"IF HE KNOWS--DOES SHE?"
There seemed no particular need for haste. And yet Terry ran eagerly
to her car, and Steve hurried after her with long strides while the men
down at the bunkhouse surmised and looked to Bill Royce for a measure
of explanation. Steve was not beyond the age of enthusiasm; Terry was
all atingle. Life was shaping itself to an adventure.
And so, though it appeared that all of the time in the world was theirs
for loitering--for it should be a simple matter to come to Red Creek
well in advance of Blenham and his dupe--Terry yielded to her
excitement, Steve yielded out of hand to the lure of Terry, and, quite
gay about it, they sped away through the moonlight. While Terry,
driver, perforce kept her eyes busied with the road, Steve Packard
leaned back in his seat and contented himself with the vision of his
fellow adventurer.
"Terry Temple," he told her emphatically and utterly sincerely, "you
are absolutely the prettiest thing I ever saw."
"I'm not a thing," said Terry. "And besides, I know it already.
And----"
Then it was that they got their first puncture; a worn tire cut through
by a sharp fragment of rock so that they heard the air gush out
windily. Terry jammed on her brakes. Steve jumped out and made hasty
examination.
"Looks like a man had gone after it with a hand-ax," he announced
cheerfully. "Good thing you've got a spare."
Terry flung down from her seat impatiently.
"I need some new tires," she said, as she from one side and he from the
other began seeking in the tool-box under the seat for jack and wrench.
"That spare is soft, too, and half worn through; I'll bet we get more
than one puncture before the job's done. But it's mounted, anyway."
Steve went down on his knee and began jacking the car up; Terry
standing over him was busy with her wrench loosening the lugs at the
rim. Then, while he made the exchange and tightened the nuts, she
strapped the punctured tire in its carrier and slipped back into her
seat. As Steve got in beside her he marked how speculatively her eyes
were busied with the road.
"We've got them behind us, haven't we?" he asked.
Terry nodded quickly.
"Yes. We've got the head start and they're on horseback. It's no
trick to beat them to it. But-- Oh, I saw a look on Blenham's face
to-night! He's bad, Steve Packard; all bad; the kind that stops at
nothing! And somehow, somehow he's got a strangle-hold on poor old dad
and is making him do this. We've got the head start, we can beat them
to Red Creek, but----"
"But you don't like the idea of leaving your father alone in Blenham's
company to-night?" he finished for her. "Is that it?"
Again she nodded. He could see her teeth set to nibbling at her lips.
"Then," he suggested, "why go to Red Creek at all? Why not turn back
here and stop them? You can take Mr. Temple back home with you. I
imagine that between the two of us we can make Blenham understand he is
not wanted this time."
"I was thinking of that," said Terry.
And where the Ranch Number Ten road runs into the country road, Terry
turned to the right, headed again toward her own home.
When, with Steve at her heels, she ran up on the porch it was to be met
by Iki, the Japanese cook, his eyes shining wildly.
"Where's my father?" she asked, and Iki waving his hands excitedly
answered:
"Departed with rapid haste and many curse-words from his gentleman
friend. The master could not make a stop for one little more drink of
whiskey. The other strike and vomit threats and say: 'Most surely will
I cause that you tarry long time in jail-side.' Saying likewise: 'I
got you by the long hair like I want you and yes-by-God, like some day
soon I get your lovely daughter!' Only he say the latter with
unpleasant words of----"
Terry was shaking him by both shoulders.
"Where did they go?" she demanded. "How long ago?"
"On horses, running swiftly," gibbered Iki. "Ten minutes,
maybe--perhaps twenty or thirty. Who can tell the time when----"
"Why didn't we meet them?" asked Steve of Terry. "If they are really
headed for Red Creek?"
"They are taking all of the short-cuts there are," she answered
promptly. "They'll take a cow-trail through the ranch, cut across the
lower end of your place, and come into the old road just beyond.
