Man to Man Read online

  CHAPTER XX

  A GATE AND A RECORD SMASHED

  The man never yet lived and knew old man Packard who would havesuggested that he was not a good and thorough-going hater. His enemyand all of his enemy's household, wife and child, maid-servant andman-servant were all as the spawn of Satan.

  Now he stood back, his face flushed, his two hands on his hips, hisbeard thrust forward belligerently and fairly seeming to bristle.Terry Temple, her heart beating like mad all of a sudden and for noreason which she would admit to herself, lifted her head and steppedacross the threshold defiantly. For a very tense moment the two ofthem, old man and young girl, stared at each other.

  Doctor Bridges still sat at the chess-table, his mouth dropping open,his expression one of pure consternation; Guy Little stood in thedoorway just behind Terry, rubbing a slippered toe against his leg andwatching interestedly.

  "So you're Temple's girl, are you?" snorted the old man. "Well, Imight have guessed it!"

  And the manner of the statement, rather than the words themselves, wasvery uncomplimentary to Miss Teresa Arriega Temple.

  And, as a mere matter of fact--and old man Packard knew it well enoughdown in his soul--he would have guessed nothing of the sort. So longhad he held her in withering contempt, just because of her relationshipto her father, so long had he invested her with all thinkablydistasteful attributes, so long had he in his out-of-hand way named hersquidge-nosed, putty-faced, pig-eyed, and so on, that in due course hehad really formed his own image of her.

  And now, suddenly confronted by the most amazingly pretty girl he hadever seen, he managed to snort that she was just what he knew shewas--and in the snorting no one knew better than old man Packard that,as he could have put it himself, "He lied like a horse-thief!"

  Terry had seen him once when she was a very little girl. He had beenpointed out to her by one of her father's cowboys who, for reasons ofhis own, heartily hated and a little feared the old man. Since thenthe girl's lively imagination had created a most unseemly brute out ofthe enemy of her house, a beetle-browed, ugly-mouthed, facially-hideousbeing little short of a monstrosity.

  And now Terry's fine feminine perception begrudgingly was forced to setabout constructing a new picture. The old man, black-hearted villainthat he was, was the most upstanding, heroic figure of a man that shehad ever seen.

  Beside him Doctor Bridges was a spectacle of physical degeneracy whileGuy Little became a grotesque dwarf. The grandfather was much like thegrandson, and--though she vowed to like him the less for it--was in hisstatuesque, leonine way quite the handsomest man she had ever looked on.

  Perhaps it was at just the same instant that each realized that rathertoo great an interest had been permitted to go into a long, searchinglook. For Terry suddenly affected a look of supreme contempt while theold man jerked his eyes away, transferring his regard to the serene GuyLittle.

  "You said, Guy Little----"

  "Yes, sir, I said it!" Guy Little nodded vigorously. "Them fortymiles in fifty-three minutes. In the dark. An' with tire trouble.It's a record. The best you ever done it in was fifty-seven minutes.She beat you four minutes. Her!"

  He indicated Terry.

  "Doctor Bridges--" began Terry.

  "It's a lie!" cried the old man, smashing the table top with a clenchedfist. "I don't care who says it; she couldn't do it! No girl could;no Temple could. It ain't so!"

  "Call me a liar?" cried Terry, a sudden flaming, surging, hot currentin her cheeks, her eyes blazing. "You are a horrid old man. I alwaysknew you were a horrid old man and you are a lot horrider than Ithought you were. And--you just call me a liar again, Hell-FirePackard, and I'll slap your face for you!"

  For a moment, gripped by his ever-ready rage, the old man stoodtowering over her, looking down with blazing eyes into eyes whichblazed back, a little tremor visibly shaking him as though he weretempted almost beyond resistance to lay his hands on her and punish herimpudence. A bright, almost eager, fearlessness shone in her eyes.

  "I dare you," said Terry. "Old man that you are, I'll slap you so thatyou'd know who it is you're insulting. Pirate!" she flung at him."And land-hog-- Oh!

  "Doctor Bridges, you are to come with me right now." She had flungabout giving her shoulder to Packard's inspection. "We must hurry backto Red Creek."

  "Say, Packard," chimed in Guy Little. "Her car's all shot to pieces.An' her gas is all gone. An' her ol' man is awful sick in Red Creekan' needin' a doc in a hurry--or not any. You understan'----"

  "What's it got to do with me?" boomed Hell-Fire Packard. "What do Icare whether her old thief of a father dies to-night or next week?What do I----"

  "Aw, rats," grunted Guy Little. "What's eatin' you, Packard? Listento me: She says how she done it in fifty-three minutes an' you can't doit any better'n fifty-seven; how you ain't no dead-game sport noways;how she's short of change but would bet a man fifty dollars youcouldn't an' wouldn't."

  "She said them things?" roared the old man.

  "I--" began Terry.

  "She did!" answered Guy Little hastily and loudly. "She did!"

  "Bridges," snapped old Packard, "grab your hat an' black poison bag an'be ready in two minutes." Packard was on his way to the door. "GuyLittle, you get my car at the front door--quick! An' as for you--" Hewas at the door and half turned to stare angrily into Terry'seyes--"You can do what you please. I'm goin' to take the onlypill-slinger in the country to the worst ol' thief I ever heard a mantell about."

  "I'm going back with you," said Terry briefly.

  Old man Packard shrugged. Then he laughed.

  "If you ain't scared," he grunted, "to ride alongside a man as swears,so help him God, in spite of smash-bang-an'-be-damn', is goin' to makethat little run back to Red Creek--in less'n fifty minutes!"

  "Mind you," said old man Packard at the front door, his eye stony as itmarked how Terry's car stood among his choice roses, "I ain't doin'this because I got any use for a Temple, he or she. Especially she.You jus' get that in your head, young lady. An' before we start let metell you one more thing: You keep your two han's off'n my gran'son!"

  "What!" gasped Terry.

  "I said it," he fairly snorted. "Come on there, Guy Little, with thatcar. Ready there, Bridges, you ol' fool? Pile in."

  He took his seat at the wheel, his old black hat pushed far back on hishead, his eye already on the clock in the dash. Terry slipped ahead ofDoctor Bridges and took her seat at the old man's side.

  "You said--just what?" she demanded icily.

  "I said," he cried savagely, "as I know how you been chasin' my fool ofa gran'son Stephen, an' as how you got to stop it. I won't have youmakin' a bigger fool out'n him than he already is."

  Terry sat rigid, speechless, grown suddenly cold. For once in her lifeno ready answer sprang to her lips.

  Then Hell-Fire Packard had started his engine, sounded his horn, andthey were on their way. And Terry, because no words would come, puther head back and laughed in a way that, as she knew perfectly well,would madden him.

  The drive from Hell-Fire Packard's front door to the store in Red Creekwas made in some few negligible seconds over forty-eight minutes. Thethree occupants of the car reached town alive. Never in her life afterthat night would Terry Temple doubt that there was a Providence whichat critical times took into its hands the destinies of men.

  There had been never a word spoken until they had come to the gatewhich had closed behind Terry on the way out. Old man Packard hadlooked at speedometer, clock and obstruction. Terry had seen his handstighten on his wheel.

  "Set tight an' hang on," he had commanded sharply.

  The big front tires and bumper struck the gate; there was a wild flyingof splinters and at sixty miles an hour they went through and on to RedCreek.

  "The old devil!" whispered Terry within herself. "The old devil!"