Chapter 27

A DINNER DANCE IN PROSPECT

The girl from Boston did not come over to see Pratt that very next day; but soon she, as well as the remainder of the young people who had been the guests of Mr. Bill Edwards and his hospitable wife, were stopping at the Bar-T daily and inquiring for Pratt; and as soon as he could be helped downstairs and out upon the veranda, he held a general reception all day long.

In the afternoon when the Edwards crowd was over, the old _hacienda_ took on a liveliness of aspect that it had never known before. The veranda was gay with bright frocks and the air resounded with laughter.

The boys gathered around Pratt and plans for future hunts and other junkets were made--for the young bank clerk was rapidly recovering. The girls meanwhile made much of the old Captain--all but Sue Latrop. But she did not count for as much as she had at the beginning of her visit at the Edwards ranch. The other young folk had begun to find her out.

The punchers who were off duty were attracted to this gay party on the porch, as naturally as flies gravitate to molasses. The Amarillo girls--and, of course, Mrs. Bill Edwards--saw nothing out of the way in Captain Rugley's hands lounging up to the _hacienda_ to talk. Most of them were young fellows of neighboring families, and quite as well known as were the visitors themselves. Sue Latrop's amazement at this familiarity only made the other girls laugh.

Unless she would be left alone on the veranda with Pratt (which she considered very bad form) she was obliged one afternoon to go down to the corral with the crowd to see a bunch of ponies fresh from the range.

Some of the half-wild ponies rolled their eyes, snorted, and galloped to the far side of the corral the instant the visitors appeared.

"Get your reserved seats, gals!" cried Fred Purchase, preparing to open the gate. "Roost all along the rail up there and watch the fun. I bet Fatty Obendorf falls off and breaks a suspender-button--fust throw out of the box!"

"Oh my! you don't mean for us to climb up _there_?" gasped Sue, as one or two of her friends tucked up their skirts and started to mount the fence.

"Sure. Reserved seats at the top," laughed Mrs. Edwards, likewise mounting the barrier.

"Why! I am afraid I could never do it," murmured the Boston girl.

"You'll miss a lot of fun, then," declared one of the Amarillo girls, callously. They were all getting a little tired of Sue Latrop and her pose.

Finding herself the only one on the ground, Sue scrambled up very clumsily and just in time to see Fatty rope the first pony out of the bunch that was now racing around and around the corral.

This was a black and white rascal with a high head and rolling eye, that looked as though he had never been bridled in his life. But it was only that he had been some months on the range, and freedom had gone to his head.

Fatty lay back on the lariat and dug his high heels into the sod. When the pony felt the noose he leaped into it, it tightened around his neck, and the creature came to the ground, kicking and squealing.

"By hicketty!" yelled Purchase. "Ain't lil' old Fatty good for suthin'? Yuh could suah use him tuh tie a steamboat tuh--what!"

For all the fun the other punchers made of Fatty Obendorf, he had his selection out of the herd blindfolded, bridled, and saddled, before any other pony was noosed.

"Good for you, Fatty!" cried Frances, who was perched on the corral fence with the other girls. "And that's a good horse, too; only you want to 'ware heels. I remember that he's a kicker."

"Oh! Fatty don't keer if his fust name's Kickapoo," jeered Fred.

The black and white pony gave Obendorf all the work he wanted for some minutes, however, and afforded the spectators much excitement. He wasn't a bucking bronco, but he showed plainly his dislike for human management. Spur and bit and quirt, however, was a combination that the pony was quickly forced to give in to.

Fred himself straddled a speckled, ugly-looking animal, and put it through its paces in short order. It was a spectacular exhibition; but some of the other punchers laughed uproariously.

"What's the matter with you fellers, anyway?" demanded Fred, complainingly. "Ain't you a-gwine to accord me no praise? Don't I look as purty on hawseback as that fat chunk does?" he added, referring to Obendorf.

"You know very well," called Frances, from the seat of judgment, "that I drove that speckled pony to my little jumpcart two years ago. That's Chippy--and he's almost as big a bluff, Fred, as you are! He looks savage enough to eat you up, and is really as tame as tame can be."

"Hi, Teddie! she's got yuh throwed, tied, an' branded, all right!" shouted one of the other punchers.

The girls on the fence welcomed each feat of horsemanship with great applause. Some of the ponies "acted up," as Tom Gallup called it, "to the queen's taste."

"Whatever that may mean, Tom," Mrs. Edwards said, dryly. "Why don't you try your 'prentice hand on that buckskin? He's dodged the lariat a dozen times."

"Why, that Bucky is a regular rocking-horse, I bet," declared Tom, who, for a city boy, was a pretty good rider.

