Man to Man

Jackson Gregory

Description

Settle in for a stiff dose of daring and danger in Jackson Gregory's classic Man to Man. Protagonist Steve Packard comes from a long line of rough-and-tumble men who make decisions at the drop of a hat, and when he gets the urge to put his career as a sailor on hold and travel to his childhood stomping, he doesn't stop to question it -- he just goes. But giving into this nostalgic impulse may be the worst mistake in the long line of blunders that is his life. Will he make it out alive?

Sujets

• Westerns
• Western (genre)
• Western

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781775560463
• Langue: English

Extrait

MAN TO MAN
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JACKSON GREGORY
 
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Man to Man First published in 1920 ISBN 978-1-77556-046-3 © 2012 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Chapter I - Steve Dives into Deep Waters Chapter II - Miss Blue Cloak Knows When She's Beat Chapter III - News of a Legacy Chapter IV - Terry Before Breakfast Chapter V - How Steve Packard Came Home Chapter VI - Bank Notes and a Blind Man Chapter VII - The Old Mountain Lion Comes Down from the North Chapter VIII - In Red Creek Town Chapter IX - "It's My Fight and His Let Him Go!" Chapter X - A Ride with Terry Chapter XI - The Tempting of Yellow Barbee Chapter XII - In a Dark Room Chapter XIII - At the Lumber Camp Chapter XIV - The Man-Breaker at Home Chapter XV - At the Fallen Log Chapter XVI - Terry Defies Blenham Chapter XVII - And Calls on Steve Chapter XVIII - "If He Knows—Does She?" Chapter XIX - Terry Confronts Hell-Fire Packard Chapter XX - A Gate and a Record Smashed Chapter XXI - Packard Wrath and Temple Rage Chapter XXII - The Hand of Blenham Chapter XXIII - Steve Rides by the Temple Place Chapter XXIV - Down from the Sky! Chapter XXV - The Stampede Chapter XXVI - Yellow Barbee Keeps a Promise Chapter XXVII - In Honor of the Fairy Queen!
Chapter I - Steve Dives into Deep Waters
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Steve Packard's pulses quickened and a bright eagerness came into hiseyes as he rode deeper into the pine-timbered mountains. To-day he wason the last lap of a delectable journey. Three days ago he had riddenout of the sun-baked town of San Juan; three months had passed since hehad sailed out of a South Sea port.
Far down there, foregathering with sailor men in a dirty water-frontboarding-house, he had grown suddenly and even tenderly reminiscent ofa cleaner land which he had roamed as a boy. He stared back across thedeparted years as many a man has looked from just some such resort asBlack Jack's boarding-house, a little wistfully withal. Abruptlythrowing down his unplayed hand and forfeiting his ante in a card game,he had gotten up and taken ship back across the Pacific. The house ofPackard might have spelled its name with the seven letters of the word"impulse."
Late to-night or early to-morrow he would go down the trail intoPackard's Grab, the valley which had been his grandfather's and,because of a burst of reckless generosity on the part of the old man,Steve's father's also. But never Steve's, pondered the man on thehorse; word of his father's death had come to him five months ago andwith it word of Phil Packard's speculations and sweeping losses.
But never had money's coming and money's going been a serious concernof Steve Packard; and now his anticipation was sufficiently keen. Theworld was his; he had no need of a legal paper to state that the smallfragment of the world known as Ranch Number Ten belonged to him. Hecould ride upon it again, perhaps find one like old Bill Royce, theforeman, left. And then he could go on until he came to the otherPackard ranch where his grandfather had lived and still might be living.
After all of this—Well, there were many sunny beaches here and therealong the seven seas where he had still to lie and sun himself. Now itwas a pure joy to note how the boles of pine and cedar pointed straighttoward the clear, cloudless blue; how the little streams trickledthrough their worn courses; how the quail scurried to their brushyretreats; how the sunlight splashed warm and golden through thebranches; how valleys widened and narrowed and the thickly timberedravines made a delightful and tempting coolness upon the mountainsides.
It was an adventure with its own thrill to ride around a bend in thenarrow trail and be greeted by an old, well-remembered landmark: aflat-topped boulder where he had lain when a boy, looking up at the skyand thrilling to the whispered promises of life; or a pool where he hadfished or swum; or a tree he had climbed or from whose branches he hadshot a gray squirrel. A wagon-road which he might have taken heabandoned for a trail which better suited his present fancy since itled with closer intimacy into the woods.
It was late afternoon when he came to the gentle rise which gave firstglint of the little lake so like a blue jewel set in the dusty green ofthe wooded slopes. As he rose in his stirrups to gaze down a vistathrough the tree-trunks, he saw the bright, vivid blue of a cloak.
