Chapter 9

SURPRISING NEWS

Frances arrived at home about noon. The last few miles she bestrode Molly, for that intelligent creature had allowed herself to be caught. It was too late to go on the errand to Cottonwood Bottom before luncheon.

Silent Sam Harding met her at the corral gate. He was a lanky, saturnine man, with never a laugh in his whole make-up. But he was liked by the men, and Frances knew him to be faithful to the Bar-T interests.

"What happened to Ratty's bunch?" he asked, in his sober way.

"Did you see them?" cried Frances, leaping down from the saddle.

"Saw their dust," said Sam.

"They stampeded," Frances said, warmly. "And Mr. Sanderson and I lost our ponies--pretty nearly had a bad accident, Sam," and she went on to give the foreman of the ranch the particulars. "I thought something was wrong. I got that little grey hawse of Bill Edwards'. He just come in," said Sam.

"Ratty M'Gill was running those steers," Frances told him. "I must report him to daddy. He's been warned before. I think Ratty's got some whiskey."

"I shouldn't wonder. There was a bootlegger through here yesterday."

"The man who tried to get over our roof!" exclaimed Frances.

"Mebbe."

"Do you suppose he's known to Ratty?" questioned the girl, anxiously.

"Dunno. But Ratty's about worn out his welcome on the Bar-T. If the Cap says the word, I'll can him."

"Well," said Frances, "he shouldn't have driven that herd so hard. I'll have to speak to daddy about it, Sam, though I hate to bother him just now. He's all worked up over that business of last night."

"Don't understand it," said the foreman, shaking his head.

"Could it have been the bootlegger?" queried Frances, referring to the illicit whiskey seller of whom she suspected the irresponsible Ratty M'Gill had purchased liquor. The "bootleggers" were supposed to carry pint flasks of bad whiskey in the legs of their topboots, to sell at a fancy price to thirsty punchers on the ranges.

"Dunno how that slate come broken on the roof," grumbled Sam. "The feller knowed just where to go to hitch his rope ladder. Goin' to have one of the boys ride herd on the _hacienda_ at night for a while." This was a long speech for Silent Sam.

Frances thanked him and went up to the house. She did not find an opportunity of speaking to Captain Rugley about Ratty M'Gill at once, however, for she found him in a state of great excitement.

"Listen to this, Frances!" he ejaculated, when she appeared, waving a sheet of paper in his hand, and trying to get up from the hard chair in which he was sitting.

A spasm of pain balked him; his bronzed face wrinkled as the rheumatic twinge gripped him; but his hawklike eyes gleamed.

"My! my!" he grunted. "This pain is something fierce."

Frances fluttered to his side. "Do take an easier chair, Daddy," she begged. "It will be so much more comfortable."

"Hold on! this does very well. Your old dad's never been used to cushions and do-funnies. But see here! I want you to read this." He waved the paper again.

"What is it, Daddy?" Frances asked, without much curiosity.

"Heard from old Lon at last--yes, ma'am! What do you know about that? From good old Lon, who was my partner for twenty years. I've got a letter here that one of the boys brought from the station just now, from a minister, back in Mississippi. Poor old Lon's in a soldier's home, and he's just got track of me.

"My soul and body, Frances! Think of it," added the excited Captain. "He's been living almost like a beggar for years in a Confederate soldiers' home--good place, like enough, of its kind, but here am I rolling in wealth, and that treasure chest right here under my eye, and Lon suffering, perhaps----"

The Captain almost broke down, for with the pain he was enduring and all, the incident quite unstrung him. Frances had her arms about him and kissed his tear-streaked cheek.

"Foolish, am I?" he demanded, looking up at her, "But it's broken me up--hearing from my old partner this way. Read the letter, Frances, won't you?"

She did so. It was from the chaplain of the Bylittle Soldiers' Home, of Bylittle, Mississippi.

"Captain Daniel Rugley, "Bar-T Ranch, "Texas Panhandle.

