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CHAPTER VI
A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION
Frances knew her way about her father’s room in the dark as well as she did about her own. She knew where every piece of furniture stood. She knew where the chair was on which he carelessly threw his outer clothing at night.
Like most men who for years have slept in the open, Captain Rugley did not remove all his clothing when he went to bed. He usually lay between blankets on the outside of his bed, with his boots and trousers ready to jump into at a moment’s notice. Of some of the practices of his life on the plains, with the dome of heaven for a roof-tree, he could not be broken.
She fumbled for the chair, and found it empty. She reached for the belt and holster which he usually hung on a hook at the head of the bed. They, too, were gone, and Frances felt relieved.
She did not withdraw from the room through either of the long windows. Instead, she crept through her father’s office and out of the door of that room into the great, main hall.
Along this a little way was the door of the room to which Pratt Sanderson had been assigned, and that of the treasure room as well.
Frances scarcely gave Pratt a thought. She presumed him far in the land of dreams. She did not take into consideration the fact that about now the scratches of the mountain lion would become painful, and Pratt correspondingly restless. Frances was mainly troubled by her father’s absence from his room. Had he, too, seen the mysterious shadow in the court? Was he on the watch for a possible marauder?
By feeling rather than eyesight she knew the door to the treasure room was closed. Was her father there?
She doubled her fist and raised it to knock upon the panel. Then she hesitated. The slightest sound would ring through the silent house like an alarm of fire.
Inclining her ear to the door, she listened. But the oak planking was thick and there was no crevice, now the portal was closed, through which any slight sound could penetrate. She could not have even distinguished the heavy breathing of a sleeping man behind the door.
Uncertain, wondering, yet quite mistress of herself again, Frances went on along the corridor. Here was an open door before her into the court. Had that shadow she had seen come this way? she wondered.
The hiss of a voice, almost in her ear, did startle her:
“My goodness! is it you, Miss Frances?”
A clammy hand clutched her wrist. She knew that Pratt Sanderson must have been horribly wrought up and nervous, for he was trembling.
“What is the matter? Why are you out of your bed, Pratt?” she asked, quite calmly.
“I couldn’t sleep. Fever in those scratches, I s’pose,” said the young man. “I got up and went outside to get a drink at the fountain–and to bathe my face and wrists. Isn’t it hot?”
“You are feverish,” whispered Frances, cautiously. “Have you seen daddy?”
“The Captain?” returned Pratt, wonderingly. “Oh, no. He isn’t up, is he?”
“He’s not in his room – ”
“And you’re not in yours,” said Pratt, with a nervous laugh. “We all seem to be out of our beds at the hour when graveyards yawn, eh?”
Frances had a reassuring laugh ready.
“I think you would better go to bed again, Pratt,” she said. “You–you saw nothing in the court?”
“No. But I thought I heard a big bird overhead when I was splashing the water about out there. Imagination, of course,” he added. “There are no big night-flying birds out here on the plains?”
“Not that I know of,” returned she.
“I made some noise. I didn’t know what it was I scared up. Seemed to be on the roof of the house.”
Frances thought of the mysterious man and his rope ladder. But she did not mention them to Pratt.
“Put some more of father’s salve on those scratches,” she advised. “It’s an Indian salve and very healing. He was taught by an old Indian medicine man to make it.”
“All right. Good-night, Miss Frances,” said Pratt, and withdrew into his room, from which he had appeared so suddenly to accost her.
Pratt’s mention of “the bird on the roof” disturbed Frances a good deal. She turned to run back upstairs and learn if the ladder was still hanging from the eaves. But as she started to do so she realized that the door of the treasure room had been silently opened.
“Frances!”
“Oh, Dad!”
“What are you running about the house for at this time o’ night?” he demanded.
She laughed rather hysterically. “Why are you out of your bed, sir–with your rheumatism?” she retorted.
“Good reason. Thought I heard something,” growled the Captain.
“Good reason. Thought I saw something,” mocked Frances, seizing his arm.
She stepped inside the room with him. He flashed an electric torch for a moment about the place. She saw he had a cot arranged at one side, and had evidently gone to bed here, beside the treasure chest.
