Chapter 26

FRANCES IN SOFTER MOOD

It was the next day but one and the _hacienda_ and compound lay bathed in the hot sun of noon-day. Captain Dan Rugley was leaning back in his usual hard chair and in his usual attitude on the veranda, fairly soaking up the rays of the orb of day.

"Beats all the medicine for rheumatism in the doctor's shop!" he was wont to declare.

Since his night ride to rescue his daughter he had become more like his old self than he had been for weeks. The excitement seemed to have chased away the last twinges of pain for the time being, and he was without fever.

Now he was watching a swift pony-rider coming his way along the trail and listening to the patter of light footsteps coming down the broad stairway behind him.

"Here comes Sam, Frances," the ranchman said, in a low voice. "I reckon he'll have some news."

The girl came to the door. She had discarded her riding habit and was dressed in a soft, clinging house gown, cut low at the throat and giving her arms freedom to the elbow. She wore pretty stockings and pretty slippers on her feet. Instead of a quirt she carried a fan in her hand and there was a handkerchief tucked into her belt.

The chrysalis of the cowgirl had burst and this butterfly had emerged. Of late it was not often that Frances had "dolled up," as the old Captain called it. Now he said, enthusiastically:

"My! you do look sweet! What's all the dolling up for? Me? The Chinks? Or maybe that boy upstairs, eh?"

"For myself," said Frances, quietly. "Pratt is too sick to notice much what I wear, I guess. But I find that I have been paying too little attention to dress."

"Huh!" snorted the old ranchman.

"It is a woman's duty to make herself as beautiful and attractive as possible," said Frances, with a bright smile. "You know, I read that in a woman's paper."

"You surely did!" agreed the ranchman, and then turned to meet Silent Sam as that individual drew up to the step.

"What's the good word, Sam?" inquired the Captain.

"Got that Ratty. He's in the jail at Jackleg. Like you said, I never told nobody but the sheriff what 'twas for you wanted him."

"That's right," said the Captain, gravely. "If the boys understood he was mixed up with this kidnapping business, I don't know what they would do."

"Right, Captain," said the foreman. "So the sheriff took him for being all lit up. Ratty won't sleep it off before to-morrow."

"And if they could catch that Pete What's-his-name by then----"

"Ain't found hide nor hair of him," answered Silent Sam.

"Where do you reckon he went to, Sam?"

"He didn't go with his horse, Captain. He fooled us."

"What?"

"That's so. Horse was found yisterday evenin' down beyand Peckham's--scurcely breathed. He'd run fur, but he didn't have nobody on his back."

"I see!" ejaculated the ranchman, smiting one doubled fist upon the other palm. "That Pete has fooled us from the start."

"Sure did," admitted Sam.

"He never mounted his horse at all?" cried Frances, deeply interested.

"That's it," said her father. "We ought to have known that at the time. No horse could have gone smashing through the brush the way that one did without knocking his rider's head off."

"Sure," agreed Sam again.

"And he was right there near the place he held Pratt and me captive all the time we were making a stretcher for poor Pratt," said Frances.

"Or hiking up stream," said the foreman, preparing to ride down to the corral.

"Lucky the boy broke the fellow's gun as he did," said Captain Rugley, thoughtfully, turning to his daughter. "Otherwise some of us might have been popped off from the bushes."

"Oh, Daddy!"

"When a man's as mean as that scalawag," said her father, philosophically, "there's no knowing to what lengths he will go. I shan't feel that you are safe on the ranges until he's found and jailed."

"And I shan't feel that we're out of trouble until your friend Mr. Lonergan comes here and you divide and get rid of that silly old treasure," declared Frances, and she pouted a little.

"What's that, Frances?" gasped the old Captain. "All those jewels and stuff? Why, don't you care anything for them?"

"I care more for my peace of mind," she said, decidedly. "And see what it's brought poor Pratt to."

"Well," said her father, subsiding. "The boy did git the dirty end of the stick, for a fact. I'm sorry he was hurt----"

"And you are sorry you thought so ill of him, too, Daddy--you know you are," whispered Frances, one arm stealing over the Captain's shoulder.

"Well----"

"Now, ''fessup!'" she laughed, softly. "He's a good boy to risk himself for me."

"I wouldn't have thought much of him if he hadn't," said the old ranchman, stubbornly.

"What could you really expect when you consider that he has lived all his life in a city----"

"And works in a bank," finished the Captain, with a sly grin. "But I reckon I have got to take off my hat to him. He's a hero."

"He is a good boy," Frances said, cheerfully. "And I hope that he will recover all right, as the doctor says he will."

"I don't know how fast he'll mend," chuckled the Captain. "If I were he, and getting the attention he is----"

"From whom?" demanded Frances, turning on him sharply.

"From Ming, of course," responded her father, soberly, but with his eyes a-twinkle.

And then Frances fled upstairs again, her cheeks burning as she heard the old ranchman's mellow laughter.