"Dear Sir:

"I am writing in behalf of an old soldier in this institution, one Jonas P. Lonergan, who was at one time a member of Company K, Texas Rangers, and who before that time served honorably in Company P, Fifth Regiment, Mississippi Volunteers, during the War between the States.

"Mr. Lonergan is a sadly broken man, having passed through much evil after his experiences on the Border and in Mexico in your company. Indeed, his whole life has been one of privation and hardship. Now, bent with years, he has been obliged to seek refuge with some of his ancient comrades at Bylittle.

"In several private talks with me, Captain Rugley, he has mentioned the incidents relating to the looting and destruction of Senor Morales' _hacienda_, over the Border in Mexico, while you and he were on detail in that vicinity as Rangers.

"Perhaps the old man is rambling; but he always talks of a treasure chest which he claims you and he rescued from the bandits and removed into Arizona, hiding the same in a certain valley at the mouth of a canyon which he calls Dry Bone Canyon.

"Mr. Lonergan always speaks of you as 'the whitest man who ever lived.' 'If my old partner, Captain Dan, knew how I was fixed or where I was, he'd have me rollin' in luxury in no time,' he has said to me; 'providing he's this same Captain Dan Rugley that's owner of the Bar-T Ranch in the Panhandle.'

"You know (if you know him at all) that Mr. Lonergan had no educational advantages. Such men have difficulty in keeping up communication with their friends.

"He claims to have lost track of you twenty-odd years ago. That when you separated you both swore to divide equally the contents of Senor Morales' treasure chest, the hiding place of which at that time was in a hostile country, Geronimo and his braves being on the warpath.

"If you are Jonas P. Lonergan's old-time partner you will remember the particulars more clearly than I can state them.

"If this be the case, I am sure I need only state the above and certify to the identity of Mr. Lonergan, to bring from you an expression of your remembrance and the statement whether or no any property to which Mr. Lonergan might make a claim is in your possession.

"Mr. L. speaks much of the treasure chest and tells marvelous stories of its contents. He does not seem to desire wealth for himself, however, for he well knows that he has but a few months to live, nor does he seem ever to have cared greatly for money.

"His anxiety is for the condition of a sister of his who was left a widow some years ago, and for her son. Mr. L. fears that the nephew has not the chance of getting on in life that he would like the boy to have. In his old age Mr. L. feels keenly the fact that he was never able to do anything for his family, and the fate of his widowed sister and her son is much on his mind.

"A prompt reply, Captain Rugley, if you are the old-time partner of my ancient friend, will be gratefully received by the undersigned, and joyfully by Mr. Lonergan.

"Respectfully, "(Rev.) Decimus Tooley."

"Why! what do you think of that?" gasped Frances, when she had read the letter to the very last word.

Her father's face was shining and there were tears in his eyes. His joy at hearing from his old companion-in-arms was unmistakable.

This turning up of Jonas Lonergan meant the parting with a portion of the mysterious wealth that the old ranchman kept hidden in the Spanish chest--wealth that he might easily keep if he would.

Frances was proud of him. Never for an instant did he seem to worry about parting with the treasure to Lonergan. His fears for it had never been the fears of a miser who worshiped wealth--no, indeed!

Now it was plain that the thought of seeing his old partner alive again, and putting into his hands the part of the treasure rightfully belonging to him, delighted Captain Dan Rugley in every fibre of his being.

"The poor old codger!" exclaimed the ranchman, affectionately. "And to think of Lon being in need, and living poor--maybe actually suffering--when I've been doing so well here, and have had this old chest right under my thumb all these years.

"You see, Frances," said the Captain, making more of an explanation than ever before, "Lon and I got possession of that chest in a funny way.

"We'd been sent after as mean a man as ever infested the Border--and there were some mighty mean men along the Rio Grande in those days. He had slipped across the Border to escape us; but in those times we didn't pay much attention to the line between the States and Mexico.

