they didn't," said Barbee queerly.  "I got one of 'em!"
+
+"You did?" Steve swung back toward him eagerly.  "Who is he, Barbee?
+And where is he?  I want a talk with him."
+
+Barbee shook his head and reached for his tobacco and papers.  He was
+young after all, was Barbee, and this was his first man.
+
+"Andy Sprague, it was," said Barbee.  "He's dead now."
+
+There fell a heavy, breathless silence upon the three standing there
+under the stars.  Terry shivered as though with cold and drew a step
+closer to Steve; he felt her hand on his arm.  Barbee lighted his
+cigarette, his hands steady, but his face looking terribly serious in
+the brief-lived light shed upon it.
+
+"I heard you shootin'," said Barbee.  "I rode this way, on the jump.  I
+was only about a mile up the valley; maybe a shade less.  He had his
+horse close an' was on him an' poundin' leather lively to get out.  We
+come pretty close to runnin' into each other.  I hollered at him to
+hold on an' he jus' rode on his spurs an' I shot.  Emptied my gun.  Got
+him twice, bein' that lucky, an' him that unlucky.  He slid off his
+cayuse an' clawed aroun' an'--an' he's dead now," ended Barbee briefly.
+
+"Did he tell you anything?  Did he say anything that would implicate
+anybody?"
+
+"Meanin'," said Barbee steadily, "did he squeal on his pals?"
+
+"Just that.  Did he mention any names?"
+
+"No," replied Barbee thoughtfully.  "He jus' cusses me an' dies game.
+But this here was in his pocket."
+
+He passed it to his employer.  It was a bit of note-paper.  Steve and
+Terry read it together as Steve struck one match after another.  Then
+they looked into each other's faces, grown very tense, while Barbee
+smoked in silence.  The few words were:
+
+
+BLENHAM: This here Mex don't seem to know what I mean.  Next time send
+a man as can talk English.  Anyway I am coming to-night.  I don't want
+no killing if it ain't necessary, but there ain't going to be a hide or
+hoof left in Drop Off by morning.
+
+
+And the signature, cramped and stiff, was that of Steve's grandfather.
+
+"So," muttered Steve heavily.  "The old man has gone the limit, has he?
+He meant it when he said he'd stop at nothing to smash me.  And yet I
+can't believe----"
+
+"Let me see it again," Terry commanded.
+
+She took the paper from his fingers and with it his block of sulphur
+matches.  For even Terry, to whom old man Packard was as relentless and
+unscrupulous as Satan himself, hesitated to believe that he was hand in
+glove with Blenham in this.
+
+There might be a way to read between the lines, to come to some other
+understanding of the baffling situation.  Evidently the old man had
+given the note to the "Mex" who did not know enough of the English
+language to carry word of mouth; the Mex had passed it to Sprague.
+
+Steve and Barbee and the man with Barbee--an old Ranch Number Ten hand
+named Bandy Oliver--had stepped aside quietly.  Terry stood with the
+note in her hand, forgetting it for the moment.  So, at the last,
+matters had come to this: There lay a man over yonder, dead, with
+Barbee's lead in him.
+
+And old man Packard was coming to-night, now of all times when Steve's
+heart was hard, when his brain was hot with his fury, when he had just
+come upon men stealing his stock and had learned that his own
+grandfather, the old mountain-lion from the north, was one of them.
+
+"If they meet to-night," said Terry, "those two Packards, there are
+going to be other men killed.  Good men and bad men.  And, as likely as
+not, Blenham won't be one of them."
+
+"There was another jasper with Sprague.  He got away.  That way, I
+think.  Couldn't say, but there might have been more; what with the
+dark an' the cattle scared an' churnin' aroun'."
+
+Steve with Barbee and Bandy Oliver had moved slowly away and toward the
+upper end of the plateau.  Detached words, fragments of their speech,
+floated back to her more and more indistinctly on the night wind that
+never sleeps upon these uplands.
+
+Terry turned from them and stood for a little looking down into the
+black void of the canon into which the stolen cattle had been lowered,
+from which she and Steve had just climbed.  She fancied that the
+darkness down there was thinning.  The dawn was coming up almost
+imperceptibly over the mountain-tops, filtering wanly into the depths
+of the canons.  The night had rushed by; it would soon be day.
+
+And old man Packard had not come.  Thank God for that.  Down in her
+heart Terry was conscious of a leaping gladness.  She knew, admitted
+now, that she had been afraid.  A man lay dead over yonder; if Packard
+met Packard to-night there would be other men dead.  Terry shivered and
+drew back from the edge of the precipice.
