TERRY DEFIES BLENHAM
Blenham must have ridden late into the night. For at a very early hour
the next morning he was at the Big Bend ranch fifty miles to the north
and reporting to his employer. Early as it was, the old man had
breakfasted, and now the wide black hat far back on his head, the spurs
on his big boots, bespoke his readiness to be riding.
At times he stood stock-still, his hands on his hips, staring down at
Blenham's lesser stature; at other times and in a deep, thoughtful
silence he strode back and forth in the great barn-like library, his
spurs jingling.
"Why, burn it, man," he exploded once during the fore part of the
interview, "the boy is a Packard! I'm proud of him. We're going to
make a real man out of Stephen yet. Haven't I said the words a dozen
times: 'Break a fool an' make a man!' I'm tellin' you, the las'
Packard to be spoiled by havin' too much easy money has lived an' died.
All we got to do with Stephen is put him on foot; set him down in the
good ol'-fashioned dirt where he's got to work for what he gets, an'
he'll come through. Same as I did. Yessir!"
Blenham waited for his signal to continue his report, and when he got
it, a look and a nod, he resumed, face, voice, and eye alike
expressionless of any personal interest in the matter.
"You know them nine big steers as strayed from here some time ago? I
tol' you about 'em two or three weeks ago? Well, I found 'em like I
said I would, all nine of 'em, an' on Ranch Number Ten."
"It's quite a way for cattle to stray," said the old man sharply.
Blenham shrugged carelessly.
"Oh, I dunno," he returned lightly. "I've knowed 'em to go fu'ther
than that. Well, I made a pass to haze 'em on back this way an' young
Packard blocks my play."
The old man's eye brightened.
"What did he say?" he asked eagerly.
"He said," said Blenham, picking at his hat-band, "as how if the stock
was yours which he didn't believe he'd hold 'em until you sent over
enough coin to pay for their feed. He said as how, if you couldn't be
decent you better anyhow leave him alone. He said hell with both of
us."
"He did?" cried old Packard. "He said that, Blenham?"
"He did," answered Blenham with a quick, curious, sidewise glance.
Packard's big hand was lifted and came down mightily upon his thigh as,
suddenly released, the old man's voice boomed out in a great peal of
laughter.
"Ho!" he cried, shouting out the words to be heard far out across the
open meadow. "Say to hell with me, does he? Holds my stock for
pasture money, does he? Defies me to do my worst, him a young,
penniless whippersnapper, me a millionaire an' a man-breaker! Why,
curse it, he's a man already, Blenham! He's a Packard to his backbone,
I tell you! By the Lord, I've a notion to jump into my car and go get
the boy!"
A troubled shadow came and went swiftly across Blenham's face, not to
be seen by the old man who was staring out of his window. All of the
craft there was in the ranch foreman rose to the surface.
"Yes," he agreed quietly, "he's got the makin's in him. He ain't
scared of the devil himself, which is one right good earmark. He's
independent, which is another good sign. Why, when I runs across him
an' that Temple girl out in the woods----"
"What's that!" snapped the old man, though he had heard well enough.
"Do you mean to tell me----"
"They was sittin' on top a big log," said Blenham tonelessly.
"Confidential lookin', you know. I won't say he was holdin' her hands,
an' at the same time I won't say he wasn't. An' I won't say he'd jus'
kissed her, two seconds before I rode aroun' a bend in the trail." One
of his ponderous shrugs and a grimace concluded his meaning. Then he
laughed. "Nor I wouldn't say he hadn't. But, like I was tellin'
you----"
"You were tellin' me," growled the old man, "that that scoundrel of a
Temple's fool of a girl is tryin' her hand at spellbindin' my gran'son
Stephen! The dirty little saphead-- Look here, Blenham; you've got
more gumption than most: tell me how far things have gone an' what
Temple's game is. Guy Little has been tellin' me the same sort of
thing."
"There ain't much to tell," answered Blenham. "That is, that a man
couldn't guess without bein' told. He's your gran'son; even with a
scrap on between you an' him, still blood is thicker'n water an' some
day, maybe, you'll pass on to him all you got. Leastways, there's a
chance, an' also he oughta fit pretty snug in a girl's eye. Fu'ther to
all that, it's jus' the same ol' story. A feller an' a girl, an' the
girl with a fine figger an' a fine pair of eyes which, bein' a
she-girl, she knows how to use. Seein' as you ask the question, I
guess I could answer it by jus' sayin' that the Temples are makin' the
one move they'd be sure to make."
The senior Packard's scowl had known fame as long as fifty years ago;
never was it blacker than right now. For a little he stood still
glaring at the floor. Blenham watched him covertly, a look of craft in
the one good eye.
"Better go over an' see Temple right away," said Packard presently.
