Читать книгу Frances of the Ranges: or, The Old Ranchman's Treasure - Marlowe Amy Bell - Страница 2

The grey was a well-trained cow-pony, for the Edwards’ ranch was one of the latest in that section of the Panhandle to change from cattle to wheat raising. A part of its range had not as yet been plowed, and Bill Edwards still had a corral full of good riding stock.

Pratt Sanderson got into his saddle without much trouble and the girl whistled for Molly.

“I’ll throw that lion over my saddle,” she said. “Molly won’t mind it much–especially if you hold her bridle with her head up-wind.”

“All right, Miss Rugley,” the young man returned. “My name is Pratt Sanderson–I don’t know that you know it.”

“Very well, Mr. Sanderson,” she repeated.

“They don’t call me that much,” the young fellow blurted out. “I answer easier to my first name, you know–Pratt.”

“Very well, Pratt,” said the girl, frankly. “I am Frances Rugley–Frances Durham Rugley.”

She lifted the heavy lion easily, flung it across Molly, and lashed it to the saddle; then she mounted in a hurry and the ponies started for the ranch trail which Frances had been following before she heard the report of the shotgun.

The youth watched her narrowly as they rode along through the dropping darkness. She was a well-matured girl for her age, not too tall, her limbs rounded, but without an ounce of superfluous flesh. Perhaps she knew of his scrutiny; but her face remained calm and she did not return his gaze. They talked of inconsequential things as they rode along.

Pratt Sanderson thought: “What a girl she is! Mrs. Edwards is right–she’s the finest specimen of girlhood on the range, bar none! And she is more than a little intelligent–quite literary, don’t you know, if what they say is true of her. Where did she learn to plan pageants? Not in one of these schoolhouses on the ranges, I bet an apple! And she’s a cowgirl, too. Rides like a female Centaur; shoots, of course, and throws a rope. Bet she knows the whole trade of cattle herding.

“Yet there isn’t a girl who went to school with me at the Amarillo High who looks so well-bred, or who is so sure of herself and so easy to converse with.”

For her part, Frances was thinking: “And he doesn’t remember a thing about me! Of course, he was a senior when I was in the junior class. He has already forgotten most of his schoolmates, I suppose.

“But that night of Cora Grimshaw’s party he danced with me six times. He was in the bank then, and had forgotten all ‘us kids,’ I suppose. Funny how suddenly a boy grows up when he gets out of school and into business. But me —

“Well! I should have known him if we hadn’t met for twenty years. Perhaps that’s because he is the first boy I ever danced with–in town, I mean. The boys on the ranch don’t count.”

Her tranquil face and manner had not betrayed–nor did they betray now–any of her thoughts about this young fellow whom she remembered so clearly, but who plainly had not taxed his memory with her.

That was the way of Frances Durham Rugley. A great deal went on in her mind of which nobody–not even Captain Dan Rugley, her father–dreamed.

Left motherless at an early age, the ranchman’s daughter had grown to her sixteenth year different from most girls. Even different from most other girls of the plains and ranges.

For ten years there was not a woman’s face–white, black, or red–on the Bar-T acres. The Captain had married late in life, and had loved Frances’ mother devotedly. When she died suddenly the man could not bear to hear or see another woman on the place.

Then Frances grew into his heart and life, and although the old wound opened as the ranchman saw his daughter expand, her love and companionship was like a healing balm poured into his sore heart.

The man’s strong, fierce nature suddenly went out to his child and she became all and all to him–just as her mother had been during the few years she had been spared to him.

So the girl’s schooling was cut short–and Frances loved books and the training she had received at the Amarillo schools. She would have loved to go on–to pass her examinations for college preparation, and finally get her diploma and an A. B., at least, from some college.

That, however, was not to be. Old Captain Rugley lavished money on her like rain, when she would let him. She used some of the money to buy books and a piano and pay for a teacher for the latter to come to the ranch, while she spent much midnight oil studying the books by herself.

Captain Rugley’s health was not all it should have been. Frances could not now leave him for long.

Until recently the old ranchman had borne lightly his seventy years. But rheumatism had taken hold upon him and he did not stand as straight as of old, nor ride so well.

He was far from an invalid; but Frances realized–more than he did, perhaps–that he had finished his scriptural span of life, and that his present years were borrowed from that hardest of taskmasters, Father Time.

Often it was Frances who rode the ranges, instead of Captain Rugley, viewing the different herds, receiving the reports of underforemen and wranglers, settling disputes between the punchers themselves, looking over chuck outfits, buying hay, overseeing brandings, and helping cut out fat steers for the market trail.

There was nothing Frances of the ranges did not know about the cattle-raising business. And she was giving some attention to the new grain-raising ideas that had come into the Panhandle with the return of the first-beaten farming horde.

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!”