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

“Hard luck, Miss Frances!” the good lady cried. “Them men ain’t worth more’n two bits a dozen, when it comes to sending ’em out on a trail. They never got your trunk for you at all!”

“And they did not catch the man who stopped us at the ford?”

“Of course not. John Peckham never could catch anything but a cold.”

“But where could he have gone–that man, I mean?” queried Frances.

“Give it up! One party went up stream and t’other down. Your friend, Mr. Sanderson, went with the first party.”

“Oh, yes,” Frances commented. “That would be on his way to the Edwards ranch where he is staying.”

“Well, mebbe. They say he was mighty anxious to find your trunk. He’s an awful nice young man – ”

“Where’s Mack?” asked Frances, endeavoring to stem the tide of the lady’s speech.

“He’s a-getting the team ready, Frances. He’s done had his breakfast. And I never did see a man with such a holler to fill with flapjacks. He eat seventeen.”

“Mack’s appetite is notorious at the ranch,” admitted Frances, glad Mrs. Peckham had finally switched from the subject of the lost chest.

“He was telling me about that burned wagon you passed on the trail. Can’t for the life of me think who it could belong to,” said Mrs. Peckham.

“We thought once that Mr. Bob Ellis was ahead of us on the trail,” said Frances.

“He’d have come right on here,” declared the ranchman’s wife. “No. ’Twarn’t Bob.”

“Then I thought it might have belonged to that man who stopped us,” suggested Frances.

“If that’s so, I reckon he got square for his loss, didn’t he?” cried the lady. “I reckon that chest was filled with valuables, eh?”

Fortunately, Frances had swallowed her coffee and the mule team rattled to the door.

“I must hurry!” the girl cried, jumping up. “Many, many thanks, dear Mrs. Peckham!” and she kissed the good woman and so got out of the house without having to answer any further questions.

She sprang into Molly’s saddle and Mack cracked his whip over the mules.

“Mebbe we’ll have good news for you when you come back, Frances!” called the ranchwoman, quite filling the door with her ample person as she watched the Bar-T wagon, and the girl herself, take the trail for Amarillo.

Mack Hinkman was quite wrought up over the adventure of the previous evening.

“That young Pratt Sanderson is some smart boy–believe me!” he said to Frances, who elected to ride within earshot of the wagon-seat for the first mile or two.

“How is that?” she asked, curiously.

“They tell me it was him found the place where the chest had been put aboard that punt.”

“What punt?”

“The boat the feller escaped in with the chest,” said Mack.

“Then he wasn’t the man whose wagon and one horse was burned?” queried Frances.

“Don’t know. Mebbe. But that’s no difference. This old punt has been hid down there below the ford since last duck-shooting season. Maybe he knowed ’twas there; maybe he didn’t. Howsomever, he found the boat and brought it up to the ford. Into the boat he tumbled the chest. There was the marks on the bank. John Peckham told me himself.”

“And Pratt found the trail?”

“That’s what he did. Smart boy! The rest of ’em was up a stump when they didn’t find the chest knocked to pieces. The hold-up gent didn’t even stop to open it.”

“He expected we’d set somebody on his trail,” Frances said, reflectively.

“In course. Two parties. One went up stream and t’other down.”

“So Mrs. Peckham just told me.”

“Wal!” said Mack. “Mebbe one of ’em will ketch the varmint!”

But Frances made no further comment. She rode on in silence, her mind vastly troubled. And mostly her thought connected Pratt Sanderson with the disappearance of the chest.

Why had the young fellow been so sure that the robber had gone up stream instead of down? It did not seem reasonable that the man would have tried to stem the current in the heavy punt–nor was the chest a light weight.

It puzzled Frances–indeed, it made her suspicious. She was anxious to learn whether the man who had stolen the chest had gone up, or down, the river.

CHAPTER XX

THE BOSTON GIRL AGAIN

Frances warned Mack to say nothing about the hold-up at the ford. That was certainly laying no cross on the teamster’s shoulders, for he was not generally garrulous.

They put up at the hotel that night and Frances did her errands in Amarillo the next day without being disturbed by awkward questions regarding their adventure.

Certainly, she was not obliged to go to the bank under the present circumstances, for there was no chest now to put in the safe-keeping of that institution.

Nor did Frances Rugley have many friends in the breezy, Western city with whom she might spend her time. Two years make many changes in such a fast-growing community. She was not sure that she would be able to find many of the girls with whom she had gone to high school.

