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

“Seems to me, Frances,” he called, “you’re filling the entire circumambient air with smoke–ker-chow!”

“Why! the wind isn’t your way,” said Frances, and she stood up to look curiously about again.

There seemed to be a lot of smoke. It was rolling in from the westward across the almost level plain. There was a deep rose glow behind it–a threatening illumination.

“Wow!” yelled Pratt.

He had just crawled out from beneath the wagon and was rising to his feet. An object flew by him in the half-dusk, about shoulder-high, and so swiftly that he was startled. He stepped back into a gopher-hole, tripped, and fell full length.

“What in thunder was that?” he yelled, highly excited.

“A jack-rabbit,” growled Mack. “And going some. Something scare’t that critter, sure’s you’re bawn!”

“Didn’t you ever see a jack before, Pratt?” asked Frances, her tone a little queer, he thought.

“Not so close to,” admitted the young fellow, as he scrambled to his feet. “Gracious! if he had hit me he’d have gone clear through me like a cannon-ball.”

It was only Frances who had realized the unexpected peril. She had tried to keep her voice from shaking; but Mack noticed her tone.

“What’s up, Miss?” he asked, getting to his legs, too.

“Fire!” gasped the range girl, clutching suddenly at Pratt’s arm.

“You mean smoke,” laughed Pratt. He saw her rubbing her eyes with her other hand.

But Mack had risen, facing the west. He uttered a funny little cluck in his throat and the laughing young fellow wheeled in wonder.

Along the horizon the glow was growing rapidly. A tongue of yellow flame shot high in the air. A long dead, thoroughly seasoned tree, standing at the forks of the trail, had caught fire and the flame flared forth from its top like a banner.

The prairie was afire!

“Glory to Jehoshaphat!” groaned Mack Hinkman, again. “Who done that?”

“Goodness!” gasped Pratt, quite horror-stricken.

Frances gathered up the cooking implements and flung them into the wagon. She had hobbled Molly and the grey pony; now she ran for them.

“Got that axle fixed, Mack?” she shouted over her shoulder.

“Not for no rough traveling, I tell ye sure, Miss Frances!” complained the teamster. “That was a bad crack. Have to wait to fix it proper at Peckham’s.” Then he added, sotto voce: “If we get the blamed thing there at all.”

“Don’t say that, man!” gasped Pratt Sanderson. “Surely there’s not much danger?”

“This here spot will be scorched like an overdone flapjack in half an hour,” declared Hinkman. “We got to git!”

Frances heard him, distant as she was.

“Oh, Mack! you know we can’t reach the river in half an hour, even if we travel express speed.”

“Well! what we goin’ ter do then?” demanded the teamster. “Stay here and fry?”

Pratt was impressed suddenly with the thought that they were both leaning on the advice and leadership of the girl! He was inexperienced, himself; and the teamster seemed quite as helpless.

A pair of coyotes, too frightened by the fire to be afraid of their natural enemy, man, shot by in the dusk–two dim, grey shapes.

Frances released Molly and the grey pony from their hobbles. She leaped upon the back of the pinto and dragged the grey after by his bridle-reins. She was back at the stalled wagon in a few moments.

Already the flames could be seen along the western horizon as far as the unaided eye could see anything, leaping under the pall of rising smoke. The fire was miles away, it was true; but its ominous appearance affrighted even Pratt Sanderson, who knew so little about such peril.

Mack was fastening straps and hooking up traces; they had not dared leave the mules hitched to the wagon while they were engaged in its repair.

“Come on! get a hustle on you, Mister!” exclaimed the teamster. “We got to light out o’ here right sudden!”

CHAPTER XVIII

THE WAVE OF FLAME

Pratt was pale, as could be seen where his face was not smudged with earth and axle-grease. He came and accepted his pony’s bridle from Frances’ hand.

“What shall we do?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.

It was plain that the teamster had little idea of what was wise or best to do. The young fellow turned to Frances of the ranges quite as a matter of course. Evidently, she knew so much more about the perilous circumstances than he did that Pratt was not ashamed to take Frances’ commands.

“This is goin’ to be a hot corner,” the teamster drawled again; but Pratt waited for the girl to speak.

“Are you frightened, Pratt?” she asked, suddenly, looking down at him from her saddle, and smiling rather wistfully.

“Not yet,” said the young fellow. “I expect I shall be if it is very terrible.”

“But you don’t expect me to be scared?” asked Frances, still gravely.

“I don’t think it is your nature to show apprehension,” returned he.