Pratt lay on his bed with his head swathed in bandages and his shoulder in a brace. He had suffered a dislocation as well as the bruises and the cut in his head. From the time he had been struck from behind by the man, Pete, the young fellow had known nothing at all until he awoke to find himself stretched upon this bed in the Bar-T ranch-house.

The old Captain, with Ming's help, had disrobed Pratt and put him to bed; but when the doctor came early in the morning, he put the patient in Frances' hands.

"What he needs is good nursing. Don't leave him to the men," said the doctor. "Your father says he's cured himself by getting out on horseback. If it didn't kill him, I admit it's aiding in his cure for him to be more active again.

"But I depend upon you, my dear, to keep this patient as quiet as possible. I hate having my patients get away from me," added the physician with twinkling eye. "And this lad is mine for some time. He has sure been badly shaken up."

He was afraid at first that there was concussion of the brain; but after a few hours the young bank clerk became lucid in his speech and the fever began to decrease.

The doctor had not left the ranch until the evening before this day when Frances stole up the stair again to peer into the room to see how her patient was.

"Oh, I'm awake!" cried Pratt, cheerfully. "You don't expect me to sleep all the time, do you, Frances?"

"Sleep is good for you," declared the girl of the ranges, with a sober smile. "The doctor says you are to keep very quiet."

"Goodness! I might as well be buried and so save my board," grumbled Pratt. "When is he going to let me get up out of this?"

"Not for a long, long time yet," said Frances, seriously.

"What? Why, I could get up now----"

"With those shingles plastered to your shoulder?" asked the girl, smiling again, but somewhat roguishly.

"Oh--well--have those boards actually got to stay on?"

"Yes, indeed."

"How long?"

"Till the doctor removes them, Pratt. Now, be a good boy."

"I'll never be able to get out of bed," grumbled the patient, "if he keeps me here much longer, I'll be bedridden."

"Nonsense," said Frances, with a very superior air. "You haven't been here two days yet."

"And when is the doctor coming again?" went on Pratt.

"He said he'd come within the week," replied the girl, demurely.

"Good-night, nurse!" groaned Pratt. "A whole week? Why, I'll die in that time--positively."

"You only think so," said Frances, coolly.

"You don't know how hard it is to lie here with nothing to do."

"You don't appreciate your good fortune, I am afraid," returned the girl, more gravely. "You might have been much more seriously hurt----"

"You don't suppose I care about being hurt, do you?" he cried, with some excitement. "I'd go through it a dozen times to the same end, Frances----"

"Now, stop!" she said, commandingly, and raising an admonitory finger. "If you show any excitement I will go out of the room and leave Ming----"

"Don't!" groaned Pratt.

"I shall certainly leave him in charge of you. You won't talk to him."

"No. If he doesn't sit silent like a yellow graven image, he scatters 'l's' all about the room until I want to get out of bed and sweep 'em up," declared Pratt.

The ranchman's daughter smiled at him, but shook her head. "Now! no more talking. I'll sit here and promise not to scatter any of the alphabet broadcast; but you must keep still."

"That's mighty hard," muttered the patient. "Sit over by the window. There! right in the sun. I like to see your hair when the sun burnishes it."

Frances promptly removed her seat to the shady side of the room.

"Oh, please!" begged Pratt. "I'm sick, you know. You really ought to humor me."

"And you really ought not to jolly me!" laughed the range girl. "I think you are a tease, Pratt."

"Honest! I mean it."

She looked at him with a roguish smile. "What did you say to Miss Latrop about her hair? Isn't it a lovely blond?"

"Oh! I never looked at it twice. Molasses color," declared Pratt. "I don't like such light hair."

"Now, be still. Mrs. Edwards sent over word they are coming to see you to-morrow. If you are feverish I shan't let them in."

"My goodness!" gasped Pratt. "Not all of them coming, I hope?"

"Mrs. Edwards and Miss Latrop, anyway," said Frances, seriously. "Now keep still."

Pratt digested this for a while; then he held up one arm and waved it.

"Well? What is it?" asked the stern nurse.

"Please, teacher!"

"Well?"

"May I say one thing?"

"Just one. Then silence for an hour."

"If that girl from Boston comes I'm going to have a fever--understand? I don't want her up here. Now, that's all there is about it."

"Hush, small boy! You don't know what is good for you. You must leave it to the doctor and me," said Frances, but she kept her head turned from the bed so that Pratt would not see her eyes.

By and by Pratt waved his hand again like a pupil in school and even snapped his fingers to attract her attention.

"Please, teacher!" he begged when she looked up from the pad on her knee over which her pencil had been traveling so rapidly.

"I'm nurse, not teacher," Frances said, firmly.

"Nurse, then. Is that the plan for the pageant you are writing?"

"A part of it," she admitted. "Some ideas that came to me the time I went to Amarillo."

"With the make-believe treasure chest?"

"Yes."

"Read it to me, will you, Miss Nurse?" he asked.

"If you will keep still. I never did see such a chatterbox!" exclaimed Frances, in vexation.

"I'll be just as still as still!" he promised. "Maybe it will put me to sleep."

"Mercy! I hope it isn't as dull as all that," she said, and began to read the pages she had written.