+
+"It's always colder just before day," she told herself.
+
+"Sunrise already?"
+
+Steve's voice, borne to her ears with startling distinctness.  He had
+not come nearer; maybe the dawn wind was stiffening, thus bearing his
+words to her more clearly.  Or it might be that Steve had lifted his
+voice suddenly.
+
+Why should a man be startled by a new sunrise?  True, the night had
+gone quickly, but----
+
+"The sun never rose there!" Steve's voice again, thrilling through her
+with its portent.  "It's fire--range fire--in a dozen places!"
+
+A bright glow lay across the far, upper end of Drop Off Valley.  At
+first one might have done as Steve Packard did and wondered what had
+happened to the sun.  The sky had merely brightened warmly, slowly,
+gradually, showing a hint of pink.  And then, as the bone-dry grass
+here and there had caught, vivid streaks of flame and a veritable
+devil's dance of a myriad sparks shot high skyward.  And, as Steve had
+cried out, not in one place only, but in a dozen spots had the fires
+been lighted.
+
+"To herald the wrathful coming of Hell-Fire Packard!"
+
+Such was the thought springing full-fledged into Terry's brain, into
+Steve's, into Yellow Barbee's.  A chain of fires had been started
+across the whole width of the feeding grounds.  Now the rising wind
+made of it a sudden burning barrier that extended from side to side of
+Drop Off Valley, came rushing toward the lower end, threatening to
+leave but a black charred devastation of the precious pasturage.
+
+Barbee had run and thrown himself upon his horse.  Steve had grasped
+the dragging reins of Andy Sprague's mount.  Terry saw him and his two
+cowboys swing about toward the upper end.
+
+"Terry!" he shouted over his shoulder.  "Down the cliffs again; quick!
+The fire is coming this way; the herds will stampede!"
+
+There was only the sound of thudding hoofs as the three men rode
+furiously to meet the menace the dawn had brought and seek to grapple
+with it.  Then that sound had gone and its place, for a little taken by
+heavy silence, gradually gave way to new sounds.  The crack of rifles,
+faintly heard--thin voices of men shouting a long way off--a sound like
+that of a distant sea, moving restlessly--grown to suggest the coming
+of a storm that ever swelled in violence--and then a deep and deepening
+rumble, like thunder.
+
+The herd had stampeded.
+
+To Terry there came then, for the first time in her life, the sense of
+utter helplessness and hopelessness.  At least the others were doing
+something, no matter how fruitless it might prove, while she was doing
+nothing.  Steve was riding full-tilt to meet the herd.  She saw him and
+his men, strange figures in the uncertain light, looming big against
+the dawn sky and the fires' glow.  They were shouting, waving their
+arms.  Then, going down over a swell of earth they were lost to her.
+
+Again and again there came to her the sound of shots and men's voices
+shouting, cursing, yelling wild commands, a rising clamor meant to
+divert the blind rush of frightened beasts, to turn them to right and
+left so that they might scramble out of the valley before they came to
+the lower end where Terry stood--where was the yawning chasm down into
+which many a great, terror-filled body was doomed to plunge to
+annihilation unless the way were found to swing the flood of fear aside
+in time.
+
+Barbee and Bandy Oliver and the other boys were obeying Steve's
+commands, doing all that they could, seeking frantically to split the
+herd and divert it and so save it.  But all of the time the wind
+strengthened, the fires rose higher and higher against the sky, the
+sparks soared to rarer altitudes, were flung further out, new fires
+were catching everywhere.
+
+The tall, dry grass was burning in a hundred places.  The herd,
+sweeping on, was snorting its terror, yielding absolutely to the blind
+instinct of flight.  And steadily the thunderous murmuring sound from
+the hoof-smitten earth rose and swelled.  Closer and closer they came.
+Terry could distinguish Steve's voice.
+
+In her hand were the matches he had given her in order that she might
+read again his grandfather's letter.  A little gasp broke from her
+lips.  The letter fluttered from her hand, no longer of the slightest
+importance and on the wings of the wind went outward and then down into
+the chasm.  She ran forward swiftly, a hundred yards from the
+precipice's edge.  She struck a match, stopped briefly, set it to the
+grass.
+
+The flame caught, leaping up avidly, licking hungrily for more fuel, a
+demon for desire, newly born, yearning to rage a giant of destruction.
+The girl snatched a handful of the burning grass and ran with it; a
+little further forward, then to the side, scattering burning wisps as
+she went.
