not here so much to meet him
as--let's say to head him off."

Terry set it down that, since it was next to impossible at any time for
a Packard to speak the truth, he was just lying to her for the sake of
the devious exercise. As she was on the point of saying emphatically
when Steve said "Sh!" and pointed. She heard a breaking of brush and
saw the horns of a steer; the animal was coming into the trail from the
Packard side.

"You just watch," whispered Steve. "And sit right still. It won't do
you any harm to know what's going on."

The big steer broke through into the trail, stopped and sniffed, and
then came on up the stream. Behind came another and another, emerging
from the shadows, passing through the swiftly fading light of the open,
gone again into the shadows that lay over the wooded Temple acreage.
In all nine big fat steers. And behind them, sitting loosely in his
saddle, came Blenham.

Only when the last steer had crossed the line did Steve rise suddenly,
standing upright on the great log, his hands on his hips. Terry
looking up into his face saw that all of the good humor had gone from
it and that there was something ominous in the darkening of his eyes.

"Hold on, Blenham!" he called.

Blenham drew a quick rein.

"That you, Packard?" he asked quietly.

"It is," answered Steve briefly. "On the job, too, Blenham. All the
time."

Blenham laughed.

"So it seems," he said, his look like his tone eloquent of an innuendo
which embraced Terry evilly. "If you're invitin' me to join your
little party, I ain't got the time. Thanks jus' the same."

Since one's consciousness may harbor several clear-cut impressions
simultaneously, Steve Packard, while he was thinking of other matters,
felt that never until this moment had he hated Blenham properly; no,
nor respected him as it would be the part of wisdom to do.

The man's glance running over Terry Temple's girlishness was like the
crawling of a slug over a wild flower and supplied a new and perhaps
the key-note to Blenham's ugliness. It was borne in upon Steve that
his grandfather's lieutenant was bad, absolutely bad; that, old adages
to the contrary notwithstanding, here was a character with not a hint
of redemption in it; after the Packard outright way, this youngest
Packard was ready to condemn out of hand.

And further, to all of this Steve marked how Blenham had drawn a quick
rein but had shown no tremor of uneasiness; had considered th