Frances of the Ranges; Or, The Old Ranchman's Treasure

CHAPTER XXVII
A DINNER DANCE IN PROSPECT

The punchers who were off duty were attracted to this gay party on the porch, as naturally as flies gravitate to molasses. The Amarillo girls–and, of course, Mrs. Bill Edwards–saw nothing out of the way in Captain Rugley’s hands lounging up to the hacienda to talk. Most of them were young fellows of neighboring families, and quite as well known as were the visitors themselves. Sue Latrop’s amazement at this familiarity only made the other girls laugh.

Unless she would be left alone on the veranda with Pratt (which she considered very bad form) she was obliged one afternoon to go down to the corral with the crowd to see a bunch of ponies fresh from the range.

Some of the half-wild ponies rolled their eyes, snorted, and galloped to the far side of the corral the instant the visitors appeared.

“Get your reserved seats, gals!” cried Fred Purchase, preparing to open the gate. “Roost all along the rail up there and watch the fun. I bet Fatty Obendorf falls off and breaks a suspender-button–fust throw out of the box!”

“Oh my! you don’t mean for us to climb up there?” gasped Sue, as one or two of her friends tucked up their skirts and started to mount the fence.

“Sure. Reserved seats at the top,” laughed Mrs. Edwards, likewise mounting the barrier.

“Why! I am afraid I could never do it,” murmured the Boston girl.

“You’ll miss a lot of fun, then,” declared one of the Amarillo girls, callously. They were all getting a little tired of Sue Latrop and her pose.

Finding herself the only one on the ground, Sue scrambled up very clumsily and just in time to see Fatty rope the first pony out of the bunch that was now racing around and around the corral.

This was a black and white rascal with a high head and rolling eye, that looked as though he had never been bridled in his life. But it was only that he had been some months on the range, and freedom had gone to his head.

Fatty lay back on the lariat and dug his high heels into the sod. When the pony felt the noose he leaped into it, it tightened around his neck, and the creature came to the ground, kicking and squealing.

“By hicketty!” yelled Purchase. “Ain’t lil’ old Fatty good for suthin’? Yuh could suah use him tuh tie a steamboat tuh–what!”

For all the fun the other punchers made of Fatty Obendorf, he had his selection out of the herd blindfolded, bridled, and saddled, before any other pony was noosed.

“Good for you, Fatty!” cried Frances, who was perched on the corral fence with the other girls. “And that’s a good horse, too; only you want to ’ware heels. I remember that he’s a kicker.”

“Oh! Fatty don’t keer if his fust name’s Kickapoo,” jeered Fred.

The black and white pony gave Obendorf all the work he wanted for some minutes, however, and afforded the spectators much excitement. He wasn’t a bucking bronco, but he showed plainly his dislike for human management. Spur and bit and quirt, however, was a combination that the pony was quickly forced to give in to.

Fred himself straddled a speckled, ugly-looking animal, and put it through its paces in short order. It was a spectacular exhibition; but some of the other punchers laughed uproariously.

“What’s the matter with you fellers, anyway?” demanded Fred, complainingly. “Ain’t you a-gwine to accord me no praise? Don’t I look as purty on hawseback as that fat chunk does?” he added, referring to Obendorf.

“You know very well,” called Frances, from the seat of judgment, “that I drove that speckled pony to my little jumpcart two years ago. That’s Chippy–and he’s almost as big a bluff, Fred, as you are! He looks savage enough to eat you up, and is really as tame as tame can be.”

“Hi, Teddie! she’s got yuh throwed, tied, an’ branded, all right!” shouted one of the other punchers.

The girls on the fence welcomed each feat of horsemanship with great applause. Some of the ponies “acted up,” as Tom Gallup called it, “to the queen’s taste.”

“Whatever that may mean, Tom,” Mrs. Edwards said, dryly. “Why don’t you try your ’prentice hand on that buckskin? He’s dodged the lariat a dozen times.”

“Why, that Bucky is a regular rocking-horse, I bet,” declared Tom, who, for a city boy, was a pretty good rider.

“Get down and ride him, Tommy,” urged Sue. “Can’t you ride as well as these country boys?”

“I never said I could,” retorted Tom, doubtfully. “You girls are guying the punchers, too. Why don’t one o’ you get down and show ’em what you can do?”

“Frances can beat all you boys riding, Tommy,” Mrs. Edwards cried.

“Bet she couldn’t even get aboard of that Bucky,” young Gallup instantly responded.

“You’re not going to take a dare like that, are you, Frances?” demanded Mrs. Edwards.

Sue became disdainful the moment Frances came into the argument. She had nothing further to say.

“I believe the boys are all holding back on that little buckskin,” said Frances, laughing.

“Step right this way, Ma’am, step right this way,” urged Fred Purchase, bowing low and offering his lariat. “Here’s my rope and I’ll lend ye anything else ye may need if ye wanter try that Bucky. He’s some bronco, believe me!”

Frances got down off the fence.

“Oh! don’t you try it, Frances!” cried one nervous girl. “That pony looks wicked!”

“Let her break her neck, if she wants to make a fool of herself!” snapped Sue, sotto voce.

Nobody heard her. All were watching too closely the range girl approach the buckskin pony. She had accepted Fred’s lariat and the coil of it began to whirl about her head.

“There it goes!” cried Tom Gallup.

The buckskin started on a long, swinging lope; but it could not get out from under the coil of the lariat. The noose fell and the plunging pony went head and forefeet into it. Frances leaped with both feet upon the rope, just as it snapped taut. Bucky went on his head, kicking all four feet in the air.

“Got him! got him!” shrieked the excited Tom, and the girls cheered likewise.

And then the lariat snapped in two!

Muddied and scratched, the buckskin scrambled to his feet, his eyes blazing, nostrils distended, and as wild a horse as ever came off the range.

“Look out, Miss Frances!” yelled Mack Hinkman, who had just come upon the scene. “That thar buckskin hawse is a bad actor.”

“Oh! the dear girl! Whatever did possess me to urge her on?” cried Mrs. Edwards. “Boys! Save her!”

But it was all over before any of the punchers, or the visitors on the fence, could go to Frances’ rescue.

