Frances of the Ranges: or, The Old Ranchman's Treasure

A little silence had fallen after the girl’s speech. Then Captain Rugley started forward suddenly and the forelegs of his chair came sharply to the planks.

“Hello!” he said, into the darkness outside the radiance of the porch light. “Who’s there?”

Frances fluttered out of her chair. Pratt noted that she slipped into the shadow. Neither she nor the Captain had been sitting in the full radiance of the lamp.

The visitor had heard nothing; but he knew that the old ranchman was leaning forward listening intently.

“Who’s there?” the captain demanded again.

“Don’t shoot, neighbor!” said a hoarse voice out of the darkness. “I’m jest a-paddin’ of it Amarillo way. Can I get a flop-down and a bite here?”

“Only a tramp, Dad,” breathed Frances, with a sigh.

“How did you get into this compound?” demanded Captain Rugley, none the less suspiciously and sternly.

“I come through an open gate. It’s so ’tarnal dark, neighbor – ”

“You see those lights down yonder?” snapped the Captain. “They are at the bunk-house. Cook’ll give you some chuck and a chance to spread your blanket. But don’t you let me catch you around here too long after breakfast to-morrow morning. We don’t encourage hobos, and we already have all the men hired for the season we want.”

“All right, neighbor,” said the voice in the darkness, cheerfully–too cheerfully, in fact, Pratt Sanderson thought. An ordinary man–even one with the best intentions in the world–would have been offended by the Captain’s brusk words.

A stumbling foot went down the yard. Captain Rugley grunted, and might have said something explanatory, but just then Ming came softly to the door, whining:

“Dlinner, Misse.”

“Guess Pratt’s hungry, too,” grunted the Captain, rising. “Let’s go in and see what the neighbors have flung over the back fence.”

But sad as the joke was, all that Captain Rugley said seemed so open-hearted and kindly–save only when he was talking to the unknown tramp–that the guest could not consider him vulgar.

The dining-room was long, massively furnished, well lit, and the sideboard exposed some rare pieces of old-fashioned silver. Two heavy candelabra–the loot of some old cathedral, and of Spanish manufacture–were set upon either end of the great serving table.

All these treasures, found in the ranch-house of a cowman of the Panhandle, astounded the youth from Amarillo. Nothing Mrs. Bill Edwards had said of Frances of the ranges and her father had prepared him for this display.

Captain Rugley saw his eyes wandering from one thing to the other as Ming served a perfect soup.

“Just pick-ups over the Border,” the old man explained, with a comprehensive wave of his hand toward the candelabra and other articles of value. “I and a partner of mine, when we were in the Rangers years and years ago, raided over into Mexico and brought back the bulk of these things.

“We cached them down in Arizona till after I was married and built this ranch-house. Poor Lon! Never have heard what became of him. I’ve got his share of the treasure out of old Don Milo Morales’ hacienda right here. When he comes for it we’ll divide. But I haven’t heard from Lon since long before Frances, here, was born.”

This was just explanation enough to whet the curiosity of Pratt. Talk of the Texas Rangers, and raiding over the Border, and looting a Mexican hacienda, was bound to set the young man’s imagination to work.

But the dinner, as it was served in courses, took up Pratt’s present attention almost entirely. Never–not even when he took dinner at the home of the president of the bank in Amarillo–had he eaten so well-cooked and well-served a meal.

Despite his commonplace speech, Captain Rugley displayed a familiarity with the niceties of table etiquette that surprised the guest. Frances’ mother had come from the East and from a family that had been used to the best for generations. And the old ranchman, in middle age, had set himself the task of learning the niceties of table manners to please her.

He had never fallen back into the old, careless ways after Frances’ mother died. He ate to-night in black clothes and a soft, white shirt in the bosom of which was a big diamond. Although he had sat on the veranda without a coat–contrary to his doctor’s orders–he had slipped one on when he came to the table and, with his neatly combed hair, freshly shaven face, and well-brushed mustache, looked well groomed indeed.

