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

“Molly, come here!” She whistled for the pinto and Molly’s head came up and her eyes rolled in the direction of her mistress. She knew she was being abused; and she remembered that Frances was always kind to her.

Whether Ratty agreed or not, the pinto galloped across the corral.

“Get down off that pony, you brute!” exclaimed Frances, her eyes flashing at the half-serious, half-grinning cowboy.

“She’s some little pinto when she gits in a tantrum,” remarked the unabashed Ratty.

Frances had brought her bridle. Although Molly stood shaking and quivering, the girl slipped the bit between her jaws and buckled the straps in a moment. She held the pony, but did not attempt to lead her toward the saddling shed.

“M’Gill,” Frances said, sharply, “you go to Silent Sam and get your time and come to the house this noon for your pay. You’ll never bestride another pony on this ranch. Do you hear me?”

“What’s that?” demanded the cowpuncher, his face flaming instantly, and his black eyes sparkling.

She had reproved him before his mates, and the young man was angry on the instant. But Frances was angry first. And, moreover, she had good reason for distrusting Ratty. The incident was one lent by Fortune as an excuse for his discharge.

“You are not fit to handle stock,” said Frances, bitingly. “Look what you did to that bunch of cattle the other day! And I’ve watched you more than once misusing your mount. Get your pay, and get off the Bar-T. We’ve no use for the like of you.”

“Say!” drawled the puncher, with an ugly leer. “Who’s bossing things here now, I’d like to know?”

“I am!” exclaimed the girl, advancing a step and clutching the quirt, which swung from her wrist, with an intensity that turned her knuckles white. “You see Sam as I told you, and be at the house for your pay when I come back.”

The other punchers had slipped away, going about their work or to the bunk-house. Ratty M’Gill stood with flaming face and glittering eyes, watching the girl depart, leading the trembling Molly toward the exit of the corral.

“You’re a sure short-tempered gal this A. M.,” he growled to himself. “And ye sure have got it in for me. I wonder why? I wonder why?”

Frances did not vouchsafe him another look. She stood in the shadow of the shed and petted Molly, fed her a couple of lumps of sugar from her pocket, and finally made her forget Ratty’s abuse. But Molly’s flanks would be tender for some time and her temper had not improved by the treatment she had received.

“Perfectly scandalous!” exclaimed Frances, to herself, almost crying now. “Just to show off before the other boys. Oh! he was mean to you, Molly dear! A fellow like Ratty M’Gill will stand watching, sure enough.”

Finally, she got the saddle cinched upon the nervous pinto and rode her out of the corral and away to the ranges for her usual round of the various camps. She had not been as far as the West Run for several days.

CHAPTER XIII

THE GIRL FROM BOSTON

Cow-ponies are never trained to trot. They walk if they are tired; sometimes they gallop; but usually they set off on a long, swinging lope from the word “Go!” and keep it up until the riders pull them down.

The moment Frances of the ranges had swung herself into Molly’s saddle, the badly treated pinto leaped forward and dashed away from the corrals and bunk-house. Frances let her have her head, for when Molly was a bit tired she would forget the sting and smart of Ratty M’Gill’s spurs and quirt.

Frances had not seen Silent Sam that morning; but was not surprised to observe the curling smoke of a fresh fire down by the branding pen. She knew that a bunch of calves and yearlings had been rounded up a few days before, and the foreman of the Bar-T would take no chance of having them escape to the general herds on the ranges, and so have the trouble of cutting them out again at the grand round-up.

It was impossible, even on such a large ranch as the Bar-T, to keep cattle of other brands from running with the Bar-T herds. A breach made in a fence in one night by some active young bull would allow a Bar-T herd and some of Bill Edwards’ cattle, for instance, to become associated.

To try to separate the cattle every time such a thing happened would give the punchers more than they could do. The cattle thus associated were allowed to run together until the round-up. Then the unbranded calves would always follow their mothers, and the herdsmen could easily separate the young stock, as well as that already branded, from those belonging on other ranches.

Although it was a bit out of her direct course, Frances pulled Molly’s head in the direction of the branding fire. Before she came in sight of the bawling herd and the bunch of excited punchers, a cavalcade of riders crossed the trail, riding in the same direction.