The buckskin rose on his hind legs and struck at the girl desperately. She had gathered in the slack of the broken lariat and she swung it sharply across the pony’s face, leaping sideways to avoid him.

The pony whirled and struck again, whistling shrilly, the foam flying from his jaws. Once more Frances avoided him.

Tom Gallup was yelling like a wild boy on the fence. Sue could scarcely catch her breath for fear. She would not have admitted it for the world; but the courage of the range girl amazed her. Her own rescue from the charge of the little black bullock by Frances had not impressed Sue Latrop as did this battle with the pony in the arena of the horse corral.

Fred Purchase ran with another lariat. Frances seized it, flung the noose over the upraised head of the pony, took a swift turn around a shed post, and brought the “bad actor” up short.

She insisted, too, on cinching on the saddle and putting the bit in the pony’s mouth. Then she mounted him and as he tore around the corral, the girl sitting as though she were a part of the creature, the boys and girls joined the punchers in cheering her.

It was not in this way, however, that the girl visitors to the ranges learned the true worth of Frances Rugley. They were, after all, only “porch acquaintances.” Once only had the party been invited into the inner court for luncheon, and their brief calls to the ranch-house offered little opportunity for the girls to really see Frances’ home.

They had met her so much in riding costume that, like Pratt Sanderson, they were amazed when she appeared in a pretty house dress. And they were really a bit awed by her, for although the range girl was of a naturally cheerful disposition, she possessed, too, more than her share of dignity.

“You don’t flit about like these other girls, Frances,” said the old ranchman, who was very observant. “You grow to look and seem more like your mother every day. But the goodness knows I don’t want you to grow into a woman ahead of your time.”

“I reckon I won’t do that, Dad,” she said, laughing at him fondly.

“I don’t know. I reckon you’ve had too much responsibility on those shoulders of yours. You left school too young, too. That’s what these other girls say. Why, that Boston girl is going to school now!

“But, shucks! she wouldn’t know enough to hurt her if she attended school from now till the end of time!”

Frances laughed again. “That is pretty harsh, father. Now, I think I have had quite schooling enough to get along. I don’t need the higher branches of education to help you run this ranch. Do I?”

“By mighty!” exploded the Captain. “I don’t know whether I have been doing right by you or not. I’ve been talking to Mrs. Bill Edwards about it. I loved you so, Frances, that I hated to have you out of my sight. But—”

“Now, now!” cried the girl. “Let’s have no more of that. You and I have only each other, and I couldn’t bear to be away from you long enough to go to a boarding school.”

“Yes–I know,” went on Captain Rugley. “But there are ways of getting around that. We’ll see.”

One thing he was determined on was Captain Dan Rugley. He proposed to have “some doings” at the ranch-house before Pratt was well enough to be discharged from “St. Frances’ Hospital,” as he called the hacienda.

The old ranchman worked up the idea with Mrs. Edwards before Frances knew anything about it.

“They call it a ‘dinner dance,’” he confided to Frances at length, when the main plan was already made. “At least that’s what Mrs. Edwards says.”

“A ‘dinner dance’?” repeated his daughter, not sure for the moment that she wished to have so much confusion in the house when there was so much to do.

“Yes! Now, it isn’t one of those dances you read about out East, where folks drink a cup of tea, and then get up and dance around, and then take a sandwich and the orchestra strikes up another tune,” chuckled Captain Rugley.

“No, it isn’t like that. I couldn’t stand any such doings. I’d never know when I’d had enough to eat; every dance would shake down the courses so that my stomach would be packed as hard as a cement sidewalk.”

“Oh, Daddy!” said Frances, half laughing at him.

“No. This dinner dance idea is all right,” declared the ranchman. “We give a dinner to the whole crowd–all the girls and boys that have been coming over here for the past two or three weeks.”

“It will make fifteen at table,” said the practical Frances, thinking hard of the resources of the household.

“That’s all right. I’ll get in the Reposa boys to help San Soo and Ming.”

“Victorino, too?” asked his daughter, curiously.

“Yes,” declared the Captain, stoutly. “He’s sorry he mixed up with Ratty M’Gill. Vic isn’t a bad boy. Well, that’s help enough, and San Soo can outdo himself on his dinner.”

“That part of it will be all right–and the service, too, for José and Victorino are handy boys,” admitted Frances.

“We’ll have out the best tableware we own. That silver stuff that came from Don Morales will knock their eyes out—”

“Oh, Daddy!” cried Frances, going off into a gale of laughter. “You picked up that expression from Tom Gallup.”

“That’s the slangy boy–yes,” admitted the old ranchman, with a broad smile. “But some of his slang just hits things off right. Some of those girls think you’re ‘country,’ I know. We’ll show them!”

Frances sighed. She knew it meant that she must dress the part of a barbarian princess to please her father. But she made no objection. If she tried to show him that the jewels and ornaments were not fit for her to wear, he would be hurt.

“Yes!” exclaimed Captain Rugley, evidently much pleased with the idea of a social time that he had evolved with Mrs. Edwards’ help, “we’ll have as nice a dinner as San Soo can make. After dinner we’ll have dancing, I’ll get the string band from Jackleg. Jackleg’s getting to be quite a social centre, Mrs. Edwards says.”

Frances laughed again. “I expect,” she said, “that Mrs. Edwards is eager to have a dance, and the Jackleg string band is a whole lot better than Bob Jones’ accordion and Perry’s old fiddle.”

“Oh, well! Of course, an accordion and fiddle are all right for a cowboy dance, but this is going to be the real thing!” declared her father.

“Aren’t you going to invite the boys as usual?” asked Frances, quickly.

“Not to the dinner!” gasped her father. “But that’s all right. To the dance, afterward. Some of them are mighty good dancers, and there aren’t boys enough in Mrs. Edwards’ crowd to go round. It’s quite the thing at a dinner dance, she says, to invite extra people to come in after the dinner is over.”

“All right,” said Frances, suppressing another sigh.

“And I’m going to send off for half a carload of potted palms, and other plants. We’ll decorate like the Town Hall. You’ll see!” exclaimed the old ranchman, as eager as a boy about it all.

Frances hadn’t the heart to make any objection, but she was afraid that the affair would be a disappointment to him. She did not think the boys from the ranges, and Sue Latrop and her girl friends, would mix well.