He would have been a bizarre figure at a city table; nevertheless, he presided at his own board with dignity, and was a splendid foil for the charming figure of Frances opposite.

In the midst of the repast the Captain said, suddenly, to the soft-footed Chinaman:

“Ming! telephone down to Sam at the bunk-house and see if a hobo has just struck there, on his way to Amarillo. I told him he could get chuck and a sleep. Savvy?”

“Jes so, Clapen,” said Ming, softly, and shuffled out.

It was evident that the tramp was on the Captain’s mind. Pratt believed there must be some special reason for the old ranchman’s worrying over marauders about the Bar-T.

There was nothing to mar the friendliness of the dinner, however; not even when Ming slipped back and said in a low voice to the Captain:

“Him Slilent Slam say no hobo come to blunk-house.”

They finished the meal leisurely; but on rising from the table Captain Rugley removed a heavy belt and holster from its hook behind the sideboard and slung it about his hips.

Withdrawing the revolver, he spun the cylinder, made sure that it was filled, and slipped it back in the holster. All this was done quite as a matter of course. Frances made no comment, nor did she seem surprised.

The three went back to the porch for a little while, although the night air was growing chill. Frances insisted that her father wear his coat, and they both sat out of the brighter radiance of the hanging lamp.

She and her guest were talking about the forthcoming pageant at the Jackleg schoolhouse. Pratt had begun to feel enthusiastic over it as he learned more of the particulars.

“People scarcely realize,” said Frances, “that this Panhandle of ours has a history as ancient as St. Augustine, Florida. And that, you know, is called the oldest white settlement in these United States.

“Long, long ago the Spanish explorers, with Indian guides whom they had enslaved, made a path through the swarming buffaloes up this way and called the country Llano Estacada, the staked plain. Our geographers misapplied the name ‘Desert’ to this vast country; but Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma threw off that designation because it was proven that the rains fell more often than was reported.”

“What has built up those states,” said Pratt, with a smile, “is farming, not cattle.”

The Captain grunted, for he had been listening to the conversation.

“You ought to have seen those first hayseeds that tried to turn the ranges into posy beds and wheat fields,” he chuckled. “They got all that was coming to them–believe me!”

Frances laughed. “Daddy is still unconverted. He does not believe that the Panhandle is fit for anything but cattle. But he’s going to let me have two hundred acres to plow and sow to wheat–he’s promised.”

The Captain grunted again.

“And last year we grew a hundred acres of milo maize and feterita. Helped on the winter feed–didn’t it, Daddy?” and she laughed.

“Got me there, Frances–got me there,” admitted the old ranchman. “But I don’t hope to live long enough to see the Bar-T raising more wheat than steers.”

“No. It’s stock-raising we want to follow, I believe,” said the girl, calmly. “We must raise feed for our steers, fatten them in fenced pastures, and ship them more quickly.”

“My goodness!” exclaimed Pratt, admiringly, “you talk as though you understood all about it, Miss Frances.”

“I think I do know something about the new conditions that face us ranchers of the Panhandle,” the girl said, quietly. “And why shouldn’t I? I have been hearing it talked about, and thinking of it myself, ever since I can remember.”

Secretly Pratt thought she must have given her attention to something beside the ranch work and cattle-raising. Of this he was assured when they went inside later, and Frances sat down to the piano. The instrument was in a big room with a bare, polished floor. It was evidently used for dancing. There was a talking machine as well as a piano. The girl played the latter very nicely indeed. There were a few scratches on the floor of the room, and she saw Pratt looking at them.

“I told Ratty M’Gill he shouldn’t come in here with the rest of the boys to dance if he didn’t take his spurs off,” she said. “We have an old-time hoe-down for the boys pretty nearly every week, when we’re not too rushed on the ranch. It keeps ’em better contented and away from the towns on pay-days.”