“I’m not like other girls, you mean. That girl from Boston, for instance?” Frances said, looking away at the line of fire again. “Well!” and she sighed. “I am not, I suppose. With daddy I’ve been up against just such danger as this before. You never saw a prairie fire, Pratt?”

“No, ma’am!” exclaimed Pratt. “I never did.”

“The grass and greasewood are just right for it now. Mack is correct,” the girl went on. “This will be a hot corner.”

“And that mighty quick!” cried Mack.

“But you don’t propose to stay here?” gasped Pratt.

“Not much! Hold your mules, Mack,” she called to the grumbling teamster. “I’m going to make a flare.”

“Better do somethin’ mighty suddent, Miss,” growled the man.

She spurred Molly up to the wagon-seat and there seized one of the blankets.

“Got a sharp knife, Pratt?” she asked, shaking out the folds of the blanket.

“Yes.”

“Slit this blanket, then–lengthwise. Halve it,” urged Frances. “And be quick.”

“That’s right, Miss Frances!” called the teamster. “Set a backfire both sides of the trail. We got to save ourselves. Be sure ye run it a mile or more.”

“Do you mean to burn the prairie ahead of us?” panted Pratt.

“Yes. We’ll have to. I hope nobody will be hurt. But the way that fire is coming back there,” said Frances, firmly, “the flames will be ten feet high when they get here.”

“You don’t mean it!”

“Yes. You’ll see. Pray we may get a burned-over area before us in time to escape. The flames will leap a couple of hundred feet or more before the supply of gas–or whatever it is that burns so high above the ground–expires. The breath of that flame will scorch us to cinders if it reaches us. It will kill and char a big steer in a few seconds. Oh, it is a serious situation we’re in, Pratt!”

“Can’t we keep ahead of it?” demanded the young man, anxiously.

“Not for long,” replied Frances, with conviction. “I’ve seen more than one such fire, as I tell you. There! Take this rawhide.”

The ranchman’s daughter was not idle while she talked. She showed him how to knot the length of rawhide which she had produced from under the wagon-seat to one end of his share of the blanket. Her own fingers were busy with the other half meanwhile.

“Into your saddle now, Pratt. Take the right-hand side of the trail. Ride as fast as you can toward the river when I give the word. Go a mile, at least.”

The ponies were urged close to the campfire and he followed Frances’ example when she flung the tail of her piece of blanket into the blaze. The blankets caught fire and began to smoulder and smoke. There was enough cotton mixed with the wool to cause it to catch fire quickly.

“All right! We’re off!” shouted Frances, and spurred her pinto in the opposite direction. Immediately the smouldering blanket-stuff was blown into a live flame. Wherever it touched the dry grass and clumps of low brush fire started like magic.

Immediately Pratt reproduced her work on the other side of the trail. At right angles with the beaten path, they fled across the prairie, leaving little fires in their wake that spread and spread, rising higher and higher, and soon roaring into quenchless conflagrations.

These patches of fire soon joined and increased to a wider and wider swath of flame. The fire traveled slowly westward, but rushed eastward, propelled by the wind.

Wider and wider grew the sea of flame set by the burning blankets. Like Frances, Pratt kept his mount at a fast lope–the speediest pace of the trained cow-pony–nor did he stop until the blanket was consumed to the rawhide knot.

Then he wheeled his mount to look back. He could see nothing but flames and smoke at first. He did not know how far Frances had succeeded in traveling with her “flare”; but he was quite sure that he had come more than a mile from the wagon-trail.

He could soon see a broadening patch of burned-over prairie in the midst of the swirling flames and smoke. His pony snorted, and backed away from the approach-fire; but Pratt wheeled the grey around to the westward, and where the flames merely crept and sputtered through the greasewood and against the wind, he spurred his mount to leap over the line of fire.

The earth was hot, and every time the pony set a hoof down smoke or sparks flew upward; but Pratt had to get back to the trail. With the quirt he forced on the snorting grey, and finally reached a place where the fire had completely passed and the ground was cooler.

Ashes flew in clouds about him; the smoke from the west drove in a thick mass between him and the darkened sky. Only the glare of the roaring fire revealed objects and landmarks.

The backfire had burned for many yards westward, to meet the threatening wave of flame flying on the wings of the wind. To the east, the line of flame Pratt and Frances had set was rising higher and higher.

He saw the wagon standing in the midst of the smoke, Mack Hinkman holding the snorting, kicking mules with difficulty, while a wild little figure on a pony galloped back from the other side of the trail.

