Man to Man, Page 3

  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 totemptation. But in this case he finally decided that common sense ifnot 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 thetrees. Conscious of a man's-sized appetite he galloped up the longlane, turned in at a gate sagging wearily upon its hinges, and rode tothe door of the lighted house. The first glance showed him that it wasa long, low, rambling affair resembling in dejectedness the droopinggate. An untidy sort of man in shirt-sleeves and smoking a pipe cameto the door, kicking into silence his half-dozen dogs.

  "What's the chance of something to eat and a place to sleep in thebarn?" asked Packard.

  The rancher waved his pipe widely.

  "Help yourself, stranger," he answered, in a voice meant to behospitable but which through long habit had acquired an unpleasantlysullen tone. "You'll find the sleeping all right, but when it comes tosomething to eat you can take it from me you'll find damn' poorpicking. Get down, feed your horse, and come in."

  When he entered the house Packard was conscious of an oddly bare andcheerless atmosphere which at first he was at a loss to explain. Forthe room was large, amply furnished, cheerfully lighted by a cracklingfire of dry sticks in the big rock fireplace, and a lamp swung from theceiling. What the matter was dawned on him gradually: time was whenthis chamber had been richly, even exquisitely, furnished andappointed. Now it presented rather a dejected spectacle of fadedsplendor, not entirely unlike a fine gentleman of the old school fallenamong bad companions and into tattered ill repute.

  The untidy host, more untidy than ever here in the full light, draggedhis 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 soharmonized both with himself and his sitting-room. "After which we'llsee what's to eat. Terry fired the cook last week and there's beensmall feasting since."

  Packard accepted a moderate drink, the rancher filled his own glassgenerously, and they drank standing. This ceremony briefly performedand chairs dragged comfortably up to the fireplace, Packard's hostcalled 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 theother end of the long house, "why can't he forage for himself? Wantsme 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. Andif I was you, pardner, and had a real hankering for grub I'd moseyright along in there while there's something left." His eye roved tothe bottle on the chimneypiece and dropped to the fire. "I'll trailyou in a minute."

  Here was invitation sufficient, and Packard rose swiftly, went outthrough the door at the end of the room, passed through an untidychamber 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 onan oilcloth-covered table, her booted feet swinging, a thick sandwichin one hand and a steaming cup of coffee in the other, took time tolook him up and down seriously and to swallow before she answered hisbow with a quick, bird-like nod.

  "Don't mind me," she said briefly, having swallowed again. "Dig in andhelp yourself."

  On the table beside her were bread, butter, a very dry andblack-looking roast, and a blacker but more tempting coffee-pot.

  "I didn't follow you on purpose," said Packard. "Back there where theroads forked I saw that you had turned to the left, so I turned to theright."

  "All roads lead to Rome," she said around the corner of the bigsandwich. "Anyway, it's all right. I guess I owe you a square mealand 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 thatyou just made a fool of yourself that time."

  She openly sniffed the air as he stepped by her reaching out forbutcher-knife and roast. "So you are dad's kind, are you? Hitting thebooze 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 upyour nose at a fellow for taking a drop o' kindness with a hospitablehost, why, that's all nonsense, you know."

  Terry kicked her high heels impudently and vouchsafed him no furtheranswer beyond that easy gesture. Packard made his own sandwich, foundthe 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; helpyourself 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'veyou 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 thequick, bright way which already he found characteristic of her. "Terryfor myself, if you say it quick."

  He had suspected from the beginning that there was Southern blood ofsome strain in her. Now he studied her frankly, and, just to try herout, 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 sayyour mother was Mexican----"

  "Mexican, your foot!" she flared out at him, her trim little bodystiffening perceptibly, her chin proudly lifted. "The Arriegas werepure-blooded Castilian, I'd have you understand. There's no mongrelabout 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 ofthe cattle outfits around here that are short-handed?"

  "Men are scarce right now," she answered. "A good cattle-hand is ashard to locate as a dodo bird. You could get a job anywhere if you'reworth 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'the?"

  "So you know Bill Royce?" countered Terry. "Well, that's something inyour 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 ofthat outfit or any other again. He's blind."

  Old Bill Royce blind! Here was a shock, and Packard sat back andstared at her speechlessly. Somehow this was incredible, unthinkable,nothing short. The old cattle-man who had been the hero of hisboyhood, who had taught him to shoot and ride and swim, who had been sovital 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 isstill with the outfit. A man named Blenham is the foreman now. He'sold 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 havehim."