No cowpunchers these, but a party of horsemen and horsewomen who might have just ridden out of the Central Park bridle-path at Fifty-ninth Street or out of the Fens in Boston’s Back Bay section.

At a distance they disclosed to Frances’ vision–unused to such sights–a most remarkable jumble of colors and fashions. In the West khaki, brown, or olive grey is much worn for riding togs by the women, while the men, if not in overalls, or chaps, clothe themselves in plain colors.

But here was actually more than one red coat! A red coat with never a fox nearer than half a thousand miles!

“Is it a circus parade?” thought Frances, setting spurs to her pinto.

And no wonder she asked. There were three girls, or young women, riding abreast, each in a natty red coat with tails to it, hard hats on their heads, and skirts. They rode side-saddle. Luckily the horses they rode were city bred.

There were two or three other girls who were dressed more like Frances herself, and bestrode their ponies in sensible style. The males of the party were in the Western mode; Frances recognized one of them instantly; it was Pratt Sanderson.

He was not a bad rider. She saw that he accompanied one of the girls who wore a red coat, riding close upon her far side. The cavalcade was ambling along toward the branding pen, which was in the bottom of a coulie.

As Frances rode up behind the party, Molly’s little feet making so little sound that her presence was unnoticed, the Western girl heard a rather shrill voice ask:

“And what are they doing it for, Pratt? I re’lly don’t just understand, you know. Why burn the mark upon the hides of those–er–embryo cows?”

“I’m telling you,” Pratt’s voice replied, and Frances saw that it was the girl next to him who had asked the question. “I’m telling you that all the calves and young stock have to be branded.”

“Branded?”

“Yes. They belong to the Bar-T, you see; therefore, the Bar-T mark has to be burned on them.”

“Just fancy!” exclaimed the girl in the red coat. “Who would think that these rude cattle people would have so much sentiment. This Frances Rugley you tell about owns all these cows? And does she have her monogram burned on all of them?”

Frances drew in her mount. She wanted to laugh (she heard some of the party chuckling among themselves), and then she wondered if Pratt Sanderson was not, after all, making as much fun of her as he was of the girl in the red coat?

Pratt suddenly turned and saw the ranchman’s daughter riding behind them. He flushed, but smiled, too; and his eyes were dancing.

“Oh, Sue!” he exclaimed. “Here is Frances now.”

So this was Sue Latrop–the girl from Boston. Frances looked at her keenly as she turned to look at the Western girl.

“My dear! Fancy! So glad to know you,” she said, handling her horse remarkably well with one hand and putting out her right to Frances.

The latter urged Molly nearer. But the pinto was not on her good behavior this morning. She had been too badly treated at the corral.

Molly shook her head, danced sideways, wheeled, and finally collided with Pratt’s grey pony. The latter squealed and kicked. Instantly, Molly’s little heels beat a tattoo on the grey’s ribs.

“Hello!” exclaimed Pratt, recovering his seat and pulling in the grey. “What’s the matter with that horse, Frances?”

Molly was off like a rocket. Frances fairly stood in the stirrups to pull the pinto down–and she was not sparing of the quirt. It angered her that Molly should “show off” just now. She had heard Sue Latrop’s shrill laugh.

When she rode back Frances did not offer to shake hands with the Boston girl. And, as it chanced, she never did shake hands with her.

“You ride such perfectly ungovernable horses out here,” drawled the Boston girl. “Is it just for show?”

“Our ponies are not usually family pets,” laughed Frances. Yet she flushed, and from that moment she was always expecting Sue to say cutting things.

“They tell me it is so interesting to see the calves–er–monogrammed; do you call it?” said Sue, with a little cough.

“Branded!” exclaimed Pratt, hurriedly.

“Oh, yes! So interesting, I suppose?”

“We do not consider it a show,” said Frances, bluntly. “It is a necessary evil. I never fancied the smell of scorched hair and hide myself; and the poor creatures bawl so. But branding and slitting their ears are the only ways we have of marking the cattle.”

“Re’lly?” repeated Sue, staring at her as though Frances were more curious than the bawling cattle.

The irons were already in the fire when the party rode down to the scene of the branding. Silent Sam was in charge of the gang. They had rounded up nearly two hundred calves and yearlings. Some of the cows had followed their off-spring out of the herd, and were lowing at the corral fence.