"He won't be able to pay up his next instalment. Tell him I'm goin' to
foreclose an' drive him out. While you're at it you can show him the
plum foolishness of sickin' his idiot girl on Stephen. How it won't
bring 'em any good an' will jus' get me out on his trail red-hot.
He'll understand." And the stern old mouth set into lines of which
Blenham read the full and emphatic meaning. "Go on: anything else to
report?"
After his fashion in business matters he had pondered deeply but
briefly upon this interference of Terry, had planned, had instructed
his agent, and now turned to whatever might next demand his attention
in connection with his campaign against and for Steve Packard. And
Blenham, deeming that he had scored a certain point, moved straight on
to another.
"He said--an' she watched an' listened an' giggled--as how he was in
right an' you was in wrong; as how the law was on his side an' he'd
stick it out; how he could take the whole ruction into court an' beat
you; how----"
Old Hell-Fire Packard stared at him, mumbling heavily:
"He said that? Stephen, my gran'son said that?"
"Yes," lied Blenham glibly. "Them was his words. An', not knowin' a
whole lot about law an' such----"
He ended there, knowing that his words went unheeded. The look upon
the old man's face changed slowly from one of pure amazement to one of
pain, grief, disappointment. Stephen, his gran'son, threatened to go
to law! It was unthinkable that any one save a thief and an out-right
scoundrel, such by the way as were all of his business rivals and the
men who refused to tote and carry at his bidding, should make a threat
like that; worse than unthinkable, utterly, depravedly disgraceful that
one of the house of Packard should resort to such devious and damnable
practices. For an instant Blenham thought that tears were actually
gathering in the weary old eyes.
But the emotion which came first was gone in a scurry before a sudden
windy rage. The face which had been graven with humiliation and
chagrin went fiery red; the big hands clenched and were uplifted; the
great booming voice trembled to the shouted words:
"Let him; burn him, let him! I can break the fool quicker that way
than any other; don't he know it takes money, money without end, for
the perjurin', trickery, slippery law sharks that'll bleed a man, aye,
suck out his life-blood an' then spit him out like the pulp of an
orange? Infernal young puppy-dawg! See what it's done for him
already, this rich-man's-son business. To think that one of my blood,
my own gran'son, should go to law! Why, by high heaven, Blenham, the
thing's downright disgraceful!"
Swiftly, deftly, employing a remark like a surgeon's lancet, Blenham
offered:
"I have the hunch that Temple girl put it in his head."
"You're right!" This new suggestion required no weighing and fine
balancing. You could attribute no villainy whatever to one of the old
man's enemies that he would not admit the extreme likelihood of your
being right. "Stephen ain't that sort; she's got him by the nose, hell
take her! She's drivin' him to it, an' it's Temple drivin' her. An'
it's up to you an' me to drive him clean out'n this corner of the
universe. Which we can do without goin' to the law!" he interjected
scornfully. "I reckon you understan', don't you, Blenham?"
Blenham nodded and put on his hat.
"I'm to hound him from the start to finish; until we drive him an' her
out the country. An' I'm to pound at your gran'son too an' at the same
time until we bust him wide open. That right?"
"Right an' go to it!" cried Packard.
Blenham saluted as he might have done were he still a sergeant down on
the border, wheeled and went out. Five minutes later he was riding
again toward the south. And now the look on his face was one of near
triumph. For at last the time had come when the old man had given
outright the instructions which could make many things possible.
That same day, about noon, Terry Temple, flashing across country in her
car, met Blenham on the country road. She was going toward Red Creek,
her errand urgent as were always the errands of Terry. Half a mile
away she knew him, first by the white stocking of his favorite mare,
second by his big bulk and the way it sat the saddle.
So, quite like the old Packard whom she so heartily detested, she gave
him the horn and never an inch of the road which was none too wide.
Blenham, his mouth working, jerked his horse out of the way, down over
the edge of the slope, and cursed after her as she passed him.
Terry, in Red Creek, went straight to the store and to a shelf in a far
and dusty corner where were all of the purchasable books of the
village. A thumb in her mouth, a frown in her eyes, she regarded them
long and soberly.
In the end she severed the Gordian knot by taking an even dozen
volumes. There were a grammar, an ancient history, some composition
books, and, most important of all, a treatise upon social usages.
How to write letters, what R. S. V. P. meant, "Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so
request and so forth," how a lady should greet a gentleman friend--in
short, an answer to all possible questions of right and wrong ways of
appearing in polite society. With her purchases stowed away in a
cracker-box Terry turned again toward the ranch.
In the ordinary course of events Terry should have returned to her home
well ahead of Blenham. But this afternoon she made a wide, circling
detour to chat briefly with Rod Norton's young wife at the Rancho de
las Flores, and so came under the Temple oaks after dusk.