  "Terry!" came the voice of the untidy man, meant to be remonstrativebut chiefly noteworthy for a newly acquired thickness of utterance.

  Terry's eyes sparkled and a hot flush came i
nto her cheeks.

  "Leave me alone, will you, pa?" she cried sharply. "I don't owe oldPackard anything; no, nor Blenham either. You can walk easy all youlike, but I'm blamed if I've got to. If you'd smash your cursed oldbottle on their heads and take a brace we'd come alive yet."

  "Remember we have a guest with us," grumbled Temple from his place bythe sitting-room fire.

  "Oh, shoot!" exclaimed the girl impatiently. Reaching out for a secondsandwich she stabbed the kitchen-knife viciously into the roast. "I'vea notion to pack up and clear out and let the cut-throat crowd cleanyou to the last copper and pick your bones into the bargain. When didyou ever get anywhere by taking your hat off and side-stepping for aPackard? If you're so all-fired strong for remembering, why don't youtry to remember how it feels to stand on two feet like a man instead ofcrawling 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, makingclearer than ever that Miss Terry Temple had a way of speaking straightout what lay in her mind, caring not at all who heard. "I'm hopingthat some day he'll come back. A real man was dad, a man's man. Butthat was before the Packards broke him and stepped on him and kickedhim out of the trail. And, believe me, the Packards, though they oughtto be hung to the first tree, are men just the same!"

  "So I have heard," admitted the youngest of the defamed house. "Yougroup 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 ofjail. He's the only one left, and from the looks of things he'll keepon living and making trouble another hundred years."

  "There was another Packard, wasn't there?" he insisted. "PhilPackard'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 jobinstead of messing around in the dirty ports of the seven seas whilehis 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 Tenought to belong to the fool boy now, oughtn't it? And here's oldPackard's pet dog Blenham running the outfit in old Packard's interestsjust 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 beforehis death."

  "He didn't sell it to anybody. He mortgaged it right up to the hilt tothe 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 inyoung Packard's eyes. If what she told him were true, then the oldhome ranch, while commonly looked upon as belonging already to hisgrandfather, was the property legally of Steve Packard. AndBlenham--yes, and old Bill Royce--were taking his pay. Suddenlyinfinite possibilities stretched out before him.

  "Come alive!" laughed Terry. "We were talking about your finding ajob. There's one open here for you; first to teach me all you knowabout the insides of my car; second-- What's the matter? Gone tosleep?"

  He started. He had been thinking about Blenham and Bill Royce. AsTerry continued to stare wonderingly at him he smiled.

  "If you don't mind," he said non-committally, "we'll forget about thejob for a spell. I left some stuff back at the Packard ranch thatbelongs to me. I'm going back for it in the morning. Maybe I'll go towork 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 wantto 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 afree country, didn't I? Only you can burn this in your nextwheat-straw: once you go to riding herd with that gang you needn't comearound here again. And you can take Blenham a message for me: PhilPackard knifed dad and double-crossed him and made him pretty nearlywhat he is now; old Hell-Fire Packard finished the job. But just thesame, the Temple Ranch is still on the map and Terry Temple had ratherscrap a scoundrel to the finish than shake hands with one. And one ofthese 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 tohave a word with old man Packard."

  She stared at him incredulously. Then she put her head back andlaughed in high amusement.

  "Nobody'd miss guessing that you had your nerve with you, Mr. LankyStranger," she cried mirthfully. "But when it comes to tacklingHell-Fire Packard with a mouthful of fool questions-- Look here; whoare you anyway?"

  "Nobody much," he answered quietly and just a trifle bitterly. "TomFool 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 ofred leaping into her cheeks, startling him with the manner in which allmirth 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 stillhigher. Packard heard her father rise hurriedly and shuffle across thefloor toward the kitchen.

  "You're a worthy chip off the old stump," Terry was sayingcontemptuously. "You're a darned sneak!"

  "Terry!" admonished Temple warningly.

  Her stiff little figure remained motionless a moment, never an eyelidstirring. Then she whirled and went out of the room, banging a doorafter her.

  "She's high-strung, Mr. Packard," said Temple, slow and heavy and a bituncertain in his articulation. "High-strung, like her mother. And attimes apt to be unreasonable. Come in with me and have a drink, andwe'll talk things over."

  Packard hesitated. Then he turned and followed his host back to thefireplace. Suddenly he found himself without further enthusiasm forconversation.