Man to Man Part 32

"To pay off a mortgage to my grandfather, yes," he answered soberly, quite conscious of what he was doing and of its recklessness and, perhaps, idiocy. "And to beat Blenham."

She jumped up and ran around the table to put her two hands on his shoulders and shake him.

"You're a G.o.d-blessed brick, Steve Packard!" she cried ringingly. "But I'm not a bloodsucker, either. If you're a dead game sport-- Well, that's what I'd rather be than anything else you can put a name to.

Lace your boots, get into a hat, shove that in your pocket." And she slipped the roll of bills into his hand. "By now dad and Blenham will be on the road to Red Creek; we'll beat them to it, have a lawyer and some papers all ready, and when they show up we'll just take dad out of Blenham's hands."

"I don't quite get you," said Steve. "If you won't borrow the money----"

"I'll make dad sell out to you for eight thousand; he pockets one thousand and with the other seven your money-grabbing, pestiferous old granddad is paid off. Then you and I frame a deal between us----"

"Partners!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Bill Royce. "Glory to be! Steve Packard an'

Terry Temple pardners----"

"Don't you see?" Terry was excitedly tugging at Steve's arm. "Come on; come alive. We're going to play freeze-out with h.e.l.l-Fire Packard and his right-hand bower, both. And we're going to keep dad from doing a fool thing. And we're going to-- Oh, come on, can't you?"

Steve got up and stood looking down at her curiously. Then he laughed and turned away for his coat and hat.

"Lead on; I'm trailing you," he said briefly.

Bill Royce rubbed his hands and chuckled.

"Even if I ain't got eyes," he mused, "there's some things I can see real clear."

CHAPTER XVIII

"IF HE KNOWS--DOES SHE?"

There seemed no particular need for haste. And yet Terry ran eagerly to her car, and Steve hurried after her with long strides while the men down at the bunkhouse surmised and looked to Bill Royce for a measure of explanation. Steve was not beyond the age of enthusiasm; Terry was all atingle. Life was shaping itself to an adventure.

And so, though it appeared that all of the time in the world was theirs for loitering--for it should be a simple matter to come to Red Creek well in advance of Blenham and his dupe--Terry yielded to her excitement, Steve yielded out of hand to the lure of Terry, and, quite gay about it, they sped away through the moonlight. While Terry, driver, perforce kept her eyes busied with the road, Steve Packard leaned back in his seat and contented himself with the vision of his fellow adventurer.

"Terry Temple," he told her emphatically and utterly sincerely, "you are absolutely the prettiest thing I ever saw."

"I'm not a thing," said Terry. "And besides, I know it already.

And----"

Then it was that they got their first puncture; a worn tire cut through by a sharp fragment of rock so that they heard the air gush out windily. Terry jammed on her brakes. Steve jumped out and made hasty examination.

"Looks like a man had gone after it with a hand-ax," he announced cheerfully. "Good thing you've got a spare."

Terry flung down from her seat impatiently.

"I need some new tires," she said, as she from one side and he from the other began seeking in the tool-box under the seat for jack and wrench.

"That spare is soft, too, and half worn through; I'll bet we get more than one puncture before the job's done. But it's mounted, anyway."

Steve went down on his knee and began jacking the car up; Terry standing over him was busy with her wrench loosening the lugs at the rim. Then, while he made the exchange and tightened the nuts, she strapped the punctured tire in its carrier and slipped back into her seat. As Steve got in beside her he marked how speculatively her eyes were busied with the road.

"We've got them behind us, haven't we?" he asked.

Terry nodded quickly.

"Yes. We've got the head start and they're on horseback. It's no trick to beat them to it. But-- Oh, I saw a look on Blenham's face to-night! He's bad, Steve Packard; all bad; the kind that stops at nothing! And somehow, somehow he's got a strangle-hold on poor old dad and is making him do this. We've got the head start, we can beat them to Red Creek, but----"

"But you don't like the idea of leaving your father alone in Blenham's company to-night?" he finished for her. "Is that it?"

Again she nodded. He could see her teeth set to nibbling at her lips.

"Then," he suggested, "why go to Red Creek at all? Why not turn back here and stop them? You can take Mr. Temple back home with you. I imagine that between the two of us we can make Blenham understand he is not wanted this time."

"I was thinking of that," said Terry.

And where the Ranch Number Ten road runs into the country road, Terry turned to the right, headed again toward her own home.

When, with Steve at her heels, she ran up on the porch it was to be met by Iki, the j.a.panese cook, his eyes s.h.i.+ning wildly.

"Where's my father?" she asked, and Iki waving his hands excitedly answered:

"Departed with rapid haste and many curse-words from his gentleman friend. The master could not make a stop for one little more drink of whiskey. The other strike and vomit threats and say: 'Most surely will I cause that you tarry long time in jail-side.' Saying likewise: 'I got you by the long hair like I want you and yes-by-G.o.d, like some day soon I get your lovely daughter!' Only he say the latter with unpleasant words of----"

Terry was shaking him by both shoulders.

"Where did they go?" she demanded. "How long ago?"

"On horses, running swiftly," gibbered Iki. "Ten minutes, maybe--perhaps twenty or thirty. Who can tell the time when----"

"Why didn't we meet them?" asked Steve of Terry. "If they are really headed for Red Creek?"

"They are taking all of the short-cuts there are," she answered promptly. "They'll take a cow-trail through the ranch, cut across the lower end of your place, and come into the old road just beyond.

Blenham's all fox; he has guessed that I am out to put a spoke in his wheel somehow. He won't be wasting any perfectly good moonlight. Come on!" And again she was running to the car. "We'll overhaul them just the same.

"I believe you," grunted Steve, once more seated beside her, the engine drumming, the wheels spinning. "You don't know what a speed law is, do you?"

"Speed law?" she repeated absently, her eyes on the next dark turn in the road. "What's that?"

He chuckled and settled back in his seat. His eyes, like the girl's, were watchfully bent upon the gloom-filled angle which Terry must negotiate before the way straightened out again before her. Her headlights cut through the shadows; Terry's little body stiffened a bit and her hands tensed on her wheel; her flying speed was lessened an almost negligible trifle; she made the turn and opened the throttle.

Steve nodded approvingly.

For the greater part they were silent. He had never seen her in a mood like to-night's. He read in her face, in her eyes, in the carriage of her body, one and the same thing; and that was a complex something made of the several emotions of determination, sorrow, and fiery anger.

He read her thought readily; it was clear that she made no attempt to conceal it: She was going to consummate a certain deal, she was grieved and ashamed for her father, she remembered the "look on Blenham's face to-night," and again and again her fury shot its red tide into her cheeks.

"Blenham put his dirty hands on her," was Steve's thought; "or tried to."

And he found that his own pulses drummed the hotter as he let his imagination conjure up a picture for him, Blenham's big, knotted hands upon the daintiness that was Terry. In that moment it seemed to him that he had been drawn home across the seas to help mete out punishment to a man: a man who had stricken old Bill Royce, and who now dared look evilly upon Terry Temple.

Then came their second puncture, an ugly gash like the first caused by a flinty fragment of rock driven against the worn outer casing.