And she was, too, in haste to return to the Bar-T. Although she had left her father better, she worried much about him. Naturally, too, she wished to get back and report to him the adventures which had marked her journey to Amarillo.

She would have been glad to escape stopping at the Peckham ranch over the third night; but she could not get beyond that point–the wagon now being heavily laden; nor did she wish to remain out on the range at night without a shelter tent.

The hold-up at the ford naturally made Frances feel somewhat timid, too. Mack was not armed, and she had only the revolver that she usually carried in her saddle holster and wouldn’t have thought of defending herself with it from any human being.

So she rode ahead when it became dark, and reached the Peckham ranch at supper time, finding both a warm welcome and much news awaiting her.

“Glad to see ye back again, Frances,” declared Mrs. Peckham. “We done been talking about you and your hold-up most of the time since you went to Amarillo. Beats all how little it does take to set folks’ tongues wagging in the country. Ain’t it so?

“Well! that feller got clean away. And he took chest and all. Them fellers that went down stream found the old punt. But they never found no place where he’d shifted the trunk ashore. And it must have been heavy, Frances?”

“Oh, yes!”

“Must have been a sight of valuables in it,” repeated Mrs. Peckham.

“What about those who went up stream?” asked Frances, quickly.

“There! your friend, Mr. Sanderson, didn’t come back. He went on to Mr. Bill Edwards’ place, so he said. He axed would you lead his grey pony on behind your wagon to the Bar-T. Said he’d come after it there.”

“Yes; of course,” returned Frances. “But didn’t he find any trace of the robber up stream?”

“How could they, Miss Frances, if the boat went down?” demanded Mrs. Peckham. “Of course not.”

It was true. Frances worried about this. Pratt Sanderson had insisted upon leading a part of the searchers in exactly the opposite direction to that in which common sense should have told him the robber had gone with the chest.

“Of course he would never have tried to pole against the current,” Frances told herself. “I am afraid daddy will consider that significant.”

She did not attempt to keep the story from Captain Dan Rugley when she got back home on the fourth evening.

“Smart girl!” the old ranchman said, when she told him of the make-believe treasure chest she had carted halfway to Amarillo, burlapped, corded, and tagged as though for deposit in the city bank for safe-keeping.

“Smart girl!” he repeated. “Fooled ’em good. But maybe you were reckless, Frances–just a wee mite reckless.”

“I had no intention of trying to defend the chest, or of letting Mack,” she told him.

“And how about that Pratt boy who you say went along with you?” queried the Captain, his brows suddenly coming together.

“Well, Daddy! He insisted upon going with me because Ratty bothered me,” said Frances, in haste.

“Humph! Mack could break that M’Gill in two if the foolish fellow became really fresh with you. Now! I don’t want to say anything to hurt your feelings, Frances; but it does seem to me that this Pratt Sanderson was too handy when that hold-up man got the chest.”

It was just as the girl feared. She bit her lip and said nothing. She did not see what there was to say in Pratt’s defense. Besides, in her secret heart she, too, was troubled about the young fellow from Amarillo.

She wondered what the robber at the ford thought about it when he got the old trunk open and found in it nothing but some junk and rubbish she had found in the attic of the ranch-house. At least, she had managed to draw the attention of the dishonest orderly from the Bylittle Soldiers’ Home from the real Spanish treasure chest for several days.

Before he could make any further attempt against the peace of mind of her father and herself, Frances hoped Mr. Lonergan would have arrived at the Bar-T and the responsibility for the safety of the treasure would be lifted from their shoulders.

At any rate, the mysterious treasure would be divided and disposed of. When Pete knew that the Spanish treasure chest was opened and the valuables divided, he might lose hope of gaining possession of the wealth he coveted.

A telegram had come while Frances was absent from the chaplain of the Soldiers’ Home, stating that Mr. Lonergan would start for the Panhandle in a week, if all went well with him.

Captain Rugley was as eager as a boy for his old partner’s appearance.

“And I’ve been wishing all these years,” he said, “while you were growing up, Frances, to dress you up in a lot of this fancy jewelry. It would have been for your mother if she had lived.”

“But you don’t want me to look like a South Sea Island princess, do you, Daddy?” Frances said, laughing. “I can see that the belt and bracelet I wore the night Pratt stopped here rather startled him. He’s used to seeing ladies dressed up, in Amarillo, too.”