But the Captain went ahead with his preparations with his usual energy. He had Mrs. Edwards as chief adviser. But Frances overlooked the plans in the household in her usually capable way.

The big drawing-room was thoroughly cleaned and the floor waxed. The scratches made by Ratty M’Gill’s spurs were eliminated. When the potted plants came–a four-mule wagon-load–Frances arranged them about the dancing floor and dining-room.

She found her father practising his steps in the hall one morning before breakfast. “Goodness, Daddy,” she cried. “Do be careful of your weak leg.”

“Don’t you worry about me,” he chuckled. “I’m going to give old Mr. Rheumatism a black eye this time. I’m going to ‘shake a leg’ at this dance if it’s the last act of my life.”

“Don’t be too reckless,” she told him, with a worried little frown on her brow. “I want you to be able to ride to Jackleg to see the pageant. And that comes the very day but one after our dance.”

“I’ll be all right,” he assured her. “I have a dance promised from Mrs. Edwards and each of the girls but that Boston one, right now. And I wouldn’t miss your show in Jackleg, Frances, for a penny!

“I only wish Lon were here to enjoy it. I got a letter from that minister saying that Lon and he will reach here next week. If they’d come early in the week they’d get here in time for the pageant, anyway.”

With so much bustle and preparation about the Bar-T ranch-house, there was not much likelihood of anybody being reckless enough to attempt stealing the old Spanish chest, or its contents.

These days the Captain kept the room in which the chest of treasure lay double-locked, and at night slept in the room himself. From sunset to sunrise a relay of cowboys rode around the huge house and compound, and although Pete Marin, as Ratty M’Gill’s friend from Mississippi was called, was still at large, there was no fear that he, or anybody else, would get into the hacienda at night.

Frances, with all her duties, had less time to devote to Pratt’s entertainment now. In truth, as soon as he was able to get downstairs by himself he complained that he lost his nurse.

When the crowd came over from the Edwards ranch, and sat around on the porch, Frances was not always with them. One afternoon–the very day before the dinner and dance, in fact–she came through one of the long, open windows upon the veranda, right behind a group of three of the girls. It was by chance she heard one of them say:

“Well, I don’t care, Sue, I think she is real nice. You are awfully critical.”

“I can’t bear dowdy people,” drawled Sue Latrop. “I know she’ll be a sight at that dinner to-morrow night. My goodness! if for nothing else I’d come to see how she looks in her ‘best bib and tucker’ and how that queer old man acts when he is what he calls ‘all dolled up.’”

“Sh!” warned the third girl. “Somebody will hear you.”

“Pooh! If they do?” returned Sue Latrop, carelessly.

“If I were you,” said the other girl, with warmth, “I wouldn’t accept an invitation to dine with people whom I expected to make fun of.”

“Silly!” laughed the girl from Boston. “I’ve got to find enjoyment somewhere–and there’s little enough of it in this Panhandle. I’ll be glad when father writes saying that I can come home once again.”

“How about your going to this dance, Sue?” chuckled one of the girls, suddenly. “I thought your doctor had forbidden dancing for this summer?”

“I think I see myself dancing with these cowboys that they are going to invite,” scoffed Sue. “And Pratt can’t dance yet. There isn’t anybody worth dancing with in our crowd now.”

“Hasn’t the Captain asked you for a dance?” queried her friend, roguishly.

“I should say not!” gasped Sue. “Fancy!”

“You must not act as though his invitation insulted you, Sue Latrop,” said one of the other girls, rather tartly. “You might as well understand, first as last, that we are all fond of Captain Rugley. Besides, he’s a very influential man and one of the wealthiest in this part of the Panhandle.”

“Nouveau-riche,” sniffed Miss Sue, with a toss of her head.

“If that means newly rich, why, he’s not!” exclaimed the other girl, with continued warmth. “It’s true, he didn’t make his money baking beans, or bean-pots; nor by drying and selling pollock and calling it ‘codfish.’ I believe one has to make his money in some such way to break into Boston society?”

“Something like that,” responded Sue, calmly.

“Well, the old Captain is very, very wealthy,” went on his champion. “If you’d ever been much inside this big house, you’d see it is so. And they say he has a treasure chest containing jewels of fabulous value.”

“A treasure chest!” ejaculated the Boston girl.

“Yes, Ma’am!”

“Now you are trying to fool me,” declared Sue Latrop.

“You wait! I expect Frances will wear at the dinner some of those wonderful old jewels the Captain digs out of his chest once in a while. I’ve heard they are really amazing—

“Jewels to deck out the Cattle Queen!” interrupted Sue, tauntingly. “Nose ring and anklets included, I s’pose?”

“Now, Sue! how can you be so mean?” cried one of the other girls.

“Pshaw! I suppose she’ll be a wondrous sight in her ‘best bib and tucker.’ Loaded down with silver ornaments, like a Mexican belle at a fair, or an Indian squaw at a poodle-dog feast. She will undoubtedly throw all us girls in the shade,” and Sue burst into a gale of laughter.

“I declare! you’re cruel, Sue!” cried one of the girls from Amarillo.

“I’d like to know how you make that out, Miss?” demanded the girl from Boston.

“Frances has never done you a bit of harm. Why! you are accepting her hospitality this very moment. And yet, you haven’t a good word to say for her.”

“I don’t see that I am called upon to give her a good word,” sneered Miss Latrop. “She is a rough, rude, quite impossible person. I fail to see wherein she deserves any consideration at my hands. I declare! to hear you girls, one would think this cowgirl was of some importance.”

Frances came quietly away from the window, postponing her dusting in that quarter until later. But she was tempted–very sorely tempted indeed.

Sue expected her to look like a cross between an Indian squaw and a Mexican belle at dinner–and Frances was sorely tempted to fulfil the Boston girl’s idea of what a “cattle queen” should look like at a society function!

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE BURSTING OF THE CHRYSALIS

And meanwhile Frances was undecided. She almost wished she might run away from the ordeal before her. To face all these people whom, after all, she knew so slightly, and play hostess at her father’s table, and be criticised by them all, was an ordeal hard for the range girl to face.

She was not particularly shy; but she shrank from unkind remarks, and she was sure of having at least one critic-extraordinary at the table–Sue Latrop.