+
+Everywhere that a spark fell it made of itself a blaze.  Already, in
+twenty seconds, she had created a broad belt of flame that rose swiftly
+and spread to right and left.
+
+About her everywhere the air grew stifling, hot, filled with smoke and
+ash and cinder so that as she ran her lungs began to hurt her.  But she
+kept on.  Nearer were the herds coming; Steve and his men had not been
+able to stem the mad torrent; not yet had they succeeded in turning it.
+
+And in another handful of minutes the black, tight-jammed mass of big
+panting bodies would be hurtling out into space.  Unless she made her
+fire extend from side to side in a wall of leaping, roaring, swirling
+menace that would do what no men and horses could accomplish.
+
+Terry was racing as never had Terry run before, her breath coming in
+choking sobs, her eyes shining wildly, her body shaken with the effort
+she put upon it.  She had her burning barrier across the more dangerous
+end of the valley, where the cliffs dropped sheerest, she had but
+another few yards to go and there would be hope that she would succeed.
+But she must not stop yet, not yet.
+
+She ran on toward the nearer rim of the valley, scattering burning
+wisps of grass as she went, her heart beating wildly, seeming ready to
+burst through her side.  She fell, rose, ran on.  She stood still a
+moment, turning her back to the fires of her own building, looking
+toward the upper end whence came the steady roar.
+
+For an instant she stood fascinated.  It looked as though the ground
+itself, in many a low-lying swell, were racing on to meet her.  Then
+she saw the hundreds of horns glistening dully in the new light.  That
+black mass, surging forward, was the herd and she was still in its path.
+
+She cried out and threw down her last torch and ran just as the
+frightened steers were running, fear in her heart, racing away from
+death, just running for her life.  She saw a form ahead of the others,
+breaking away from them, sweeping down upon her.  She cried out in
+terror; then she knew and cried out again and threw up her arms and
+turned toward the rider who had remembered her and feared for her and
+come for her.  And Steve, bending from his saddle, equal to the need of
+the moment, swept her up and caught her tight in his arm and rode out
+of the way of herd and fire.
+
+From a little crag-crested knoll, standing hand in hand, their forms
+blended in silhouette against the dawn, they watched breathlessly the
+end of the stampede.  The maddened brutes rushed on, straight toward
+Terry's barrier of flame.  Then those in the van sought suddenly to
+alter their headlong courses.
+
+Steve's face was white with anger as he saw the result.  A full
+half-dozen, perhaps ten, big bodies at the fore passed through the far
+end of the flaming line, swept on, sought to swerve only at the last
+frantic moment with their fellows crowding them to the brink, and,
+struggling wildly, went over and down and out of sight.  Terry
+shuddered.
+
+The herd, however, broke, divided, swung to right and left and passed
+about the burning danger-signal and to the outer rims of the valley,
+achieving safety somewhere in the night, scattering, tossing their
+gleaming fronts, snorting, and beginning to bellow their rage.
+
+"If it hadn't been for you, Terry Temple--" Steve began, his voice a
+little hoarse.
+
+"If it hadn't been for you, Steve Packard,"' laughed Terry a trifle
+unsteadily but quite happily, "where would I have been?"
+
+And then, quite as though their destiny wished it made plain that not
+yet had the time come for them to devote exclusively to themselves,
+Barbee rode down toward them, spurring through the last of the fleeing
+herd, shouting:
+
+"There's a dozen men ridin' this way an' ridin' like----!  An' the
+firelight's shinin' on their guns; every man's totin' one.  An' it's
+ol' Hell-Fire Packard ridin' at their head."
+
+"I'm glad he has come," muttered Steve heavily.
+
+And then, as though he were uncertain of his return to her, he kissed
+Terry's lips that were lifted toward his.  In a dull stupor, so much
+had she experienced these last few minutes, she watched him swing again
+to the back of a horse and ride to meet those who came.  The very way
+he carried his rifle in front of him bespoke with rare eloquence his
+readiness for anything.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+YELLOW BARBEE KEEPS A PROMISE
+
+Terry started, shook off her apathy with a sudden effort and called out:
+
+"Steve!  Steve!  Come back!"
+
+He had gone but a half-dozen paces.  He swung about and returned to
+her.  It was not light enough yet for her to see his eyes; they seemed
+just unfathomable, sombre pools in the shadow of his hat-brim.  As he
+turned his head a little, harking to the distant sounds of men's voices
+earning on, the rigid profile was harsh and implacable.