“Pooh! In the cities women are ablaze with jewels. Your mother and I went to Chicago once, and we went to the opera. Say! that was a show!

“Let me tell you, there are things in that chest that will outshine anything in the line of ornaments that that Pratt Sanderson–or any other Amarillo person–ever saw.”

The girl was quite sure that this desire on her father’s part of arraying her in the gaudy jewels from the old chest was bound to make her the laughing-stock of the people who were coming out from Amarillo to see the Pageant of the Panhandle.

But what could she do about it? His wish was fathered by his love for her. She must wear the gems to please him, for Frances would never do anything to hurt his feelings, for the world.

A good many of their friends, of course–people like good Mrs. Peckham–would never realize the incongruity of a girl being bedecked like a barbarian princess. But Frances wondered what the girl from Boston would say to Pratt Sanderson about it, if she chanced to see Frances so adorned?

She had an opportunity of seeing something more of the Boston girl shortly, for in a day or two Pratt Sanderson came over for the grey pony he had left at the Peckham ranch, and Frances had led back to the Bar-T for him.

And with Pratt trailed along Mrs. Bill Edwards and the visitors whom Frances had met twice before.

By this time Captain Dan Rugley was able to hobble out upon the veranda, and was sitting there in his old, straight-backed chair when the cavalcade rode up. He hailed Mrs. Edwards, and welcomed her and her young friends as heartily as it was his nature so to do.

“Come in, all of you!” he shouted. “Ming will bring out a pitcher of something cool to drink in a minute; and San Soo can throw together a luncheon that’ll keep you from starving to death before you get back to Bill’s place.”

He would not listen to refusals. The Mexican boys took the ponies away and a round dozen of visitors settled themselves–like a covey of prairie chickens–about the huge porch.

Frances welcomed everybody quietly, but with a smile. She instructed Ming to set tables in the inner court of the hacienda, as it would be both cool and shady there on this hot noontide.

She noticed that Sue Latrop scarcely bowed to her, and immediately set about chattering to two or three of her companions. Frances did not mind for herself; but she saw that the girl from Boston seemed amused by Captain Rugley’s talk, and was not well-bred enough to conceal her amusement.

The old ranchman was not dull in any particular, however; before long he found an opportunity to say to his daughter:

“Who’s the girl in the fancy fixin’s? That red coat’s got style to it, I reckon?”

“If you like the style,” laughed Frances, smiling tenderly at him.

“You don’t? And I see she doesn’t cotton much to you, Frances. What’s the matter?”

“She’s Eastern,” explained Frances, briefly. “I imagine she thinks I am crude.”

“‘Crude’? What’s ‘crude’?” demanded Captain Dan Rugley. “That isn’t anything very bad, is it, Frances?” and his eyes twinkled.

“Can’t be anything much worse, Daddy,” she whispered, “if you are all ‘fed up,’ as the boys say, on ‘culchaw’!”

He chuckled at that, and began to eye Sue Latrop with more interest. When the shuffle-footed Ming called them to luncheon, he kept close to the girl from Boston, and sat with her and Mrs. Bill Edwards at one of the small tables.

“I reckon you’re not used to this sort of slapdash eating, Miss?” suggested Captain Rugley, with perfect gravity, as he saw Sue casting doubtful glances about the inner garden.

The fountain was playing, the trees rustled softly overhead, a little breeze played in some mysterious way over the court, and from the distance came the tinkle of some Mexican mandolins, for Frances had hidden José and his brother in one of the shadowy rooms.

“Oh, it’s quite al fresco, don’t you know,” drawled Sue. “Altogether novel and chawming–isn’t it, Mrs. Edwards?”

The neighboring rancher’s wife had originally come from the East herself; but she had lived long enough in the Panhandle to have quite rubbed off the veneer of that “culchaw” of which Sue was an exponent.

“The Bar-T is the show place of the Panhandle,” she said, promptly. “We are rather proud of it–all of us ranchers.”

“Indeed? I had no idea!” cooed the girl from Boston. “And I thought all you ranch folk had your wealth in cattle, and re’lly had no time for much social exchange.”

“Oh!” exclaimed the Captain, “when we have folks come to see us we manage to treat ’em with our best.”

Sue was obliged to note that the service and the napery were dainty, and what she had seen of the furnishings of the darkened hall amazed her–as it had Pratt on his first visit. The food was, of course, good and well prepared, for San Soo was “A Number One, topside” cook, as he would have himself expressed it in pigeon English.