This was really Frances’ “coming out party” but she didn’t want to “come out” at all!

“Oh! I wish they had never come here. I wish daddy had not asked them to this dinner. Dear me!” groaned the girl of the ranges, “I almost wish I had never met Pratt at all.”

For, looking into the future, she saw a long vista of range work and quiet living, with merely the minor incidents of ranch life to break the monotony. This “dip” into society would not even leave a pleasant remembrance, she was afraid.

And it might be years before she would be called upon to play hostess in such a way as this again. She sighed and unbraided her hair. At that moment there sounded a knock upon her door.

She ran to open it to her father.

“Here you are, Frances,” said the old ranchman, jovially. “Never mind if Lon hasn’t got here yet; I’ve gone deeper into the treasure chest. I want you to be all dolled up to-night.”

His hands were fairly ablaze–or looked to be. He had his great palms cupped, and that cup was full of gems in all sorts of ancient settings–shooting sparks of all colors in the dimly lighted room.

“There’s a handful of stuff to make you pretty,” he said, proudly.

The ancient belt dangled over his arm. He placed all the things on her dressing-table, and stood off to admire their brilliancy. Frances swallowed a lump in her throat. How could she disappoint him! How could she try to tell him how unsuitable these gems were for a young girl in her teens! He would be heart-broken if she did not wear them.

“You are a dear, Daddy!” she murmured, and kissed him. “Now run away and let me dress.”

He tiptoed out, all a-smile. His wife’s dressing-room had been a “holy of holies” to this simple-minded old man, and Frances reminded him every day, more and more strongly, of the woman whom he had worshiped for a few happy years.

Frances did not hasten with her preparations, however. She sat down and spread the gewgaws out before her on the dresser. The belt, Spanish earrings of fabulous value and length, rings that almost blinded her when she held the stones in the sunlight, a great oval brooch, bracelets, and a necklace of matched stones that made her heart beat almost to suffocation when she tried it on her brown throat.

She had it in her power to “knock their eyes out,” as daddy (and Tom Gallup) had expressed it. She could bedeck herself like a queen. She knew that Sue Latrop worshiped the tangible signs of wealth, as she understood them.

Cattle, and range lands, and horses, and a great, rambling house like this at the Bar-T, impressed the girl from Boston very little. But jewels would appeal to her empty head as nothing else could.

Frances knew this very well. She knew that she could overawe the Boston girl with a display of these gems. And she would please her father, too, in loading her fingers and ears and neck and arms with the brilliants.

And then, before she got any farther in her dressing, or had decided in her troubled mind what really to do, there came another, and lighter, tapping on her door.

“Who’s there?” asked Frances.

“It’s only me, Frances,” said Pratt.

“What do you want?” she asked, calmly, rising and approaching the door.

“Got something for you–if you want them,” the young man said, in a low voice.

“What is it?” she queried.

“Open the door and see,” and he laughed a little nervously.

Frances drew her gown closer about her throat, and turned the knob. Instantly a great bunch of fragrant little blossoms–the wild-flowers so hard to find on the plains and in the foothills–were thrust into her hands.

“Oh, Pratt!” shrieked the girl in delight.

She clasped the blossoms to her bosom; she buried her face in them. Pratt watched her with smiling lips, and wonderingly.

How pretty and girlish she was! The grown-up air that responsibilities had lent her fell away like a cloak. She was just a simple, enthusiastic, delighted girl, after all!

“Like them?” asked the young man, laconically.

“I love them!” Frances declared.

Pratt was thinking how wonderful it was that a girl could seize a big bunch of posies like that, and hug them, and press them to her face, and still not crush the fragile things.

“Why,” he thought, “I’ve had to handle them like eggs all the way here, to keep from spoiling them beyond repair. Aren’t girls wonders?”

You see, Pratt Sanderson was beginning to be interested in the mysteries of the opposite sex.

“Run away now, like a good boy,” she said to him, as she had to her father, and closed the door once more.

She ran to her bathroom and filled two vases with water and put the flower stems in, that they might drink and keep the blossoms fresh.

Then, with a lighter air and tread, she went about her dressing for the party.

She put up her hair, deftly copying the fashion that Sue Latrop–that mirror of Eastern fashion–affected. And the new mode became Frances vastly.

Her new dress–the one she had had made for the pageant–had already come home from the city dressmaker who had her measurements. She spread it upon the bed and got her skirts and other linen.

Half an hour later she was out of her bath and ready for the dress itself. It went on and fitted perfectly.

“I am sure anybody must admire this,” she told herself. She was sure that none of the girls at the dinner and dance would be more fitly dressed than herself–if she stopped right here!

But now she returned to the dresser and looked at the blazing gems from the old Spanish chest. If only daddy did not want her to wear them!

A ring, one bracelet, possibly the brooch. She might wear those without shocking good taste. All were beautiful; but the heavy settings, the great belt of gold and emeralds, the necklace of sparkling brilliants–all, all were too rich and too startling for a girl of her age, and well Frances knew it.

With sinking heart and trembling fingers she adorned herself with the heaviest weight of trouble she had ever borne.

A little later she descended the stairs, slowly, regally, bearing her head erect, and looking like a little tragedy queen as she appeared in the soft evening glow at the foot of the stairs.

Pratt’s gasp of wonder and amazement made the old Captain turn to look.

Above her brow was a crescent of sparkling stones. The long, graceful earrings lay lovingly upon the bared, velvet shoulders of the girl.

The bracelets clasped the firm flesh of her arms warmly. The collar of gems sparkled at her throat. The brooch blazed upon her bosom. And around her slender waist was the great belt of gold.

She was a wonderful sight! Pratt was dazzled–amazed. The old ranchman poked him in the ribs.

“What do you think of that?” he demanded. “Went right down to the bottom of the chest to get all that stuff. Isn’t she the whole show?”

And Frances had hard work to keep back the tears. She knew that was exactly what she was–a show.

She could see the change slowly grow in Pratt’s features. His wonder shifted to disapproval. After the first shock he realized that the exhibition of the gems on such an occasion as this was in bad taste.

Why! she was like a jeweler’s window! The gems were wonderfully beautiful, it was true. But they would better be on velvet cushions and behind glass to be properly appreciated.

“Do you like me, Daddy?” she asked, softly.

