Man to Man | Page 8

sandwich,
found the salt, poured a tin cup of coffee.
"The sugar's over there." She jerked her head toward a shelf on which,
after some searching among a lot of empty and nearly empty cans,
Packard found it. "That's all there is and precious little left; help
yourself but don't forget breakfast comes in the morning."
"This is the old Slade place, isn't it?" Packard asked.
"It was, about the time the big wall was building in China. Where've
you been the last couple of hundred years? It's the Temple place now."
"Then you're Miss Temple?"
"Teresa Arriega for my mother, Temple for my dad," she told him in
the quick, bright way which already he found characteristic of her.
"Terry for myself, if you say it quick."

He had suspected from the beginning that there was Southern blood of
some strain in her. Now he studied her frankly, and, just to try her out,
said carelessly:
"If you weren't so tanned you'd be quite fair; your eyes are gray too.
Blue-gray when you smile, dark gray when you are angry; and yet you
say your mother was Mexican----"
"Mexican, your foot!" she flared out at him, her trim little body
stiffening perceptibly, her chin proudly lifted. "The Arriegas were
pure-blooded Castilian, I'd have you understand. There's no mongrel
about me."
He drowned his satisfied chuckle with a draft of coffee.
"I'm looking for a job," he said abruptly. "Happen to know of any of the
cattle outfits around here that are short-handed?"
"Men are scarce right now," she answered. "A good cattle-hand is as
hard to locate as a dodo bird. You could get a job anywhere if you're
worth your salt."
"I was thinking," said Packard, "of moseying on to Ranch Number Ten.
There's a man I used to know--Bill Royce, his name is. Foreman, isn't
he?"
"So you know Bill Royce?" countered Terry. "Well, that's something in
your favor. He's a good scout."
"Then he is still foreman?"
"I didn't say so! No, he isn't. And I guess he'll never be foreman of that
outfit or any other again. He's blind."
Old Bill Royce blind! Here was a shock, and Packard sat back and
stared at her speechlessly. Somehow this was incredible, unthinkable,
nothing short. The old cattle-man who had been the hero of his
boyhood, who had taught him to shoot and ride and swim, who had

been so vital and so quick and keen of eye--blind?
"What happened to him?" asked Packard presently.
"Suppose you ask him," she retorted. "If you know him so well. He is
still with the outfit. A man named Blenham is the foreman now. He's
old Packard's right-hand bower, you know."
"But Phil Packard is dead. And----"
"And old 'Hell-Fire' Packard, Phil Packard's father, never will die. He's
just naturally too low-down mean; the devil himself wouldn't have
him."
"Terry!" came the voice of the untidy man, meant to be remonstrative
but chiefly noteworthy for a newly acquired thickness of utterance.
Terry's eyes sparkled and a hot flush came into her cheeks.
"Leave me alone, will you, pa?" she cried sharply. "I don't owe old
Packard anything; no, nor Blenham either. You can walk easy all you
like, but I'm blamed if I've got to. If you'd smash your cursed old bottle
on their heads and take a brace we'd come alive yet."
"Remember we have a guest with us," grumbled Temple from his place
by the sitting-room fire.
"Oh, shoot!" exclaimed the girl impatiently. Reaching out for a second
sandwich she stabbed the kitchen-knife viciously into the roast. "I've a
notion to pack up and clear out and let the cut-throat crowd clean you
to the last copper and pick your bones into the bargain. When did you
ever get anywhere by taking your hat off and side-stepping for a
Packard? If you're so all-fired strong for remembering, why don't you
try to remember how it feels to stand on two feet like a man instead of
crawling on your belly like a worm!"
"My dear!" expostulated Temple.
Terry sniffed and paid no further attention to him.

"Dad was all man once," she said without lowering her voice, making
clearer than ever that Miss Terry Temple had a way of speaking
straight out what lay in her mind, caring not at all who heard. "I'm
hoping that some day he'll come back. A real man was dad, a man's
man. But that was before the Packards broke him and stepped on him
and kicked him out of the trail. And, believe me, the Packards, though
they ought to be hung to the first tree, are men just the same!"
"So I have heard," admitted the youngest of the defamed house. "You
group them altogether? They're all the same then?"
"Phil Packard's dead,"