"Get down and ride him, Tommy," urged Sue. "Can't you ride as well as these country boys?"

"I never said I could," retorted Tom, doubtfully. "You girls are guying the punchers, too. Why don't one o' you get down and show 'em what you can do?"

"Frances can beat all you boys riding, Tommy," Mrs. Edwards cried.

"Bet she couldn't even get aboard of that Bucky," young Gallup instantly responded.

"You're not going to take a dare like that, are you, Frances?" demanded Mrs. Edwards.

Sue became disdainful the moment Frances came into the argument. She had nothing further to say.

"I believe the boys are all holding back on that little buckskin," said Frances, laughing.

"Step right this way, Ma'am, step right this way," urged Fred Purchase, bowing low and offering his lariat. "Here's my rope and I'll lend ye anything else ye may need if ye wanter try that Bucky. He's some bronco, believe me!"

Frances got down off the fence.

"Oh! don't you try it, Frances!" cried one nervous girl. "That pony looks wicked!"

"Let her break her neck, if she wants to make a fool of herself!" snapped Sue, _sotto voce_.

Nobody heard her. All were watching too closely the range girl approach the buckskin pony. She had accepted Fred's lariat and the coil of it began to whirl about her head.

"There it goes!" cried Tom Gallup.

The buckskin started on a long, swinging lope; but it could not get out from under the coil of the lariat. The noose fell and the plunging pony went head and forefeet into it. Frances leaped with both feet upon the rope, just as it snapped taut. Bucky went on his head, kicking all four feet in the air.

"Got him! got him!" shrieked the excited Tom, and the girls cheered likewise.

And then the lariat snapped in two!

Muddied and scratched, the buckskin scrambled to his feet, his eyes blazing, nostrils distended, and as wild a horse as ever came off the range.

"Look out, Miss Frances!" yelled Mack Hinkman, who had just come upon the scene. "That thar buckskin hawse is a bad actor."

"Oh! the dear girl! Whatever did possess me to urge her on?" cried Mrs. Edwards. "Boys! Save her!"

But it was all over before any of the punchers, or the visitors on the fence, could go to Frances' rescue.

The buckskin rose on his hind legs and struck at the girl desperately. She had gathered in the slack of the broken lariat and she swung it sharply across the pony's face, leaping sideways to avoid him.

The pony whirled and struck again, whistling shrilly, the foam flying from his jaws. Once more Frances avoided him.

Tom Gallup was yelling like a wild boy on the fence. Sue could scarcely catch her breath for fear. She would not have admitted it for the world; but the courage of the range girl amazed her. Her own rescue from the charge of the little black bullock by Frances had not impressed Sue Latrop as did this battle with the pony in the arena of the horse corral.

Fred Purchase ran with another lariat. Frances seized it, flung the noose over the upraised head of the pony, took a swift turn around a shed post, and brought the "bad actor" up short.

She insisted, too, on cinching on the saddle and putting the bit in the pony's mouth. Then she mounted him and as he tore around the corral, the girl sitting as though she were a part of the creature, the boys and girls joined the punchers in cheering her.

It was not in this way, however, that the girl visitors to the ranges learned the true worth of Frances Rugley. They were, after all, only "porch acquaintances." Once only had the party been invited into the inner court for luncheon, and their brief calls to the ranch-house offered little opportunity for the girls to really see Frances' home.

They had met her so much in riding costume that, like Pratt Sanderson, they were amazed when she appeared in a pretty house dress. And they were really a bit awed by her, for although the range girl was of a naturally cheerful disposition, she possessed, too, more than her share of dignity.

"You don't flit about like these other girls, Frances," said the old ranchman, who was very observant. "You grow to look and seem more like your mother every day. But the goodness knows I don't want you to grow into a woman ahead of your time."

"I reckon I won't do that, Dad," she said, laughing at him fondly.

"I don't know. I reckon you've had too much responsibility on those shoulders of yours. You left school too young, too. That's what these other girls say. Why, that Boston girl is going to school now!

"But, shucks! she wouldn't know enough to hurt her if she attended school from now till the end of time!"

Frances laughed again. "That is pretty harsh, father. Now, I think I have had quite schooling enough to get along. I don't need the higher branches of education to help you run this ranch. Do I?"

"By mighty!" exploded the Captain. "I don't know whether I have been doing right by you or not. I've been talking to Mrs. Bill Edwards about it. I loved you so, Frances, that I hated to have you out of my sight. But----"

"Now, now!" cried the girl. "Let's have no more of that. You and I have only each other, and I couldn't bear to be away from you long enough to go to a boarding school."

"Yes--I know," went on Captain Rugley. "But there are ways of getting around _that_. We'll see."