“My mercy, Frances! I scarcely know you,” he admitted. “You certainly make a great show.”

“Are you satisfied?” she asked again.

“I–I’d ought to be,” he breathed, solemnly. “You–you’re a beauty! Isn’t she, Pratt?”

“Save my blushes,” Frances begged, but not lightly. “If I suit you exactly, Daddy, I shall appear at dinner this way.”

“Sure! Show them to our guests. There’s not another woman in the Panhandle can make such a show.”

Frances, with a sharp pain at her heart, thought this was probably true.

“Wait, Daddy,” she said. “Let me run back and make one little change. You wait there in the cool reception-room, and see how I look next time.”

She could no longer bear the expression of Pratt’s eyes. Turning, she gathered up her skirts and scuttled back to her room. Her cheeks were afire. Her lips trembled. She had to fight back the tears.

One by one she removed the gaudy ornaments. She left the crescent in her wavy brown hair and the old-fashioned brooch at her breast. Everything else she stripped off and flung into a drawer, and locked it.

These two pieces of jewelry might be heirlooms that any young girl could wear with taste at her “coming out” party.

She ran to the vases and took a great bunch of Pratt’s flowers which she carried in her gloved hand when she went down for the second time to show herself to her father.

This time she tripped lightly. Her cheeks were becomingly flushed. Her bare throat, brown and firm, rose from the soft laces of her dress in its unadorned beauty. The very dress she wore seemed more simple and girlish–but a thousand times more fitting for her wearing.

“Daddy!”

She burst into the dimly lighted room. He wheeled in his chair, removed the pipe from his mouth, and stared at her again.

This time there was a new light in his eyes, as there was in hers. He stood up and something caught him by the throat–or seemed to–and he swallowed hard.

“How do you like me now?” she whispered, stretching her arms out to him.

“My–my little girl!” murmured the old Captain, and his voice broke. “Then–then you are not grown up, after all?”

“Nor do I want to be, for ever and ever so long yet, Daddy!” she cried, and ran to enfold him in her warm embrace.

“Humph!” said the old Captain, confidentially. “I was half afraid of that young person who was just down here, Frances. I can kiss you now without mussing you all up, eh?”

Pratt had stolen out of the room through one of the windows to the veranda.

His heart was swelling and salt tears stung his eyes.

Like the old Captain, the youth had felt some awe of the richly-bedecked young girl who had displayed to such advantage the stunning and wonderful old jewelry that had once adorned Spanish señoras or Aztec princesses. Despite the fact that he disapproved of such a barbarous display, Pratt had been impressed.

He had an inkling, too, as to Sue Latrop’s attitude toward the range girl and believed that some unkind expression of the Boston girl’s feelings had tempted Frances to show herself in barbaric guise at the dinner. Pratt could not have blamed the Western girl if she had “knocked their eyes out,” to use Tom Gallup’s expression, with an exhibition of the gorgeous jewels Captain Rugley had got out of the treasure chest.

Without much doubt the old ranchman would have been very proud of his daughter’s beauty, set off by the glitter of the wonderful old gems. It was his nature to boast of his possessions, although his pride in them was innocent enough. His wealth would never in this wide world make Captain Dan Rugley either purse-proud or arrogant!

The old man’s sweetness of temper, kindliness of manner, and open-handedness had been inherited by Frances. She was a true daughter of her father. But she was her mother’s child, too. The well-bred, quiet, tactful lady whom the old Border fighter had married had left her mark upon the range girl. Frances possessed natural refinement and good taste. It was that which had caused her to go to her chamber after the display of the jewels, and return for a second “review.”

The appearance of the simply-dressed girl who had come downstairs the second time had so impressed Pratt Sanderson that he wished to get off here on the porch by himself for a minute or two.

The first load of visitors was just driving up to the gate of the compound.

He watched the girls from Amarillo, and Sue, and all the others descend, shake out their ruffles, and run up the steps.

“My!” sighed Pratt Sanderson in his soul. “Frances has got them all beat in every little way. That’s as sure as sure!”

CHAPTER XXIX
“THE PANHANDLE–PAST AND PRESENT”

Almost before the plans for the pageant had been formed, the business men of Jackleg had subscribed a liberal sum to defray expenses. As the plans for the entertainment progressed, and it was whispered about what a really fine thing it was to be, more subscriptions rolled in.

But Captain Dan Rugley had deposited a guarantee with the Committee that he would pay any debts over the subscriptions received, therefore Frances and her helpers had gone ahead along rather lavish lines.

The end wall of the school building had been actually removed. The framework of the wall was rearranged by the carpenters like the proscenium arch of a stage, and a drop of canvas faced the spectators where the teacher’s desk and platform had been.

Behind the schoolhouse was a vacant lot. This had been surrounded with a high board fence. The enclosure made the great stage for the spectacle which the Jackleg people, the ranchers and farmers from around about, and the visitors from Amarillo and other towns, had come to see.

At the back of this enclosure, or stage, was a big sheet, or screen, on which moving pictures could be thrown. On a platform built outside, and over the open end of the building, were two moving picture machines with operators who had come on from California where some of the pictures had been made by a very famous film company.

Some of the pictures had been made in Oklahoma, too, where one public-spirited American citizen has saved a herd of the almost extinct bison that once roamed our Western plains in such numbers.

At either side of the fenced yard behind the schoolhouse stood the actors in the spectacle–both human and dumb–with all the paraphernalia. A director had come on from the film company to stage the show; but the story as developed was strictly in accordance with Frances Rugley’s “plans and specifications.”

“She’s a wonder, that little girl,” declared the professional. “She’d make her mark as a scenario writer–no doubt of that. I’d like to get her for our company; but they say her father is one of the richest men in the Panhandle.”

Pratt Sanderson, to whom he happened to say this, nodded. “And one of the best,” he assured the Californian. “Captain Dan Rugley is a noble old man, a gentleman of the old school, and one who has seen the West grow up and develop from the times of its swaddling clothes until now.”

“Wonderful country,” sighed the director. “Look at its beginnings almost within the memory of the present generation, and now–why! there’s half a hundred automobiles parked right outside this show to-night!”

Captain Dan Rugley secured a front seat. He was as excited as a boy over the event. He admitted to Mrs. Bill Edwards that he hadn’t been to a “regular show” a dozen times in his life.