+
+"Terry," he said sternly, "you mustn't ask me to come back again.  I am
+just standing on my own rights this time, as a man must now and then.
+Old man Packard is over there.  He is coming on.  He wants trouble.  He
+doesn't want the law courts.  He always preferred to play the game man
+to man.  He has cost me a number of cattle; when I can figure just how
+many I am going over and collect from him--if we are both left alive,
+which is to be doubted.  And now, if he wants fight----"
+
+Again he glanced over his shoulder.  Still she could not read what lay
+in his eyes.  But a new, almost eager note, boyishly eager Terry
+thought in dismay, had burst into his voice:
+
+"If he wants fight--by God, Terry Temple, I'm as much Packard as he is!"
+
+She watched him wheel again and go.  This time she did not call to him.
+Her little figure stiffened, her hands were down at her sides and
+clenched, her chin was lifted a little.  The whole attitude was
+soldierlike.
+
+"They are two of a kind," said Terry within herself.  "They are men.
+They are Packards.  I am proud and--and afraid--and--  Oh, dear God!
+Dear God!  Bring him back to me!"
+
+She could hear Steve giving his brief orders crisply.  Other figures
+loomed about him, coming out of the night and the shadows.  There was
+young Yellow Barbee and Bandy Oliver; there was the Number Ten cowboy
+whom she knew only as "Spotty"; in a moment these and two or three
+other men were with Steve.  Six or seven; possibly eight of them all
+told.  And Barbee had said that there were about a dozen men with old
+man Packard.
+
+"This is my fight, boys," Steve was saying.  "Mine and my
+grandfather's.  I want you fellows to keep out of it unless the boys
+with old man Packard mix in.  If they do----"
+
+"We're with you," said Yellow Barbee.  "Huh, boys?"
+
+And a little nervously and hurriedly they answered--
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then," concluded Steve, "keep your eyes open.  Hang back, now."
+
+She saw him lean forward in the saddle, noted how the horse leaped
+under him, took anxious stock of the manner in which he carried his
+rifle.  Then suddenly there came back into Terry's cheeks the good hot
+blood, into her eyes the sparkle and shine, into her heart something
+akin to the sheer joy of battle.  Had she a horse she would not have
+hung back for want of a rifle, but would have ridden after him, with
+him.  As it was she cried out ringingly:
+
+"God go with you, Steve Packard!  I'm proud of you!"
+
+She might not ride with him; at least she would not crouch and cringe
+and hide her eyes.  She would watch him as he rode, watch him as he
+fought, watch him to the end even though he slipped from the saddle.
+
+So she made her way hastily to a point of vantage, running the brief
+distance lying between the slight knoll on which she stood and the
+eastern edge of the valley where the rugged peaks rose abruptly.  She
+scrambled up the first bit of slope, her heart beating wildly,
+expecting each second to hear the snap and crackle of rifle-fire.  She
+turned and looked back; the floor of the valley was too uneven for her
+to have a sweeping view.
+
+She began climbing again.  Great boulders rose in her path; somehow she
+got on them and over them.  Broken slabs of granite strewed the way;
+she made of them steps on which to mount higher and higher.  Still no
+sound of a shot and at last, upon a narrow shelf of rock offering
+sufficient foothold, she stopped.
+
+Here, with her back tight pressed to a rock, her hands gripping at
+irregularities on each side of her to steady her, she sent her questing
+gaze down into Drop Off Valley.
+
+Now she understood why there had as yet been no rifle-fire.  The day,
+coming on slowly, still offered more gloom than radiance, but she could
+pick out two figures clearly.  One was that of Steve.  He had ridden on
+ahead of his men, perhaps a hundred feet ahead, and was upon a bit of
+higher ground.
+
+The other form, bulking big in the thin light, was indisputably that of
+old man Packard.  Like Steve, he had ridden on in advance of his men.
+She could just make out a dull mass yonder behind him which might have
+been but a group of boulders had not the impatient stirring showed
+where his horsemen were waiting.
+
+It was very still there on the uplands in the dim dawning.  In
+breathless watchfulness a few men behind Steve watched; a few men
+behind old man Packard watched; a girl upon a granite peak watched.
+Down toward the lower end of the valley where the floor of the plateau
+dropped precipitously into the steep-walled canon the fire Terry had
+set was still burning fiercely.  But the wind carried its fury away
+from them, so that it was only an evil whisper.
+
+Here and there, elsewhere in the valley, the fires still burned on.
