nt far
out of his way upon every opportunity to learn of his grandson's
activities.

"What for a man is he growed up to be, anyhow?" was what Hell-Fire
Packard was interested in ascertaining.

When the old man wanted to get anywhere he ordered out his car and Guy
Little. When he wanted information he sent for Guy Little. The
undersized mechanician was gifted with eyes which could see, ears which
could hear, and a tongue which could set matters clear; he must have
been unusually keen to have retained his position in the old man's
household for the matter of five or six years.

To his employer he had come once upon a time, half-starved and weary, a
look of dread in his eyes which had the way of turning swiftly over his
shoulder; the old man had had from the beginning the more than
suspicion that the little fellow was a fugitive from the law and in a
hurry at that.

He had immediately taken him in and given him succor and comfort. The
poor devil fumbled for a name and was so obviously making himself a new
one that Packard dubbed him Guy Little on the spot, simply because, he
explained, he was such a little guy. And thereafter the two grew in
friendship.

Guy Little's first coming had been opportune. The old man had only
recently bought his first touring-car; in haste to be gone somewhere
his motor failed to respond to his first coaxing and subsequent bursts
of violent rage. While he was cursing it, reviling it, shaking his
fist at it, and vowing he'd set a keg of giant powder under the thing
and blow it clean to blue blazes, Guy Little ran a loving hand over it,
stroked its mane, so to speak, whispered in its ear, and set the engine
purring. Old Man Packard nodded; they two, big-bodied millionaire and
dwarfed waif, needed each other.

"Climb on the runnin'-board, Guy Little," he said right then. "You go
wherever I go." And later he came to say of his mechanician, "Him?
Why, man, he can take four ol' wagon wheels an' a can of gasoline an'
make the damn' thing go. He's all automobile brains, that's what Guy
Little is!"

On the Big Bend ranch, the old man's largest and favorite of several
kindred holdings, an outfit which flung its twenty thousand acres this
way and that among the Little Hills and on either side of the upper
waters of the stream which eventually gave its name to Red Creek, the
oldest of the name of Packard had summoned Guy Little.

It was some ten days after the stopping of all activity i