“Why is this, sir?” she demanded, with pretty seriousness.
“Reckon the old man’s getting nervous,” said Captain Rugley. “Can’t sleep in my reg’lar bed when there are strangers in the house.”
Frances started. “What do you mean?” she cried.
“Well, there’s that young man.”
“Why, Pratt is all right,” declared Frances, confidently.
“I don’t know anything for him–and do know one thing against him,” growled the old ranchman. “He’s been up and about all night, so far. Weren’t you just talking to him?”
“Oh, yes, Dad! But Pratt is all right.”
“That’s as may be. What was he doing wandering around that court?”
“Oh, Dad! Don’t worry about him. His arm and chest hurt him – ”
“Humph! didn’t hurt him when he went to bed, did they? Yet he was sneaking along this hall and looking into this very room when the door was slightly ajar. I saw him,” said the old ranchman, bitterly.
Frances was amazed by this statement; but she realized that her father was oversuspicious regarding the interest of strangers in the old Spanish chest and its contents.
“Never mind Pratt,” she said. “I came downstairs to find you, Daddy, because there really is a stranger about the house.”
“What do you mean, Frances?” was the sharp retort.
The girl told him briefly about the man she had observed climbing up to the veranda roof, and later to the roof of the house by aid of the rope ladder.
“And Pratt tells me he heard some sound up there. He thought it was a big bird,” she concluded.
“Come on!” said her father, hastily. “Let’s see that ladder.”
He locked the door of the treasure room and strode up the main stairway. Frances kept close behind him and warned him to step softly–rather an unnecessary bit of advice to an old Indian trailer like Captain Rugley!
But when they came to the window through which Frances had seen the dangling ladder it was gone. The old ranchman shot a ray of his electric torch through the opening; but the light revealed nothing.
“Gone!” he announced, briefly.
“Do–do you think so, Dad?”
“Sure. Been scared off.”
“But what could he possibly want–climbing up over our roof, and all that?”
Captain Rugley stood still and stroked his chin reflectively. “I reckon I know what they’re after —
“They? But, Daddy, there was only one man.”
“One that was coming over the roof,” said her father. “But he had pals–sure he did! If one of them wasn’t in the house – ”
“Why, Dad!” exclaimed Frances, in wonder.
“You can’t always tell,” said the old ranchman, slowly. “There’s a heap of valuables in that chest. Of course, they don’t all belong to me,” he added, hastily. “My partner, Lon, has equal rights in ’em–don’t ever forget that, Frances, if something should happen to me.”
“Why, Dad! how you talk!” she exclaimed.
“We can never tell,” sighed her father. “Treasure is tempting. And it looks to me as though this fellow who climbed over the roof expected to find somebody inside to help him. That’s the way it looks to me,” he repeated, shaking his head obstinately.
“Dear Dad! you don’t mean that you think Pratt Sanderson would do such a thing?” said Frances, in a horrified tone.
“We don’t know him.”
“But his coming here to the Bar-T was unexpected. I urged him to come. That lion really scratched him – ”
“Yes. It doesn’t look reasonable, I allow,” admitted her father; but she could see he was not convinced of the honesty of Pratt Sanderson.
There was a difference of opinion between Frances and Captain Rugley.
CHAPTER VII
THE STAMPEDE
The remainder of the night passed in quietness. That there really had been a marauder about the Bar-T ranch-house could not be doubted; for a slate was found upon the ground in the morning, and the place in the roof where it had been broken out was plainly visible.
Captain Rugley sent one of the men up with a ladder and new slates to repair the damage. He reported that the marks of the grappling-hook in the roof sheathing were unmistakable, too.
Although her father had expressed himself as doubtful of the good intentions of Pratt Sanderson, Frances was glad to see at breakfast that he treated the young man no differently than before. Pratt slept late and the meal was held back for him.
“The attentions of that old mountain lion bothered me so that I did not sleep much the fore part of the night,” Pratt explained.
“How about that bird you heard on the roof?” the Captain asked, calmly.
“I don’t know what it was. It sounded like big wings flapping,” the young fellow explained. “But I really didn’t see anything.”