Blenham's all fox; he has guessed that I am out to put a spoke in his
wheel somehow. He won't be wasting any perfectly good moonlight. Come
on!" And again she was running to the car. "We'll overhaul them just
the same.
"I believe you," grunted Steve, once more seated beside her, the engine
drumming, the wheels spinning. "You don't know what a speed law is, do
you?"
"Speed law?" she repeated absently, her eyes on the next dark turn in
the road. "What's that?"
He chuckled and settled back in his seat. His eyes, like the girl's,
were watchfully bent upon the gloom-filled angle which Terry must
negotiate before the way straightened out again before her. Her
headlights cut through the shadows; Terry's little body stiffened a bit
and her hands tensed on her wheel; her flying speed was lessened an
almost negligible trifle; she made the turn and opened the throttle.
Steve nodded approvingly.
For the greater part they were silent. He had never seen her in a mood
like to-night's. He read in her face, in her eyes, in the carriage of
her body, one and the same thing; and that was a complex something made
of the several emotions of determination, sorrow, and fiery anger.
He read her thought readily; it was clear that she made no attempt to
conceal it: She was going to consummate a certain deal, she was grieved
and ashamed for her father, she remembered the "look on Blenham's face
to-night," and again and again her fury shot its red tide into her
cheeks.
"Blenham put his dirty hands on her," was Steve's thought; "or tried
to."
And he found that his own pulses drummed the hotter as he let his
imagination conjure up a picture for him, Blenham's big, knotted hands
upon the daintiness that was Terry. In that moment it seemed to him
that he had been drawn home across the seas to help mete out punishment
to a man: a man who had stricken old Bill Royce, and who now dared look
evilly upon Terry Temple.
Then came their second puncture, an ugly gash like the first caused by
a flinty fragment of rock driven against the worn outer casing.
"I ordered new tires a month ago," said Terry by way of explanation, as
she and Steve in the road together set about remedying the trouble.
While he was getting the inner-tube out, squatting in front of her car
so as to work in the glow from her headlights, she was rummaging
through her repair kit.
"These rocky roads, you know, and the way I drive."
He laughed. "The way she drove!" That meant, "Like the devil!" as he
would put it. Over rocky roads, racing right up to a turn, jamming on
her brakes when she must slow down a little; swinging about a sharp
bend so that her car slid and her tires dragged; in short getting all
of the speed out of her motor that she could possibly extract from it,
regardless and coolly contemptuous of skuffed tires and other trifles.
Finding the cut in the inner-tube was simple enough; the moonlight
alone would have shown it. He held it up for her to look at and she
shook her head and sighed. But making the patch so that it would hold
was another matter; and pumping up the tire when the job was done was
still another, and required time and ate up all of Terry's rather
inconsiderable amount of patience.
"A little more luck like this," she cried as once more they took to the
road, "and Blenham will put one over on us yet!"
It was borne in upon Steve that Terry's fears might prove to be only
too well founded. The time she had taken to drive to him at his ranch,
the time lost in returning to her home and in changing tires and
mending a puncture, had been put to better use by Blenham. True, he
was on horseback while they motored. And yet, for a score or so of
miles, a determined, brutally merciless man upon a horse may render an
account of himself.
But while they both speculated they sped on. They came to the spot
where the "old road" turned into the new; Blenham and Temple were to be
seen nowhere though here the country was flat and but sparsely
timbered, and the moon pricked out all objects distinctly.
And so on and on, beginning to wonder at last, asking themselves if
Blenham and Temple had drawn out of the road somewhere, hiding in the
shadows, to let them go by? But finally only when they were climbing
the last winding grade with Red Creek but a couple of miles away, they
saw the two horsemen.
Terry's car swung about a curve in the road her headlights for a brief
instant aiding the moon in garishly illuminating a scene to be
remembered. Blenham had turned in his saddle, startled perhaps by the
sound of the oncoming car or by the gleam of the headlights; his
uplifted quirt fell heavily upon the sides of his running horse; rose
and fell again upon the rump of Temple's mount, and the two men, their
horses leaping under them, were gone over the ridge and down upon the
far side.