“Are the cowpunchers just the same as they used to be?” asked Pratt. “Do they go to town and blow it wide open on pay-nights?”

“Not much. We have a good sheriff. But it wasn’t so long ago that your fancy little city of Amarillo was nothing but a cattleman’s town. I’m going to have a representation of old Amarillo in our pageant–you’ll see. It will be true to life, too, for some of the very people who take part in our play lived in Amarillo at the time when the sight of a high hat would draw a fusillade of bullets from the door of every saloon and dance-hall.”

“Don’t!” gasped Pratt. “Was Amarillo ever like that?”

“And not twenty years ago,” laughed Frances. “It had a few hundred inhabitants–and most of them ruffians. Now it claims ten thousand, has bricked streets that used to be cow trails, electric lights, a street-car service, and all the comforts and culture of an ‘effete East.’”

Pratt laughed, too. “It’s a mighty comfortable place to live in–beside Bill Edwards’ ranch, for instance. But I notice here at the Bar-T you have a great many of the despised Eastern luxuries.”

“‘Do-funnies’ daddy calls them,” said Frances, smiling. “Ah! here he is.”

The old ranchman came in, the holstered pistol still slung at his hip.

“All secure for the night, Daddy?” she asked, looking at him tenderly.

“Locked, barred, and bolted,” returned her father. “I tell you, Pratt, we’re something of a fort here when we go to bed. The court’s free to you; but don’t try to get out till Ming opens up in the morning. You see, we’re some distance from the bunk-house, and nobody but the two Chinks are here with us now.”

“I see, sir,” said Pratt.

But he did not see; he wondered. And he wondered more when, after separating from Frances for the night, he found his way through the hall to the door of the room that had been assigned to him for his use.

On the other side of the hall was another door, open more than a crack, with a light shining behind it. Pratt’s curiosity got the better of him and he peeped.

Captain Dan Rugley was standing in the middle of the almost bare room, before an old dark, Spanish chest. He had a bunch of keys in one hand and in the other dangled the ancient girdle and the bracelet Frances had worn.

“That must be the ‘treasure chest’ she spoke of,” thought the youth. “And it looks it! Old, old, wrought-iron work trimmings of Spanish design. What a huge old lock! My! it would take a stick of dynamite to blow that thing open if one hadn’t the key.”

The Captain moved quickly, turning toward the door. Pratt dodged back–then crept silently away, down the hall. He did not know that the eye of the old ranchman watched him keenly through the crack of the door.

CHAPTER IV

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT

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.

There was a reason for this that the girl did not entirely understand, although her father often hinted at it. His stories of his adventures as a Texas Ranger, and over the Border into Mexico, amused her; but they had not impressed her much. Perhaps, because the Captain always skimmed over the particulars of those desperate adventures which had so spiced his early years–those years before the gentle influence of Frances’ mother came into his life.

He had mentioned his partner, “Lon,” on this evening. But he seldom particularized about him.

Frances could not remember when her father had gone into Arizona and returned from thence with a wagon-train loaded with many of the most beautiful of their household possessions. It was when she was a very little girl.

With the other things, Captain Rugley had brought back the old Spanish chest which he guarded so anxiously. She did not know what was in the chest–not all its treasures. It was the one secret her father kept from her.

Out of it he brought certain barbarous ornaments that he allowed her to wear now and then. She was as much enamored of jewelry and beautiful adornments as other girls, was Frances of the ranges.

There was perfect trust between her father and herself; but not perfect confidence. No more than Pratt Sanderson, for instance, did she know just how the old ranchman had become possessed of the great store of Indian and Spanish ornaments, or of the old Spanish chest.

Certain she was that he could not have obtained them in a manner to wrong anybody else. He spoke of them as “the loot of old Don Milo Morales’ hacienda”; but Frances knew well enough that her good father, Captain Dan Rugley, had been no land pirate, no so-called Border ruffian, who had robbed some peaceful Spanish ranch-owner across the Rio Grande of his possessions.