“And I expect this is going to knock the spots out of anything I ever saw–even the Grand Opera at Chicago, when my wife and I went on our honeymoon.”

The young folks from the Edwards ranch were scattered about the old Captain. Sue Latrop had assumed her most critical attitude. But Sue had been wonderfully silent about Frances and her father since the dinner dance.

That occasion had turned out to be something entirely different from what the girl from Boston expected. In the first place, her young hostess was better and more tastefully–though simply–dressed than any of her guests.

Her adornments had been only a crescent in her hair and a brooch; but Sue had been forced to admire the beauty and value of these. Beside Frances, the other girls seemed overdressed. The range girl had dignity enough to carry off her part perfectly.

Under the soft glow of the candles in the wonderful old candelabra, to which the Captain referred as “a part of the loot of Señor Morales’ hacienda,” Frances of the ranges sat as hostess, calmly beautiful, and governing the course of the dinner without the least hesitancy or confusion.

She looked out for every guest’s needs and directed the two Mexican boys and Ming in their service with all the calmness and judgment of a hostess who was long used to dinner parties. Indeed, Sue Latrop was forced to admit in her secret soul that she had never seen any hostess manage better at an entertainment of this kind.

At the upper end of the table, the old Captain fairly beamed his hospitality and delight. He kept the boys in a gale of laughter, and the girls seemed all to enjoy themselves, too. Critical Miss Latrop could throw no wet blanket upon the proceedings; to tell the truth, her sour face was quite overlooked by the other guests, and about all the attention she attracted was when Mrs. Bill Edwards asked her if she had the toothache.

“No, I have no toothache!” snapped Sue. “I don’t see why you should ask.”

“Well, my dear,” said the lady, soothingly, “something must surely be the matter. I never saw a person at dinner with so miserable a countenance. Does something pinch you?”

Yes! it was Sue’s vanity pinching her, if the truth were known. Her diatribes about Frances and the old Captain were not to be easily forgotten by the girl from Boston. Not so much was she smitten because of her unkindness; but she felt that she had played the fool!

Her friends from Amarillo must be quietly laughing in secret over what Sue had said regarding the uncouthness of the Captain and the lack of breeding of the “Cattle Queen.” Sue felt that she had laid herself open to ridicule, and it did hurt Sue Latrop to think that her young friends were laughing at her.

As for the dinner, that was a revelation to the girl from Boston. The service, if a bit odd, was very good. And the silver, cut glass, napery, and all were as rich as Sue had ever seen.

After the dinner, and the other guests began to arrive, and the band struck up behind the palms in the inner court of the hacienda, Sue continued to be surprised, though she failed to admit it to her friends.

It was true the boys came up from the bunk-house without evening dress. But their black clothes were clean and well brushed, and those who wore the usual kerchief about their necks sported silk ones and carried their bullion-loaded sombreros in their hands.

And they could all dance. Sue refused the first few dances and tried to sit and look on in a superior way; but she presently failed to make good at this.

When the kindly old ranchman considered her a wall-flower and came and begged her to “give him a whirl,” Sue had to break through her “icy reserve.”

Although they did not dance the more modern dances, she found that Captain Rugley knew his steps and was as light on his feet as a man half his age.

“I have given Mr. Rheumatism the time of his life to-night!” declared the owner of the Bar-T brand. “That’s what I told Frances I would do.”

And Captain Rugley suffered no ill effects from the dance, as was shown by his appearance here at the Jackleg schoolhouse to-night, when the canvas curtain slowly rolled up to reveal first the painted curtain behind it, on which was a picture of the meeting of Cortez and the Aztec princes soon after the Conqueror’s arrival in Mexico.

The school teacher read the prologue, and the spectators settled down to listen and to see. His explanation of what was to follow was both concise and well written, and the whisper went around:

“And she’s only a girl! Yes, Miss Rugley wrote it all.”

Sue sniffed. The teacher stepped back into the shadow and the painted curtain rolled up.

There was a gasp of amazement when the audience saw what was revealed behind the painted sheet. One of the moving picture machines was already running, and on the great screen was thrown a representation of the staked plains of the Panhandle as they were in the days before the white man ever saw them.

Far, far away appeared a band of painted and feather-bedecked Indians, riding their mustangs, and sweeping down toward the immediate foreground of the picture with a vividness that was almost startling.

Into that foreground was drifting a herd of buffaloes. They started, the bulls giving the signal as the enemy approached, and the end of that section was the scampering of the great, hairy beasts, with the Indians in full chase, brandishing their spears.

Immediately the scene changed and a train of a different kind broke into view in the dim perspective. The moving figures grew clearer as the moments passed. Over a similar part of the staked plain came the exploring Spaniards, with their cattle and caparisoned horses, their enslaved Aztecs, their priests bearing the Cross before.

The moving procession came closer and closer until suddenly the whirring of the picture machine stopped, a great searchlight was turned upon the dusky yard between the screen and the open end of the school building, and with a gasp of amazement the audience saw there the double of the procession which had just been pictured on the moving picture screen.

The actors in this part of the pageant crowded across the desert, were stopped by a stampede of Indian ponies, and later made friends of the wondering savages.

From this point on the history of the Panhandle developed rapidly. The spectators saw the crossing of the plains by the early pioneers, both in picture and by actual people, a train of prairie schooners drawn by oxen, and a sham battle between the pioneers and the Indians.

The buffaloes disappeared from the picture and the wide-horned cattle took their place. A picture of a famous round-up was shown, and then a real herd of cattle was driven into the enclosure (they wore the Bar-T brand) and several cowboys displayed their skill in roping and tying.

The curtain was dropped, there was a swift change, and it arose again on a hastily-built frontier town–a town of one-story shacks with two-story false fronts, dance and gambling halls, saloons, a pitiful hotel, and all the crude and ugly building expressions of a raw civilization.

“My mighty!” gasped Captain Dan Rugley. “That’s Amarillo–Amarillo as I first saw it, twenty-five years ago.”

People appeared in the street, and rough enough they were. A band of cowpunchers rode in, with yells and pistol shots. The rough life of that early day was displayed in some detail.

