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
assailed 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 sex, 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 attitude 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 friendship 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 butter 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 corkscrewing 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 Hell 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 hell-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.
"Damn the girl!" he muttered angrily.
Terry, sitting on the table, grew very still, ceased the swinging of
her feet, and turned to peek cautiously out at him from the kitchen
window. Her look was utterly joyous.
"Men are always horrid creatures before they've had their breakfasts,"
she informed the stillness about her complacently.