CHAPTER X
THE MAN FROM BYLITTLE
Responsibility weighed heavily upon the young shoulders of Frances ofthe ranges in these circumstances.
Old Captain Rugley insisted upon being out of doors, ill as he was, andthey made him as comfortable as possible on a couch in the court wherethe fountain played. Ming was in attendance upon him all day long, forFrances had many duties to call her away from the ranch-house at thistime. But at night she slept almost within touch of the sick man's bed.
He did not get better. The physician declared that he was not inimmediate danger, although the fever would have to run its course. Thepain that racked his body was hard to bear; and although he was a stoicin such matters, Frances would see his jaws clench and the muscles knotin his cheeks; and she often wiped the drops of agony from his foreheadwhile striving to hide the tears that came into her own eyes.
He demanded to know how long he was "going to be laid by the heels"; andwhen he learned that the doctor could not promise him a swift return tohealth, Captain Rugley began to worry.
It was of his old partner he thought most. That the affairs of the ranchwould go on all right in the hands of his young daughter and Silent Sam,he seemed to have no doubt. But the letter from the chaplain of theBylittle Soldiers' Home was forever troubling him. Between his spells ofagony, or when his mind was really clear, he talked to Frances of littlebut Jonas Lonergan and the treasure chest.
"He is troubling his mind about something, and it is not good for him,"the doctor, who came every third day (and had a two hundred-mile jauntby train and buckboard), told Frances. "Can't you calm his mind, MissFrances?"
She told the medical man as much about her father's ancient friend asshe thought was wise. "He desires to have him brought here," sheexplained, "so that they can go over, face to face and eye to eye, theirold battles and adventures."
"Good! Bring the man--have him brought," said the physician.
"But he is an old soldier," said Frances. She read aloud that part ofthe Reverend Decimus Tooley's letter relating to the state of Mr.Lonergan's health.
"Don't know what we can do about it, then," said the doctor, who was anative of the Southwest himself. "Your father and the old fellow seem tobe 'honing' for each other. Too bad they can't meet. It would do yourfather good. I don't like his mind's being troubled."
That night Frances was really frightened. Her father began muttering inhis sleep. Then he talked aloud, and sat up in bed excitedly, his faceflushed, and his tongue becoming clearer, although his speech was notlucid.
He was going over in his distraught mind the adventures he had had withLon when they two had foiled the bandits and recovered possession of theSenor's treasure chest.
Frances begged him to desist, but he did not know her. He babbled of thelong journey with the mule team into the mouth of Dry Bone Canyon, andthe caching of the treasure. For an hour he talked steadily and then,growing weaker, gradually sank back on his pillows and became silent.
But the effort was very weakening. Frances telephoned from the neareststation for the doctor. Something _had_ to be done, for theexertion and excitement of the night had left Captain Rugley in a statethat troubled the girl much.
She had no friend of her own sex. Mrs. Bill Edwards was a city womanwhom, after all, she scarcely knew, for the lady had not been married toMr. Edwards more than a year.
There were other good women scattered over the ranges--some "nesters,"some small cattle-raisers' wives, and some of the new order of Panhandlefarmers; but Frances had never been in close touch with them.
The social gatherings at the church and schoolhouse at Jackleg had beenattended by Frances and Captain Rugley; but the Bar-T folk really had nonear neighbors.
The girl's interest in the forthcoming pageant had called the attentionof other people to her more than ever before; but to tell the truth theyoung folk were rather awe-stricken by Frances' abilities as displayedin the preparation for the entertainment, while the older people did notknow just how to treat the wealthy ranchman's daughter--whether as aperson of mature years, or as a child.
Riding back from the railroad station, where one of the boys with thebuckboard three hours later would meet the physician, she thought ofthese facts. Somehow, she had never felt so lonely--so cut off fromother people as she did right now.
The railroad crossed one corner of the Bar-T's vast fenced ranges; butthere were twenty long miles between the house and the station. She hadridden Molly hard coming over to speak to the doctor on the telephone;but she took it easy going back.
Somewhere along the trail she would meet the buckboard and ponies goingover to meet the doctor. And as she walked her pony down the slope ofthe trail into Cottonwood Bottom, she thought she heard the rattle ofthe buckboard wheels ahead.
A clump of trees hid the trail for a bit; when she rounded it the waywas empty. Whoever she had heard had turned off the trail into thecottonwoods.
"Maybe he didn't water the ponies before he started," thought Frances,"and has gone down to the ford. That's a bit of carelessness that I donot like. Whom could Sam have sent with the bronchos for the doctor?"
She turned Molly off the trail beyond the bridge. The wood was not ajungle, but she could not see far ahead, nor be seen. By and by shesmelled tobacco smoke--the everlasting cigarette of the cattle puncher.Then she heard the sound of voices.
Why this latter fact should have made Frances suspicious, she could nothave told. It was her womanly intuition, perhaps.
Slipping out of the saddle, she tied Molly with her head up-wind. Shewas afraid the pinto would smell her fellows from the ranch, and signalthem, as horses will.
Once away from her mount, she passed between the trees and around thebrush clumps until she saw the ford of the river sparkling below her.There were the hard-driven ponies, their heads drooping, their flanksheaving, standing knee-deep in the stream--this fact in itself anoffense that she could not overlook.