And then, after a short intermission, pictures were displayed again of great droves of cattle on the trail, bound for the shipping points; following which came pictures of the new wheat fields–that march of the agricultural régime that is to make the Panhandle one of the wealthiest sections of our great country.

A great reaper was shown at work; likewise a traction gang-plow and a motor threshing machine. The progress in agriculture in the Panhandle during the last half dozen years really excited some of the older residents.

“Did you ever see the beat of that?” demanded Captain Rugley. “I’m blest if I wouldn’t like to own one of them. See those little dinguses turn up the ribbons of sod! I don’t know but that Frances can encourage me to be that kind of a farmer, after all! There’s something big about riding a reaper like that one. And that threshing machine, too! Did you see the straw blowing out of the pipes as though a cyclone was whirling it away?

“By mighty! I wish Lon could have been here to see this, I certainly do!”

For the last time the curtain was lowered and then rose again. On the screen was pictured Amarillo as it is to-day.

First a panorama of the town and its outskirts. Then “stills” of its principal buildings, and its principal citizens.

Then the main streets, full of business life, autos chugging, electric cars clanging back and forth, all of the bustle of a modern town that is growing rich and growing rapidly.

The contrast between what the spectators had seen early in the spectacle and this final scene made them thoughtful. There had been plenty of applause all through the show; but when “Good-night” was shown upon the screen, nobody moved, and Pratt raised the shout for:

“Miss Rugley!”

She would not appear before the curtain save with the other members of the committee. But the cheering was for her and she had to run away to hide her blushes and her tears of happiness.

“Wake up, Sue, it’s over!” exclaimed one of the other girls, shaking the young lady from Boston.

Sue Latrop came to herself slowly. She had never realized the Spirit of the West before, nor appreciated what it meant to have battled for and grown up with a frontier community.

“Is–is that all true?” she whispered to Pratt.

“Is what all true?” he asked, rather blankly.

“That there have been such improvements and changes here in so few years?”

“You bet!” exclaimed Pratt, with emphasis.

“Well–re’lly–it’s quite wonderful,” admitted Sue, slowly. “I had no idea it was like that!”

“So you think better of our ‘crude civilization,’ do you?” laughed one of her girl friends.

“Why–why, it is quite surprising,” said Sue, again, and still quite breathless.

“And what do you think of our Frances?” demanded Mrs. Bill Edwards, proudly. “There’s nobody in Boston’s Back Bay, even, who could do better than she?”

And Sue Latrop was–for the time being, at least–completely silenced.

CHAPTER XXX
A REUNION

This train that was stopping to cast loose the special car at Jackleg was the last to stop at that station at night. Some few of the spectators of the pageant would board it for stations farther west; so there was a small group on the station platform.

The young folk, Pratt and Frances, sighted the headlight up the track. They were walking up and down the platform, arm in arm and talking over the successful completion of the play, when they spied it.

“It’s coming, Daddy!” cried Frances, running into the station to warn the old Captain.

To tell the truth, he had been leaning back against the wall–in a hard and straight-backed chair, of course–taking a “cat-nap.” But he awoke instantly and with all his senses alert.

“All right, Frances–all right, my girl,” he said. “I’m with you. Hurrah! My old partner will be as glad to see me as I am to see him.”

But when the train rolled in there was some delay. The special car had to be shunted onto the siding before Captain Rugley could go aboard.

“Come on, Frances,” urged her father, as eager as a boy. He ran across the tracks and Frances dutifully followed him. Pratt remained on the platform and looked rather wistfully after her. Their conversation had been broken off abruptly. He had not had an opportunity to say all that he wanted to say and he was to go back to Amarillo the next day.

He saw the Captain and his daughter climb the steps, helped by the negro porter. They disappeared within the lighted car. Pratt still lingered. His pony was hitched up the street a block or so. There really was nothing further for him to wait for.

Suddenly shadows appeared on a curtain of one section of the car. The shade flew up and the window was raised.

The young man from Amarillo stood right where the lamplight fell upon his features. He found himself staring into the face of a grey-visaged, sharp-eyed old man, who had a great shock of grey hair on the top of his head like a cockatoo’s tuft.

The stranger stared at Pratt earnestly, and then beckoned him with both hands, shouting:

“Hey, you boy! You there, with the plaid cap. Come here!”

Rather startled, and not a little amused, Pratt started slowly in the direction of the car.

“Hey! Lift your feet there,” called out the old man. “You act like you had the hookworm. Git a move on!”

“What do you want?” demanded Pratt, coming under the window. He could see into the lighted car now, and he observed Frances and her father standing back of the stranger, the Captain broadly agrin.

The man reached down suddenly and grabbed Pratt by the lobe of his right ear–pinching it between thumb and finger.

“Say! what are you about?” demanded Pratt. But for a very good reason he did not seek to pull away.

“Let me look at you again,” commanded the man who had taken this liberty. “Turn your face up this way–you hear me? My soul! I knew I couldn’t be mistaken. What did you say this boy’s name was, Dan?” he shot at the Captain over his shoulder.

“That’s Pratt Sanderson,” chuckled Captain Rugley. “Something of a tenderfoot, but a good lad, Lon, a good lad.”

“You bet he is!” declared Jonas P. Lonergan, vigorously. “I knew his name when you spoke it, and now I know his face. He’s the image of his mother–that’s what he is.”

Then he turned to Pratt again and roared: “Do you know who I am, boy?”

“I fancy you are the–the old partner of Captain Rugley whom he has expected so long,” Pratt said, puzzled but smiling. He had never chanced to hear the expected guest called by any other name than “Lon.”

“I’m Jonas P. Lonergan!” exclaimed the old man. “Now do you know me. I’m your mother’s half-brother. I knew you folks lived out this way somewhere, but I’ve not seen you since you were a little shaver.

“But I’ll never forget how my little half-sister used to look, and you are just like her when she was young,” declared Mr. Lonergan. “Come in here, you young rascal, and let me get a closer look at you.”

“My Uncle Jonas?” gasped Pratt, in amazement.

“That’s what I am!” declared Mr. Lonergan. “Your old uncle who never did much of anything for you–or the rest of the fam’ly–all his life. But he’s goin’ to be able to do something now.

