ble--and yet he had not thought of her own likely emotions. To
have a man leap out into the road in front of her, all unexpectedly,
waving his arms and calling on her to stop-- Why, she'd think herself
fallen into the hands of a highwayman!

She was coming on, straight on, her horn emitting one long, sustained
shriek of menace. Packard ground his teeth; either she did not
recognize him and was bound upon getting by him, or she did recognize
him and was accepting her opportunity to emphasize her attitude toward
him.

In any case she was going by, she in whom lay his sole hope to come to
grips with Blenham. If he let her evade he might as well quit, quit in
utter disgust with the world.

With the world? Disgust with himself, that he had let Blenham beat
him, that he wasn't much of a man, that his old grandfather was right
about him. Her car was rushing down upon him; if he let it pass, why,
he'd be letting, not only a girl laugh at him, but he'd be letting his
chance rush by him. His chance that loomed up bigger than the oncoming
machine and more real; his chance not for to-night alone but for ever
after.

For if Blenham beat him to-night and his grandfather beat him again
later on, he knew that he would pass away from the country about Ranch
Number Ten, that he would give over all sustained effort to make
something of his life, that he would go back to drifting, rounding out
his days after the fashion of the last twelve years. It was while
Terry's car was speeding toward him that all of this ran through his
mind.

There was the possibility that, knowing who he was, Terry would try to
bluff him out of the road, counting confidently upon his leaping to
safety at the last moment; there was the other possibility that she
mistook his motives and would run him down in a sort of panic of
self-defense.

Packard, with his rather clear-cut conception of the girl's character
to steer by, saw the one way to master the situation. Whirling about,
his back to her now, he broke into a run, speeding along the road in
front of her. As he ran the hard lines about his mouth softened into a
rare grin: he'd have her guessing for a minute, anyway. And by the
time she got through guessing----

He had duplicated his feat of the afternoon at the bridge in Red Creek.
Terry, in her first astonishment that the man should turn and run
straight on in front of her, slowed down, hesitation in her mind. What
was he up to? Then ther