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.