"Now, there's a woman," thought Packard without enthusiasm. "The woodswere quite well enough alone without her. As I suppose Eden was. Butalong she comes just the same. And of course she must pick out the onedangerous spot on the whole lake shore to display herself on."
For he knew how, just yonder where the blue cloak caught the sunlight,there was a sheer bank and how the lapping water had cut into it,gouging it out year after year so that the loose soil above was alwaysready to crumble and spill into the lake. The wearer of the brightgarment stirred and stood up, her back still toward him.
"Young girl, most likely," he hazarded an opinion.
Though she was too far from him to be at all certain, he had sensedsomething of youth's own in the very quality of her gesture.
Then suddenly he clapped his spurs to his horse's sides and went racingdown the slope toward the spot where an instant ago she had made such agay contrast to dull verdure and gray boulders. For he had glimpsedthe quick flash of an up-thrown arm, had heard a low cry, had guessedrather than seen through the low underbrush her young body falling.
As he threw himself from his horse's back, his spur caught in the bluecloak which had dropped from her shoulders; he kicked at it savagely.He jerked off his boots, poised a moment looking down upon thedisturbed surface of the water which had closed over her head, made outthe sweep of an arm under the widening circles, and dived straight down.
And so deep down under water they met for the first time, Steve Packardwith a sense of annoyance that was almost outright irritation, the girlstruggling frantically as his right arm closed tight about her. Aquick suspicion came to him that she had not fallen but had thrownherself downward in some passionate quarrel with life; that she wantedto die and would give him scant thanks for the rescue.
This thought was followed by the other that in her access of terror shewas doing what the drowning person always does—losing her head,threatening to bind his arms with her own and drag him down with her.
Struggling half blindly and all silently they rose a little toward thesurface. Packard tightened his grip about her body, managed toimprison one of her arms against her side, beat at the water with hisfree hand, and so, just as his lungs seemed ready to burst, he broughthis nostrils into the air.
He drew in a great breath and struck out mightily for the shore,seeking a less precipitous bank at the head of a little cove. As hedid so, he noted how her struggles had suddenly given over, how shefloated quietly with him, her free arm even aiding in their progress.
A little later he crawled out of the clear, cold water to a pebblybeach, drawing her after him.
And now he understood that his destiny and his own headlong nature hadagain made a consummate fool of him. The same knowledge was offeredhim freely in a pair of gray eyes which fairly blazed at him. Nogratitude there of a maiden heroically succored in the hour of hersupreme distress; just the leaping anger of a girl with a temper likehot fire who had been rudely handled by a stranger.
Her scanty little bathing-suit, bright blue like the discarded cloak,the red rubber cap binding the bronze hair—she must have donned theridiculous thing with incredible swiftness while he batted aneye—might have been utterly becoming in other eyes than those of StevePackard. Now that they merely told him that he was a blundering ass,he was conscious solely of a desire to pick her up and shake her.
"Gee!" she panted at him with an angry scornfulness which made himwince. "You're about the freshest proposition I ever came across!"
Later, perhaps, he would admit that she was undeniably and mostamazingly pretty; that the curves of her little white body weredelightfully perfect; that she had made an armful that at another timewould have put sheer delirium into a man's blood.
Just now he knew only that in his moment of nothing less than stupidityhe had angered her and that his own anger though more unreasonable wasscarcely less heated; that he had made and still made but a sorryspectacle; that he was sopping wet and cold and would be shivering in amoment like a freezing dog.
"Why did you want to yell like a Comanche Indian when you went in?" hedemanded rudely, offering the only defense he could put mind or tongueto. "A man would naturally suppose that you were falling."
"You didn't suppose any such thing!" she retorted sharply. "You saw medive; if you had the brains of a scared rabbit, you'd know that when agirl had gone to the trouble to climb into a bathing-suit and thenjumped into the water she wanted a swim. And to be left alone," sheadded scathingly.
Packard felt the afternoon breeze through the wet garments which stuckso close to him, and shivered.
"If you think," he said, as sharply as she had spoken, "that I justjumped into that infernal ice-pond, clothes and all, for the pure joyof making your charming acquaintance in some ten feet of water, all Ican say is that you are by no means lacking a full appreciation