Man to Man | Page 6

button and--and nothing happened. Then
I tried to force down the starter pedal and the crazy thing won't go
down."
"I see," said Packard interestedly. "Don't know a whole lot about cars,
do you?"
"The world wasn't made overnight," she said tartly. "I've had this pesky
thing a month. Do you know what's the matter?"
He took his time in replying. He was so long about it, in fact, that Miss
Blue Cloak stirred uneasily and finally shot him a questioning look
over her shoulder, just to make sure, he suspected, that he hadn't
slipped away and left her.
"Well?" she asked again.
"Speak to me?" he repeated himself, pretending to start from a deep
abstraction. "Oh, do I know what's the matter? Sure!"
She waited a reasonable length of time for him to go on. He, secure in
the sense of his own mastery of the situation, waited for her. Between
them they allowed it to grow very quiet there in the wood by the lake

shore. He saw her glance furtively at the lowering sun.
"If you do know," she said finally and somewhat faintly, but as frigidly
as ever, "will you tell me or won't you?"
"Why," he said, as though he had not thought of it, "I don't know. If I
were really sure that I was needed. You know it's mighty hard telling
these days when you stumble upon a damsel in distress whether a
stranger's aid is welcome or not. If there's one thing I won't do it's
shove myself forward when I'm not wanted."
"You're a nasty animal!" she cried hotly.
"For all I know," he resumed in an untroubled tone, "the end of your
journey may be just around the bend, about a hundred yards off. And if
I plunged in to be of assistance I might be suspected of being a fresh
guy."
"It's half a dozen miles to the ranch-house," she condescended to tell
him. "And it's going to get dark in no time. And if you want to know,
Mr. Smarty, that's as close as I've ever come or ever will come to
asking anything of any man that ever lived."
He could have sat there until dark just for the sheer joy of teasing her,
making her pay a little for her recent treatment of him. But there was a
note of finality in her voice which did not escape him; in another
moment she would jump down and go on on foot and he knew it. So at
last he rode up to the car, dismounted, and lifted the hood.
"Ignition," he ordered her.
She pulled out the little button again. His eyes upon hers, his grin frank
and unconcealed, he took a stone from the road and with it tapped
gently upon the shaft running from the pump. Immediately there came
that little hissing sound she had waited for.
"Starter," he commanded.

And now her foot upon the pedal achieved the desired results; the
engine responded, humming pleasantly. He closed the hood and stood
back eying her with a mingling of amusement and triumph. Her face
reddened slowly. And then, startling him with its unheralded
unexpectedness, a gay peal of laughter from her made quite another girl
of her, a dimpling, radiant, altogether adorable and desirable creature.
"Oh, I know when I'm beat!" she cried frankly. "You've put one across
on me to-day, Mr. Man. And since you meant well all along and were
just simply the blunderheaded man God made you, I guess I have been
a little cat. Good luck to you and a worth-while trail to ride."
She blew him a friendly kiss from her brown finger-tips, bent over her
wheel, and took the first turn in the road at a swiftly acquired speed
which left Steve Packard behind in dust and growing wonderment.
"And she's been driving only a month," was his softly whistled
comment. "Reckless little devil!"
Then, in his turn cocking a speculative eye at the sun in the west, he
rode on, following in the track made by the spinning automobile tires.
CHAPTER III
NEWS OF A LEGACY
When Packard came to a forking of the roads he stopped and hesitated.
The automobile tracks led to the left; he was tempted to follow them.
And it was his way in the matter of such impulses to yield to temptation.
But in this case he finally decided that common sense if not downright
wisdom pointed in the other direction.
So, albeit a bit reluctantly, he swerved to the right.
"We'll see you some other time, though, Miss Blue Cloak," he
pondered. "For I have a notion it would be good sport knowing you."
An hour later he made out a lighted window, seen and lost through the

trees. Conscious of a man's-sized appetite