“Listen here: Captain Dan Rugley says the treasure chest old Señor Morales gave us so long ago is all right. It’s chock-full of jewels and gold and money— Shucks! I’m as crazy as a child about it,” laughed the old man.

“After bein’ through what I have, and livin’ poor so many years, it’s enough to scatter the brains of an old man like me to come into a fortune. Yes, sir! And what’s mine is yours, Pratt. They tell me you are a mighty good boy. Captain Dan speaks well of you—”

“And I ought to,” growled the old ranchman from the background. “I owe something to him, too, for what he did for Frances.”

“Heh?” exclaimed Lonergan. He turned short around and stared at the blushing Frances. “She’s a mighty fine girl, I reckon?”

“The best in the Panhandle,” declared the old ranchman, nodding understandingly.

“And this boy of my sister’s is a pretty good fellow, Dan?” asked Lonergan.

“Mighty fine–mighty fine,” admitted Captain Dan Rugley.

“I tell you what,” whispered Jonas, in the Captain’s ear, “this dividin’ up the contents of that old treasure chest will only be temporary after all–just temporary, eh?”

“We’ll see–we’ll see, Lon,” said Captain Dan, carefully. “They’re young yet, they’re over-young. But ’twould certain sure be a romantic outcome of all our adventures together years ago, eh?”

“Right you are, Captain, right you are!” agreed Lonergan.

Frances and Pratt heard none of this. Pratt had entered the car and the two young people were talking to the Reverend Mr. Tooley, who was a demure little man in clerical black, who seemed quite happy over the reunion of the two old friends, Captain Dan Rugley and Jonas P. Lonergan.

Lonergan was a lean old man who walked with a crutch. Although he had a very vigorous voice, he showed his age and his state of ill health when he began to move about.

“But we’ll fix all that, Lon,” the Captain assured him. “Once we get you out to the Bar-T we’ll build you up in a jiffy. We’ll get you out of doors. Humph! soldiers’ home, indeed! Why, you’ve got a long stretch of life ahead of you yet. I’ve beat out old Mr. Rheumatism myself these last few weeks.

“We’ll fight our bodily ills and old age together, Lon–just as we used to fight other enemies. Back to back and never give up or ask for quarter, eh?”

“That’s the talk, Dan!” cried the other old fellow.

But Mr. Lonergan was glad to ride out to the Bar-T in the comfortably-cushioned carriage that Mack Hinkman had driven to town. The party arrived at the ranch-house–Mr. Tooley and all–after daybreak. The Captain had insisted upon Pratt’s going, too.

“What?” Lonergan demanded. “You a bank clerk, looking out through the wires of a cage like a monkey in the Zoo we saw years ago at Kansas City?”

“That is a nice job for your nephew, hey Lon?” put in the Captain.

“Drop it, boy, drop it. You’re the heir of a rich man now–isn’t that so, Captain?”

“That’s so,” agreed Captain Dan Rugley. “He’d better write in to his bank and tell ’em to excuse him indefinitely; and write to his mother to come out here and visit a spell with her brother. The Bar-T’s big enough, I should hope–hey, Frances? What do you say?”

“I am sure it would be nice to have Pratt’s mother with us. I’d be delighted to have somebody’s mother in the house, Daddy,” said Frances, smiling. “You know, you’re the best father that ever lived; but you can’t be mother, too.”

“It’s what you’ve missed since you were a tiny little girl, Frances,” agreed Captain Rugley, gravely. “But just the same–I want ’em to show me a girl in all this blessed Panhandle that’s a better or finer girl than my Frances. Am I right, Pratt?”

“You most certainly are, Captain,” the young man agreed. “Or anywhere outside the Panhandle.”

Frances smiled at him roguishly. “Even from Boston, Pratt?” she whispered.

But Pratt forgave her for that.

Another picture of the Bar-T ranch-house on a late afternoon. The slanting rays of a westering sun lie across the floor of the main veranda. The family party idling there need no introduction save in a single particular.

A tall, well-built lady in black, and with grey hair, and who looks so much like Pratt Sanderson that the relationship between them could be seen at a glance, has the chair of honor. Mrs. Sanderson is making her first of many visits to the Bar-T.

Old Jonas P. Lonergan, his crutch beside him, is lying comfortably in another lounging chair. But he already looks much more vigorous.

Captain Dan Rugley, as ever, is tipped back against the wall in his favorite position. Frances is with her sewing at a low table, while Pratt is lying on the rug at his mother’s feet.

“What’s that Mr. Tooley said in his letter, Frances?” asked Pratt. “Is he sure the man who was killed on the railroad when he went home from here was a man named Pete Marin, who once was orderly at the soldiers’ home?”

“Yes,” said Frances, gravely. “He was walking the track, they thought. Either he was intoxicated or he did not hear the train. Poor fellow!”

“Blamed rascal!” ejaculated Jonas P. Lonergan.

“He made us some trouble–but it’s over,” said Pratt.

“You showed what sort of stuff you were made of, young man,” said the Captain, thoughtfully, “at that very time. Maybe you’ve got something to thank that Pete for.”

“And Ratty M’Gill?” asked Pratt, smiling.

“Poor Ratty!” said Frances again.

“He’s gone down to the Pecos country,” said the Captain, briskly. “Best place for him. Maybe he will know enough not to get in with such fellows as that Pete again.”

“I should have been much afraid had I known what Pratt was getting into out here,” Mrs. Sanderson ventured.

“Now, now, Sister! Don’t try to make a mollycoddle out o’ the boy,” said Jonas P. Lonergan. “I tell you we’re going to make a man out o’ Pratt here. I’ve bought an interest in the Bar-T for him. He’s going to take some of the work off the Captain’s shoulders when we get him broke in, hey, Dan?”

“Right you are, Lon!” agreed the other old man.

Frances smiled quietly to hear them plan. She put her needle in and out of the work she was doing slowly. By and by her fingers stopped altogether and she looked away across the ranges.

She, too, was planning. She was seeing herself living in a college town the next winter, with daddy for company, while Mr. Lonergan and Pratt and his mother remained on at the Bar-T.

She saw herself graduating after a few years from some advanced school, quite the equal of Pratt in education. Meanwhile he would be learning to change the vast Bar-T ranges into wheat and milo fields, and taking up the new farming that is revolutionizing the Panhandle.