d a book in Blenham's face. "A pretty
decent scout from the jump!"

He had literally jumped into her life, going after her quite as
though----

"Oh, shucks!" laughed Terry. "It's the moonlight!"

There came a certain sharp turn in the road where even she must slow
down. Here Terry came to a dead stop, not so much in hesitation as
because she was conscious of a departure from the old trails and felt
deeply that the act might be filled with significance. For when she
had made the turn she would have crossed the old dead line, she would
have passed the boundary and invaded Packard property.

"Well," thought Terry, "when you are between the devil and the deep sea
what are you going to do?"

So she let in her clutch, opened her throttle, sounded her horn purely
by way of defiance, and when next she stopped it was at the very door
of the old ranch-house where Steve Packard should be found at this
early hour of the evening.

The men in the bunk-house had heard her coming, and to the last man of
them pushed to the door to see who it might be. Their first thought,
of course, would be that the old mountain-lion, Steve's grandfather,
had come roaring down from his place in the north. Terry tossed up her
head so that they might see and know and marvel and speculate and do
and say anything which pleased them. Having crossed her Rubicon, she
didn't care the snap of her pretty fingers who knew.

"I want Steve Packard," she called to them. "Where is he?"

It was young Barbee who answered, Barbee of the innocent blue eyes.

"In the ranch-house, Miss Terry," he said. And he came forward,
patting his hair into place, hitching at his belt, smiling at her after
his most successful lady-killing fashion. "Sure I won't do?"

"You?" Terry laughed. "When I'm looking for a man I'm not going to
stop for a boy, Barbee dear!"

And she jumped down and knocked loudly at Steve's door, while the men
at the bunk-house laughed joyously and Barbee cursed under his breath.

Steve, supposing that it was one of his own men grown suddenly formal,
did not take his stockinged feet down from his table or his pipe from
his lips as he called shortly--

"Come in!"

And Terry asked no second invitation. In she went, slamming the door
after her so that those who gawked at the bunk-house entrance might
gawk in vain.

And now Steve Packard achieved in one flashing second the removal of
his feet from the table, the shifting of his pipe fro