Man to Man | Page 5

led?
He drew rein among the pines, waiting in his turn for her to go on. The
blue cloak did not move. He leaned to one side to see better, peering
around a low-flung cedar bough. His trail here led to the road; he must
pass her unless she went on soon.

Beside the vivid hue of her cloak the sunlight streaming through the
forest showed him another bright, gay color, a streak of red which
through the underbrush he was at first at a loss to account for. He
would have said that she was seated in a low-bodied, red wagon, were
it not that if such had been the case he must have seen the horses.
"An automobile!" he guessed.
He rode on a score of steps and stopped again. Sure enough, there she
sat at the steering-wheel of a long, rakish touring-car, the slump of her
shoulders vaguely hinting at despair and perhaps a stalled engine. His
grin widened joyously. He touched his horse with his one spur,
assumed an expression of vast indifference, and rode on. She jerked up
her head, looked about at him swiftly, gave him her shoulder again.
He rode into the road and came on with tantalizing slowness, knowing
that she would want to turn again and guessing that she would conquer
the impulse. A few paces behind her he stopped again, rolling a fresh
cigarette and seeming, as he had been before the meeting, the most
leisurely man in the world.
He saw her lean forward, busied with ignition and starter; he fancied
that the little breeze brought to him the faintest of guarded
exclamations.
"The blamed old thing won't go," chuckled Packard with vast
satisfaction. "Some car, too. Boyd-Merril Twin Eight, latest model.
And dollars to doughnuts I know just what's wrong--and she doesn't!"
She ignored him with such a perfect unconsciousness of his presence in
the same world with her that he was moved to a keen admiration.
"I'll bet her face is as red as a beet, just the same," was his cheerful
thought. "And right here, Steve Packard, is where you don't 'crowd in'
until you're called on."
She straightened up, sitting very erect, her two hands tense upon the
useless wheel. He noted the poise of her head and found in it something

almost queenly. For a moment they were both very still, he watching
and feeling his sense pervaded by the glowing sensation that all was
right with the world, she holding her face averted and keeping her
thoughts to herself.
Presently she got out and lifted the hood, looking in upon the engine,
despairing. But did not glance toward him. Then she closed the hood
and returned to her seat, once more attempting to get some sort of
response from the starting system. Packard felt himself fairly beaming
all over.
"I may be a low-lived dog and a deep-dyed villain besides," he was
frank to admit to himself. "But right now I'm having the time of my life.
And I wouldn't bet two bits which way she's going to jump next,
either--never having met just her type before."
"Well?" she said abruptly.
She hadn't moved, hadn't so much as turned her head to look at him. If
she had done so just then perhaps Packard's extremely good-humored
smile, a contented, eminently satisfied smile, would not have warmed
her to him.
"Speak to me?" he asked innocently.
"I did. Simply because there's nobody else to speak to. Don't happen to
know anything about motor-cars, do you?"
It was all very icily enunciated, but had no noticeably freezing effect
upon the man's mood.
"I sure do," he told her cheerfully. "Know 'em from front bumper to
tail-lamp. Yours is a Boyd-Merril, Twin Eight, this year's model.
Fox-Whiting starting and lighting system. Great little car, too, if you
ask me."
"What I was going to ask you," came the cool little voice, more
haughtily than ever, "was not what you think of the car but if you--if

you happened to know how to make the miserable thing go."
"Sure," he replied to the back of her head, with all of his former
pleasant manner. "Pull out the ignition button; push down the starter
pedal with your right foot; throw out the clutch with your left; put her
into low; let in your clutch slowly; give her a little----"
"Smarty!" He had counted upon some such interruption, and chuckled
when it came. "I know all that."
"Then why don't you do it?" he queried innocently. "You're right
square in my way, the road's narrow, and I've got to be moving on."
"I don't do it," she informed that portion of the world which lay
immediately in front of her slightly elevated nose, "because it won't
work. I pulled out the ignition