+There were wide stretches across which the flames had already swept so
+that now they were ink-black, burnt-out, smoking a little.  Upon such
+an open space, still hot under their horses' hoofs, the two Packards,
+grandfather and grandson, came face to face.  And they were stern,
+ominously set faces confronting each other.
+
+At last they had pulled rein, both of them, looking grotesquely like
+clockwork mechanisms, being actuated by the same impulse at the same
+time.  Some ten feet only were between their horses' tossing heads.
+They were almost opposite Terry's lookout and at no great distance.  In
+the quiet pervading the valley their voices came to her.  Not each
+word, but a word now and then, lifted above its fellows, and always the
+purport.  For there was no mistaking the quality of the two voices.
+
+Rage in old Packard was welcomed by wrath in young Packard.  Heat and
+anger and explosive denunciation, these were to be looked for now.
+Never had it been the Packard way to temporize; always had it been the
+Packard way to leap in and strike.  Few-worded always was the old man;
+as few-worded was the young man now.
+
+"You are a damn' scoundrel, sir!"
+
+"You will draw your men off.  You will pay for the damage Blenham has
+done."
+
+"By God, sir!"
+
+There was little more said.  That thunderous "By God, sir!" from the
+old man's lips carried to Terry where she stood tight pressed against
+her rock.  And then all unexpectedly and from an unexpected quarter,
+came the first rifle-shot.
+
+The first shot and the second, close together.  The bullets passed
+between grandfather and grandson, kicking up little puffs of dust
+beyond them.  Neither looked to see whence the shots came.  The thought
+was in each mind:
+
+"Is this a Packard I am dealing with?  Setting one of his hired
+assassins to shooting from a blind?"
+
+The old man's rifle was thrown up before him; Steve's rose with it.
+Over yonder old Packard's men squared themselves in their saddles and
+made ready for grim work.  Yellow Barbee gave a signal all unneeded to
+his men; his own rifle in his eager hands, was ready, the trigger
+yielding to his calloused forefinger.
+
+And then from the flinty spire of a peak rising between them and a sun
+that was slowly wheeling into the clear sky, came scream after scream
+that echoed and billowed across the open lands as Terry Temple, seeing
+something of the truth, cried out in terrified desperation and warning.
+
+A girl's voice screaming--Old man Packard turned sharply and stared in
+wonderment.  Terry's voice--Steve swung about, his anger suddenly
+quenched in alarm, his eyes seeking everywhere for her.
+
+It was Barbee who saw her first.  Barbee called out, a strange note in
+his voice, and clapped his spurs to his horse's sides and went racing
+across the undulating lands toward her.  Then Steve saw and old man
+Packard and the rest.  Saw but at first could not understand: the sun
+was just behind her, winking into their eyes.  There was some one with
+her, struggling with her.
+
+"Blenham!" shouted Steve.
+
+And he was racing wildly along after Barbee, yearning to shoot to kill
+and yet not daring to shoot at all.  Blenham and Terry struggling upon
+the iron side of the mountain, Terry striking and striking at him
+frantically, Blenham with his arms about her, dragging her back toward
+a wide fissure in the rocks, the sun bright above them.
+
+To Terry it seemed that the universe had come crashing down about her
+ears.  A moment ago, tense and rigid and breathless, she had stood
+watching two men face each other threateningly.  Then there had been
+the crack of the unexpected, unseen rifle; the dust struck up between
+them; the second shot.  And the smoking rifle-barrel was not three feet
+from where Terry stood, Blenham's convulsed face laid against the
+stock, Blenham's one evil eye lining the sights.
+
+Almost on the instant she guessed something of the truth.  Blenham in
+this light was not sure of hitting; he would be a fool to shoot and
+miss.  Unless--and it was then that she screamed out her warning, then
+before he had so much as put out his hand toward her.
+
+Unless Blenham, with all of the guile of him uppermost, knew that that
+shot fired between the two would send them flying at each other's
+throats, ending all parley and bringing about unthinkable tragedy.
+Blenham had his own reasons for what he did; certainly it would fit in
+with Blenham's plans to see the hand of a Packard set against a Packard.
+
+But she had not thought to have him seize her.  Now his great,
+calloused, soiled, hairy hands shut down upon her, gripping her
+shoulders, jerking her from her place into the crevice from which his
+face had emerged.  She fought, seeking to get the revolver in her
+blouse.
+
+Blenham must have known that she kept it there.  He snatched it and
+threw it behind him and cursed her as he dragged her with him.  As
+Barbee came on and Steve came just behind him, the figures of Blenham
+and Terry were both gone as though the mountain-side had split for them
+and closed after them.
