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Updated: May 26, 2025
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.
Left motherless at an early age, the ranchman's daughter had grown to her sixteenth year different from most girls. Even different from most other girls of the plains and ranges. For ten years there was not a woman's face white, black, or red on the Bar-T acres. The Captain had married late in life, and had loved Frances' mother devotedly.
"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.
Pete leaned toward him and his hairy hand clutched Ratty's knee. What he said to the discharged employee of the Bar-T Ranch Frances did not hear. She had, however, heard enough. She was worried by what Ratty had said about his interview with Captain Rugley. Her father should not have been disturbed by ranch business just then.
She remembered that the young man from Amarillo had taken a peep into the Bar-T wagon when he joined them on the trail. He must have seen the heavy chest; and now he ignored it. On and on they rode. The smoke made the ride very unpleasant, even if the flames were now at a distance.
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.
She and Pratt would have been immediately free. It was hours afterward indeed, almost sunset that old Captain Rugley, sitting on the broad veranda of the Bar-T ranch-house and expecting Frances to appear at any moment, raised his eyes to see, instead, Victorino Reposa slouching up the steps. "Hello, Vic!" said the Captain. "What do you want?"
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.
"I'm telling you," Pratt's voice replied, and Frances saw that it was the girl next to him who had asked the question. "I'm telling you that all the calves and young stock have to be branded." "Branded?" "Yes. They belong to the Bar-T, you see; therefore, the Bar-T mark has to be burned on them." "Just fancy!" exclaimed the girl in the red coat.
But the old ranchman considered it his bounden duty to keep the treasure in his own hands until his partner came to divide it; and he would be stubborn about any change in this plan. Lonergan could not get to the Bar-T for three weeks, or more. In the meantime suppose Pete made another attempt to steal the contents of the Spanish chest?
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