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Man to Man

by Jackson Gregory · English · Gutenberg #18933 · 436,542 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Man to Man

Author: Jackson Gregory


        
Release date: July 29, 2006 [eBook #18933]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18933

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE 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; th

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