Kitabı oku: «Frances of the Ranges: or, The Old Ranchman's Treasure», sayfa 8
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.
“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.