In a few moments, from the crest of the ridge, they made out the two
running forms on the road below. Blenham was still frantically beating
his horse and Temple's. Terry's horn blared; her car leaped; and
Blenham, cursing loudly, jerked his horse back on its haunches and well
out of the road. With wheels locked, Terry slid to a standstill.
"Pile in, dad," she said coolly, ignoring Blenham. "Steve Packard and
I will take you into Red Creek. Packard is ready to make you a better
proposition than Blenham's. Turn your horse loose; he'll go home, and
pile in with us."
"He'll do nothing of the kind!" shouted Blenham, his voice husky with
his fury. "Just you try that on Temple, an'-- He'll do nothing of the
kind," he concluded heavily, his mien eloquent of threat.
"We know you think you've got some kind of a strangle-hold on him,
Blenham," cut in Terry crisply. "But even if you have, dad is a white
man and--dad! What is the matter?"
Temple slipped from his saddle and stood shaking visibly, his face dead
white, his eyes staring. Even in the moonlight they could all see the
big drops of sweat on his forehead, glistening as they trickled down.
He put out his hand to support himself by gripping at his saddle,
missed blindly, staggered, and began slowly collapsing where he stood
as though his bones were little by little melting within him. Blenham
laughed harshly.
"Drunker'n a boiled owl," he grunted. "But jus' the same sober enough
to know----"
"Dad!" cried Terry a second time, out in the road beside him now, her
arms belting his slacking body. "It isn't just that. You----"
"Sick," moaned Temple weakly. "God knows--he's been hounding me to
death--I don't know--I wanted to stop, to rest back there but--I'm
afraid that----"
He broke off panting. Steve jumped out and slipped his own arms about
the wilting form.
"Let me get him into the car," he said gently. And when he had lifted
Temple and placed him in the seat he added quietly: "You'd better hurry
on I think. Get a doctor for him. I'll follow on his horse."
Terry flashed him a look of gratitude, took her place at the wheel and
started down grade. Her father at her side continued to settle in his
place as long as Steve kept him in sight.
"Well?" growled Blenham, his voice ugly and baffled and throaty with
his rage. "You butt in again, do you?"
Steve swung up into the saddle just now vacated by Temple.
"Yes," he retorted coolly. "And I'm in to stay, too, if you want to
know, Blenham. To the finish."
With only the width of a narrow road between them they stared at each
other. Then Blenham jeered:
"Oho! It's the skirt, huh? Stuck on her yourself, are you?"
Steve frowned, but met his piercing look with level contempt.
"Your language is inelegant, friend Blenham," he said slowly. "Like
yourself it is better withdrawn from public notice. As to your
meaning--why, by thunder, I half believe you are right! And I hadn't
thought of it!"
Blenham caught In one of his rare bursts of heady rage shook his fist
high above his head and cried out savagely:
"I'll beat you yet, the both of you! See if I don't. Yes you an' your
crowd an' him an' her an'----"
"Don't take on too many all at once," suggested Steve.
Only the tail of his eye was on Blenham; he was looking wonderingly and
a bit wistfully down the moonlit, empty road.
"I got him where I want him right now," snarled Blenham. "An'
her--I'll have her, too, where I want her! An', inside less time than
you'd think I'll have----"
But he clamped his big mouth tight shut, glared at Steve a moment and
then, striking with spur and quirt together, so that his frightened
horse leaped out frantically, he was gone down the road after Temple
and Terry.
As Steve followed a smile was in his eyes, a smile slowly parting his
lips.
"The scoundrel was right!" he mused. "And I hadn't even thought of it.
Now how the devil do you suppose he knew?"
And then, before he had gone a dozen yards a curious, puzzled,
uncertain look come into his face.
"If he knows," was his perplexity, "Does she?"