Afoot and on horseback the men drove the half-wild calves into the branding pen runway. As they came through they were roped and thrown, and Sam and an assistant clapped the irons to their bony hips. The smell of singed hair was rather unpleasant, and the bawling of the excited cattle drowned all conversation.

When a calf or a yearling was let loose, he ran as hard as he could for a while, with the smoking “monogram,” as Sue Latrop called it, the object of his tenderest attention. But the smart of it did not last for long, and the branded stock soon went to graze contentedly outside the corral fence, forgetting the experience.

Frances had a chance to speak to Sam for a moment.

“Ratty will come to you for his time. I’m going to pay him off this noon. I’ve got good reason for letting him go.”

“I bet ye,” agreed Sam, for whatever Frances said or did was right with him.

Pratt insisted upon Frances meeting all these people from Amarillo. There was Mrs. Bill Edwards, whom she already knew, as chaperon. Most of the others were young people, although nearer Pratt’s age than that of the ranchman’s daughter.

Sue Latrop was the only one from the East. She had been to Amarillo before, and she evidently had much influence over her girl friends from that Panhandle city, if over nobody else. Two of the girls had copied her riding habit exactly; and if imitation is the sincerest flattery, then Sue was flattered indeed.

The Boston girl undoubtedly rode well. She had had schooling in the art of sticking to a side-saddle like a fly on a wall!

Her horse curvetted, arched his neck, played pretty tricks at command, and was long-legged enough to carry her swiftly over the ground if she so desired. He made the scrubby, nervous little cow-ponies–including Molly–look very shabby indeed.

Sue Latrop apparently believed she was ever so much better mounted than the other girls, for she was the only one who had brought her own horse. The others, including Pratt, were mounted on Bill Edwards’ ponies.

While they were standing in a group and talking, there came a yell from the branding pen. A section of rail fence went down with a crash. Through the fence came a little black steer that had escaped several “branding soirées.”

Blackwater, as the Bar-T boys called him, was a notorious rebel. He was originally a maverick–a stray from some passing herd–and had joined the Bar-T cattle unasked. That was more than two years before. He had remained on the Bar-T ranges, but was evidently determined in his dogged mind not to submit to the humiliation of the branding-iron.

He had been rounded up with a bunch of yearlings and calves a dozen times; but on each occasion had escaped before they got him into the corral. It was better to let the black rebel go than to lose a dozen or more of the others while chasing him.

This time, however, Silent Sam had insisted upon riding the rebel down and hauling him, bawling, into the corral.

But the rope broke, and before the searing-iron could touch the black steer’s rump he went through the fence like a battering-ram.

“Look out for that ornery critter, Miss Frances!” yelled the foreman of the Bar-T Ranch.

Frances saw him coming, headed for the group of visitors. She touched Molly with the spur, and the intelligent cow-pony jumped aside into the clear-way. Frances seized the rope hanging at her saddle.

Pratt had shouted a warning, too. The visitors scattered. But for once Sue Latrop did not manage her mount to the best advantage.

“Look out, Sue!”

“Quick! He’ll have you!”

These and other warnings were shouted. With lowered front the black steer was charging the horse the girl from Boston rode.

Unlike the trained cow-ponies from Bill Edwards’ corral, this gangling creature did not know, of himself, what to do in the emergency. The other mounts had taken their riders immediately out of the way. Sue’s horse tossed his head, snorted, and pawed the earth, remaining with his flank to the charging steer.

“Get out o’ that!” yelled Pratt, and laid his quirt across the stubborn horse’s quarters.

But to no avail. Sue could neither manage him nor get out of the saddle to escape Blackwater. The maverick was fortunately charging the strange horse from the off side, and he was coming like a shot from a cannon.

The cowpunchers at the pen were mounting their ponies and racing after the black steer, but they were too far away to stop him. In another moment he would head into the body of Sue’s mount with an awful impact!

CHAPTER XIV

THE CONTRAST

“Frances!”

Pratt Sanderson fairly shrieked the ranch girl’s name. He could do nothing to save Sue Latrop himself, nor could the other visitors from Amarillo. Silent Sam and his men were too far away.

If with anybody, it lay with Frances Rugley to save the Boston girl. Frances already had her rope circling her head and Molly was coming on the jump!

The wicked little black steer was almost upon the gangling Eastern horse ere Frances stretched forward and let the loop go.

