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 to
temptation. But in this case he finally decided that common sense if
not 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 the
trees. Conscious of a man's-sized appetite he galloped up the long
lane, turned in at a gate sagging wearily upon its hinges, and rode to
the door of the lighted house. The first glance showed him that it was
a long, low, rambling affair resembling in dejectedness the drooping
gate. An untidy sort of man in shirt-sleeves and smoking a pipe came
to the door, kicking into silence his half-dozen dogs.
"What's the chance of something to eat and a place to sleep in the
barn?" asked Packard.
The rancher waved his pipe widely.
"Help yourself, stranger," he answered, in a voice meant to be
hospitable but which through long habit had acquired an unpleasantly
sullen tone. "You'll find the sleeping all right, but when it comes to
something to eat you can take it from me you'll find damn' poor
picking. Get down, feed your horse, and come in."
When he entered the house Packard was conscious of an oddly bare and
cheerless atmosphere which at first he was at a loss to explain. For
the room was large, amply furnished, cheerfully lighted by a crackling
fire of dry sticks in the big rock fireplace, and a lamp swung from the
ceiling. What the matter was dawned on him gradually: time was when
this chamber had been richly, even exquisitely, furnished and
appointed. Now it presented rather a dejected spectacle of faded
splendor, not entirely unlike a fine gentleman of the old school fallen
among bad companions and into tattered ill repute.
The untidy host, more untidy than ever here in the full light, dragged
his 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 so
harmonized both with himself and his sitting-room. "After which we'll
see what's to eat. Terry fired the cook last week and there's been
small feasting since."
Packard accepted a moderate drink, the rancher filled his own glass
generously, and they drank standing. This ceremony briefly performed
and chairs dragged comfortably up to the fireplace, Packard's host
called 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 the
other end of the long house, "why can't he forage for himself? Wants
me 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. And
if I was you, pardner, and had a real hankering for grub I'd mosey
right along in there while there's something left." His eye roved to
the bottle on the chimneypiece and dropped to the fire. "I'll trail
you in a minute."
Here was invitation sufficient, and Packard rose swiftly, went out
through the door at the end of the room, passed through an untidy
chamber 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 on
an oilcloth-covered table, her booted feet swinging, a thick sandwich
in one hand and a steaming cup of coffee in the other, took time to
look him up and down seriously and to swallow before she answered his
bow with a quick, bird-like nod.
"Don't mind me," she said briefly, having swallowed again. "Dig in and
help yourself."
On the table beside her were bread, butter, a very dry and
black-looking roast, and a blacker but more tempting coffee-pot.
"I didn't follow you on purpose," said Packard. "Back there where the
roads forked I saw that you had turned to the left, so I turned to the
right."
"All roads lead to Rome," she said around the corner of the big
sandwich. "Anyway, it's all right. I guess I owe you a square meal
and 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 that
you just made a fool of yourself that time."
She openly sniffed the air as he stepped by her reaching out for
butcher-knife and roast. "So you are dad's kind, are you? Hitting the
booze 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 up
your nose at a fellow for taking a drop o' kindness with a hospitable
host, why, that's all nonsense, you know."
Terry kicked her high heels impudently and vouchsafed him no further
answer beyond that easy gesture. Packard made his own sandwich, found
the 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; help
yourself 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've
you 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 the
quick, bright way which already he found characteristic of her. "Terry
for myself, if you say it quick."
He had suspected from the beginning that there was Southern blood of
some strain in her. Now he studied her frankly, and, just to try her
out, 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 say
your mother was Mexican----"
"Mexican, your foot!" she flared out at him, her trim little body
stiffening perceptibly, her chin proudly lifted. "The Arriegas were
pure-blooded Castilian, I'd have you understand. There's no mongrel
about 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 of
the cattle outfits around here that are short-handed?"
"Men are scarce right now," she answered. "A good cattle-hand is as
hard to locate as a dodo bird. You could get a job anywhere if you're
worth 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't
he?"
"So you know Bill Royce?" countered Terry. "Well, that's something in
your 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 of
that outfit or any other again. He's blind."
