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Updated: May 26, 2025
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.
Victorino was scarcely out of the compound when the Captain had summoned Ming from the dining-room and San Soo from his pots and pans. "Put off dinner. Maybe we won't have any dinner to-night, San Soo," said the owner of the Bar-T. "We're in trouble. You and Ming shut the doors when I go out and bar them. Stand watch. Don't let a soul in unless I come back or Miss Frances appears.
The fellow now sat easily in his saddle at a little distance and rolled a cigarette, leering in the meantime at the ranch girl and her friend. "What does that fellow want?" demanded Pratt again. "Oh, don't mind him," said Frances, hurriedly. "He has been discharged from the Bar-T " "That's the fellow you said made the steers stampede?" Pratt interrupted. "Yes."
So the young man dropped the subject. He ran after his own pony, and then brought Sue's stubborn mount to her hand. Sue was being congratulated and made much of by her friends. None of them spoke to Frances. Pratt came over to the latter before she could ride away after the bawling steer. Blackwater was going to be branded this time if it took the whole force of the Bar-T to accomplish it!
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!"
The young girl and her companion could not travel fast to the Bar-T ranch-house for two reasons: Pratt Sanderson was sore all over, and the mountain lion slung across Frances' pony caused some trouble. The pinto objected to carrying double especially when an occasional draft of evening air brought the smell of the lion to her nostrils.
Frances looked through her barred window, out over the fenced yard, and down to the few twinkling watch-lights at the men's quarters. All the second-story windows of the ranch-house, overlooking the porch roof, were barred with iron rods set in the cement, like those on the first floor. The Bar-T ranch-house was a veritable fort.
For some of the other cattlemen of the Panhandle rode many miles to call at the Bar-T Ranch; and, of course, they insisted upon seeing Captain Rugley. Then Frances threw a Navajo blanket over it and it looked like a couch or divan. To Silent Sam she said; "I want a four-mule wagon to go to Amarillo for supplies. When can I have it?"
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.
"You'd better ride to the Bar-T for the night. We will send a boy over there with a message, if you think Mrs. Edwards will be worried." "I suppose I'd better do as you say," he said, rather ruefully. "Mrs. Edwards will be worried about my absence over supper time. She says I'm such a tenderfoot."
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