+
+"They've got in a hole," called out Barbee.  "Them mountains is full of
+caves.  They can't get away far."
+
+As they went up the steep slope Barbee was still in the lead.  He
+mounted to the shelf of rock on which Terry had been standing.  He
+stepped into the crevice through which Blenham had dragged Terry.
+
+"There's a split in the rocks here," called Barbee.  "He went this way."
+
+"Watch out for him!" warned Steve, now on the ledge close to the boy.
+"Let me go ahead!"
+
+Barbee laughed.
+
+"Long ago I told him I'd get him!"
+
+But Blenham was waiting in a little rock-rimmed hollow.  He shot from
+the hip, using a heavy revolver.  Barbee stood a moment looking
+foolishly at the sky as he slowly leaned back against the rock.  Then
+he lurched and fell, twisting, spinning so that he lay half in the
+fissure, his rifle clattering to the ledge outside, his body falling so
+that his head and shoulders were across the rifle.
+
+Steve stepped over Barbee's twitching body, alert, every nerve taut,
+his finger crooked to the trigger of his rifle.  But again Blenham had
+withdrawn.  In the little rudely circular hollow from which Blenham had
+fired point-blank at Yellow Barbee was Terry's hat, trodden underfoot.
+Again it was as though the mountain had swallowed the man and the girl
+he had taken with him.
+
+But a moment later Steve saw and understood.  Not ten steps from where
+he stood was the mouth of a cave.  Into it Blenham had retreated.  In
+there was Blenham now; Blenham and Terry with him.  And the way, for
+the moment at least, was securely blocked.  Evidently here was a
+hangout known before, previously employed.  It had a door made of heavy
+cedar slabs.  The door was shut, and, of course, barred from within.
+
+"Terry!" called Steve.
+
+Terry sought to answer; he heard her voice in inarticulate terror,
+little more than a gasp, choked back in her throat.  Steve went dead
+white.  He visualized Blenham's hands upon her.
+
+He came on to the door, his rifle clubbed.  There was but the one thing
+to do; smash down the door and so come at Blenham the shortest,
+quickest, only way.
+
+Then Blenham called to him for the first time.
+
+"Fool, are you, Steve Packard?  Look at that door.  Don't you know
+before you can batter it down I can pick you off!  An' I can do more'n
+that!"
+
+As though he had cruelly drawn it from her, there came again Terry's
+scream.  Steve sprang forward and struck at the heavy cedar planks.
+And Blenham called out again:
+
+"Maybe you can break your way in; there's enough of you.  But you'll
+find her dead when the door falls!"
+
+Steve had again lifted his rifle.  Now he let it sink slowly so that
+the butt came to rest gently upon the rock at his feet.  Blenham held
+the high hand; Blenham was unthinkably vile; Blenham was desperate.
+And Terry, his little Terry on whom Blenham had always looked with the
+eye of a brute and a beast, was in there, just beyond three inches of
+solid seasoned cedar planking.
+
+"If you harm her in the least--"  It was Steve's voice though certainly
+at first neither Blenham nor even Terry could have recognized it.  "If
+you harm her in the least, Blenham, I'll kill you.  Not all at
+once--just by inches!"
+
+Blenham answered him coolly.
+
+"I know when I've lost a trick, Steve Packard.  This ain't the firs'
+one an' it ain't goin' to be the last.  I've played 'em high an' I
+always knowed I took chances.  But I'm playin' safe!  Get me?  Safe!"
+
+"Go ahead; what do you mean?"
+
+"Ol' man Packard is down there.  This girl's yellin' spoiled my play.
+By now he has learned a thing or two.  All right; that's jus' the run
+of luck, rotten luck!"
+
+Under the words the restraint was gone and his rage flared out briefly.
+But it was patent that Blenham's shrewdness was still with him.  He
+continued almost calmly:
+
+"You an' him can have two words together.  Then come back here an' give
+me your promises, both of you, to let me go.  Then I'll let her go.
+Otherwise, I'm as good as dead--an' so's she.  I'll jam a gun to her
+head the las' thing an' blow her brains out.  An', what's more, I'll
+get one or two of you besides before you drop me."
+
+Into their parley, interrupting it, his eyes flaming, his face hot with
+anger, mounted old man Packard.
+
+"Stephen," he said sternly, his eyes hard on his grandson's face, "tell
+me an' tell me the down-right truth, so help you God: Did you rent this
+pasture from Andy Sprague, thinkin' he owned it?"