Captain Rugley grunted, and said no more. He grunted a good deal this morning, in fact, for every movement gave him pain.
“The rheumatism has got its fangs set in me right, this time,” he told Frances.
“That’s for being out of your warm bed and chasing all over the house without a coat on in the night,” she said, admonishingly.
“Goodness!” said her father. “Must I be that particular? If so, I am getting old, I reckon.”
She made him promise to keep out of draughts when she mounted Molly to ride away on an errand to a distant part of the ranch. She rode off with Pratt Sanderson, for he was traveling in the same direction, toward Mr. Bill Edwards’ place.
Frances of the ranges was more silent than she had been when they rode together the night before. Pratt found it hard to get into conversation with her on any but the most ephemeral subjects.
For instance, when he hinted about Captain Rugley’s adventures on the Border:
“Your father is a very interesting talker. He has seen and done so much.”
“Yes,” said Frances.
“And how adventurous his life must have been! I’d love to get him in a story-telling mood some day.”
“He doesn’t talk much about old times.”
“But, of course, you know all about his adventures as a Ranger, and his trips into Mexico?”
“No,” said Frances.
“Why! he spoke last night as though he often talked about it. About the looting of – Who was the old Spanish grandee he mentioned?”
“I know very little about it, Pratt,” fluttered Frances. “That’s just dad’s talk.”
“But that gorgeous girdle and bracelet you wore!”
Frances secretly determined not to wear jewelry from the treasure chest again. She had never thought before about its causing comment and conjecture in the minds of people who did not know her father as well as she did.
Suppose people believed that Captain Dan Rugley had actually stolen those things in some raid into Mexico? Such a thought had never troubled her before. But she could see, now, that strangers might misjudge her father. He talked so recklessly about his old life on the Border that he might easily cause those who did not know him to believe that not alone the contents of that mysterious treasure chest but his other wealth was gained by questionable means.
Fortunately, a herd of steers, crossing from one of the extreme southern ranges of the Bar-T to the north where juicier grass grew, attracted the attention of the guest from Amarillo.
“Are those all yours, Frances?” he asked, when he saw the mass of dark bodies and tossing horns that appeared through rifts in the dust cloud that accompanies a driven herd even over sod-land.
“My father’s,” she corrected, smiling. “And only a small herd. Not more than two thousand head in that bunch.”
“I’d call two thousand cows a whole lot,” Pratt sighed.
“Not for us. Remember, the Bar-T has been in the past one of the great cattle ranches of the West. Daddy is getting old now and cannot attend to so much work.”
“But you seem to know all about it,” said Pratt, with enthusiasm. “Don’t you really do all the overseeing for him?”
“Oh, no!” laughed Frances. “Not at all. Silent Sam is the ranch manager. I just do what either dad or Sam tell me. I’m just errand girl for the whole ranch.”
But Pratt knew better than that. He saw now that she was watching the oncoming mass of steers with a frown of annoyance. Something was going wrong and Frances was troubled.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, curiously.
“I thought that was Ratty M’Gill with that bunch,” Frances answered, more as though thinking aloud than consciously answering Pratt’s question. “The rascal! He’d run all the fat off a bunch of cows between pastures.”
She pulled Molly around and headed the pinto for the herd. It was not in his way, but Pratt followed her example and rode his grey hard after the cowgirl.
Not a herdsman was in sight. The steers were coming on through the dust, sweating and steaming, evidently having been driven very hard since daybreak. Occasionally one bawled an angry protest; but those in front were being forced on by the rear ranks, which in turn were being harassed by the punchers in charge.
Suddenly, a bald-faced steer shot out of the ruck of the herd, darting at right angles to the course. For a little way a steer can run as fast as a race-horse. That’s why the creatures are so very hard to manage on occasion.
To Pratt, who was watching sharply, it was a question which got into action first–Frances or her wise little pinto. He did not see the girl speak to Molly; but the pony turned like a shot and whirled away after the careering steer. At the same moment, it seemed, Frances had her hair rope in her hand.
The coils began to whirl around her head. The pinto was running like the wind. The bald-faced, ugly-looking brute of a steer was soon running neck and neck with the well-mounted girl.
