Frances of the Ranges: or, The Old Ranchman's Treasure

“I’ll be all right,” he assured her. “I have a dance promised from Mrs. Edwards and each of the girls but that Boston one, right now. And I wouldn’t miss your show in Jackleg, Frances, for a penny!

“I only wish Lon were here to enjoy it. I got a letter from that minister saying that Lon and he will reach here next week. If they’d come early in the week they’d get here in time for the pageant, anyway.”

With so much bustle and preparation about the Bar-T ranch-house, there was not much likelihood of anybody being reckless enough to attempt stealing the old Spanish chest, or its contents.

These days the Captain kept the room in which the chest of treasure lay double-locked, and at night slept in the room himself. From sunset to sunrise a relay of cowboys rode around the huge house and compound, and although Pete Marin, as Ratty M’Gill’s friend from Mississippi was called, was still at large, there was no fear that he, or anybody else, would get into the hacienda at night.

Frances, with all her duties, had less time to devote to Pratt’s entertainment now. In truth, as soon as he was able to get downstairs by himself he complained that he lost his nurse.

When the crowd came over from the Edwards ranch, and sat around on the porch, Frances was not always with them. One afternoon–the very day before the dinner and dance, in fact–she came through one of the long, open windows upon the veranda, right behind a group of three of the girls. It was by chance she heard one of them say:

“Well, I don’t care, Sue, I think she is real nice. You are awfully critical.”

“I can’t bear dowdy people,” drawled Sue Latrop. “I know she’ll be a sight at that dinner to-morrow night. My goodness! if for nothing else I’d come to see how she looks in her ‘best bib and tucker’ and how that queer old man acts when he is what he calls ‘all dolled up.’”

“Sh!” warned the third girl. “Somebody will hear you.”

“Pooh! If they do?” returned Sue Latrop, carelessly.

“If I were you,” said the other girl, with warmth, “I wouldn’t accept an invitation to dine with people whom I expected to make fun of.”

“Silly!” laughed the girl from Boston. “I’ve got to find enjoyment somewhere–and there’s little enough of it in this Panhandle. I’ll be glad when father writes saying that I can come home once again.”

“How about your going to this dance, Sue?” chuckled one of the girls, suddenly. “I thought your doctor had forbidden dancing for this summer?”

“I think I see myself dancing with these cowboys that they are going to invite,” scoffed Sue. “And Pratt can’t dance yet. There isn’t anybody worth dancing with in our crowd now.”

“Hasn’t the Captain asked you for a dance?” queried her friend, roguishly.

“I should say not!” gasped Sue. “Fancy!”

“You must not act as though his invitation insulted you, Sue Latrop,” said one of the other girls, rather tartly. “You might as well understand, first as last, that we are all fond of Captain Rugley. Besides, he’s a very influential man and one of the wealthiest in this part of the Panhandle.”

“Nouveau-riche,” sniffed Miss Sue, with a toss of her head.

“If that means newly rich, why, he’s not!” exclaimed the other girl, with continued warmth. “It’s true, he didn’t make his money baking beans, or bean-pots; nor by drying and selling pollock and calling it ‘codfish.’ I believe one has to make his money in some such way to break into Boston society?”

“Something like that,” responded Sue, calmly.

“Well, the old Captain is very, very wealthy,” went on his champion. “If you’d ever been much inside this big house, you’d see it is so. And they say he has a treasure chest containing jewels of fabulous value.”

“A treasure chest!” ejaculated the Boston girl.

“Yes, Ma’am!”

“Now you are trying to fool me,” declared Sue Latrop.

“You wait! I expect Frances will wear at the dinner some of those wonderful old jewels the Captain digs out of his chest once in a while. I’ve heard they are really amazing —

“Jewels to deck out the Cattle Queen!” interrupted Sue, tauntingly. “Nose ring and anklets included, I s’pose?”

“Now, Sue! how can you be so mean?” cried one of the other girls.

“Pshaw! I suppose she’ll be a wondrous sight in her ‘best bib and tucker.’ Loaded down with silver ornaments, like a Mexican belle at a fair, or an Indian squaw at a poodle-dog feast. She will undoubtedly throw all us girls in the shade,” and Sue burst into a gale of laughter.