“All right, Pratt?” shrieked Frances. “Get up, Mack; we’ve no time to lose!”

The teamster let the mules go. Yet he dared not let them take their own gait. The thought of that cracked axle disturbed him.

The wagon led, however, through the smoke and dust; the two ponies fell in behind upon the trail. Frances and Pratt looked at each other. The young man was serious enough; but the girl was smiling.

Something she had said a little while before kept returning to Pratt’s mind. He was thinking of what would have happened had Sue Latrop, the girl from Boston, been here instead of Frances.

“Goodness!” Pratt told himself. “They are out of two different worlds; that’s sure! And I’m an awful tenderfoot, just as Mrs. Bill Edwards says.”

“What do you think of it?” asked Frances, raising her voice to make it heard above the roar of the fire and the rumble of the wagon ahead of them.

“I’m scared–right down scared!” admitted Pratt Sanderson.

“Well, so was I,” she admitted. “But the worst is over now. We’ll reach the river and ford it, and so put the fire all behind us. The flames won’t leap the river, that’s sure.”

The heat from the prairie fire was most oppressive. Over their heads the hot smoke swirled, shutting out all sight of the stars. Now and then a clump of brush beside the trail broke into flame again, fanned by the wind, and the ponies snorted and leaped aside.

Suddenly Mack was heard yelling at the mules and trying to pull them down to something milder than a wild gallop. Frances and Pratt spurred their ponies out upon the burned ground in order to see ahead.

Something loomed up on the trail–something that smoked and flamed like a big bonfire.

“What can it be?” gasped Pratt, riding knee to knee with the range girl.

“Not a house. There isn’t one along here,” she returned.

“Some old-timer got caught!” yelled the teamster, looking back at the two pony-riders. “Hope he saved his skin.”

“A wagoner!” cried Frances, startled.

“He cut his stock loose, of course,” yelled Mack Hinkman.

But when they reached the burning wagon they saw that this was not altogether true. One horse lay, charred, in the harness. The wagon had been empty. The driver of it had evidently cut his other horse loose and ridden away on its back to save himself.

“And why didn’t he free this poor creature?” demanded Pratt. “How cruel!”

“He was scare’t,” said Mack, pulling his mules out of the trail so as to drive around the burning wagon. “Or mebbe the hawse fell. Like enough that’s it.”

Frances said nothing more. She was wondering if this abandoned wagon was the one she had seen turn into the trail from Cottonwood Bottom early in the day? And who was its driver?

They went on, puzzled by this incident. At least, Frances and Pratt were puzzled by it.

“We may see the fellow at the ford,” Frances said. “Too bad he lost his outfit.”

“He didn’t have anything in that wagon,” said Pratt. “It was as empty as your own.”

Frances looked at him curiously. She remembered that the young man from Amarillo had taken a peep into the Bar-T wagon when he joined them on the trail. He must have seen the heavy chest; and now he ignored it.

On and on they rode. The smoke made the ride very unpleasant, even if the flames were now at a distance. Behind them the glare of the fire decreased; but to north and south the wall of flame, at a distance of several miles, rushed on and passed the riders on the trail.

The trees along the river’s brink came into view, outlined in many places by red and yellow flames. The fire would do a deal of damage along here, for even the greenest trees would be badly scorched.

The mules had run themselves pretty much out of breath and finally reduced their pace; but the wagon still led the procession when it reached the high bank.

The water in the river was very low; the trail descended the bank on a slant, and Mack put on the brakes and allowed the sure-footed mules to take their own course to the ford.

With hanging heads and heaving flanks, the two cow-ponies followed. Frances and Pratt were scorched, and smutted from head to foot; and their throats were parched, too.

“I hope I’ll never have to take such another ride,” admitted the young man from Amarillo. “Adventure is all right, Frances; but clerking in a bank doesn’t prepare one for such a strenuous life.”

“I think you are game, Pratt,” she said, frankly. “I can see that Mack, even, thinks you are pretty good–for a tenderfoot.”

The wagon went into the water at that moment. Mack yelled to the mules to stop. The wagon was hub deep in the stream and he loosened the reins so that the animals might plunge their noses into the flood. Molly and the grey quickly put down their heads, too.

Above the little group the flames crackled in a dead-limbed tree, lighting the ford like a huge torch. Above the flare of the thick canopy of the smoke spread out, completely overcasting the river.

Suddenly Frances laid her hand upon Pratt’s arm. She pointed with her quirt into a bushy tree on the opposite bank.

