our nerve with you, Mr. Lanky
Stranger," she cried mirthfully. "But when it comes to tackling
Hell-Fire Packard with a mouthful of fool questions-- Look here; who
are you anyway?"

"Nobody much," he answered quietly and just a trifle bitterly. "Tom
Fool you named me a while ago. Or, if you prefer, Steve Packard."

She flipped from her place on the table to stand erect, twin spots of
red leaping into her cheeks, startling him with the manner in which all
mirth fled from her eyes, which narrowed and grew hard.

"That would mean old Hell-Fire's grandson?" she asked sharply.

He merely nodded, watching her speculatively. Her head went still
higher. Packard heard her father rise hurriedly and shuffle across the
floor toward the kitchen.

"You're a worthy chip off the old stump," Terry was saying
contemptuously. "You're a darned sneak!"

"Terry!" admonished Temple warningly.

Her stiff little figure remained motionless a moment, never an eyelid
stirring. Then she whirled and went out of the room, banging a door
after her.

"She's high-strung, Mr. Packard," said Temple, slow and heavy and a bit
uncertain in his articulation. "High-strung, like her mother. And at
times apt to be unreasonable. Come in with me and have a drink, and
we'll talk things over."

Packard hesitated. Then he turned and followed his host back to the
fireplace. Suddenly he found himself without further enthusiasm for
conversation.

CHAPTER IV

TERRY BEFORE BREAKFAST

A gay young voice singing somewhere through the dawn awoke Steve
Packard and informed him that Terry was up and about. He lay still a
moment, listening. He remembered the song, which, by the way, he had
not heard for a good many years, the ballad of a cowboy sick and lonely
in a big city, yearning for the open country. At times when Terry's
humming was smothered by the walls of the house, Packard's memory
strove for the words which his ears failed to catch. And more often
than not the words, retrieved from oblivion, were less than worth the
effort; no poet had builded the chant, which, rather, grown to goodly
proportions of perhaps a hundred verses, had resulted from a natural
evolution like a modern Odyssey, or some sprawling vine which was what
it was because of its environment. But while lines were faulty and
rhymes were bad, and the composition never rose above the commonplace,
and often enough sank below it, the ballad was sincere and meant much
to