One thing he was determined on was Captain Dan Rugley. He proposed to have "some doings" at the ranch-house before Pratt was well enough to be discharged from "St. Frances' Hospital," as he called the _hacienda_.

The old ranchman worked up the idea with Mrs. Edwards before Frances knew anything about it.

"They call it a 'dinner dance,'" he confided to Frances at length, when the main plan was already made. "At least that's what Mrs. Edwards says."

"A 'dinner dance'?" repeated his daughter, not sure for the moment that she wished to have so much confusion in the house when there was so much to do.

"Yes! Now, it isn't one of those dances you read about out East, where folks drink a cup of tea, and then get up and dance around, and then take a sandwich and the orchestra strikes up another tune," chuckled Captain Rugley.

"No, it isn't like that. I couldn't stand any such doings. I'd never know when I'd had enough to eat; every dance would shake down the courses so that my stomach would be packed as hard as a cement sidewalk."

"Oh, Daddy!" said Frances, half laughing at him.

"No. This dinner dance idea is all right," declared the ranchman. "We give a dinner to the whole crowd--all the girls and boys that have been coming over here for the past two or three weeks."

"It will make fifteen at table," said the practical Frances, thinking hard of the resources of the household.

"That's all right. I'll get in the Reposa boys to help San Soo and Ming."

"Victorino, too?" asked his daughter, curiously.

"Yes," declared the Captain, stoutly. "He's sorry he mixed up with Ratty M'Gill. Vic isn't a bad boy. Well, that's help enough, and San Soo can outdo himself on his dinner."

"That part of it will be all right--and the service, too, for Jose and Victorino are handy boys," admitted Frances.

"We'll have out the best tableware we own. That silver stuff that came from Don Morales will knock their eyes out----"

"Oh, Daddy!" cried Frances, going off into a gale of laughter. "You picked up that expression from Tom Gallup."

"That's the slangy boy--yes," admitted the old ranchman, with a broad smile. "But some of his slang just hits things off right. Some of those girls think you're 'country,' I know. We'll show them!"

Frances sighed. She knew it meant that she must dress the part of a barbarian princess to please her father. But she made no objection. If she tried to show him that the jewels and ornaments were not fit for her to wear, he would be hurt.

"Yes!" exclaimed Captain Rugley, evidently much pleased with the idea of a social time that he had evolved with Mrs. Edwards' help, "we'll have as nice a dinner as San Soo can make. After dinner we'll have dancing, I'll get the string band from Jackleg. Jackleg's getting to be quite a social centre, Mrs. Edwards says."

Frances laughed again. "I expect," she said, "that Mrs. Edwards is eager to have a dance, and the Jackleg string band _is_ a whole lot better than Bob Jones' accordion and Perry's old fiddle."

"Oh, well! Of course, an accordion and fiddle are all right for a cowboy dance, but this is going to be the real thing!" declared her father.

"Aren't you going to invite the boys as usual?" asked Frances, quickly.

"Not to the dinner!" gasped her father. "But that's all right. To the dance, afterward. Some of them are mighty good dancers, and there aren't boys enough in Mrs. Edwards' crowd to go round. It's quite the thing at a dinner dance, she says, to invite extra people to come in after the dinner is over."

"All right," said Frances, suppressing another sigh.

"And I'm going to send off for half a carload of potted palms, and other plants. We'll decorate like the Town Hall. You'll see!" exclaimed the old ranchman, as eager as a boy about it all.

Frances hadn't the heart to make any objection, but she was afraid that the affair would be a disappointment to him. She did not think the boys from the ranges, and Sue Latrop and her girl friends, would mix well.

But the Captain went ahead with his preparations with his usual energy. He had Mrs. Edwards as chief adviser. But Frances overlooked the plans in the household in her usually capable way.

The big drawing-room was thoroughly cleaned and the floor waxed. The scratches made by Ratty M'Gill's spurs were eliminated. When the potted plants came--a four-mule wagon-load--Frances arranged them about the dancing floor and dining-room.

She found her father practising his steps in the hall one morning before breakfast. "Goodness, Daddy," she cried. "Do be careful of your weak leg."

"Don't you worry about me," he chuckled. "I'm going to give old Mr. Rheumatism a black eye this time. I'm going to 'shake a leg' at this dance if it's the last act of my life."

"Don't be too reckless," she told him, with a worried little frown on her brow. "I want you to be able to ride to Jackleg to see the pageant. And that comes the very day but one after our dance."

"I'll be all right," he assured her. "I have a dance promised from Mrs. Edwards and each of the girls but that Boston one, right now. And I wouldn't miss your show in Jackleg, Frances, for a penny!