“I declare! you’re cruel, Sue!” cried one of the girls from Amarillo.

“I’d like to know how you make that out, Miss?” demanded the girl from Boston.

“Frances has never done you a bit of harm. Why! you are accepting her hospitality this very moment. And yet, you haven’t a good word to say for her.”

“I don’t see that I am called upon to give her a good word,” sneered Miss Latrop. “She is a rough, rude, quite impossible person. I fail to see wherein she deserves any consideration at my hands. I declare! to hear you girls, one would think this cowgirl was of some importance.”

Frances came quietly away from the window, postponing her dusting in that quarter until later. But she was tempted–very sorely tempted indeed.

Sue expected her to look like a cross between an Indian squaw and a Mexican belle at dinner–and Frances was sorely tempted to fulfil the Boston girl’s idea of what a “cattle queen” should look like at a society function!

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE BURSTING OF THE CHRYSALIS

Frances Durham Rugley was growing up. At least, she felt a great many years older now than she did that day so short a time before when, riding along the trail, she had heard Pratt and the mountain lion fighting in Brother’s Coulie.

She looked at her reflection in the long dressing-mirror in her own room, and could not see that she had added to her stature in this time “one jot or tittle.” But inside she felt worlds older.

It was the afternoon of the dinner-party day. She had come upstairs to make ready to receive her guests. The dinner was for seven and Frances had given herself plenty of time to dress.

Pratt was off on his pony, “getting the stiffness out of himself,” he declared. The old Captain was just as busy as a bee, and just as fussy as a clucking hen, about the last preparations for the party.

And meanwhile Frances was undecided. She almost wished she might run away from the ordeal before her. To face all these people whom, after all, she knew so slightly, and play hostess at her father’s table, and be criticised by them all, was an ordeal hard for the range girl to face.

She was not particularly shy; but she shrank from unkind remarks, and she was sure of having at least one critic-extraordinary at the table–Sue Latrop.

This was really Frances’ “coming out party” but she didn’t want to “come out” at all!

“Oh! I wish they had never come here. I wish daddy had not asked them to this dinner. Dear me!” groaned the girl of the ranges, “I almost wish I had never met Pratt at all.”

For, looking into the future, she saw a long vista of range work and quiet living, with merely the minor incidents of ranch life to break the monotony. This “dip” into society would not even leave a pleasant remembrance, she was afraid.

And it might be years before she would be called upon to play hostess in such a way as this again. She sighed and unbraided her hair. At that moment there sounded a knock upon her door.

She ran to open it to her father.

“Here you are, Frances,” said the old ranchman, jovially. “Never mind if Lon hasn’t got here yet; I’ve gone deeper into the treasure chest. I want you to be all dolled up to-night.”

His hands were fairly ablaze–or looked to be. He had his great palms cupped, and that cup was full of gems in all sorts of ancient settings–shooting sparks of all colors in the dimly lighted room.

“There’s a handful of stuff to make you pretty,” he said, proudly.

The ancient belt dangled over his arm. He placed all the things on her dressing-table, and stood off to admire their brilliancy. Frances swallowed a lump in her throat. How could she disappoint him! How could she try to tell him how unsuitable these gems were for a young girl in her teens! He would be heart-broken if she did not wear them.

“You are a dear, Daddy!” she murmured, and kissed him. “Now run away and let me dress.”

He tiptoed out, all a-smile. His wife’s dressing-room had been a “holy of holies” to this simple-minded old man, and Frances reminded him every day, more and more strongly, of the woman whom he had worshiped for a few happy years.

Frances did not hasten with her preparations, however. She sat down and spread the gewgaws out before her on the dresser. The belt, Spanish earrings of fabulous value and length, rings that almost blinded her when she held the stones in the sunlight, a great oval brooch, bracelets, and a necklace of matched stones that made her heart beat almost to suffocation when she tried it on her brown throat.

She had it in her power to “knock their eyes out,” as daddy (and Tom Gallup) had expressed it. She could bedeck herself like a queen. She knew that Sue Latrop worshiped the tangible signs of wealth, as she understood them.

Cattle, and range lands, and horses, and a great, rambling house like this at the Bar-T, impressed the girl from Boston very little. But jewels would appeal to her empty head as nothing else could.

