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"Now, don't bother, Frances. Your old dad isn't dead yet not by any means! I'll be all right in a day or two." But Captain Rugley was not all right in so short a time. He actually grew worse. Frances sent a messenger for the doctor the very next morning. Whether it was from the exposure of the night the stranger tried to climb over the hacienda roof or not, Captain Rugley took to his bed.
That there really had been a marauder about the Bar-T ranch-house could not be doubted; for a slate was found upon the ground in the morning, and the place in the roof where it had been broken out was plainly visible. Captain Rugley sent one of the men up with a ladder and new slates to repair the damage.
"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.
Frances knew that the unknown lay there, panting, after his exertions. A dozen things she might have done afterward appealed to Frances Rugley. But as she crouched by her chamber window watching the squirming human figure on the edge of the roof, she was interested in only one thing: Who was he? This question so filled her thought that she was neither fearful nor anxious.
"What would father say, if he knew about it?" But fortunately Captain Rugley was not at hand with his suspicions. Frances wished to believe the young man from Amarillo truly her friend; and on this ride toward Peckham's they became better acquainted than before. That is, the girl of the ranges learned to know Pratt better.
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.
Frances kept close behind him and warned him to step softly rather an unnecessary bit of advice to an old Indian trailer like Captain Rugley! But when they came to the window through which Frances had seen the dangling ladder it was gone. The old ranchman shot a ray of his electric torch through the opening; but the light revealed nothing. "Gone!" he announced, briefly. "Do do you think so, Dad?"
Nothing had ever happened to Frances Rugley to really terrify her. Why should she be afraid now? She walked swiftly, her robe trailing behind, her slippered feet twinkling in and out under the nightgown she wore. In the cross-hall she almost ran. There, at the end, was the open window. Indeed, there were no sashes in these hall windows at this time of year; only the bars.
He flashed an electric torch for a moment about the place. She saw he had a cot arranged at one side, and had evidently gone to bed here, beside the treasure chest. "Why is this, sir?" she demanded, with pretty seriousness. "Reckon the old man's getting nervous," said Captain Rugley. "Can't sleep in my reg'lar bed when there are strangers in the house." Frances started.
"This is Pratt Sanderson, from Amarillo," the daughter of the ranchman said first of all. "He's a friend of Mrs. Bill Edwards. He was having trouble with a lion over in Brother's Coulie, when I came along. We got the lion; but Pratt got some scratches. Can't Ming find him a flannel shirt, Dad?" "Of course," agreed Captain Rugley, his eyes twinkling just as Frances' had a little while before.
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