“Look over there!” she exclaimed, in a low tone.

Almost as she spoke there sounded the sharp crack of a rifle, and a ball passed through the top of the wagon, so near that it made the ponies jump.

“Put up your hands–all three of you folks down there!” commanded an angry voice. “The magazine of this rifle is plumb full and I can shoot straight. D’ye get me? Hands up!”

“My goodness!” gasped Pratt Sanderson.

What Mack Hinkman said was muffled in his own beard; but his hands shot upward as he sat on the wagon-seat.

Frances said nothing; her heart jumped–and then pumped faster. She recognized the drawling voice of the man in the tree, although she could not see his face clearly in the firelight.

It was Pete–Ratty M’Gill’s acquaintance–the man who had been orderly at the Bylittle Soldiers’ Home, and who had come all the way to the Panhandle to try to secure the treasure in the old Spanish chest.

Perhaps Frances had half expected some such incident as this to punctuate her journey to Amarillo. Nevertheless, the reckless tone of the man, and the way he used his rifle, troubled her.

“Put your hands up!” she murmured to Pratt. “Do just what he tells you. He may be wicked and foolish enough to fire again.”

CHAPTER XIX

MOST ASTONISHING!

“The man must be crazy!” murmured the young bank clerk.

“All the more reason why we should be careful to obey him,” Frances said.

Yet she was not unmindful of the peril Pratt pointed out. Only, in Frances’ case, she had been brought up among men who carried guns habitually, and the sound of a rifle shot did not startle her as it did the young man.

“Look yere, Mr. Hold-up Man!” yelled Mack Hinkman, when his amazement let him speak. “Ain’t you headed in the wrong way? We ain’t comin’ from town with a load. Why, man! we’re only jest goin’ to town. Why didn’t you wait till we was comin’ back before springin’ this mine on us?”

“Keep still there,” commanded Pete, from the tree. “Drive on through the river, and up on this bank, and then stop! You hear?”

“I’d hear ye, I reckon, if I was plumb deef,” complained Mack. “That rifle you handle so permiscuous speaks mighty plain.”

“Let them on hossback mind it, too,” added the man in the tree. “I got an eye on ’em.”

“Easy, Mister,” urged Mack, as he picked up the reins again. “One o’ them is a young lady. You’re a gent, I take it, as wouldn’t frighten no female.”

“Stow that!” advised Pete, with vigor. “Come out o’ there!”

Mack started the mules, and they dragged the wagon creakingly up the bank. Frances and Pratt rode meekly in its wake. The man in the tree had selected his station with good judgment. When Mack halted his four mules, and Frances and Pratt obeyed a commanding gesture to stop at the water’s edge, all three were splendid targets for the man behind the rifle.

“Ride up to that wagon, young fellow,” commanded Pete. “Rip open that canvas. That’s right. Roll off your horse and climb inside; but don’t you go out of sight. If you do I’ll make that canvas cover a sieve in about one minute. Get me?”

Pratt nodded. He could not help himself. He gave an appealing glance toward Frances. She nodded.

“Don’t be foolish, Pratt,” she whispered. “Do what he tells you to do.”

Thus encouraged, the young fellow obeyed the mandate of the man who had stopped them on the trail. He had read of highwaymen and hold-ups; but he had believed that such things had gone out of fashion with the coming of farmers into the Panhandle, the building up of the frequent settlements, and the extension of the railroad lines.

Pratt’s heart was warmed by the girl’s evident desire that he should not run into danger. The outlaw in the tree was after the chest hidden in the wagon; but Frances put his safety above the value of the treasure chest.

“Heave that chist out of the end of the wagon, and be quick about it!” was the expected order from the desperado. “And don’t try anything funny, young fellow.”

Pratt was in no mood to be “funny.” He hesitated just a moment. But Frances exclaimed:

“Do as he says! Don’t wait!”

So out rolled the chest. Mack was grumbling to himself on the front seat; but if he was armed he did not consider it wise to use any weapon. The man with the rifle had everything his own way.

“Now, drive on!” commanded the latter individual. “I’ve got no use for any of you folks here, and you’ll be wise if you keep right on moving till you get to that Peckham ranch. Git now!”

“All right, old-timer,” grunted Mack. “Don’t be so short-tempered about it.”

He let the mules go and they scrambled up the bank, drawing the wagon after them. The chest lay on the river’s edge. Pratt Sanderson had climbed upon his pony again.

“You two git, also,” growled the man in the tree. “I got all I want of ye.”