+
+Though he wondered, Steve answered briefly, to have this done with so
+that he could again turn to Blenham--
+
+"Yes."
+
+"An' the boys says you have been losin' stock an' blamin' it to me?
+An' that you've had stock poisoned an' shot?  An' blamed it to me?"
+
+"Yes," said Steve.
+
+"So've I," said the old man heavily.  "An' I've always blamed it to
+you.  An' I never sold to Andy Sprague.  Him an' Blenham--Blenham has
+played us both ways for suckers, has stole enough cows from one an'
+another----"
+
+His voice was swept up into the roar of rage which had given him his
+name of the old mountain-lion of the north.  He came stepping over poor
+Barbee's body, thrusting by Steve, towering over the door of the cave.
+
+"Hold back," commanded Steve queerly.  "He's in there.  But he's got it
+on us.  We've got to promise to let him go!"
+
+"Let him go!" shouted the old man, his big bulk seeming actually to
+quiver with rage.  "After all he's done, let him go?  By the Lord,
+Stephen Packard, if you're that sort of a man----"
+
+"She is in there with him," said Steve heavily.  "Terry is in there.
+Don't you see?"
+
+"Terry?  That Temple girl?  What have we to do----"
+
+"In the first place," cried Steve sharply, "she's a girl and he's a
+brute.  In the second place, she is the next Mrs. Packard and I won't
+have Blenham pawing over her!"
+
+His grandfather stared at him, long and keenly.  Then he turned away
+and called out commandingly--
+
+"Blenham, come out of that!"
+
+Blenham jeered at him.
+
+"And be shot down like a dog?  There's a girl in here, Packard.  Young
+Packard is gone on her; he wants to marry her.  An' unless you an' him
+give your word to let me go, I'm goin' to jam a gun at her head an'
+blow her brains out.  An' I'll get him as I come out; an' I'll get you."
+
+"Let him go!" called Terry faintly.  "Let him go, Steve!  Oh, dear
+God--if you love me----"
+
+"Come out, Blenham!" shouted Steve.  "I give you my word, so help me
+God, to let you go scot-free.  Come out!"
+
+"Not so fast," mocked Blenham, lingering over his high card.  "You've
+got to promise for your men; you've got to send 'em across the valley.
+You've got to have a horse handy for me to ride.  You've got to back
+down the valley yourse'f.  An' ol' man Packard has got to do the same."
+
+Old man Packard roared out his curses, but in the end, seeing nothing
+else to do, he went grumbling down the rocky slope, back to his horse
+and to his men.  But first he had known perhaps the supreme humiliation
+of his life.  He had said:
+
+"Blenham, on my word of honor as a Packard an' a gentleman, I'll let
+you go.  An' I'll make my men let you go."
+
+And there were actually tears hanging to his lashes as he swung again
+into his saddle.
+
+"He has not hurt you, Terry?" asked Steve before he too would go down
+the slope.
+
+"No," cried Terry.  "No, no!  But, oh, hurry, hurry, Steve.  I feel
+that I'll smother, I'll die!"
+
+From down in the valley they watched, close to a score of hard-eyed,
+wrath-filled men, as Blenham stepped out of the crevice and on to the
+ledge.  They saw how he jeered as he stepped over the body of the man
+he had shot.
+
+"A fool was Barbee," he called.  "A fool the Packards, ol' an' young!"
+
+They saw him come down the slope, carrying himself with a swaggering
+air of braggadocio, but plainly watchful and suspicious.  Terry had
+come out upon the ledge and she too watched him.  He came down swiftly
+and swung up into the saddle of the horse they had left for him.
+
+And now at last his suspicion was past.  His triumph broke out like a
+streak of evil light.
+
+"I was ready to go," he called, "any time!"
+
+He swung his arm out toward the blue hills of Old Mexico.
+
+"Down there-----"
+
+Barbee whom they had thought dead stirred a little where he lay.  The
+rifle under him he thrust forward six inches.
+
+"Blenham!" he called weakly.
+
+Blenham swung about and fired, again from the hip.  But he had fired
+hastily.  Barbee's rifle, resting upon the rock, was steady.  Between
+its muzzle and Blenham's broad chest there was but the brief distance
+of some fifty feet.  The report of Barbee's rifle, the thin upcurling
+smoke under the new sun--these were the chief matters in all the world
+for their little fragment of time.
+
+Then Blenham threw out his arms and pitched forward.  His foot caught
+in the stirrup.  The frightened horse was plunging, running, dragging a
+man whose body was whipped this way and that.
