For the Texas Panhandle has had its two farming booms. The first advance of the farmers into the ranges twenty-five years or more before had been a rank failure.
“They came here and plowed up little spots in our parsters that air eyesores now,” one old cowman said, “and then beat it back East when they found it didn’t rain ’cordin’ ter schedule. This land ain’t good for nothin’ ’cept cows.”
But this had been in the days of the old unfenced ranges, and before dry-farming had become a science. Now the few remaining cattlemen kept their pastures fenced, and began to think of raising other feed than river-bottom hay.
The cohorts of agriculturists were advancing; the cattlemen were falling back. The ancient staked plains of the Spanish conquestadors were likely to become waving wheat fields and smiling orchards.
The young girl and her companion could not travel fast to the Bar-T ranch-house for two reasons: Pratt Sanderson was sore all over, and the mountain lion slung across Frances’ pony caused some trouble. The pinto objected to carrying double–especially when an occasional draft of evening air brought the smell of the lion to her nostrils.
The young fellow admired the way in which the girl handled her mount. He had seen many half-wild horsemen at the Amarillo street fairs, and the like; since coming to Bill Edwards’ place he had occasionally observed a good rider handling a mean cayuse. But this man-handling of a half-wild pony was nothing like the graceful control Frances of the ranges had over Molly. The pinto danced and whirled and snorted, and once almost got her quivering nose down between her knees–the first position of the bucking horse.
At every point Frances met her mount with a stern word, or a firm rein, or a touch of the spur or quirt, which quickly took the pinto’s mind off her intention of “acting up.”
“You are wonderful!” exclaimed the youth, excitedly. “I wish I could ride half as good as you do, Miss Frances.”
Frances smiled. “You did not begin young enough,” she said. “My father took me in his arms when I was a week old and rode a half-wild mustang twenty miles across the ranges to exhibit me to the man who was our next-door neighbor in those days. You see, my tuition began early.”
It was not yet fully dark, although the ranch-house lamps were lit, when they came to the home corral and the big fenced yard in front of the Bar-T.
Two boys ran out to take the ponies. One of these Frances instructed to saddle a fresh pony and ride to the Edwards place with word that Pratt Sanderson would remain all night at the Bar-T.
The other boy was instructed to give the mountain lion to one of the men, that the pelt might be removed and properly stretched for curing.
“Come right in, Pratt,” said the girl, with frank cordiality. “You’ll have a chance for a wash and a brush before supper. And dad will find you some clean clothes.
“There’s dad on the porch, though he’s forbidden the night air unless he puts a coat on. Oh, he’s a very, very bad patient, indeed!”
CHAPTER III
THE OLD SPANISH CHEST
Pratt saw a tall, lean man–a man of massive frame, indeed, with a heavy mustache that had once been yellow but had now turned grey, teetering on the rear legs of a hard-bottomed chair, with his shoulders against the wall of the house.
There were plenty of inviting-looking chairs scattered about the veranda. There were rugs, and potted plants, and a lounge-swing, with a big lamp suspended from the ceiling, giving light enough over all.
But the master of the Bar-T had selected a straight-backed, hard-bottomed chair, of a kind that he had been used to for half a century and more. He brought the front legs down with a bang as the girl and youth approached.
“What’s kept you, Frances?” he asked, mellowly. “Evening, sir! I take it your health’s well?”
He put out a hairy hand into which Pratt confided his own and, the next moment, vowed secretly he would never risk it there again! His left hand tingled badly enough since the attentions of the mountain lion. Now his right felt as though it had been in an ore-crusher.
“This is Pratt Sanderson, from Amarillo,” the daughter of the ranchman said first of all. “He’s a friend of Mrs. Bill Edwards. He was having trouble with a lion over in Brother’s Coulie, when I came along. We got the lion; but Pratt got some scratches. Can’t Ming find him a flannel shirt, Dad?”
“Of course,” agreed Captain Rugley, his eyes twinkling just as Frances’ had a little while before. “You tell him as you go in. Come on, Pratt Sanderson. I’ll take a look at your scratches myself.”
A shuffle-footed Chinaman brought the shirt to the room Pratt Sanderson had been ushered to by the cordial old ranchman. The Chinaman assisted the youth to get into the garment, too, for Captain Rugley had already swathed the scratches on Pratt’s chest and arm with linen, after treating the wounds with a pungent-smelling but soothing salve.
“San Soo, him alle same have dlinner ready sloon,” said Ming, sprinkling ‘l’s’ indiscriminately in his information. “Clapen an’ Misse Flank wait on pleaza.”
The young fellow, when he was presentable, started back for the “pleaza.”
Everything he saw–every appointment of the house–showed wealth, and good taste in the use of it. The old ranchman furnished the former, of course; but nobody but Frances, Pratt thought, could have arranged the furnishings and adornments of the house.
The room he was to occupy as a guest was large, square, grey-walled, was hung with bright pictures, a few handsome Navajo blankets, and had heavy soft rugs on the floor. There was a gay drapery in one corner, behind which was a canvas curtain masking a shower bath with nickel fittings.
The water ran off from the shallow marble basin through an open drain under the wall. The bed was of brass and looked comfortable. There was a big steamer chair drawn invitingly near the window which opened into the court, or garden, around which the house was built.
The style of the building was Spanish, or Mexican. A fountain played in the court and there were trees growing there, among the branches of which a few lanterns were lit, like huge fireflies.
In passing back to the front porch of the ranch-house (farther south it would have been called hacienda) Pratt noted Spanish and Aztec armor hanging on the walls; high-backed, carven chairs of black oak, mahogany, and other heavy woods; weapons of both modern and ancient Indian manufacture, and those of the style used by Cortez and his cohorts when they marched on the capital city of the great Montezuma.
In a glass-fronted case, too, hung a brilliant cloak of parakeet feathers such as were worn by the Aztec nobles. Lights had been lit in the hall since he had arrived and the treasures were now revealed for the first time to the startled eye of the visitor.
The sight of these things partially prepared him for the change in Frances’ appearance. Her smooth brown skin and her veiled eyes were the same. She still wore her hair in girlish plaits. She was quite the simple, unaffected girl of sixteen. But her dress was white, of some soft and filmy material which looked to the young fellow like spider’s web in the moonlight. It was cut a little low at the throat; her arms were bared to the elbow. She wore a heavy, glittering belt of alternate red-gold links and green stones, and on one arm a massive, wrought-gold bracelet–a serpent with turquoise eyes.
“Frances is out in her warpaint,” chuckled Captain Rugley’s mellow voice from the shadow, where he was tipped back in his chair again.
“You gave me these things out of your treasure chest, Daddy, to wear when we had company,” said the girl, quite calmly.
She wore the barbarous ornaments with an air of dignity. They seemed to suit her, young as she was. And Pratt knew that the girdle and bracelet must be enormously valuable as well as enormously old.
The expression “treasure chest” was so odd that it stuck in the young man’s mind.