Yet Sue could not satisfy herself that these “cattle people” were really worthy of her attention. Had she not been with Mrs. Edwards she would have made open fun of the old Captain and his daughter.

Frances of the ranges looked a good deal like a girl on a moving picture screen. She was in her riding dress, short skirt, high gaiters, tight-fitting jacket, and with her hair in plaits.

The Captain looked as though he had never worn anything but the loose alpaca coat he now had on, with the carpet-slippers upon his blue-stockinged feet.

“Re’lly!” Sue whispered to Pratt, as they all arose to return to the front of the house, “they are quite too impossible, aren’t they?”

“Who?” asked Pratt, with narrowing gaze.

“Why–er–this cowgirl and her father.”

“I only see that they are very hospitable,” the young man said, pointedly, and he kept away from the Boston girl for the remainder of their visit to the Bar-T ranch-house.

CHAPTER XXI

IN THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY

Silent Sam had reported some jack-rabbits on one of the southern ranges, and the Captain thought it would interest the party from the Edwards ranch to come over the next day and help run them.

Jack-rabbits have become such a nuisance in certain parts of the West of late years that a price has been set upon their heads, and the farmers and ranchmen often organize big drives to clear the ranges of the pests.

This was only a small drive on the Bar-T; but Captain Rugley had several good dogs, and the occasion was an interesting one–for everybody but the jacks.

Of course, the old ranchman could not go; but Frances and Sam were at Cottonwood Bottom soon after sunrise, waiting for the party from Mr. Bill Edwards’ ranch.

José Reposa had the dogs in leash–two long-legged, sharp-nosed, mouse-colored creatures, more than half greyhound, but with enough mongrel in their make-up to make them bite when they ran down the long-eared pests that they were trained to drive.

The branch of the river that ran through Cottonwood Bottom was too shallow–at least, at this season–to float even a punt. Frances gazed down the wooded and winding hollow and asked Silent Sam a question:

“Do you know of any place along the river where a man might hide out–that fellow who stopped us at the ford the other evening, for instance?”

“There’s a right smart patch of small growth down below Bill Edwards’ line,” said Sam. “The boys from Peckham’s, with that Pratt Sanderson, didn’t more’n skirt that rubbish, I reckon, by what Mack said,” Sam observed. “Mebbe that hombre might have laid up there for a while.”

“Before or after he robbed us?” Frances asked quietly.

“Wal, now!” ejaculated Sam. “If he took that chest aboard the punt, and the punt was found below the ford – ”

“You know, Sam,” said the girl, thoughtfully, “that he might have poled up stream a way, put the chest ashore, and then let the punt drift down.”

“Reckon that’s so,” grunted the foreman.

He said no more, and neither did Frances. But the brief dialogue gave the girl food for thought, and her mind was quite full of the idea when the crowd from the Edwards ranch came into view.

The boys were armed with light rifles or shotguns, and even some of the girls were armed, as well as Mrs. Edwards herself.

But Sue Latrop had never fired a gun in her life, and she professed to be not much interested in this hunt.

“Oh, I’ve fox-hunted several times. That is real sport! But we don’t shoot foxes. The dogs kill them–if there re’lly is a fox.”

“Humph!” asked one of the local boys, with wonder, “what do the dogs follow, if there’s no fox? What scent do they trail, I mean?”

“Oh,” said Sue, “a man rides ahead dragging an aniseed bag. Some dogs are trained to follow that scent and nothing else. It’s very exciting, I assure you.”

“Well! what do you know about that?” gasped the questioner.

“Say! was this around Boston?” asked Pratt, his eyes twinkling.

“Oh, yes. There is a fine pack of hounds at Arlington,” drawled Sue.

“Sho!” chuckled Pratt. “I should think they’d teach the dogs around Boston to follow the trail of a bean-bag. Wouldn’t it be easier?”

“Oh, dear me!” exclaimed Miss Latrop. “Don’t you think you are witty? And look at those dogs!”

“What’s the matter with them?” asked one of the girls.

“Why, they are all limbs! What perfectly spidery-looking animals! Did you ever – ”

“You wait a bit,” laughed Mrs. Edwards. “Those long-legged dogs are just what we need hunting the jacks. And if we didn’t have guns, at that, there would be few of the rabbits caught. All ready, Sam Harding?”

“Jest when Miss Frances says the word, Ma’am,” returned the foreman, coolly.