Frances was a bit worried to-night. There were two topics of thought that disturbed her.

Motherless, and with few female friends even, she had been shut away with her own girlish thoughts and fears and wonderings more than most girls of her age. Life was a mystery to her. She lived in books and in romances and in imagination’s pictures more than she did in the workaday world about her.

There seems to be little romance attached to the everyday lives we live, no matter how we are situated. The most dreary and uncolored existence, in all probability, there is in the world to-day is the daily life of a real prince or princess. We look longingly over the fence of our desires and consider all sorts and conditions of people outside as happier and far better off than we.

That was the way it was with Frances. Especially on this particular night.

Her unexpected meeting with Pratt Sanderson had brought to her heart and mind more strongly than for months her experiences in Amarillo. She remembered her school days, her school fellows, and the difference between their lives and that which she lived at present.

Probably half the girls she had known at school would be delighted (or thought they would) to change places with Frances of the ranges, right then. But the ranch girl thought how much better off she would be if she were continuing her education under the care of people who could place her in a more cultivated life.

Not that she was disloyal, even in thought, to her father. She loved him intensely–passionately! But the life of the ranges, after her taste of school and association with cultivated people, could not be entirely satisfactory.

So she sat, huddled in a white wool wrapper, by the barred, open window, looking out across the plain. Only for the few lights at the corrals and bunk-house, it seemed a great, horizonless sea of darkness–for there was no moon and a haze had enveloped the high stars since twilight.

No sound came to her ears at first. There is nothing so soundless as night on the plains–unless there be beasts near, either tamed or wild.

No coyote slunk about the ranch-house. The horses were still in the corrals. The cattle were all too far distant to be heard. Not even the song of a sleepy puncher, as he wheeled around the herd, drifted to the barred window of Frances’ room.

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. But after dark–or, after bedtime at least–the place was barred like a fort in the Indian country!

Captain Rugley never went to his bed save after making the rounds, armed as he had been to-night, with Ming to bolt the doors. The only way a marauder could get into the inner court was by climbing the walls and getting over the roof, and as the latter extended four feet beyond the second-story walls, such a feat was well-nigh impossible.

The cement walls themselves were so thick that they seemed impregnable even to cannon. The roof was of slates. And, as has been pointed out already, all the outer first-floor windows, and all those reached from the porch roof, were barred.

Frances knew that her father had been seriously troubled to-night by the appearance of the strange and unseen tramp in the yard, and the fact that the arrival of that same individual had not been reported from the men’s quarters.

Captain Rugley telephoned and learned from his foreman, Silent Sam Harding, that nobody had come to the bunk-house that night asking for lodging and food.

Frances was about to seek her bed. She yawned, curled her bare toes up closer in the robe, and shivered luxuriously as the night air breathed in upon her. In another moment she would pop in between the blankets and cuddle down —

Something snapped! It was outside, not in!

Frances was wide awake on the instant. Her eyelids that had been so drowsy were propped apart–not by fear, but by excitement.

She had lived a life which had sharpened her physical perceptions to a fine point. She had no trouble in locating the sound that had so startled her. Somebody was climbing the vine at the corner of the veranda roof, not twenty feet from her window. She crouched back, well sheltered in the shadow, but able to see anything that appeared silhouetted between her window and the dark curtain of the night.

There was no light in the room behind her; indeed every lamp in the ranch-house had been extinguished some time before. It was evident that this marauder–whoever he was–had waited for the quietude of sleep to fall upon the place.

Back in the room at the head of Frances’ bed hung her belt with the holster pistol she wore when riding about the ranges. In these days it was considered perfectly safe for a girl to ride alone, save that coyotes sometimes came within range, or such a savage creature as had been the introduction of Pratt Sanderson and herself so recently. It was the duty of everybody on the ranges to shoot and kill these “varmints,” if they could.