"We went after him just the same. He was with a crowd of regular bandits, we found out. And they were aiming to clean up Senor Milo Morales' _hacienda_.

"We got onto their plans, and we rode hard to the _hacienda_ to head them off. We knew the old Spaniard--as fine a Castilian gentleman as ever stepped in shoe-leather.

"We stopped with him a while, beat off the bandits, and captured our man. After everything quieted down (as we thought) we started for the Border with the prisoner. Senor Morales was an old man, without chick or child, and not a relative in the world to leave his wealth to. His was one of the few Castilian families that had run out. Neither in Mexico nor in Spain did he have a blood tie.

"His vast estates he had already willed to the Church. Such faithful servants as he had (and they were few, for the _peon_ is not noted for gratitude) he had already taken care of.

"Lon and I had saved his life as well as his personal property, he was good enough to say, and he showed us this treasure chest and what was in it. When he passed on, he said, it should be ours if we were fixed so we could get it before the Mexican authorities stepped in and grabbed it all, or before bandits cleaned out the _hacienda_. It was a toss-up in those days between the two, which was the most voracious!

"Well, Frances, that's how it stood when we rode away with Simon Hawkins lashed to a pony between us. Before we reached the river we heard of a big band of outlaws that had come down from the Sierras and were trailing over toward Morales'.

"We hurried back, leaving Simon staked down in a hide-out we knew of. But Lon and I were too late," said the old Captain, shaking his head sadly. "Those scoundrels had got there ahead of us, led by the men we had first beaten off, and they had done their worst.

"The good old Senor--as harmless and lovely a soul as ever lived--had been brutally murdered. One or two of his servants had been killed, too--for appearance's sake, I suppose. The others, especially the _vaqueros_, had joined the outlaws, and the _hacienda_ was being looted.

"But Lon and I took a chance, stole in by night, found the treasure chest, and slipped away with it. I went back alone before dawn, found a six-mule team already loaded with household stuff and drove off with it, thus stealing from the thieves.

"A good many of these fine old things we have here were on that wagon. I decided that they belonged to me as much as to anybody. Get them once over the boundary into God's country and the thieving Mexican Government--only one degree removed at that time from the outlaws themselves--would not dare lay claim to them.

"We did this," concluded Captain Dan, with a sigh of reminiscence, and with his eyes shining, "and we got Simon into the jail at Elberad, too.

"Lon and I kept on up into Arizona, into Dry Bone Canyon, and there we cached the stuff. Air and sand are so dry there that nothing ever decays, and so all these rugs and hangings and featherwork were uninjured when I brought them away to this ranch soon after you were born.

"That's the story, my dear. I never talk much about it, for it isn't altogether my secret. You see, my old partner, Lon, was in on it. And now he's going to come for his share----"

"Come for his share, Daddy?" asked Frances, in surprise.

"Yes--sir-ree--sir!" chuckled the old ranchman. "Think I'm going to let old Lon stay in that soldiers' home? Not much!"

"But will he be able to travel here to the Panhandle?"

"Of course! What the matter is with Lon, he's been shut indoors. I know what it is. Why! he's younger than I am by a year or two."

"But if he can't travel alone----"

"I'll go after him! I'll hire a private car! My goodness! I'll hire a whole train if it's necessary to get him out of that Bylittle place! That's what I'll do!

"And he shall live here with us--so he shall! He and I will divide this treasure just as I've been aching to do for years. You shall have jewels then, my girl!"

"But, dear!" gasped Frances, "you are not well enough to go so far."

"Now, don't bother, Frances. Your old dad isn't dead yet--not by any means! I'll be all right in a day or two."

But Captain Rugley was not all right in so short a time. He actually grew worse. Frances sent a messenger for the doctor the very next morning. Whether it was from the exposure of the night the stranger tried to climb over the _hacienda_ roof or not, Captain Rugley took to his bed. The physician pronounced it rheumatic fever, and a very serious case indeed.