Frances knew this very well. She knew that she could overawe the Boston girl with a display of these gems. And she would please her father, too, in loading her fingers and ears and neck and arms with the brilliants.

And then, before she got any farther in her dressing, or had decided in her troubled mind what really to do, there came another, and lighter, tapping on her door.

“Who’s there?” asked Frances.

“It’s only me, Frances,” said Pratt.

“What do you want?” she asked, calmly, rising and approaching the door.

“Got something for you–if you want them,” the young man said, in a low voice.

“What is it?” she queried.

“Open the door and see,” and he laughed a little nervously.

Frances drew her gown closer about her throat, and turned the knob. Instantly a great bunch of fragrant little blossoms–the wild-flowers so hard to find on the plains and in the foothills–were thrust into her hands.

“Oh, Pratt!” shrieked the girl in delight.

She clasped the blossoms to her bosom; she buried her face in them. Pratt watched her with smiling lips, and wonderingly.

How pretty and girlish she was! The grown-up air that responsibilities had lent her fell away like a cloak. She was just a simple, enthusiastic, delighted girl, after all!

“Like them?” asked the young man, laconically.

“I love them!” Frances declared.

Pratt was thinking how wonderful it was that a girl could seize a big bunch of posies like that, and hug them, and press them to her face, and still not crush the fragile things.

“Why,” he thought, “I’ve had to handle them like eggs all the way here, to keep from spoiling them beyond repair. Aren’t girls wonders?”

You see, Pratt Sanderson was beginning to be interested in the mysteries of the opposite sex.

“Run away now, like a good boy,” she said to him, as she had to her father, and closed the door once more.

She ran to her bathroom and filled two vases with water and put the flower stems in, that they might drink and keep the blossoms fresh.

Then, with a lighter air and tread, she went about her dressing for the party.

She put up her hair, deftly copying the fashion that Sue Latrop–that mirror of Eastern fashion–affected. And the new mode became Frances vastly.

Her new dress–the one she had had made for the pageant–had already come home from the city dressmaker who had her measurements. She spread it upon the bed and got her skirts and other linen.

Half an hour later she was out of her bath and ready for the dress itself. It went on and fitted perfectly.

“I am sure anybody must admire this,” she told herself. She was sure that none of the girls at the dinner and dance would be more fitly dressed than herself–if she stopped right here!

But now she returned to the dresser and looked at the blazing gems from the old Spanish chest. If only daddy did not want her to wear them!

A ring, one bracelet, possibly the brooch. She might wear those without shocking good taste. All were beautiful; but the heavy settings, the great belt of gold and emeralds, the necklace of sparkling brilliants–all, all were too rich and too startling for a girl of her age, and well Frances knew it.

With sinking heart and trembling fingers she adorned herself with the heaviest weight of trouble she had ever borne.

A little later she descended the stairs, slowly, regally, bearing her head erect, and looking like a little tragedy queen as she appeared in the soft evening glow at the foot of the stairs.

Pratt’s gasp of wonder and amazement made the old Captain turn to look.

Above her brow was a crescent of sparkling stones. The long, graceful earrings lay lovingly upon the bared, velvet shoulders of the girl.

The bracelets clasped the firm flesh of her arms warmly. The collar of gems sparkled at her throat. The brooch blazed upon her bosom. And around her slender waist was the great belt of gold.

She was a wonderful sight! Pratt was dazzled–amazed. The old ranchman poked him in the ribs.

“What do you think of that?” he demanded. “Went right down to the bottom of the chest to get all that stuff. Isn’t she the whole show?”

And Frances had hard work to keep back the tears. She knew that was exactly what she was–a show.

She could see the change slowly grow in Pratt’s features. His wonder shifted to disapproval. After the first shock he realized that the exhibition of the gems on such an occasion as this was in bad taste.

Why! she was like a jeweler’s window! The gems were wonderfully beautiful, it was true. But they would better be on velvet cushions and behind glass to be properly appreciated.

“Do you like me, Daddy?” she asked, softly.

“My mercy, Frances! I scarcely know you,” he admitted. “You certainly make a great show.”

“Are you satisfied?” she asked again.

“I–I’d ought to be,” he breathed, solemnly. “You–you’re a beauty! Isn’t she, Pratt?”

