"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!"