Gregory Man to Man

1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-3-96799-193-2
Verlag: Librorium Editions
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 143 Seiten

Settle in for a stiff dose of daring and danger in Jackson Gregory's classic Man to Man. Protagonist Steve Packard comes from a long line of rough-and-tumble men who make decisions at the drop of a hat, and when he gets the urge to put his career as a sailor on hold and travel to his childhood stomping, he doesn't stop to question it.he just goes. But giving into this nostalgic impulse may be the worst mistake in the long line of blunders that is his life. Will he make it out alive?

Jackson Gregory (March 12, 1882 - June 12, 1943) was an American teacher, journalist, and writer.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gregory, Jackson

Leseproben

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 he galloped up the long lane, turned in at a gate sagging wearily upon its hinges, and rode to the door of the lighted house. The first glance showed him that it was a long, low, rambling affair resembling in dejectedness the drooping gate. An untidy sort of man in shirt-sleeves and smoking a pipe came to the door, kicking into silence his half-dozen dogs.

"What's the chance of something to eat and a place to sleep in the barn?" asked Packard.

The rancher waved his pipe widely.

"Help yourself, stranger," he answered, in a voice meant to be hospitable but which through long habit had acquired an unpleasantly sullen tone. "You'll find the sleeping all right, but when it comes to something to eat you can take it from me you'll find damn' poor picking. Get down, feed your horse, and come in."

When he entered the house Packard was conscious of an oddly bare and cheerless atmosphere which at first he was at a loss to explain. For the room was large, amply furnished, cheerfully lighted by a crackling fire of dry sticks in the big rock fireplace, and a lamp swung from the ceiling. What the matter was dawned on him gradually: time was when this chamber had been richly, even exquisitely, furnished and appointed. Now it presented rather a dejected spectacle of faded splendor, not entirely unlike a fine gentleman of the old school fallen among bad companions and into tattered ill repute.

The untidy host, more untidy than ever here in the full light, dragged his slippered feet across the threadbare carpet to a corner cupboard, from which he took a bottle and two glasses.

"We can have a drink anyhow," he said in that dubious tone which so harmonized both with himself and his sitting-room. "After which we'll see what's to eat. Terry fired the cook last week and there's been small feasting since."

Packard accepted a moderate drink, the rancher filled his own glass generously, and they drank standing. This ceremony briefly performed and chairs dragged comfortably up to the fireplace, Packard's host called out loudly:

"Hi, Terry! There's a man here wants something to eat. Anything left?"

"If he's hungry," came the cool answer from a room somewhere toward the other end of the long house, "why can't he forage for himself? Wants me to bring his rations in there and feed it to him, I suppose!"

Packard lifted his eyebrows humorously.

"Is that Terry?" he asked.

"That's Terry," grumbled the rancher. "She's in the kitchen now. And if I was you, pardner, and had a real hankering for grub I'd mosey right along in there while there's something left." His eye roved to the bottle on the chimneypiece and dropped to the fire. "I'll trail you in a minute."

Here was invitation sufficient, and Packard rose swiftly, went out through the door at the end of the room, passed through an untidy chamber which no doubt had been intended originally as a dining-room, and so came into lamplight again and the presence of Miss Blue Cloak.

He made her a bow and smiled in upon her cheerfully. She, perched on an oilcloth-covered table, her booted feet swinging, a thick sandwich in one hand and a steaming cup of coffee in the other, took time to look him up and down seriously and to swallow before she answered his bow with a quick, bird-like nod.

"Don't mind me," she said briefly, having swallowed again. "Dig in and help yourself."

On the table beside her were bread, butter, a very dry and black-looking roast, and a blacker but more tempting coffee-pot.

"I didn't follow you on purpose," said Packard. "Back there where the roads forked I saw that you had turned to the left, so I turned to the right."

"All roads lead to Rome," she said around the corner of the big sandwich. "Anyway, it's all right. I guess I owe you a square meal and a night's lodging for being on the job when my car stalled."

"Not to mention for diving into the lake after you," amended Packard.

"I wouldn't mention it if I were you," she retorted. "Seeing that you just made a fool of yourself that time."

She openly sniffed the air as he stepped by her reaching out for butcher-knife and roast. "So you are dad's kind, are you? Hitting the booze every show you get. The Lord deliver me from his chief blunder. Meaning a man."

"He probably will," grinned Packard genially. "And as for turning up your nose at a fellow for taking a drop o' kindness with a hospitable host, why, that's all nonsense, you know."

Terry kicked her high heels impudently and vouchsafed him no further answer beyond that easy gesture. Packard made his own 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...