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Updated: June 4, 2025
"Yes," agreed Steve, feeling vaguely that the cowman had unknowingly touched upon a problem in higher mathematics. He slipped a hand into his pocket. But the friend whom an old, long-forgotten kindness raised now for him at his need, shook his head, would have none of Packard's money, and led the way to a shed behind the saloon.
"No answer," he explained to Nixon as he hurriedly, dismissed him. "That 'if' concerns you," he now declared, coming back to his wife and to his troubles at the same instant. "Explain the mystery which seems likely to undo me. Why do you sit there bowed under my accusations? Why should Henry Packard's wife cry for mercy, to any man? Because those damnable accusations are true?
If so, I was not disappointed. My features certainly betrayed the effect of this unexpected attack upon my professional equanimity. What did the girl mean? What was she hinting at? What underlay what could underlie her surprising remark, "I guess you never heard about this house?" Something worth my knowing; something which might explain Mayor Packard's fears and Mrs. Packard's There I stopped.
"I stumbled on a passage leading here, which I thought you ought to know is now open to any one in Mayor Packard's house. Of course, it will be closed soon," I hastened to add as Miss Charity hurriedly rose at her sister's quick look and anxiously left the room. "Mrs. Packard will see to that." "Yes, yes, I have no doubt; she's a very good woman, a very fair woman, don't you think so, Miss "
"Not much in a way; a good deal when you figure on how tight money is and how little we've seen of it these last few years. Now, Packard sends Blenham across with a message; he's going to foreclose; he is going to drive us out; to ruin us. That is Packard's word." Terry stiffened in her chair; her chin rose a little in the air; her eyes brightened; the color in her cheeks deepened.
"He did," answered Blenham with a quick, curious, sidewise glance. Packard's big hand was lifted and came down mightily upon his thigh as, suddenly released, the old man's voice boomed out in a great peal of laughter. "Ho!" he cried, shouting out the words to be heard far out across the open meadow. "Say to hell with me, does he? Holds my stock for pasture money, does he?
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," she retorted. "So we'll let him go at that. Old Hell-Fire Packard, his father, is the biggest lawbreaker out of jail.
Packard, hearing it, too, drew herself up still more firmly and was passing bravely forward, when Nixon's gray head protruded from the doorway and I heard him say: "There's company for breakfast, ma'am. His Honor could not spare Mr. Steele and asked me to set a place for him." I noted a momentary hesitation on Mrs. Packard's part, then she silently acquiesced and we both passed on.
And despite the extravagance of the words it was borne in upon Packard's understanding that she meant just exactly what she said. He was getting colder all the time and knew that in a moment his teeth would chatter. So a second time he turned his back on her, gathered up his horse's reins, and moved away, seeking a spot in the woods where he could get dry and sun his clothes.
Mrs. Packard's voice fell, and I cast her a humorous look. "Were there ghosts in those days?" I lightly asked. Her answer was calm enough. "Not yet, but the place must have been desolate enough for one. I have sometimes tried to imagine the scene surrounding that broken-down old man. There was no furniture in the room, save what was indispensable to his bare comfort.
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