Man to Man Part 45

She watched him wheel again and go. This time she did not call to him.

Her little figure stiffened, her hands were down at her sides and clenched, her chin was lifted a little. The whole att.i.tude was soldierlike.

"They are two of a kind," said Terry within herself. "They are men.

They are Packards. I am proud and--and afraid--and-- Oh, dear G.o.d!

Dear G.o.d! Bring him back to me!"

She could hear Steve giving his brief orders crisply. Other figures loomed about him, coming out of the night and the shadows. There was young Yellow Barbee and Bandy Oliver; there was the Number Ten cowboy whom she knew only as "Spotty"; in a moment these and two or three other men were with Steve. Six or seven; possibly eight of them all told. And Barbee had said that there were about a dozen men with old man Packard.

"This is my fight, boys," Steve was saying. "Mine and my grandfather's. I want you fellows to keep out of it unless the boys with old man Packard mix in. If they do----"

"We're with you," said Yellow Barbee. "Huh, boys?"

And a little nervously and hurriedly they answered--

"Yes."

"Then," concluded Steve, "keep your eyes open. Hang back, now."

She saw him lean forward in the saddle, noted how the horse leaped under him, took anxious stock of the manner in which he carried his rifle. Then suddenly there came back into Terry's cheeks the good hot blood, into her eyes the sparkle and shine, into her heart something akin to the sheer joy of battle. Had she a horse she would not have hung back for want of a rifle, but would have ridden after him, with him. As it was she cried out ringingly:

"G.o.d go with you, Steve Packard! I'm proud of you!"

She might not ride with him; at least she would not crouch and cringe and hide her eyes. She would watch him as he rode, watch him as he fought, watch him to the end even though he slipped from the saddle.

So she made her way hastily to a point of vantage, running the brief distance lying between the slight knoll on which she stood and the eastern edge of the valley where the rugged peaks rose abruptly. She scrambled up the first bit of slope, her heart beating wildly, expecting each second to hear the snap and crackle of rifle-fire. She turned and looked back; the floor of the valley was too uneven for her to have a sweeping view.

She began climbing again. Great boulders rose in her path; somehow she got on them and over them. Broken slabs of granite strewed the way; she made of them steps on which to mount higher and higher. Still no sound of a shot and at last, upon a narrow shelf of rock offering sufficient foothold, she stopped.

Here, with her back tight pressed to a rock, her hands gripping at irregularities on each side of her to steady her, she sent her questing gaze down into Drop Off Valley.

Now she understood why there had as yet been no rifle-fire. The day, coming on slowly, still offered more gloom than radiance, but she could pick out two figures clearly. One was that of Steve. He had ridden on ahead of his men, perhaps a hundred feet ahead, and was upon a bit of higher ground.

The other form, bulking big in the thin light, was indisputably that of old man Packard. Like Steve, he had ridden on in advance of his men.

She could just make out a dull ma.s.s yonder behind him which might have been but a group of boulders had not the impatient stirring showed where his hors.e.m.e.n were waiting.

It was very still there on the uplands in the dim dawning. In breathless watchfulness a few men behind Steve watched; a few men behind old man Packard watched; a girl upon a granite peak watched.

Down toward the lower end of the valley where the floor of the plateau dropped precipitously into the steep-walled canon the fire Terry had set was still burning fiercely. But the wind carried its fury away from them, so that it was only an evil whisper.

Here and there, elsewhere in the valley, the fires still burned on.

There were wide stretches across which the flames had already swept so that now they were ink-black, burnt-out, smoking a little. Upon such an open s.p.a.ce, still hot under their horses' hoofs, the two Packards, grandfather and grandson, came face to face. And they were stern, ominously set faces confronting each other.

At last they had pulled rein, both of them, looking grotesquely like clockwork mechanisms, being actuated by the same impulse at the same time. Some ten feet only were between their horses' tossing heads.

They were almost opposite Terry's lookout and at no great distance. In the quiet pervading the valley their voices came to her. Not each word, but a word now and then, lifted above its fellows, and always the purport. For there was no mistaking the quality of the two voices.

Rage in old Packard was welcomed by wrath in young Packard. Heat and anger and explosive denunciation, these were to be looked for now.