+
+"I promised--a long time ago," whispered Barbee, "that I'd get you,
+Blenham."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+IN HONOR OF THE FAIRY QUEEN!
+
+"Guy Little!"
+
+The old man's voice boomed out mightily as the old man himself strode
+back and forth impatiently in the big barn-like library of his ranch
+home.  Guy Little appeared with a promptness savoring either of magic
+or prepared expectancy.
+
+"You rang, your majesty?"
+
+"Rang, your foot!" shouted old Packard.  "I hollered my ol' head off.
+What's the day of the week, Guy Little?"
+
+"It's Wednesday, your----"
+
+"An' what's the day of the month?"
+
+"It's the nineteenth, your----"
+
+"Then tell me, sir," and the old man's tone was angry and challenging
+to a remarkable degree, "why in the name of the devil my gran'son,
+Stephen, ain't showed up yet!"
+
+Guy Little might have remarked that it was rather early to expect any
+one to show up.  It was not yet six o'clock of a morning which promised
+to be one of the very finest mornings ever known.  The old man had, as
+Guy Little expressed it, "been prancin' an' pawin' aroun'," for an hour.
+
+Guy Little grinned like any cherub.
+
+"He has showed up," he chuckled, though he had meant to hold back the
+tidings teasingly.  "He come in late las' night.  You was asleep an'
+sleepin' soun', so----"
+
+"He did, did he?" bellowed the old man.  "Crept in like a damn' thief
+in the night, did he?  Well, where is he now?  Sleepin' yet, I'll be
+bound.  When he ought to be up an'--  Why, when I was a young devil his
+age----"
+
+"He's outside somewhere," said Guy Little.  "He has been down to the
+crick for a mornin' dip, I'd guess, your majesty."
+
+"Why would you guess that?"
+
+"Because pretty near all he had on was a towel an' a--a sort of
+a----immodes' britch-cloth," explained Guy Little confidentially.
+
+"An'," continued old man Packard, "where's--she?"
+
+"Meanin' the Fairy Queen, your majesty?"  Guy Little's voice was now a
+whisper.
+
+"Meanin' her--the Fairy Queen," said the old man gently.  "Sleepin',
+Guy Little?  I won't have her woke!"
+
+"Woke, your eyebrow!" chuckled Guy Little.  "I'd say she's gone for
+a--a dip, too, your majesty.  An'--an', between just the two of us ol'
+fellers, hers is purty near as immodes' as his!  Fact, an' I don't care
+whose granddaughter she is.  Blue, you know; an' not very much of it.
+An' a red cap.  An'--I couldn't see very well through the curtains an'
+I dasn't let 'em know I was lookin'.  Only don't you let her know we
+know; why, bless her little simple heart, she ain't got the least idea
+how pretty an'--an'----immodes'----"
+
+Old man Packard fixed him with a knowing eye.
+
+"Ain't she?" he demanded.  "Ain't she, Guy Little?  Why, if there's one
+thing in this world worth knowin' that my granddaughter don't know--
+Go order breakfas' ready in two shakes, Guy Little."
+
+"I did," said Guy Little.  "It's ready already.  There they come.
+Happy-lookin', ain't they?  Like a couple kids."
+
+"An' see that them two new saddle-horses is ready right after breakfas'
+for 'em, Guy Little."
+
+"They're ready now," chuckled Guy Little.  "I remembered."
+
+"An--an' she likes----"
+
+"Flowers on the table?  An' her grapefruit stacked high with sugar?
+An' the coffee with hot milk?  Don't I know nothin' a-tall, Packard?"
+
+Steve and Terry, dripping and laughing, breaking into a run as they
+came on across the meadow, spied the big man and the little at the
+window and shouted a joyous good morning and Terry threw them a kiss
+apiece.  And old man Packard, his hands on his hips, a look of
+absolute, ineffable content in his eyes, said softly:
+
+"I've made a mistake or two in my life, Guy Little.  But ain't I lived
+long enough to squeeze in a blunder or so here an' there?  An' I've
+made a mistake a time or two on a man."
+
+"Blenham did fool you pretty slick," suggested Guy Little.
+
+"But," went on the old man hurriedly, "I know a real, upstandin',
+thoroughbred----"
+
+"Fairy Queen of a woman."
+
+"Fairy Queen of a woman when I see her.  An' that little thing out
+there, her eyes shinin' like I ain't seen a pair of eyes shine for
+more'n fifty year, Guy Little--why, sir, she's what I call a--  Why,
+she's a Packard, man!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Man to Man, by Jackson Gregory
+
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