Frances did not even think of this weapon now. She did not fear the unknown; only that the mystery of the night, and of his secret pursuit, surrounded him. Who could he be? What was he after? Should she run to awaken her father, or wait to observe his appearance above the edge of the veranda roof?

A dried stick of the vine snapped again. There was a squirming figure on the very edge of the roof. Frances knew that the unknown lay there, panting, after his exertions.

CHAPTER V

THE SHADOW IN THE COURT

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. Curiosity controlled her actions entirely for the few next minutes. And so she observed the marauder rise up, carefully balance himself on the slates of the veranda roof, and tiptoe away to the corner of the house. He did not come near her window; nor could she see his face. His outlines were barely visible as he drifted into the shadow at the corner–soundless of step now. Only the cracking of the dry branch, as he climbed up, had betrayed him.

“I wish he had come this way,” thought Frances. “I might have seen what he looked like. Surely, we have no man on the ranch who would do such a thing. Can it be that father is right? Did the fellow who hailed us to-night come here to the Bar-T for some bad purpose?”

She waited several minutes by her window. Then she bethought her that there was a window at the end of a cross-hall on the side of the house where the man had disappeared, out of which she might catch another glimpse of him.

So she thrust her bare feet into slippers, tied the robe more firmly about her, and hurried out of the room. Nor did she think now of the charged weapon hanging at the head of her bed.

She believed nobody would be astir in the great house. The Chinamen slept at the extreme rear over the kitchen. Their guest, Pratt Sanderson, was on the lower floor and at the opposite side, with his windows opening upon the court around which the hacienda was built.

Captain Rugley’s rooms were below, too. Frances knew herself to be alone in this part of the house.

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.

The night air breathed in upon her. Was that a rustling just outside the bars? There was no light behind her and she did not fear being seen from without.

Tiptoeing, she came to the sill. Her ears were quick to distinguish sounds of any character. There was a strange, faint creaking not far from that wide-open casement. She could not thrust her head between the bars now (she remembered vividly the last time she had done that and got stuck, and had to shriek for Daddy to come and help her out), but she could press her face close against them and stare into the blackness of the outer world.

There! something stirred. Her eyes, growing more accustomed to the darkness, caught the shadow of something writhing in the air.

What could it be? Was it alive? A man, or —

Then the bulk of it passed higher, and the strange creaking sound was renewed. Frances almost cried aloud!

It was the man she had before seen. He was mounting directly into the air. The over-thrust of the ranch-house roof made the shadow very thick against the house-wall. The man was swinging in the air just beyond this deeper shadow.

“What can he be doing?” Frances thought.

She had almost spoken the question aloud. But she did not want to startle him–not yet.

First, she must learn what he was about. Then she would run and tell her father. This night raider was dangerous–there was no doubt of that.

“Oh!” quavered Frances, suddenly, and under her breath. The uncertain bulk of the man hanging in the air had disappeared!

For a minute she could not understand. He had disappeared like magic. His very corporeal body–and she noted that it had been bulky when she first saw him roll over the edge of the veranda roof and sit up–had melted into thin air.

And then she saw something swinging, pendulum-like, before her. She thrust an arm between the bars and seized the thing. It was a rope ladder.

The whole matter, then, was as plain as daylight. The man had climbed to the porch roof, with the rope ladder wound around his body. That was what had made him seem so bulky.

Selecting this spot as a favorable one, he had flung the grappling-hook over the eaves. There must be some break in the slates which held the hook. Once fastened there, the man had quickly worked his way up to the roof, and Frances had arrived just in time to see him squirm out of sight.

There were a dozen questions in Frances’ mind. How did he get here? Who was he? What did he want? Was he the man Captain Rugley had seemed to be expecting to try to make a raid upon the ranch-house? Was he alone? How did he know he could make the hook of his ladder fast at this point? Was there a traitor about who had broken a slate in the roof? Or was the broken place the result of an accident, and the marauder had noted it by daylight from the ground?