e
tell you one more thing: You keep your two han's off'n my gran'son!"

"What!" gasped Terry.

"I said it," he fairly snorted. "Come on there, Guy Little, with that
car. Ready there, Bridges, you ol' fool? Pile in."

He took his seat at the wheel, his old black hat pushed far back on his
head, his eye already on the clock in the dash. Terry slipped ahead of
Doctor Bridges and took her seat at the old man's side.

"You said--just what?" she demanded icily.

"I said," he cried savagely, "as I know how you been chasin' my fool of
a gran'son Stephen, an' as how you got to stop it. I won't have you
makin' a bigger fool out'n him than he already is."

Terry sat rigid, speechless, grown suddenly cold. For once in her life
no ready answer sprang to her lips.

Then Hell-Fire Packard had started his engine, sounded his horn, and
they were on their way. And Terry, because no words would come, put
her head back and laughed in a way that, as she knew perfectly well,
would madden him.

The drive from Hell-Fire Packard's front door to the store in Red Creek
was made in some few negligible seconds over forty-eight minutes. The
three occupants of the car reached town alive. Never in her life after
that night would Terry Temple doubt that there was a Providence which
at critical times took into its hands the destinies of men.

There had been never a word spoken until they had come to the gate
which had closed behind Terry on the way out. Old man Packard had
looked at speedometer, clock and obstruction. Terry had seen his hands
tighten on his wheel.

"Set tight an' hang on," he had commanded sharply.

The big front tires and bumper struck the gate; there was a wild flying
of splinters and at sixty miles an hour they went through and on to Red
Creek.

"The old devil!" whispered Terry within herself. "The old devil!"

CHAPTER XXI

PACKARD WRATH AND TEMPLE RAGE

No far-sighted, inspired prophet's services were needed to predict a
rather stormy scene upon the arrival of old Hell-Fire Packard and Miss
Terry Temple at the place of the storekeeper of Red Creek. It was to
be expected that Steve Packard would be on hand; that he would be
impatiently awaiting the drum of a racing motor; that he would be on
the sidewalk to greet Temple's daughter.

"Terry!" he called. "So soon?"

He couldn't have made a worse beginning had he pondered the matter long
and diabolically. Blenham had been right and Steve had ha