"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 G.o.d"s sake!" cried Terry sharply. "What does he say?"
"He will pay us a thousand dollars to let him take over everything! He will a.s.sume the mortgage; he will sc.r.a.p it out with old Packard; he will clear the t.i.tle; 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 a.s.sume 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 hobn.o.b 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 h.e.l.l-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 gla.s.s 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.
CHAPTER XVII
AND CALLS ON STEVE
Though a tempest brewed in her soul and her blood grew turbulent with it, Terry did not hesitate from the first second. Just the other day upon a certain historic log had she not said:
"I hate Blenham worse than a Packard!"
True, she had gone on to intimate that the youngest of the house of Packard was scarcely more to her liking than was the detested foreman.
But-- Well, if Steve didn"t know, at least Terry did, that that remark was uttered purely for its rhetorical effect.
"He"s been a pretty decent scout from the jump," Terry admitted serenely to herself as she threw her car into high and went streaking through the pale moonlight. Then she smiled, the first quick smile to come and go since she had hurled a book in Blenham"s face. "A pretty decent scout from the jump!"
He had literally jumped into her life, going after her quite as though----
"Oh, shucks!" laughed Terry. "It"s the moonlight!"
There came a certain sharp turn in the road where even she must slow down. Here Terry came to a dead stop, not so much in hesitation as because she was conscious of a departure from the old trails and felt deeply that the act might be filled with significance. For when she had made the turn she would have crossed the old dead line, she would have pa.s.sed the boundary and invaded Packard property.