Man to Man Part 4

"That would mean old h.e.l.l-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 a.s.sailed 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 s.e.x, 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 att.i.tude 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 b.u.t.ter 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 corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g 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 h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l-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.