Old Bill Royce blind! Here was a shock, and Packard sat back and
stared at her speechlessly. Somehow this was incredible, unthinkable,
nothing short. The old cattle-man who had been the hero of his
boyhood, who had taught him to shoot and ride and swim, who had been so
vital 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 is
still with the outfit. A man named Blenham is the foreman now. He's
old 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 have
him."
"Terry!" came the voice of the untidy man, meant to be remonstrative
but chiefly noteworthy for a newly acquired thickness of utterance.
Terry's eyes sparkled and a hot flush came into her cheeks.
"Leave me alone, will you, pa?" she cried sharply. "I don't owe old
Packard anything; no, nor Blenham either. You can walk easy all you
like, but I'm blamed if I've got to. If you'd smash your cursed old
bottle on their heads and take a brace we'd come alive yet."
"Remember we have a guest with us," grumbled Temple from his place by
the sitting-room fire.
"Oh, shoot!" exclaimed the girl impatiently. Reaching out for a second
sandwich she stabbed the kitchen-knife viciously into the roast. "I've
a notion to pack up and clear out and let the cut-throat crowd clean
you to the last copper and pick your bones into the bargain. When did
you ever get anywhere by taking your hat off and side-stepping for a
Packard? If you're so all-fired strong for remembering, why don't you
try to remember how it feels to stand on two feet like a man instead of
crawling 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, making
clearer than ever that Miss Terry Temple had a way of speaking straight
out what lay in her mind, caring not at all who heard. "I'm hoping
that some day he'll come back. A real man was dad, a man's man. But
that was before the Packards broke him and stepped on him and kicked
him out of the trail. And, believe me, the Packards, though they ought
to be hung to the first tree, are men just the same!"
"So I have heard," admitted the youngest of the defamed house. "You
group 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 of
jail. He's the only one left, and from the looks of things he'll keep
on living and making trouble another hundred years."
"There was another Packard, wasn't there?" he insisted. "Phil
Packard'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 job
instead of messing around in the dirty ports of the seven seas while
his 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 Ten
ought to belong to the fool boy now, oughtn't it? And here's old
Packard's pet dog Blenham running the outfit in old Packard's interests
just 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 before
his death."
"He didn't sell it to anybody. He mortgaged it right up to the hilt to
the 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 in
young Packard's eyes. If what she told him were true, then the old
home ranch, while commonly looked upon as belonging already to his
grandfather, was the property legally of Steve Packard. And
Blenham--yes, and old Bill Royce--were taking his pay. Suddenly
infinite possibilities stretched out before him.
"Come alive!" laughed Terry. "We were talking about your finding a
job. There's one open here for you; first to teach me all you know
about the insides of my car; second-- What's the matter? Gone to
sleep?"
He started. He had been thinking about Blenham and Bill Royce. As
Terry continued to stare wonderingly at him he smiled.
"If you don't mind," he said non-committally, "we'll forget about the
job for a spell. I left some stuff back at the Packard ranch that
belongs to me. I'm going back for it in the morning. Maybe I'll go to
work 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 want
to 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 a
free country, didn't I? Only you can burn this in your next
wheat-straw: once you go to riding herd with that gang you needn't come
around here again. And you can take Blenham a message for me: Phil
Packard knifed dad and double-crossed him and made him pretty nearly
what he is now; old Hell-Fire Packard finished the job. But just the
same, the Temple Ranch is still on the map and Terry Temple had rather
scrap a scoundrel to the finish than shake hands with one. And one of
these 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 to
have a word with old man Packard."
She stared at him incredulously. Then she put her head back and
laughed in high amusement.
"Nobody'd miss guessing that you had your nerve with you, Mr. Lanky
Stranger," she cried mirthfully. "But when it comes to tackling
Hell-Fire Packard with a mouthful of fool questions-- Look here; who
are you anyway?"
"Nobody much," he answered quietly and just a trifle bitterly. "Tom
Fool 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 of
red leaping into her cheeks, startling him with the manner in which all
mirth 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 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.