Never had it been the Packard way to temporize; always had it been the Packard way to leap in and strike. Few-worded always was the old man; as few-worded was the young man now.

"You are a d.a.m.n' scoundrel, sir!"

"You will draw your men off. You will pay for the damage Blenham has done."

"By G.o.d, sir!"

There was little more said. That thunderous "By G.o.d, sir!" from the old man's lips carried to Terry where she stood tight pressed against her rock. And then all unexpectedly and from an unexpected quarter, came the first rifle-shot.

The first shot and the second, close together. The bullets pa.s.sed between grandfather and grandson, kicking up little puffs of dust beyond them. Neither looked to see whence the shots came. The thought was in each mind:

"Is this a Packard I am dealing with? Setting one of his hired a.s.sa.s.sins to shooting from a blind?"

The old man's rifle was thrown up before him; Steve's rose with it.

Over yonder old Packard's men squared themselves in their saddles and made ready for grim work. Yellow Barbee gave a signal all unneeded to his men; his own rifle in his eager hands, was ready, the trigger yielding to his calloused forefinger.

And then from the flinty spire of a peak rising between them and a sun that was slowly wheeling into the clear sky, came scream after scream that echoed and billowed across the open lands as Terry Temple, seeing something of the truth, cried out in terrified desperation and warning.

A girl's voice screaming--Old man Packard turned sharply and stared in wonderment. Terry's voice--Steve swung about, his anger suddenly quenched in alarm, his eyes seeking everywhere for her.

It was Barbee who saw her first. Barbee called out, a strange note in his voice, and clapped his spurs to his horse's sides and went racing across the undulating lands toward her. Then Steve saw and old man Packard and the rest. Saw but at first could not understand: the sun was just behind her, winking into their eyes. There was some one with her, struggling with her.

"Blenham!" shouted Steve.

And he was racing wildly along after Barbee, yearning to shoot to kill and yet not daring to shoot at all. Blenham and Terry struggling upon the iron side of the mountain, Terry striking and striking at him frantically, Blenham with his arms about her, dragging her back toward a wide fissure in the rocks, the sun bright above them.

To Terry it seemed that the universe had come crashing down about her ears. A moment ago, tense and rigid and breathless, she had stood watching two men face each other threateningly. Then there had been the crack of the unexpected, unseen rifle; the dust struck up between them; the second shot. And the smoking rifle-barrel was not three feet from where Terry stood, Blenham's convulsed face laid against the stock, Blenham's one evil eye lining the sights.

Almost on the instant she guessed something of the truth. Blenham in this light was not sure of hitting; he would be a fool to shoot and miss. Unless--and it was then that she screamed out her warning, then before he had so much as put out his hand toward her.

Unless Blenham, with all of the guile of him uppermost, knew that that shot fired between the two would send them flying at each other's throats, ending all parley and bringing about unthinkable tragedy.

Blenham had his own reasons for what he did; certainly it would fit in with Blenham's plans to see the hand of a Packard set against a Packard.

But she had not thought to have him seize her. Now his great, calloused, soiled, hairy hands shut down upon her, gripping her shoulders, jerking her from her place into the crevice from which his face had emerged. She fought, seeking to get the revolver in her blouse.

Blenham must have known that she kept it there. He s.n.a.t.c.hed it and threw it behind him and cursed her as he dragged her with him. As Barbee came on and Steve came just behind him, the figures of Blenham and Terry were both gone as though the mountain-side had split for them and closed after them.

"They've got in a hole," called out Barbee. "Them mountains is full of caves. They can't get away far."

As they went up the steep slope Barbee was still in the lead. He mounted to the shelf of rock on which Terry had been standing. He stepped into the crevice through which Blenham had dragged Terry.

"There's a split in the rocks here," called Barbee. "He went this way."

"Watch out for him!" warned Steve, now on the ledge close to the boy.

"Let me go ahead!"

Barbee laughed.

"Long ago I told him I'd get him!"

But Blenham was waiting in a little rock-rimmed hollow. He shot from the hip, using a heavy revolver. Barbee stood a moment looking foolishly at the sky as he slowly leaned back against the rock. Then he lurched and fell, twisting, spinning so that he lay half in the fissure, his rifle clattering to the ledge outside, his body falling so that his head and shoulders were across the rifle.