Man to Man. Jackson Gregory

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

MISS BLUE CLOAK KNOWS WHEN SHE'S BEAT

       Table of Contents

      Half an hour later, his clothing wrung out and sun-dried after a fashion, Packard dressed, swung up into the saddle, and turned back into the trail. And through the trees, where their rugged trunks made an open vista, he saw not two hundred yards away the gay spot of color made by the blue cloak. So she was still here, lingering down the road that wound about the lake's shores, when already he had fancied her far on her way. He wondered for the first time where that way led?

      He drew rein among the pines, waiting in his turn for her to go on. The blue cloak did not move. He leaned to one side to see better, peering around a low-flung cedar bough. His trail here led to the road; he must pass her unless she went on soon.

      Beside the vivid hue of her cloak the sunlight streaming through the forest showed him another bright, gay color, a streak of red which through the underbrush he was at first at a loss to account for. He would have said that she was seated in a low-bodied, red wagon, were it not that if such had been the case he must have seen the horses.

      "An automobile!" he guessed.

      He rode on a score of steps and stopped again. Sure enough, there she sat at the steering-wheel of a long, rakish touring-car, the slump of her shoulders vaguely hinting at despair and perhaps a stalled engine. His grin widened joyously. He touched his horse with his one spur, assumed an expression of vast indifference, and rode on. She jerked up her head, looked about at him swiftly, gave him her shoulder again.

      He rode into the road and came on with tantalizing slowness, knowing that she would want to turn again and guessing that she would conquer the impulse. A few paces behind her he stopped again, rolling a fresh cigarette and seeming, as he had been before the meeting, the most leisurely man in the world.

      He saw her lean forward, busied with ignition and starter; he fancied that the little breeze brought to him the faintest of guarded exclamations.

      "The blamed old thing won't go," chuckled Packard with vast satisfaction. "Some car, too. Boyd-Merril Twin Eight, latest model. And dollars to doughnuts I know just what's wrong—and she doesn't!"

      She ignored him with such a perfect unconsciousness of his presence in the same world with her that he was moved to a keen admiration.

      "I'll bet her face is as red as a beet, just the same," was his cheerful thought. "And right here, Steve Packard, is where you don't 'crowd in' until you're called on."

      She straightened up, sitting very erect, her two hands tense upon the useless wheel. He noted the poise of her head and found in it something almost queenly. For a moment they were both very still, he watching and feeling his sense pervaded by the glowing sensation that all was right with the world, she holding her face averted and keeping her thoughts to herself.

      Presently she got out and lifted the hood, looking in upon the engine, despairing. But did not glance toward him. Then she closed the hood and returned to her seat, once more attempting to get some sort of response from the starting system. Packard felt himself fairly beaming all over.

      "I may be a low-lived dog and a deep-dyed villain besides," he was frank to admit to himself. "But right now I'm having the time of my life. And I wouldn't bet two bits which way she's going to jump next, either—never having met just her type before."

      "Well?" she said abruptly.

      She hadn't moved, hadn't so much as turned her head to look at him. If she had done so just then perhaps Packard's extremely good-humored smile, a contented, eminently satisfied smile, would not have warmed her to him.

      "Speak to me?" he asked innocently.

      "I did. Simply because there's nobody else to speak to. Don't happen to know anything about motor-cars, do you?"

      It was all very icily enunciated, but had no noticeably freezing effect upon the man's mood.

      "I sure do," he told her cheerfully. "Know 'em from front bumper to tail-lamp. Yours is a Boyd-Merril, Twin Eight, this year's model. Fox-Whiting starting and lighting system. Great little car, too, if you ask me."

      "What I was going to ask you," came the cool little voice, more haughtily than ever, "was not what you think of the car but if you—if you happened to know how to make the miserable thing go."

      "Sure," he replied to the back of her head, with all of his former pleasant manner. "Pull out the ignition button; push down the starter pedal with your right foot; throw out the clutch with your left; put her into low; let in your clutch slowly; give her a little——"

      "Smarty!" He had counted upon some such interruption, and chuckled when it came. "I know all that."

      "Then why don't you do it?" he queried innocently. "You're right square in my way, the road's narrow, and I've got to be moving on."

      "I don't do it," she informed that portion of the world which lay immediately in front of her slightly elevated nose, "because it won't work. I pulled out the ignition button and—and nothing happened. Then I tried to force down the starter pedal and the crazy thing won't go down."

      "I see," said Packard interestedly. "Don't know a whole lot about cars, do you?"

      "The world wasn't made overnight," she said tartly. "I've had this pesky thing a month. Do you know what's the matter?"

      He took his time in replying. He was so long about it, in fact, that Miss Blue Cloak stirred uneasily and finally shot him a questioning look over her shoulder, just to make sure, he suspected, that he hadn't slipped away and left her.

      "Well?" she asked again.

      "Speak to me?" he repeated himself, pretending to start from a deep abstraction. "Oh, do I know what's the matter? Sure!"

      She waited a reasonable length of time for him to go on. He, secure in the sense of his own mastery of the situation, waited for her. Between them they allowed it to grow very quiet there in the wood by the lake shore. He saw her glance furtively at the lowering sun.

      "If you do know," she said finally and somewhat faintly, but as frigidly as ever, "will you tell me or won't you?"

      "Why," he said, as though he had not thought of it, "I don't know. If I were really sure that I was needed. You know it's mighty hard telling these days when you stumble upon a damsel in distress whether a stranger's aid is welcome or not. If there's one thing I won't do it's shove myself forward when I'm not wanted."

      "You're a nasty animal!" she cried hotly.

      "For all I know," he resumed in an untroubled tone, "the end of your journey may be just around the bend, about a hundred yards off. And if I plunged in to be of assistance I might be suspected of being a fresh guy."

      "It's half a dozen miles to the ranch-house," she condescended to tell him. "And it's going to get dark in no time. And if you want to know, Mr. Smarty, that's as close as I've ever come or ever will come to asking anything of any man that ever lived."

      He could have sat there until dark just for the sheer joy of teasing her, making her pay a little for her recent treatment