Pratt followed. He was more interested in the outcome of the chase than he was in where his grey was putting his feet.
There was an eerie yell behind them. Pratt saw a wild-looking, hatless cowboy racing a black pony toward them. The whole herd seemed to have been turned in some miraculous way, and was thundering after Old Baldface and the girl.
Pratt began to wonder if there was not danger. He had heard of a stampede, and it looked to him as though the bunch of steers was quite out of hand. Had he been alone, he would have pulled out and let the herd go by.
But either Frances did not see them coming, or she did not care. She was after that bald-faced steer, and in a moment she had him.
The whirling noose dropped and in some wonderful way settled over a horn and one of the steer’s forefeet. When Molly stopped and braced herself, the steer pitched forward, turned a complete somersault, and lay on the prairie at the mercy of his captor.
“Hurray!” yelled Pratt, swinging his hat.
He was riding recklessly himself. He had seen a half-tamed steer roped and tied at an Amarillo street fair; but that was nothing like this. It had all been so easy, so matter-of-fact! No display at all about the girl’s work; but just as though she could do it again, and yet again, as often as the emergency arose.
Frances cast a glowing smile over her shoulder at him, as she lay back in the saddle and let Molly hold Old Baldface in durance. But suddenly her face changed–a flash of amazed comprehension chased the triumphant smile away. She opened her lips to shout something to Pratt–some warning. And at that instant the grey put his foot into a ground-dog hole, and the young man from Amarillo left the saddle!
He described a perfect parabola and landed on his head and shoulders on the ground. The grey scrambled up and shot away at a tangent, out of the course of the herd of thundering steers. He was not really hurt.
But his rider lay still for a moment on the prairie. Pratt Sanderson was certainly “playing in hard luck” during his vacation on the ranges.
The mere losing of his mount was not so bad; but the steers had really stampeded, and he lay, half-stunned, directly in the path of the herd.
Old Baldface struggled to rise and seized upon the girl’s attention. She used the rope in a most expert fashion, catching his other foreleg in a loop, and then catching one of his hind legs, too. He was secured as safely as a fly in a spider-web.
Frances was out of her saddle the next moment, and ran back to where Pratt lay. She knew Molly would remain fixed in the place she was left, and sagging back on the rope.
The girl seized the young man under his armpits and started to drag him toward the fallen steer. The bulk of Old Baldface would prove a protection for them. The herd would break and swerve to either side of the big steer.
But one thing went wrong in Frances’ calculations. Her rope slipped at the saddle. For some reason it was not fastened securely.
The straining Molly went over backward, kicking and squealing as the rope gave way, and the big steer began to struggle to his feet.
CHAPTER VIII
IN PERIL AND OUT
Pratt Sanderson had begun to realize the situation. As Frances’ pony fell and squealed, he scrambled to his knees.
“Save yourself, Frances!” he cried. “I am all right.”
She left him; but not because she believed his statement. The girl saw the bald-faced steer staggering to its feet, and she knew their salvation depended upon the holding of the bad-tempered brute.
The stampeded herd was fast coming down upon them; afoot, she nor Pratt could scarcely escape the hoofs and horns of the cattle.
She saw Ratty M’Gill on the black pony flying ahead of the steers; but what could one man do to turn two thousand head of wild cattle? Frances of the ranges had appreciated the peril which threatened to the full and at first glance.
The prostrate carcase of the huge steer would serve to break the wave of cattle due to pass over this spot within a very few moments. If Baldface got up, shook off the entangling rope and ran, Frances and Pratt would be utterly helpless.
Once under the hoofs of the herd, they would be pounded into the prairie like powder, before the tail of the stampede had passed.
Frances, seeing the attempts of the big steer to climb to its feet, ran forward and seized the rope that had slipped through the ring of her saddle. She drew in the slack at once; but her strength was not sufficient to drag the steer back to earth.
Snorting and bellowing, the huge beast was all but on his feet when Pratt Sanderson reached the girl’s side.
Pratt was staggering, for the shock of his fall had been severe. He understood her, however, when she cried:
“Jump on it, Pratt! Jump on it!”