"I only wish Lon were here to enjoy it. I got a letter from that minister saying that Lon and he will reach here next week. If they'd come early in the week they'd get here in time for the pageant, anyway."

With so much bustle and preparation about the Bar-T ranch-house, there was not much likelihood of anybody being reckless enough to attempt stealing the old Spanish chest, or its contents.

These days the Captain kept the room in which the chest of treasure lay double-locked, and at night slept in the room himself. From sunset to sunrise a relay of cowboys rode around the huge house and compound, and although Pete Marin, as Ratty M'Gill's friend from Mississippi was called, was still at large, there was no fear that he, or anybody else, would get into the _hacienda_ at night.

Frances, with all her duties, had less time to devote to Pratt's entertainment now. In truth, as soon as he was able to get downstairs by himself he complained that he lost his nurse.

When the crowd came over from the Edwards ranch, and sat around on the porch, Frances was not always with them. One afternoon--the very day before the dinner and dance, in fact--she came through one of the long, open windows upon the veranda, right behind a group of three of the girls. It was by chance she heard one of them say:

"Well, I don't care, Sue, I think she is real nice. You are awfully critical."

"I can't bear dowdy people," drawled Sue Latrop. "I know she'll be a sight at that dinner to-morrow night. My goodness! if for nothing else I'd come to see how she looks in her 'best bib and tucker' and how that queer old man acts when he is what he calls 'all dolled up.'"

"Sh!" warned the third girl. "Somebody will hear you."

"Pooh! If they do?" returned Sue Latrop, carelessly.

"If I were you," said the other girl, with warmth, "I wouldn't accept an invitation to dine with people whom I expected to make fun of."

"Silly!" laughed the girl from Boston. "I've got to find enjoyment somewhere--and there's little enough of it in this Panhandle. I'll be glad when father writes saying that I can come home once again."

"How about your going to this dance, Sue?" chuckled one of the girls, suddenly. "I thought your doctor had forbidden dancing for this summer?"

"I think I see myself dancing with these cowboys that they are going to invite," scoffed Sue. "And Pratt can't dance yet. There isn't anybody worth dancing with in our crowd now."

"Hasn't the Captain asked you for a dance?" queried her friend, roguishly.

"I should say not!" gasped Sue. "Fancy!"

"You must not act as though his invitation insulted you, Sue Latrop," said one of the other girls, rather tartly. "You might as well understand, first as last, that we are all fond of Captain Rugley. Besides, he's a very influential man and one of the wealthiest in this part of the Panhandle."

"_Nouveau-riche_," sniffed Miss Sue, with a toss of her head.

"If that means newly rich, why, he's not!" exclaimed the other girl, with continued warmth. "It's true, he didn't make his money baking beans, or bean-pots; nor by drying and selling pollock and calling it 'codfish.' I believe one has to make his money in some such way to break into Boston society?"

"Something like that," responded Sue, calmly.

"Well, the old Captain is very, very wealthy," went on his champion. "If you'd ever been much inside this big house, you'd see it is so. And they say he has a treasure chest containing jewels of fabulous value."

"A treasure chest!" ejaculated the Boston girl.

"Yes, Ma'am!"

"Now you are trying to fool me," declared Sue Latrop.

"You wait! I expect Frances will wear at the dinner some of those wonderful old jewels the Captain digs out of his chest once in a while. I've heard they are really amazing----

"Jewels to deck out the Cattle Queen!" interrupted Sue, tauntingly. "Nose ring and anklets included, I s'pose?"

"Now, Sue! how can you be so mean?" cried one of the other girls.

"Pshaw! I suppose she'll be a wondrous sight in her 'best bib and tucker.' Loaded down with silver ornaments, like a Mexican belle at a fair, or an Indian squaw at a poodle-dog feast. She will undoubtedly throw all us girls in the shade," and Sue burst into a gale of laughter.

"I declare! you're cruel, Sue!" cried one of the girls from Amarillo.

"I'd like to know how you make that out, Miss?" demanded the girl from Boston.

"Frances has never done you a bit of harm. Why! you are accepting her hospitality this very moment. And yet, you haven't a good word to say for her."

"I don't see that I am called upon to give her a good word," sneered Miss Latrop. "She is a rough, rude, quite impossible person. I fail to see wherein she deserves any consideration at my hands. I declare! to hear you girls, one would think this cowgirl was of some importance."

Frances came quietly away from the window, postponing her dusting in that quarter until later. But she was tempted--very sorely tempted indeed.

Sue expected her to look like a cross between an Indian squaw and a Mexican belle at dinner--and Frances was sorely tempted to fulfil the Boston girl's idea of what a "cattle queen" should look like at a society function!