Packard looked at her wonderingly. Then, without an answer, he strode by her and to the window. The shade he flipped up so that anyone who cared to might look into the room. Next he went to the door and called:
"Bill, oh, Bill Royce. Come up here. Here's some one who wants a word with you!"
Terry Temple's face went a burning, burning red. There came the impulse to put both arms about this big shirt-sleeved, tousled Packard man and squeeze him hard—and at the end of it pinch him harder. For in Terry's soul was understanding, and he both delighted her and shamed her.
But when Steve came back and slipped his feet into his boots and sat down across the table from her, Terry's face told him nothing.
"You're a funny guy, Steve Packard," she admitted thoughtfully.
"That's nothing," grinned Steve, by now quite himself again. "So are you!"
She had come from the Temple ranch without any hat; her hair had tumbled down long ago and now framed her vivacious face most adorably. Adorably, that is, to a man's mind; other women are not always agreed upon such matters. At any rate, Steve watched with both admiration and regret in his eyes as Terry shook out the loose bronze tresses and began to bring neat order out of bewilderingly becoming chaos. Her mouth was full of pins when Bill Royce came in. But still she could whisper tantalizingly—
"If you picked on Bill for a chaperon because he's blind——"
Royce stopped in the doorway.
"That you, Terry Temple?" he asked. "An' you wanted me? What's up?"