Pratt groaned aloud as he urged the grey pony after Molly.

“What will your father say, Frances?” he muttered.

“I don’t know,” returned the girl, honestly.

“I’m going to ride ahead to the Peckham ranch and rouse them. That fellow can’t get away with that heavy chest on horseback.”

“I’ll go with you,” returned the ranchman’s daughter. “That rascal should be apprehended and punished. We have about chased such people out of this section of the country.”

“Goodness! you take it calmly, Frances,” exclaimed Pratt. “Doesn’t anything ruffle you?”

She laughed shortly, and made no further remark. They rode on swiftly and within the hour saw the lights of Peckham’s ranch-house.

Their arrival brought the family to the door, as well as half a dozen punchers up from the bunk-house. The fire had excited everybody and kept them out of bed, although there was no danger of the conflagration’s jumping the river.

“Why, Miss Frances!” cried the ranchman’s wife, who was a fleshy and notoriously good-natured woman, the soul of Western hospitality. “Why, Miss Frances! if you ain’t a cure for sore eyes! Do ’light and come in–and yer friend, too.

“My goodness me! ye don’t mean to say you’ve been through that fire? That is awful! Come right on in, do!”

But what Frances and Pratt had to tell about their adventure at the ford excited the Peckhams and their hands much more than the fire.

“John Peckham!” commanded the fleshy lady, who was really the leading spirit at the ranch. “You take a bunch of the boys and ride right after that rascal. My mercy! are folks goin’ to be held up on this trail and robbed just as though we had no law and order? It’s disgraceful!”

Then she turned her mind to another idea. “Miss Frances!” she exclaimed. “What was in that trunk? Must have been something valuable, eh?”

“I was taking it to the Amarillo bank, to put it in the safe deposit vaults,” Frances answered, dodging the direct question.

“’Twarn’t full of money?” shrieked Mrs. Peckham.

“Why, no!” laughed Frances. “We’re not as rich as all that, you know.”

“Well,” sighed the good, if curious, woman, “I reckon there was ’nough sight more valuables in the trunk than Captain Dan Rugley wants to lose. Hurry up, there, John Peckham!” she shouted after her husband. “Git after that fellow before he has a chance to break open the trunk.”

“I’m going to get a fresh horse and ride back with them,” Pratt Sanderson told Frances. “And we’ll get that chest, don’t you fear.”

“You’d better remain here and have your night’s rest,” advised the girl, wonderfully calm, it would seem. “Let Mr. Peckham and his men catch that bad fellow.”

“And me sit here idle?” cried Pratt. “Not much!”

She saw him start for the corral, and suddenly showed emotion. “Oh, Pratt!” she cried, weakly.

The young man did not hear her. Should she shout louder for him? She paled and then grew rosy red. Should she run after him? Should she tell him the truth about that chest?

“Do come in the house, Miss Frances,” urged Mrs. Peckham. And the girl from the Bar-T obeyed her and allowed Pratt to go.

“You must sure be done up,” said Mrs. Peckham, bustling about. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

“Thank you,” said Frances. She listened for the posse to start, and knew that, when they dashed away, Pratt Sanderson was with them.

Mack Hinkman arrived with the double mule team soon after. He said the crowd had gone by him “on the jump.”

“I ’low they’ll ketch that feller that stole your chist, Miss Frances, ’bout the time two Sundays come together in the week,” he declared. “He’s had plenty of time to make himself scarce.”

“But the trunk?” cried Mrs. Peckham. “That was some heavy, wasn’t it?”

“Aw, he had a wagon handy. He wouldn’t have tried to take the chist if he hadn’t. Don’t you say so, Miss Frances?” said the teamster.

“I don’t know,” said the girl, and she spoke wearily. Indeed, she had suddenly become tired of hearing the robbery discussed.

“Don’t trouble the poor girl,” urged Mrs. Peckham. “She’s all done up. We’ll know all about it when John Peckham gets back. You wanter go to bed, honey?”

Frances was glad to retire. Not alone was she weary, but she wished to escape any further discussion of the incident at the ford.

Mrs. Peckham showed her to the room she was to occupy. Mack would remain up to repair properly the cracked axle of the wagon.

For, whether the chest was recovered or not, Frances proposed to go right on in the morning to Amarillo.

She did not awaken when Mr. Peckham and his men returned; but Frances was up at daybreak and came into the kitchen for breakfast. Mrs. Peckham was bustling about just as she had been the night before when the girl from the Bar-T retired.