As she turned in at the gate she saw Blenham's horse standing tied down
by the stable. Terry's eyes opened wonderingly and a little flush came
into her cheeks. Plainly Blenham was closeted with her father. Terry
bit her lip, gathered her books in her arms, and hastened toward the
house.
The bawling of a mother cow and a baby calf, separated by a corral
fence, had quite drowned out the purr of her motor; her step as usual
was light upon the porch. The first that Temple and Blenham knew of
her coming was her form in the doorway, her face turned curiously upon
them.
And in that instant, while all three stood motionless, Terry saw and
wondered at a look of understanding which had flashed between her own
father and the despised representative of a hated race. Further she
noted how the glass in Temple's hand was still lifted, as was the glass
in Blenham's, the whiskey still undrunk, winking at her in the pale
lamplight.
"Isn't your eternal drinking bad enough without your asking such as
that to drink with you?" she asked quietly. Very, very quietly for
Miss Terry Temple.
Her father shifted a trifle uneasily. Blenham watched her intently,
admiringly after a gross fashion and yet a bit contemptuously. Blenham
could put a look like that into his eye; to him a girl was a thing that
might be both sneered at and coveted.
"My dear," said Temple, striving for clear enunciation and in the end
achieving it heavily, "I am glad you came. I want you to listen. We
must act wisely. We must not misjudge Mr. Blenham."
While Terry remained silent, looking from one to the other of the two
men. Temple drank his whiskey hastily, furtively, snatching the second
when her gaze had gone to Blenham.
"What's the game?" asked Terry in a moment.
She set her books down upon the table at her side, put out her hand to
the back of a chair, and like the men remained standing.
Temple looked to Blenham, who merely shrugged his thick shoulders and
sipped at his whiskey, as though it had been a light wine and very soft
to an appreciative palate. In some vague way the act was vastly
insolent. Temple appeared uncertain, no uncommon thing with him; then,
going to set his emptied glass down he put an elbow on the mantel,
dropped his head, and spoke in a low, mumbling voice:
"The game? It's what it always was, Terry girl; what it always will
be. The game of the ear of corn and the millstones; the game of the
unfortunate under the iron heel."
"Unfortunate!" cried Terry in disgust. "Pooh!"
"Listen to me," commanded her father. "You ask: What's the game? and
I'm telling you." His head was up now; Terry noted a new look in his
eyes, as he hurried on. "It's just the game of life, after all. The
war of those who have everything against those who have nothing; of men
like Old Hell-Fire Packard against men like me. A game to be won more
often than not through the sheer force of massed money that squeezes
the life out of the under dog--but to be lost when the moneyed fool,
curse him, runs up against a team like Blenham and me!"
"Blenham and you?" she repeated. "You and Blenham? You mean to tell
me that you are chipping in with him?"
Blenham turned his whiskey-glass slowly in his great thick fingers.
His eye shone with its crafty light; his lips were parted a little as
though they held themselves in readiness for a swift interruption if
Temple said the wrong thing or went too far.
"You are prejudiced," said Temple. "You always have been. Just
because Blenham here has represented Packard, and Packard----"
"Is an old thief!" she cried passionately. "And worse! As Packard's
_Man Friday_ Blenham doesn't exactly make a hit with me!"
"Come, come," exclaimed Temple. "Curb your tongue, Teresa, my dear.
If you will only listen----"
"Shoot then and get it over."
Terry sank into her chair, clasped her gauntleted hands about a pair of
plump knees which drew Blenham's gaze approvingly, and set her white
teeth to nibbling impatiently at her under lip as though setting a
command upon it for silence.
"Let's have it, Dad."
"That's sensible," mumbled Temple. "You always were a smart girl,
Teresa, when you cared to be. Let's see; where had I got? Oh, yes;
speaking of Blenham chipping in with us, as you put it."
"With _you_!" corrected Terry briefly.
"We're mortgaged to old man Packard," continued Temple, somewhat hasty
about it now that he had fairly plunged into the current of what he had
to say, as though the water were cold and he was anxious to clamber out
upon the far side. "Not much in a way; a good deal when you figure on
how tight money is and how little we've seen of it these last few
years. Now, Packard sends Blenham across with a message; he's going to
foreclose; he is going to drive us out; to ruin us. That is Packard's
word."
Terry stiffened in her chair; her chin rose a little in the air; her
eyes brightened; the color in her cheeks deepened. That was her only
answer to Packard's ultimatum as quoted to her father by Blenham and by
Temple to her. Knowing that there was still more to come, she sat
still, her clasped hands tightening about her knees. Blenham, as still
as she, was sipping at his whiskey.
"But Blenham is a white man."