The young man leaped, landing with both feet on the taut rope. Frances, at the same instant, threw herself backward, digging her heels into the sod.
The shock of the tightening of the rope, therefore, fell upon the steer. Down he went bellowing angrily, for he had not cast off the noose that entangled him.
“Don’t let him get loose, Pratt! Stand on the rope!” commanded Frances.
With the slack of the lariat she ran forward, caught a kicking hind foot, then entangled one of the beast’s forefeet, and drew both together with all her strength. The bellowing steer was now doubly entangled; but he was not secure, and well did Frances know it.
She ran in closer, although Pratt cried out in warning, and looped the rope over the brute’s other horn. Slipping the end of her rope through the loop that held his feet together, Frances got a purchase by which she could pull the great head of the beast aside and downward, thus holding him helpless. It was impossible for him to get up after he was thus secured.
“Got him! Quick, Pratt, this way!” Frances panted.
She beckoned to the Amarillo young man, and the latter instantly joined her. She had conquered the steer in a few seconds; the herd was now thundering down upon them. M’Gill, on the black pony, dashed by.
“Bully for you, Miss Frances,” he yelled.
“You wait, Ratty!” Frances said; but, of course, only Pratt heard. “Father and Sam will jack you up for this, and no mistake!”
Then she whipped out her revolver and fired it into the air–emptying all the chambers as the herd came on.
The steers broke and passed on either side of their fallen brother. The tossing horns, fiery eyes and red, expanded nostrils made them look–to Pratt’s mind–fully as savage as had the mountain lion the evening before.
Then he looked again at his comrade. She was only breathing quickly now; she gave no sign of fear. It was all in the day’s work. Such adventures as this had been occasional occurrences with Frances of the ranges since childhood.
Pratt could scarcely connect this alert, vigorous young girl with her who had sat at the piano in the ranch-house the previous evening!
“You’re a wonder!” murmured Pratt Sanderson, to himself. And then suddenly he broke out laughing.
“What’s tickling you, Pratt?” asked Frances, in her most matter-of-fact tone.
“I was just wondering,” the Amarillo young man replied, “what Sue Latrop will think of you when she comes out here.”
“Who’s she?” asked Frances, a little puzzled frown marring her smooth forehead. She was trying to remember any girl of that name with whom she had gone to school at the Amarillo High.
“Sue Latrop’s a distant cousin of Mrs. Bill Edwards, and she’s from Boston. She’s Eastern to the tips of her fingers–and talk about ‘culchaw’! She has it to burn,” chuckled Pratt. “Bill Edwards says she is just ‘putting on dog’ to show us natives how awfully crude we are. But I guess she doesn’t know any better.”
The steers had swept by, and Pratt was just a little hysterical. He laughed too easily and his hand shook as he wiped the perspiration and dust from his face.
“I shouldn’t think she would be a nice girl at all,” Frances said, bluntly.
“Oh, she’s not at all bad. Rather pretty and–my word–some dresser! No end of clothes she’s brought with her. She’s coming out to the Edwards ranch before long, and you’ll probably see her.”
Frances bit her lip and said nothing for a moment. The big steer struggled again and groaned. The girl and Pratt were afoot and the stampede of cattle had swept their mounts away. Even Molly, the pinto, was out of call.
The half dozen punchers who followed the maddened steers had no time for Frances and her companion. A great cloud of dust hung over the departing herd and that was the last the castaways on the prairie would see of either cattle or punchers that day.
“We’ve got to walk, I reckon,” Frances said, slowly.
“How about this steer?” asked the young man, curiously.
“I think he’s tamed enough for the time,” said the girl, with a smile. “Anyway I want my rope. It’s a good one.”
She began to untangle the bald-faced steer. He struggled and grunted and tossed his wide, wicked horns free. To tell the truth Pratt was more than a little afraid of him. But he saw that Frances had reloaded the revolver she carried, and he merely stepped aside and waited. The girl knew so much better what to do that he could be of no assistance.
“Now, Pratt,” she said, at last, “stand from under! Hoop-la!”
