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Her second topic for thought was her father's evident expectation that the ranch-house might be attacked. Every stranger was an object of suspicion to him. This did not abate one jot his natural Western hospitality. As mark his open-handed reception of Pratt Sanderson on this evening. They kept open house at the Bar-T ranch.
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.
She sat down that very hour and wrote to the Reverend Decimus Tooley, explaining why she, instead of Captain Rugley, wrote, and requesting that Jonas Lonergan be made ready for the trip from Bylittle to Jackleg, in the Panhandle, where a carriage from the Bar-T Ranch would meet him.
The girl jerked Molly's head around and they dropped back behind the wagon which kept on lumberingly, with Mack still asleep on the seat. From the south from the direction of the distant river a rider came galloping up the trail. "Why!" murmured Frances. "It's Ratty M'Gill!" The ex-cowboy of the Bar-T swung around upon the trail, as though headed east, and grinned at the ranchman's daughter.
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."
Never was such a place as the old Bar-T for folks getting hurt." "Bar-T?" ejaculated the young man, with sudden interest. "Then you must be Miss Rugley, Captain Dan Rugley's daughter?" "Yes, sir," said the girl, quietly. "Captain Rugley is my father." "And you're going to put on that very clever spectacle at the Jackleg schoolhouse next month?
He is going to stay here for a time. What for, I wonder? Is he expecting to meet somebody?" This Cottonwood Bottom, as it was called, was on the Bar-T range. Nobody really had business here save the ranch employees. The trail to the hacienda was not a general road to any other ranch or settlement. It was curious that this lone man should come here and make camp. She came in sight of him ere long.
"But you don't object to Miss Boston's expression of gratitude, Pratt?" teased Frances. He made a little face at her as he went back to the ranchman's wife and her guests; without another word Frances spurred Molly in the other direction, and before Mrs. Bill Edwards could speak to her the girl of the ranges was far away. She headed for the West Run, where a large herd of the Bar-T cattle grazed.
It was not yet fully dark, although the ranch-house lamps were lit, when they came to the home corral and the big fenced yard in front of the Bar-T. Two boys ran out to take the ponies. One of these Frances instructed to saddle a fresh pony and ride to the Edwards place with word that Pratt Sanderson would remain all night at the Bar-T.
She knew that a bunch of calves and yearlings had been rounded up a few days before, and the foreman of the Bar-T would take no chance of having them escape to the general herds on the ranges, and so have the trouble of cutting them out again at the grand round-up. It was impossible, even on such a large ranch as the Bar-T, to keep cattle of other brands from running with the Bar-T herds.
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