Man to Man Part 27

"Think I did that on purpose?" he cried in vast good nature. "That I was spying on you? That I waited until you started to climb up here and that then I popped my head up just at the same time? All on purpose?"

"That's just exactly what I do think!" Terry told him hotly. "You--you big smarty! Everywhere I go, have you got to keep showing up?"

"I'll tell you something," said Steve. "If I had climbed up here just to give you a little surprise party; if I had known you were there and that I could have poked my head up just as you did yours--know what I would have done?"

"What?" Terry in her curiosity condescended to ask.

"I'd have kissed the prettiest girl I ever saw!" he chuckled. "Honest to grandma! That's just what I'd have done. As it was, you half scared me out of my wits; I came as close as you please to going over backward and breaking my neck."

"Not as close as I please. And as for kissing me, Long Steve Packard, you just try that on sometime when you want your face slapped good and hard and a bullet pumped into you besides!"

"Mean it?" grinned Steve.

"I most certainly do," she retorted emphatically.

"Offered merely as information?" he wanted to know. "Or as a dare? Or an invitation?"

When she did not reply at once but contented herself by putting a deal of eloquence into a look--which, by the way, had no visible effect upon his rising good humor--he went on to remark:

"If you just slapped my face it would be worth it. If you just shot me through the finger-nail or something like that, it would be worth it still." He examined her critically. "Even if you plugged me square through the thumb----"

"If you don't know it," she informed him aloofly, "you are trespa.s.sing right now where you are not wanted. The sooner you trail your big feet off Temple land the better I'll like it!"

"Temple land? Since when was a tree considered as land, Miss Teresa Arriega Temple?"

"Think that's funny?" she scoffed.

"And besides," he continued, "the tree is on Packard property. See that old pine stump over yonder? And that big rock there? Those things mark the boundary-line and you'll notice we're on my side!"

Terry's temper flamed higher in her eyes, flashed hotter in her cheeks.

"We are not! And you know we are not! The line runs yonder, just beyond that big white rock on the creek-bank. And you are a good ten feet on my side. Where, if you please, you are not wanted."

"That isn't a pretty enough thought to bear repet.i.tion," he offered genially. "Look here, Terry Temple, what's the use----"

"Are you going? Or do you intend just to squat there like a toad and spoil the view for me?"

"Toads are fat animals," he corrected her. "I'm not. More like a bullfrog, if you like. What am I going to do? Why, just squat, I guess."

As he leaned back against the limb which offered its support to his shoulders Terry noted that he wore in full sight at his side the heavy Colt he had bought the other night in Red Creek. A new habit, with Steve Packard.

"Gunman, are you?" she jeered. "I might have known it. Gunmen are all cowards."

He sighed.

"You can be the most irritating young lady I ever met. And why? What have I ever done to you--besides save you from drowning? Since we are neighbors, why not be good friends? By the way, where do you carry your gun?"

"It's different with a girl," she said bluntly. "There's some excuse for her. With the kind that's filling the woods lately she's apt to need it."

"And you wouldn't be afraid to use it?"

"I'm not here to chin with you all day," observed Terry coolly. "And you haven't told me what you're doing on my land."

"Your land?" he demanded.

"On my side of the line, then."

He considered the question.

"I'm here to meet some one," he answered finally.

"I like your nerve! Arranging to meet your friends here! Steve Packard, you are the--the--the----"

"Go on," he prompted. "You'll need a cuss-word now; any other finish will sound flat."

"--the _Packardest_ Packard I ever heard of!" she concluded. "You and your friend----"

"No more my friend than he is yours," he said, interrupting her. "An individual named Blenham. And I'm not here so much to meet him as--let's say to head him off."

Terry set it down that, since it was next to impossible at any time for a Packard to speak the truth, he was just lying to her for the sake of the devious exercise. As she was on the point of saying emphatically when Steve said "s.h.!.+" and pointed. She heard a breaking of brush and saw the horns of a steer; the animal was coming into the trail from the Packard side.

"You just watch," whispered Steve. "And sit right still. It won't do you any harm to know what's going on."

The big steer broke through into the trail, stopped and sniffed, and then came on up the stream. Behind came another and another, emerging from the shadows, pa.s.sing through the swiftly fading light of the open, gone again into the shadows that lay over the wooded Temple acreage.

In all nine big fat steers. And behind them, sitting loosely in his saddle, came Blenham.

Only when the last steer had crossed the line did Steve rise suddenly, standing upright on the great log, his hands on his hips. Terry looking up into his face saw that all of the good humor had gone from it and that there was something ominous in the darkening of his eyes.

"Hold on, Blenham!" he called.

Blenham drew a quick rein.

"That you, Packard?" he asked quietly.

"It is," answered Steve briefly. "On the job, too, Blenham. All the time."

Blenham laughed.

"So it seems," he said, his look like his tone eloquent of an innuendo which embraced Terry evilly. "If you're invitin' me to join your little party, I ain't got the time. Thanks jus' the same."

Since one's consciousness may harbor several clear-cut impressions simultaneously, Steve Packard, while he was thinking of other matters, felt that never until this moment had he hated Blenham properly; no, nor respected him as it would be the part of wisdom to do.

The man's glance running over Terry Temple's girlishness was like the crawling of a slug over a wild flower and supplied a new and perhaps the key-note to Blenham's ugliness. It was borne in upon Steve that his grandfather's lieutenant was bad, absolutely bad; that, old adages to the contrary notwithstanding, here was a character with not a hint of redemption in it; after the Packard outright way, this youngest Packard was ready to condemn out of hand.

And further, to all of this Steve marked how Blenham had drawn a quick rein but had shown no tremor of uneasiness; had considered that though the man had been taken completely by surprise he had given no sign of being startled, but had answered a sharp summons with a cool, quiet voice. So, summing it up, here was one to be hated and watched.

"What are you doing on my land, Blenham?" asked Steve sharply. "And where are you driving those steers?"