The animals had been overdriven, and now the employee of the ranch whohad them in charge was allowing them to cool off too quickly--and in thecold stream, too!
But who was he? For a moment Frances could not conceive.
The figure of the driver was humped over on the seat in a slouchingattitude, sitting sideways, and with his back toward the direction fromwhich the range girl was approaching. He faced a man on a shabby horse,whose mount likewise stood in the stream and who had been fording theriver from the opposite direction.
This horseman was a stranger to Frances. He wore a broad-brimmed blackhat, no chaps, no cartridge belt or gun in sight, and a white shirt and avest under his coat, while shoes instead of boots were on his feet. Hewas neither puncher nor farmer in appearance. And his face was bad.
There could be no doubt of that latter fact. He wore a stubble of beardthat did not disguise the sneering mouth, or the wickedly leeringexpression of his eyes.
"Well, I done my part, old fellow," drawled the man in the seat of thebuckboard, just as Frances came within earshot. "'Tain't my fault youbungled it."
Frances stopped instead of going on. It was Ratty M'Gill!
She could not understand why he was not on the range, or why Sam hadsent the ne'er-do-well to meet the doctor. It puzzled her before thepuncher's continued speech began to arouse her curiosity.
"You'll sure find yourself in a skillet of hot water, old fellow,"pursued Ratty, inhaling his cigarette smoke and letting it forth throughhis nostrils in little puffs as he talked. "The old Cap's built hishouse like a fort, anyway. And he's some man with a gun--believe me!"
"You say he's sick," said the other man, and he, too, drawled. Francesfound herself wondering where she had heard that voice before.
"He ain't so sick that he can't guard that chest you was talkin' about.He's had his bed made up right in the room with it. That's whatever,"said Ratty.
"Once let me get in there," said the other, slowly.
"Sam's set some of the boys to ride herd on the house," chuckled Ratty.
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"That's the way, then!" exclaimed the other, raising his clenched fistand shaking it. "You get put on that detail, Ratty."
"I'll see you blessed first," declared the puncher, laughing. "I don'tsee nothing in it but trouble for me."
"No trouble for you at all. They didn't get you before."
"No," said the puncher. "More by good luck than good management. I don'tlike going things blind, Pete. And you're always so blamed secretive."
"I have to be," growled the other. "You're as leaky as a sieve yourself,Ratty. I never could trust you."
"Nor nobody else," laughed the reckless puncher. "Sam's about got mynumber now. If he ain't the gal has----"
"You mean that daughter of the old man's?"
"Yep. She's an able-minded gal--believe me! And she's just about boss ofthe ranch, specially now the old Cap is laid by the heels for a while."
The other was silent for some moments. Ratty gathered up the reins fromthe backs of the tired ponies.
"I gotter step along, Pete," he said. "Gal's gone to telephone for themedical sharp, who'll show up on Number 20 when she goes throughJackleg. I'm to meet him. Or," and he began to chuckle again, "JoseReposa was, and I took his place so's to meet you here as I promised."
"And lots of good your meeting me seems to do me," growled the mancalled Pete.
"Well, old fellow! is that my fault?" demanded the puncher.
"I don't know. I gotter git inside that _hacienda_."
"Walk in. The door's open."
"You think you are smart, don't you?" snarled Pete, in anger. "You tellme where the chest is located; but it couldn't be brought out by day.But at night---- My soul, man! I had the team all ready and waiting theother night, and I could have got the thing if I'd had luck."
"You didn't have luck," chuckled Ratty M'Gill. "And I don't believeyou'd 'a' had much more luck if you'd got away with the old Cap'schest."
"I tell you there's a fortune in it!"
"You don't know----"
"And I suppose you do?" snarled Pete.
"I know no sane man ain't going to keep a whole mess of jewels and such,what you talk about, right in his house. He'd take 'em to a bank atAmarillo, or somewhere."
"Not that old codger. He'd keep 'em under his own eye. He wouldn't trusta bank like he would himself. Humph! I know his kind.
"Why," continued Pete, excitedly, "that old feller at Bylittle isanother one just like him. These old-timers dug gold, and made theirpiles half a dozen times, and never trusted banks--there warn't nobanks!"
"Not in them days," admitted Ratty. "But there's a plenty now."
"You say yourself he's got the chest."
"Sure! I seen it once or twice. Old Spanish carving and all that. But Ibet there ain't much in it, Pete."
"You'd ought to have heard that doddering old idiot, Lonergan, talkabout it," sniffed Pete. "Then your mouth would have watered. I tell youthat's about all he's been talkin' about the last few months, there atBylittle. And I was orderly on his side of the barracks and heard itall.
"I know that the parson, Mr. Tooley, was goin' to write to this CapRugley. Has, before now, it's likely. Then something will be done aboutthe treasure----"
"Waugh!" shouted Ratty. "Treasure! You sound like a silly boy with adime story book."
The puncher evidently did not believe his friend knew what he wastalking about. Pete glowered at him, too angry to speak for a minute ortwo.
Frances began to worm her way back through the brush. She put thebiggest trees between her and the ford of the river. When she knew thetwo men could not see or hear her, she ran.
She had heard enough. Her mind was in a turmoil just then. Her firstthought was to get away, and get Molly away. Then she would think thisstartling affair out.