“Save my blushes,” Frances begged, but not lightly. “If I suit you exactly, Daddy, I shall appear at dinner this way.”

“Sure! Show them to our guests. There’s not another woman in the Panhandle can make such a show.”

Frances, with a sharp pain at her heart, thought this was probably true.

“Wait, Daddy,” she said. “Let me run back and make one little change. You wait there in the cool reception-room, and see how I look next time.”

She could no longer bear the expression of Pratt’s eyes. Turning, she gathered up her skirts and scuttled back to her room. Her cheeks were afire. Her lips trembled. She had to fight back the tears.

One by one she removed the gaudy ornaments. She left the crescent in her wavy brown hair and the old-fashioned brooch at her breast. Everything else she stripped off and flung into a drawer, and locked it.

These two pieces of jewelry might be heirlooms that any young girl could wear with taste at her “coming out” party.

She ran to the vases and took a great bunch of Pratt’s flowers which she carried in her gloved hand when she went down for the second time to show herself to her father.

This time she tripped lightly. Her cheeks were becomingly flushed. Her bare throat, brown and firm, rose from the soft laces of her dress in its unadorned beauty. The very dress she wore seemed more simple and girlish–but a thousand times more fitting for her wearing.

“Daddy!”

She burst into the dimly lighted room. He wheeled in his chair, removed the pipe from his mouth, and stared at her again.

This time there was a new light in his eyes, as there was in hers. He stood up and something caught him by the throat–or seemed to–and he swallowed hard.

“How do you like me now?” she whispered, stretching her arms out to him.

“My–my little girl!” murmured the old Captain, and his voice broke. “Then–then you are not grown up, after all?”

“Nor do I want to be, for ever and ever so long yet, Daddy!” she cried, and ran to enfold him in her warm embrace.

“Humph!” said the old Captain, confidentially. “I was half afraid of that young person who was just down here, Frances. I can kiss you now without mussing you all up, eh?”

Pratt had stolen out of the room through one of the windows to the veranda.

His heart was swelling and salt tears stung his eyes.

Like the old Captain, the youth had felt some awe of the richly-bedecked young girl who had displayed to such advantage the stunning and wonderful old jewelry that had once adorned Spanish señoras or Aztec princesses. Despite the fact that he disapproved of such a barbarous display, Pratt had been impressed.

He had an inkling, too, as to Sue Latrop’s attitude toward the range girl and believed that some unkind expression of the Boston girl’s feelings had tempted Frances to show herself in barbaric guise at the dinner. Pratt could not have blamed the Western girl if she had “knocked their eyes out,” to use Tom Gallup’s expression, with an exhibition of the gorgeous jewels Captain Rugley had got out of the treasure chest.

Without much doubt the old ranchman would have been very proud of his daughter’s beauty, set off by the glitter of the wonderful old gems. It was his nature to boast of his possessions, although his pride in them was innocent enough. His wealth would never in this wide world make Captain Dan Rugley either purse-proud or arrogant!

The old man’s sweetness of temper, kindliness of manner, and open-handedness had been inherited by Frances. She was a true daughter of her father. But she was her mother’s child, too. The well-bred, quiet, tactful lady whom the old Border fighter had married had left her mark upon the range girl. Frances possessed natural refinement and good taste. It was that which had caused her to go to her chamber after the display of the jewels, and return for a second “review.”

The appearance of the simply-dressed girl who had come downstairs the second time had so impressed Pratt Sanderson that he wished to get off here on the porch by himself for a minute or two.

The first load of visitors was just driving up to the gate of the compound.

He watched the girls from Amarillo, and Sue, and all the others descend, shake out their ruffles, and run up the steps.

“My!” sighed Pratt Sanderson in his soul. “Frances has got them all beat in every little way. That’s as sure as sure!”

CHAPTER XXIX

“THE PANHANDLE–PAST AND PRESENT”

Jackleg was in holiday attire. It was a raw Western settlement, it was true; but there was more business ambition and public spirit in the place than in half a dozen Eastern towns of its population.

The schoolhouse was a long, low structure, seating as many people as the ordinary town hall. It was situated upon a flat bit of prairie on the outskirts of the town. Rather, the town had grown from the schoolhouse to the railroad station, on either side of a long, dusty street. Railroads in the West do not go out of their way to touch immature settlements. The settlements have to stretch tentacles out to the place where the railroad company determines to build a station.

