Chapter 10

THE MAN FROM BYLITTLE

Responsibility weighed heavily upon the young shoulders of Frances of the ranges in these circumstances.

Old Captain Rugley insisted upon being out of doors, ill as he was, and they made him as comfortable as possible on a couch in the court where the fountain played. Ming was in attendance upon him all day long, for Frances had many duties to call her away from the ranch-house at this time. 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 in immediate danger, although the fever would have to run its course. The pain that racked his body was hard to bear; and although he was a stoic in such matters, Frances would see his jaws clench and the muscles knot in his cheeks; and she often wiped the drops of agony from his forehead while 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"; and when he learned that the doctor could not promise him a swift return to health, Captain Rugley began to worry.

It was of his old partner he thought most. That the affairs of the ranch would 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 the Bylittle Soldiers' Home was forever troubling him. Between his spells of agony, or when his mind was really clear, he talked to Frances of little but 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 jaunt by train and buckboard), told Frances. "Can't you calm his mind, Miss Frances?"

She told the medical man as much about her father's ancient friend as she thought was wise. "He desires to have him brought here," she explained, "so that they can go over, face to face and eye to eye, their old 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 of the 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 a native of the Southwest himself. "Your father and the old fellow seem to be 'honing' for each other. Too bad they can't meet. It would do your father good. I don't like his mind's being troubled."

That night Frances was really frightened. Her father began muttering in his sleep. Then he talked aloud, and sat up in bed excitedly, his face flushed, and his tongue becoming clearer, although his speech was not lucid.

He was going over in his distraught mind the adventures he had had with Lon when they two had foiled the bandits and recovered possession of the Senor's treasure chest.

Frances begged him to desist, but he did not know her. He babbled of the long journey with the mule team into the mouth of Dry Bone Canyon, and the 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 nearest station for the doctor. Something _had_ to be done, for the exertion and excitement of the night had left Captain Rugley in a state that troubled the girl much.

She had no friend of her own sex. Mrs. Bill Edwards was a city woman whom, after all, she scarcely knew, for the lady had not been married to Mr. 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 Panhandle farmers; but Frances had never been in close touch with them.

The social gatherings at the church and schoolhouse at Jackleg had been attended by Frances and Captain Rugley; but the Bar-T folk really had no near neighbors.

The girl's interest in the forthcoming pageant had called the attention of other people to her more than ever before; but to tell the truth the young folk were rather awe-stricken by Frances' abilities as displayed in the preparation for the entertainment, while the older people did not know just how to treat the wealthy ranchman's daughter--whether as a person of mature years, or as a child.

Riding back from the railroad station, where one of the boys with the buckboard three hours later would meet the physician, she thought of these facts. Somehow, she had never felt so lonely--so cut off from other people as she did right now.

The railroad crossed one corner of the Bar-T's vast fenced ranges; but there were twenty long miles between the house and the station. She had ridden 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 going over to meet the doctor. And as she walked her pony down the slope of the trail into Cottonwood Bottom, she thought she heard the rattle of the buckboard wheels ahead.

A clump of trees hid the trail for a bit; when she rounded it the way was empty. Whoever she had heard had turned off the trail into the cottonwoods.

"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 do not 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 a jungle, but she could not see far ahead, nor be seen. By and by she smelled 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 not have told. It was her womanly intuition, perhaps.

Slipping out of the saddle, she tied Molly with her head up-wind. She was afraid the pinto would smell her fellows from the ranch, and signal them, as horses will.

Once away from her mount, she passed between the trees and around the brush clumps until she saw the ford of the river sparkling below her. There were the hard-driven ponies, their heads drooping, their flanks heaving, standing knee-deep in the stream--this fact in itself an offense that she could not overlook.

The animals had been overdriven, and now the employee of the ranch who had them in charge was allowing them to cool off too quickly--and in the cold 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 slouching attitude, sitting sideways, and with his back toward the direction from which 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 the river from the opposite direction.

This horseman was a stranger to Frances. He wore a broad-brimmed black hat, no chaps, no cartridge belt or gun in sight, and a white shirt and a vest under his coat, while shoes instead of boots were on his feet. He was 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 beard that did not disguise the sneering mouth, or the wickedly leering expression of his eyes.

"Well, I done my part, old fellow," drawled the man in the seat of the buckboard, just as Frances came within earshot. "'Tain't my fault you bungled 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 had sent the ne'er-do-well to meet the doctor. It puzzled her before the puncher'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 through his nostrils in little puffs as he talked. "The old Cap's built his house 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. Frances found 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.

"That's the way, then!" exclaimed the other, raising his clenched fist and shaking it. "You get put on that detail, Ratty."

"I'll see you blessed first," declared the puncher, laughing. "I don't see 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't like 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 my number 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 of the 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 from the backs of the tired ponies.

"I gotter step along, Pete," he said. "Gal's gone to telephone for the medical sharp, who'll show up on Number 20 when she goes through Jackleg. I'm to meet him. Or," and he began to chuckle again, "Jose Reposa 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 man called 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 tell me 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 the other 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 believe you'd 'a' had much more luck if you'd got away with the old Cap's chest."

"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 at Amarillo, or somewhere."

"Not that old codger. He'd keep 'em under his own eye. He wouldn't trust a bank like he would himself. Humph! I know his kind.

"Why," continued Pete, excitedly, "that old feller at Bylittle is another one just like him. These old-timers dug gold, and made their piles half a dozen times, and never trusted banks--there warn't no banks!"

"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 I bet there ain't much in it, Pete."

"You'd ought to have heard that doddering old idiot, Lonergan, talk about it," sniffed Pete. "Then your mouth would have watered. I tell you that's about all he's been talkin' about the last few months, there at Bylittle. And I was orderly on his side of the barracks and heard it all.

"I know that the parson, Mr. Tooley, was goin' to write to this Cap Rugley. Has, before now, it's likely. Then something will be done about the treasure----"

"Waugh!" shouted Ratty. "Treasure! You sound like a silly boy with a dime story book."

The puncher evidently did not believe his friend knew what he was talking about. Pete glowered at him, too angry to speak for a minute or two.

Frances began to worm her way back through the brush. She put the biggest trees between her and the ford of the river. When she knew the two men could not see or hear her, she ran.

She had heard enough. Her mind was in a turmoil just then. Her first thought was to get away, and get Molly away. Then she would think this startling affair out.