“Of course! Frances is mistress of the hunt,” said the ranchman’s wife, good-naturedly.

Sue Latrop had been coaxed to leave her Eastern-bred horse behind on this occasion, and was upon one of the ponies broken to side-saddle work. The tall bay would scarcely know how to keep his feet out of gopher-holes in such a chase as was now inaugurated.

“Be careful how you use your guns,” Frances said, quietly, when Sam and the Mexican, with the dogs, started off to round a certain greasewood-covered mound and see if they could start some of the long-eared animals.

“Never fire across your pony’s neck unless you are positive that no other rider is ahead of you on either hand. Better take your rabbit head on; then the danger of shooting into some of the rest of us will be eliminated.”

Sue sniffed at this. She had no gun, of course, but almost wished she had–and she said as much to one of her friends. She’d show that range girl that she couldn’t boss her!

“Why! that’s good advice about using our guns,” said this girl to whom Sue complained, surprised at the objection.

“Pooh! what does she know about it? She puts herself forward too much,” replied the girl from Boston.

It is probable that Sue would have talked about any other girl in the party who seemed to take the lead. Sue was used to being the leader herself, and if she couldn’t lead she didn’t wish to follow. There are more than a few people in the world of Sue’s temperament–and very unpleasant people they are.

But it was Frances who got the first jack. The creature came leaping down the slope, having broken cover at the brink and quite unseen by the rest of the hunters.

This was business to Frances, instead of sport. If allowed to multiply the jack-rabbits were not only a pest to the farmers, but to everybody else. Frances raised the light firearm she carried and popped Mr. Longears over “on the fly.”

“Glory! that’s a good one!” shouted Pratt, enthusiastically.

“A clean hit, Frances,” said Mrs. Edwards. “You are a splendid shot, child.”

Miss Boston sniffed!

The dogs did not bay. But in a minute or two a pair of the rabbits appeared over the rise, and then the two long-legged canines followed in their tracks.

“Wait till the jacks see us and dodge,” called out Frances, in a low tone. “Then you can fire without getting the dogs in line.”

Mrs. Edwards was a good shot. She got one of the rabbits. After several of the others snapped at the second one, and missed him, Frances brought him down just as he leaped toward a clump of sagebrush. Behind it he would have been lost to them.

“My goodness!” murmured Pratt. “What a shot you are, Frances!”

“She’s quite got the best of us in shooting,” complained one of the other girls. “She’ll bag them all.”

Frances laughed, and spurred Molly out of the group, “I’ll put away my gun and use my rope instead,” she remarked. “Perhaps I have a handicap over the rest of you with a rifle. Father taught me, and he is considered the best rifle shot in the Panhandle.”

“My goodness, Frances,” said Pratt again. “What isn’t there that you don’t do better than most of ’em?”

“Parlor tricks!” flashed back the girl of the ranges, half laughing, but half in earnest, too. “I know I should be just a silly with a lorgnette, or trying to tango.”

“Well!” gasped the young fellow, “who isn’t silly under those circumstances, I would like to know.”

Mixing talk of lorgnettes and dancing with shooting jack-rabbits did not suit very well, for the next pair of the long-eared animals that the dogs started got away entirely.

They rode on down the edge of the hollow through which the stream flowed. The dogs beat the bushes and cottonwood clumps. Suddenly a small, graceful, spotted animal leaped from concealment and came up the slope of the long river-bank ahead of both the dogs and almost under the noses of some of the excited ponies.

“Oh! an antelope!” shrieked two or three of the young people, recognizing the graceful creature.

“Don’t shoot it!” cried Mrs. Edwards. “I am not sure that the law will let us touch antelopes at this season.

“You needn’t fear, Mrs. Edwards,” said the girl from Boston, laughing. “Nobody is likely to get near enough to shoot that creature. Wonderful! see how it leaps. Why! those funny dogs couldn’t even catch it.”

Frances had had no idea of touching the antelope. But suddenly she spurred Molly away at an angle from the bank, and called to the dogs to keep on the trail of the little deer.

“Ye-hoo! Go for it! On, boys!” she shouted, and already the rope was swinging about her head.

Pratt spurred after her, and by chance Sue Latrop’s pony got excited and followed the two madly. Sue could not pull him in.

The antelope did not seem to be half trying, he bounded along so gracefully and easily. The long-limbed dogs were doing their very best. The ponies were coming down upon the quarry at an acute angle.