Temple attempted to say it with the force of conviction, but Terry
merely sniffed, and Temple himself failed somewhat to put his heart
into his words. He hurried on, repeating:
"Yes, a white man. And he's got a little money of his own that he's
been tucking away all these years of working for Packard. He comes
over this evening, Teresa, my dear, and makes us a--curse it, a
generous offer. You see, as things are, we are bound to lose the whole
place, lock, stock, and barrel, to Packard; you don't want to do that,
do you?"
"Go on," said Terry. Her face was suddenly as white as the hands from
which she was swiftly, nervously stripping her gauntlets. "Just what
is Blenham's generous offer, Dad?"
"It's one of two things."
He hesitated and licked his lips. Terry's heart sank lower yet; it
took him so long to set the thing into words! "You see, as Old Man
Packard's foreman and agent he comes to tell us that he is ordered to
foreclose; to break us utterly. As a friend to us he says----"
"For God's sake!" cried Terry sharply. "What does he say?"
"He will pay us a thousand dollars to let him take over everything! He
will assume the mortgage; he will scrap it out with old Packard; he
will clear the title; and, if we get where we want the ranch back some
time, he will let us buy him out for just what he has put in it."
Terry looked at him gravely.
"In words of one syllable," she said quietly, "Blenham plans to give
you one thousand dollars; then to pay to old Packard the seven thousand
you owe him; and for this amount of eight thousand to grab an outfit
that is worth twenty thousand if it's worth a nickel! That's his
generous offer, is it?"
"My dear----"
"Don't my dear me!" she snapped impatiently. "Just go on and get the
whole idiotic thing out of your system. What else?"
"That's all. As I have said already, as things are we are bound to
lose everything to Packard. Blenham steps up and offers us a
thousand----"
"I should think he would step up! Lively! Well, I can't stop you, can
I? You don't have to have my consent to make a laughing-stock out of
yourself? Have you signed up with Blenham already?"
Temple sought to assume an air of dignity which went poorly with his
ragged slippers and bleary eye.
"Blenham has his money in a safe in Red Creek. There will be papers to
be signed. We are going there now. I--I am sorry you take it this
way, Teresa."
Then she sprang to her feet, her two hands clenched, her eyes blazing.
"And I," she cried hotly, "am sorry. Oh, I am ashamed! that one of the
name of Temple should sink so low as to hobnob with a cur and a
scoundrel, a cheat, a liar, and all that Blenham is, and that you and I
and the whole country know he is! I'd rather see Old Hell-Fire Packard
break you and grind you under foot than see you stand there and drink
with that thing!"
And that there should be no mistake her finger shot out, pointing at
Blenham.
"Terry!" commanded her father, "be silent. You don't know what you are
saying!"
"Don't I, though! I--I----"
Blenham laughed as she broke off, laughed again as he stood watching
how she was breathing rapidly.
"Pretty puss," he said impudently, "you need them pink-an'-white nails
of your'n trimmed."
"Don't you dare say a word to me," she flung at him. "Not a word."
"Not a single little word, eh?" He tossed off his whiskey, dropped the
empty glass to the floor behind him, and came a quick stride toward
her, an ugly leer twisting at the corner of his mouth, his one eye
burning. "I've got your ol' man where I want him; he knows it an' I
an' you know it. An' when I like I can have you where I want you, too.
Understan'?"
He had taken another step toward her. The sudden thought leaped up in
her mind that he and her father had had many drinks together before her
arrival. She drew back slowly. Temple, seeing that for the moment all
attention had been drawn from him, reached out for a bottle on the far
end of the mantel.
Then suddenly and without another word being spoken Terry was
galvanized into action. Blenham was coming on toward her and she saw
the look in his eye. She whipped back; her breath caught in her
throat; the color ran out of her cheeks. She glanced wildly toward her
father; his fingers were closing about the neck of a bottle when they
should have been at the neck of a man.
Terry whipped up a book from the table--it was a volume answering many
a question about how to act in society but without any mention of such
a situation as now had arisen--and flung it straight into Blenham's
hectic face. Then she slipped through the door behind her, slammed it,
and ran out, down the porch and into the night. Behind her she heard
Blenham's heavy, spurred boots and Blenham's curse.
"If he comes on I will kill him!"
She was at her car; her revolver was in her hand. She saw Blenham come
outside. A moment he seemed to hesitate, his big bulk outlined against
the door's rectangle of light. Then she heard him laugh and saw him
return to the room. She came back slowly, tiptoe, to stand under the
window.
"You can drive the girl's car, can't you?" Blenham was asking. And
when Temple admitted that he could: "Let's pile in an' be on our way.
Like I said, you close with me tonight or I won't touch the thing."
Then again Terry ran back to her car. She sprang in, started her
engine, opened the throttle as she let in the clutch, and making a wide
circle shot up the road, out the gate, and away into the darkness.
"I'll take this pot yet, Mr. Cutthroat Blenham!" she was crying within
herself.