This was so at Jackleg, but it gave a long vista of Main Street from the heart of the town to its outlying suburbs. This street was now gay with flags and bunting, while there were many arches of colored electric lights to burn at night.

Almost before the plans for the pageant had been formed, the business men of Jackleg had subscribed a liberal sum to defray expenses. As the plans for the entertainment progressed, and it was whispered about what a really fine thing it was to be, more subscriptions rolled in.

But Captain Dan Rugley had deposited a guarantee with the Committee that he would pay any debts over the subscriptions received, therefore Frances and her helpers had gone ahead along rather lavish lines.

The end wall of the school building had been actually removed. The framework of the wall was rearranged by the carpenters like the proscenium arch of a stage, and a drop of canvas faced the spectators where the teacher’s desk and platform had been.

Behind the schoolhouse was a vacant lot. This had been surrounded with a high board fence. The enclosure made the great stage for the spectacle which the Jackleg people, the ranchers and farmers from around about, and the visitors from Amarillo and other towns, had come to see.

At the back of this enclosure, or stage, was a big sheet, or screen, on which moving pictures could be thrown. On a platform built outside, and over the open end of the building, were two moving picture machines with operators who had come on from California where some of the pictures had been made by a very famous film company.

Some of the pictures had been made in Oklahoma, too, where one public-spirited American citizen has saved a herd of the almost extinct bison that once roamed our Western plains in such numbers.

At either side of the fenced yard behind the schoolhouse stood the actors in the spectacle–both human and dumb–with all the paraphernalia. A director had come on from the film company to stage the show; but the story as developed was strictly in accordance with Frances Rugley’s “plans and specifications.”

“She’s a wonder, that little girl,” declared the professional. “She’d make her mark as a scenario writer–no doubt of that. I’d like to get her for our company; but they say her father is one of the richest men in the Panhandle.”

Pratt Sanderson, to whom he happened to say this, nodded. “And one of the best,” he assured the Californian. “Captain Dan Rugley is a noble old man, a gentleman of the old school, and one who has seen the West grow up and develop from the times of its swaddling clothes until now.”

“Wonderful country,” sighed the director. “Look at its beginnings almost within the memory of the present generation, and now–why! there’s half a hundred automobiles parked right outside this show to-night!”

Captain Dan Rugley secured a front seat. He was as excited as a boy over the event. He admitted to Mrs. Bill Edwards that he hadn’t been to a “regular show” a dozen times in his life.

“And I expect this is going to knock the spots out of anything I ever saw–even the Grand Opera at Chicago, when my wife and I went on our honeymoon.”

The young folks from the Edwards ranch were scattered about the old Captain. Sue Latrop had assumed her most critical attitude. But Sue had been wonderfully silent about Frances and her father since the dinner dance.

That occasion had turned out to be something entirely different from what the girl from Boston expected. In the first place, her young hostess was better and more tastefully–though simply–dressed than any of her guests.

Her adornments had been only a crescent in her hair and a brooch; but Sue had been forced to admire the beauty and value of these. Beside Frances, the other girls seemed overdressed. The range girl had dignity enough to carry off her part perfectly.

Under the soft glow of the candles in the wonderful old candelabra, to which the Captain referred as “a part of the loot of Señor Morales’ hacienda,” Frances of the ranges sat as hostess, calmly beautiful, and governing the course of the dinner without the least hesitancy or confusion.

She looked out for every guest’s needs and directed the two Mexican boys and Ming in their service with all the calmness and judgment of a hostess who was long used to dinner parties. Indeed, Sue Latrop was forced to admit in her secret soul that she had never seen any hostess manage better at an entertainment of this kind.

At the upper end of the table, the old Captain fairly beamed his hospitality and delight. He kept the boys in a gale of laughter, and the girls seemed all to enjoy themselves, too. Critical Miss Latrop could throw no wet blanket upon the proceedings; to tell the truth, her sour face was quite overlooked by the other guests, and about all the attention she attracted was when Mrs. Bill Edwards asked her if she had the toothache.

“No, I have no toothache!” snapped Sue. “I don’t see why you should ask.”