Then she pulled back on Molly’s bridle reins. The cow-pony began to slide, haunches down and forelegs stiffened. The loop dropped over the head of the black steer.

Had Blackwater been a heavier animal, he would have overborne Frances and her mount at the moment the rope became taut. For it was not a good job at all–that particular roping Frances was afterward ashamed of.

To catch a big steer in full flight around the neck only is to court almost certain disaster; but Blackwater did not weigh more than nine hundred pounds.

Nor was Molly directly behind him when Frances threw the lariat. The rope tautened from the side–and at the very instant the mad steer collided with Sue Latrop’s mount.

The wicked head of the steer banged against the horse’s body, which gave forth a hollow sound; the horse himself squealed, stumbled, and went over with a crash.

Fortunately Sue had known enough to loosen her foot from the stirrup. As Frances lay back in her own saddle, and she and Molly held the black steer on his knees, Pratt drove his mount past the stumbling horse, and seized the Boston girl as she fell.

She cleared her rolling mount with Pratt’s help. Otherwise she would have fallen under the heavy carcase of the horse and been seriously hurt.

Blackwater had crashed to the ground so hard that he could not immediately recover his footing. He kicked with a hind foot, and Frances caught the foot expertly in a loop, and so got the better of him right then and there. She held the brute helpless until Sam and his assistants reached the spot.

It was Pratt who had really done the spectacular thing. It looked as though Sue Latrop owed her salvation to the young man.

“Hurrah for Pratt!” yelled one of the other young fellows from the city, and most of the guests–both male and female–took up the cry. Pratt had tumbled off his own grey pony with Sue in his arms.

“You’re re’lly a hero, Pratt! What a fine thing to do,” the girl from Boston gasped. “Fancy my being under that poor horse.”

The horse in question was struggling to his feet, practically unhurt, but undoubtedly in a chastened spirit. One of the boys from the branding pen caught his bridle.

Pratt objected to the praise being showered upon him. “Why, folks, I didn’t do much,” he cried. “It was Frances. She stopped the steer!”

“You saved my life, Pratt Sanderson,” declared Sue Latrop. “Don’t deny it.”

“Lots of good I could have done if that black beast had been able to keep right on after your horse, Sue,” laughed Pratt. “You ask Mr. Sam Harding–or any of them.”

Sue’s pretty face was marred by a frown, and she tossed her head. “I don’t need to ask them. Didn’t you catch me as I fell?”

“Oh, but, Sue – ”

“Of course,” said the Boston girl, in a tone quite loud enough for Frances to hear, “those cowmen would back up their employer. They’d say she helped me. But I know whom to thank. You are too modest, Pratt.”

Pratt was silenced. He saw that it was useless to try to convince Sue that she was wrong. It was plain that the girl from Boston did not wish to feel beholden to Frances Rugley.

So the young man dropped the subject. He ran after his own pony, and then brought Sue’s stubborn mount to her hand. Sue was being congratulated and made much of by her friends. None of them spoke to Frances.

Pratt came over to the latter before she could ride away after the bawling steer. Blackwater was going to be branded this time if it took the whole force of the Bar-T to accomplish it!

“Thank you, Frances, for what you did,” the young man said, grasping her hand. “And Bill will thank you, too. He’ll know that it was your work that saved her; Mrs. Edwards isn’t used to cattle and isn’t to be blamed. I feel foolish to have them put it on me.”

Frances laughed. She would not show Pratt that this whole series of incidents had hurt her deeply.

“Don’t make a mountain out of a mole-hill, Pratt,” she said. “And you did do a brave thing. That girl would have been hurt if you had not caught her.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he grumbled.

“I reckon she thinks so, anyway,” said Frances, her eyes twinkling. “How does it feel to be a hero, Pratt?”

Pratt blushed and turned away. “I don’t want to wear any laurels that are not honestly my own,” he muttered.

“But you don’t object to Miss Boston’s expression of gratitude, Pratt?” teased Frances.

He made a little face at her as he went back to the ranchman’s wife and her guests; without another word Frances spurred Molly in the other direction, and before Mrs. Bill Edwards could speak to her the girl of the ranges was far away.

She headed for the West Run, where a large herd of the Bar-T cattle grazed. Nor did she look back again to see what became of the group of riders who were with Mrs. Edwards and Pratt.

