Chapter 16

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.