Finding the cut in the inner-tube was simple enough; the moonlight alone would have shown it. He held it up for her to look at and she shook her head and sighed. But making the patch so that it would hold was another matter; and pumping up the tire when the job was done was still another, and required time and ate up all of Terry's rather inconsiderable amount of patience.
"A little more luck like this," she cried as once more they took to the road, "and Blenham will put one over on us yet!"
It was borne in upon Steve that Terry's fears might prove to be only too well founded. The time she had taken to drive to him at his ranch, the time lost in returning to her home and in changing tires and mending a puncture, had been put to better use by Blenham. True, he was on horseback while they motored. And yet, for a score or so of miles, a determined, brutally merciless man upon a horse may render an account of himself.
But while they both speculated they sped on. They came to the spot where the "old road" turned into the new; Blenham and Temple were to be seen nowhere though here the country was flat and but sparsely timbered, and the moon pricked out all objects distinctly.
And so on and on, beginning to wonder at last, asking themselves if Blenham and Temple had drawn out of the road somewhere, hiding in the shadows, to let them go by? But finally only when they were climbing the last winding grade with Red Creek but a couple of miles away, they saw the two horsemen.
Terry's car swung about a curve in the road her headlights for a brief instant aiding the moon in garishly illuminating a scene to be remembered. Blenham had turned in his saddle, startled perhaps by the sound of the oncoming car or by the gleam of the headlights; his uplifted quirt fell heavily upon the sides of his running horse; rose and fell again upon the rump of Temple's mount, and the two men, their horses leaping under them, were gone over the ridge and down upon the far side.
In a few moments, from the crest of the ridge, they made out the two running forms on the road below. Blenham was still frantically beating his horse and Temple's. Terry's horn blared; her car leaped; and Blenham, cursing loudly, jerked his horse back on its haunches and well out of the road. With wheels locked, Terry slid to a standstill.
"Pile in, dad," she said coolly, ignoring Blenham. "Steve Packard and I will take you into Red Creek. Packard is ready to make you a better proposition than Blenham's. Turn your horse loose; he'll go home, and pile in with us."
"He'll do nothing of the kind!" shouted Blenham, his voice husky with his fury. "Just you try that on Temple, an'— He'll do nothing of the kind," he concluded heavily, his mien eloquent of threat.
"We know you think you've got some kind of a strangle-hold on him, Blenham," cut in Terry crisply. "But even if you have, dad is a white man and—dad! What is the matter?"