Frances had no heart for such company just then. Sue Latrop’s manner had really hurt the Western girl. Perhaps Frances was easily wounded; but Sue had plainly revealed her opinion of the ranchman’s daughter.

The contrast between them cut Frances to the quick. She keenly realized how she, herself, must appear in the company of the pretty Eastern girl.

“Of course, Pratt, and Mrs. Edwards, and all of them, must see how superior she is to me,” Frances thought, as Molly galloped away with her. “But just the same, I don’t like that Sue Latrop a bit!”

CHAPTER XV

IN THE FACE OF DANGER

Frances was going by the way of Cottonwood Bottom because the trail was better and there were fewer gates to open.

The Bar-T kept a gang riding fence all the time; but even so, it was impossible always to keep up the wires. Frances seldom if ever rode from home without wire cutters and staples in a pocket of her saddle.

She stopped several times on this morning to mend breaks and to tighten slack wires, so it was late when she found the herd at West Run. Here were chuck-wagon, horse corral and camp–a regular “cowboy’s home,” in fact.

The boss of the outfit was Asa Bird, and Tom Phipps was the wrangler, while a Mexican, named Miguel, was cooking for the outfit.

“Ya-as, Miss Frances,” drawled Asa, “I reckon we need a right smart of things. Mike says he’s most out o’ provisions; but for the love of home don’t send us no more beans. We’ve jest about been beaned to death! No wonder them Greasers are fighting among themselves all the endurin’ time. It’s the frijoles they eat makes ’em so fractious–sure is!”

Frances wrote out a list of the goods needed, for the next supply wagon that passed this way to drop at the camp, and looked over the outfit in general in order to report fully to Sam and her father regarding the conditions at the West Run.

It was high noon before she got in sight of the cottonwoods on her homeward trail. She was hurrying Molly, for she did not want to keep Ratty M’Gill waiting for his money. As she had told him, she wanted the reckless cowboy off the Bar-T ranges before nightfall.

She had struck the plain above the river ford when she sighted a single rider far ahead, and going in her own direction. It was plain that the man–whoever he was–was heading for the ford instead of the bridge where the new trail crossed.

Something about this fact–or about the slouching rider himself–made Frances suspicious. She was reminded of the last time she had come this way and of the dialogue she had overheard between Ratty M’Gill and the man named Pete.

“If he turns to look back, he will see me,” thought the excited girl.

Instantly she was off Molly’s back. There might be no time to ride out of sight over the ridge. Here was an old buffalo wallow, and she took advantage of it.

In the old days when the bison roamed the plains of the Panhandle the beasts made wallows in which they ground off the grass, and the grassroots as well, leaving a barren hollow from two to four feet in depth. These dust baths were used frequently by the heavily-coated buffalo in hot weather.

Holding Molly by the head the girl commanded her to lie down. The cow-pony, perfectly amenable to her young mistress now, obeyed the order, grunting as she dropped to her knees, the saddle squeaking.

“Be dead!” ordered Frances, sternly. The pinto rolled on her side, stretched out her neck, and blinked up at the girl. She was entirely hidden from any chance glance thrown back by the stranger on the trail; and when Frances dropped down, too, both of them were well out of sight of any one riding the range.

The range girl waited until she was quite sure the stranger had ridden beyond the first line of cottonwoods. Perhaps he merely wished to water his steed at the ford, but Frances had her doubts of him.

When she finally stood up to scrutinize the plain ahead, there was no moving object in sight. Yet she did not mount and ride Molly when she had got the pinto on its legs.

Instead, she led the pony, and kept off the wellworn trail, too. The pounding of hoofs on a hard trail can be distinguished for a long distance by a man who will take the trouble to put his ear to the ground. The sound travels almost as far as the jar of a coming railroad train on the steel rails.

It was more than two miles to the beginning of the cottonwood grove, and one cannot walk very fast and lead a horse, too. But with a hand on Molly’s neck, and speaking an urgent word to the pinto now and then, Frances was able to accomplish the journey within a reasonable time.

Meantime she saw no sign of the man on horseback, nor of anybody else. He had ridden down to the ford, she was sure, and was still down there.

Once among the trees, Frances tied the pinto securely and crept through the thickets toward the shallow part of the stream. She heard no voices this time; but she did smell smoke.