Chapter 18

"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?"