She swung the looped lariat and brought it down smartly upon the beast’s back as it struggled to its shaking legs. The steer bellowed, shook himself like a dog coming out of the water, or a mule out of the harness, and trotted away briskly.
“He’ll follow the herd, I reckon,” Frances said, smiling again. “If he doesn’t they’ll pick him out at the next round-up. His brand is too plain to miss.”
“And now we’re afoot,” said Pratt. “It’s a long walk for you back to the house, Frances.”
“And longer for you to the Edwards ranch,” she laughed. “But perhaps you will fall in with some of Mr. Bill’s herders. They’ll have an extra mount or two. I’ll maybe catch Molly. She’s a good pinto.”
“But oughtn’t I to go back with you?” questioned Pratt, doubtfully. “You see–you’re alone–and afoot – ”
“Why! it isn’t the first time, Pratt,” laughed the girl. “Don’t fret about me. This range to me is just like your backyard to you.”
“I suppose it sounds silly,” admitted Pratt. “But I haven’t been used to seeing girls quite as independent as you are, Frances Rugley.”
“No? The girls you know don’t live the sort of life I do,” said the range girl, rather wistfully.
“I don’t know that they have anything on you,” put in Pratt, stoutly. “I think you’re just wonderful!”
“Because I am doing something different from what you are used to seeing girls do,” she said, with gravity. “That is no compliment, Pratt.”
“Well! I meant it as such,” he said, earnestly. He offered his hand, knowing better than to urge his company upon her. “And I hope you know how much obliged to you I am. I feel as though you had saved my life twice. I would not have known what to do in the face of that stampede.”
“Every man to his trade,” quoted Frances, carelessly. “Good-bye, Pratt. Come over again to see us,” and she gave his hand a quick clasp and turned away briskly.
He stood and watched her for some moments; then, fearing she might look back and see him, he faced around himself and set forth on his long tramp to the Edwards ranch.
It was true Frances did not turn around; but she knew well enough Pratt gazed after her. He would have been amazed had he known her reason for showing no further interest in him–for not even turning to wave her hand at him in good-bye. There were tears on her cheeks, and she was afraid he would see them.
“I am foolish–wicked!” she told herself. “Of course he knows other–and nicer–girls than me. And it isn’t just that, either,” she added, rather enigmatically. “But to remember all those girls I knew in Amarillo! How different their lives are from mine!
“How different they must look and behave. Why, I’m a perfect tomboy. Pratt said I was wonderful–just as though I were a trick pony, or an educated goose!
“I do things he never saw a girl do before, and he thinks it strange and odd. But if that Sue Latrop should see me and say that I was not nice, he’d begin to see, too, that it is a fact.
“Riding with the boys here on the ranch, and officiating at the branding-pen, riding herd, cutting out beeves and playing the cowboy generally, has not added to my ‘culchaw,’ that is sure. I don’t know that I’d be able to ‘act up’ in decent society again.
“Pratt looked at me big-eyed last evening when I dressed for dinner. But he was only astonished and amused, I suppose. He didn’t expect me to look like that after seeing me in this old riding dress.
“Oh, dear!” sighed Frances of the ranges. “I wouldn’t leave daddy, or do anything to displease him, poor dear! But I wish he could be content to live nearer to civilization.
“We’ve got enough money. I don’t want any more, I’m sure. We could sell the cattle and turn our ranges into wheat and milo fields. Then we could live in town part of the year–in Amarillo, perhaps!”
The thought was a daring one. Indeed, she was not wholly confident that it was not a wicked thought.
Just then she reached the summit of a slight ridge from which she could behold the home corrals of the hacienda itself, still a long distance ahead, and glowing like jewels in the morning sunshine.
Such a beautiful place! After all, Frances Rugley loved it. It was home, and every tender tie of her life bound her to it and to the old man who she knew was sitting somewhere on the veranda, with his pipe and his memories.
There never was such another beautiful place as the old Bar-T! Frances was sure of that. She longed for Amarillo and what the old Captain called “the frills of society”; but could she give up the ranch for them?
“I reckon I want to keep my cake and eat it, too,” she sighed. “And that, daddy would say, ‘is plumb impossible!’”
