Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 28, 2025
"But remember one thing: Blenham has slipped up to-night, maybe, an' let you an' her an' her lyin', thievin', scoundrelly father steal a march on me. But it's the last one; mark that!
The bawling of a mother cow and a baby calf, separated by a corral fence, had quite drowned out the purr of her motor; her step as usual was light upon the porch. The first that Temple and Blenham knew of her coming was her form in the doorway, her face turned curiously upon them.
The few words were: BLENHAM: This here Mex don't seem to know what I mean. Next time send a man as can talk English. Anyway I am coming to-night. I don't want no killing if it ain't necessary, but there ain't going to be a hide or hoof left in Drop Off by morning. And the signature, cramped and stiff, was that of Steve's grandfather. "So," muttered Steve heavily.
With one watery eye he looked from one to the other of the two men bursting in on him. "Blenham," cried Packard, standing over him while he was careful not to lose sight of Joe Woods's working face, "I want work stopped here and this crowd of men off the ranch. You heard what I said outside, didn't you?" Blenham answered heavily: "Woods, don't you pay no attention to what this man says.
"I was ready to go," he called, "any time!" He swung his arm out toward the blue hills of Old Mexico. "Down there " Barbee whom they had thought dead stirred a little where he lay. The rifle under him he thrust forward six inches. "Blenham!" he called weakly. Blenham swung about and fired, again from the hip. But he had fired hastily. Barbee's rifle, resting upon the rock, was steady.
Blenham waited for his signal to continue his report, and when he got it, a look and a nod, he resumed, face, voice, and eye alike expressionless of any personal interest in the matter. "You know them nine big steers as strayed from here some time ago? I tol' you about 'em two or three weeks ago? Well, I found 'em like I said I would, all nine of 'em, an' on Ranch Number Ten."
That night Blenham had sneered, "Stuck on her yourself, are you?" and Steve had recognized a vital fact inelegantly expressed; that night Terry Temple had appeared to him more than just a "good little sport"; that night he had somewhat brusquely considered the sweet femininity of her under her assumed surface of diablerie and had found her infinitely desirable; that same night Terry, for no reason in the world that Steve Packard could discover, had suddenly congealed into a thing of ice that had never since thawed save only briefly before burning fits of wrath.
Guy Little has been tellin' me the same sort of thing." "There ain't much to tell," answered Blenham. "That is, that a man couldn't guess without bein' told. He's your gran'son; even with a scrap on between you an' him, still blood is thicker'n water an' some day, maybe, you'll pass on to him all you got. Leastways, there's a chance, an' also he oughta fit pretty snug in a girl's eye.
Red Creek gossiped within its limits and sent forth word of a quarrel of some sort with Blenham, a winning game of seven-and-a-half, a fight with big Joe Woods. Red Creek was inclined to set the seal of approval on this new Packard, for Red Creek, on both sides of its quarrelsome street, stood ready to say that a man was a man even when it might go gunning for him.
There came a little twitching at the corner of Woods's broad mouth. He made no answer. "Hear me?" snapped Steve. "Sure I hear you," said Woods insolently. "So does Blenham; he's right inside where he can hear. I guess it's him you want to talk with. I'm takin' my orders off'n Blenham an' nobody else." "I've talked already with Blenham.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking