A clump of trees hid the trail for a bit; when she rounded it the way was empty. Whoever she had heard had turned off the trail into the cottonwoods.

"Maybe he didn't water the ponies before he started," thought Frances, "and has gone down to the ford. That's a bit of carelessness that I do not like. Whom could Sam have sent with the bronchos for the doctor?"

She turned Molly off the trail beyond the bridge. The wood was not a jungle, but she could not see far ahead, nor be seen. By and by she smelled tobacco smoke--the everlasting cigarette of the cattle puncher.

Then she heard the sound of voices.

Why this latter fact should have made Frances suspicious, she could not have told. It was her womanly intuition, perhaps.

Slipping out of the saddle, she tied Molly with her head up-wind. She was afraid the pinto would smell her fellows from the ranch, and signal them, as horses will.

Once away from her mount, she pa.s.sed between the trees and around the brush clumps until she saw the ford of the river sparkling below her.

There were the hard-driven ponies, their heads drooping, their flanks heaving, standing knee-deep in the stream--this fact in itself an offense that she could not overlook.

The animals had been overdriven, and now the employee of the ranch who had them in charge was allowing them to cool off too quickly--and in the cold stream, too!

But who was he? For a moment Frances could not conceive.

The figure of the driver was humped over on the seat in a slouching att.i.tude, sitting sideways, and with his back toward the direction from which the range girl was approaching. He faced a man on a shabby horse, whose mount likewise stood in the stream and who had been fording the river from the opposite direction.

This horseman was a stranger to Frances. He wore a broad-brimmed black hat, no chaps, no cartridge belt or gun in sight, and a white shirt and a vest under his coat, while shoes instead of boots were on his feet. He was neither puncher nor farmer in appearance. And his face was bad.

There could be no doubt of that latter fact. He wore a stubble of beard that did not disguise the sneering mouth, or the wickedly leering expression of his eyes.

"Well, I done my part, old fellow," drawled the man in the seat of the buckboard, just as Frances came within earshot. "'Tain't my fault you bungled it."

Frances stopped instead of going on. It was Ratty M'Gill!

She could not understand why he was not on the range, or why Sam had sent the ne'er-do-well to meet the doctor. It puzzled her before the puncher's continued speech began to arouse her curiosity.

"You'll sure find yourself in a skillet of hot water, old fellow,"

pursued Ratty, inhaling his cigarette smoke and letting it forth through his nostrils in little puffs as he talked. "The old Cap's built his house like a fort, anyway. And he's some man with a gun--believe me!"

"You say he's sick," said the other man, and he, too, drawled. Frances found herself wondering where she had heard that voice before.

"He ain't so sick that he can't guard that chest you was talkin' about.

He's had his bed made up right in the room with it. That's whatever,"

said Ratty.

"Once let me get in there," said the other, slowly.

"Sam's set some of the boys to ride herd on the house," chuckled Ratty.

"That's the way, then!" exclaimed the other, raising his clenched fist and shaking it. "You get put on that detail, Ratty."

"I'll see you blessed first," declared the puncher, laughing. "I don't see nothing in it but trouble for me."

"No trouble for you at all. They didn't get you before."

"No," said the puncher. "More by good luck than good management. I don't like going things blind, Pete. And you're always so blamed secretive."

"I have to be," growled the other. "You're as leaky as a sieve yourself, Ratty. I never could trust you."

"Nor n.o.body else," laughed the reckless puncher. "Sam's about got my number now. If he ain't the gal has----"

"You mean that daughter of the old man's?"

"Yep. She's an able-minded gal--believe me! And she's just about boss of the ranch, specially now the old Cap is laid by the heels for a while."

The other was silent for some moments. Ratty gathered up the reins from the backs of the tired ponies.

"I gotter step along, Pete," he said. "Gal's gone to telephone for the medical sharp, who'll show up on Number 20 when she goes through Jackleg. I'm to meet him. Or," and he began to chuckle again, "Jose Reposa was, and I took his place so's to meet you here as I promised."

"And lots of good your meeting me seems to do me," growled the man called Pete.

"Well, old fellow! is that my fault?" demanded the puncher.

"I don't know. I gotter git inside that _hacienda_."

"Walk in. The door's open."

"You think you are smart, don't you?" snarled Pete, in anger. "You tell me where the chest is located; but it couldn't be brought out by day.

But at night---- My soul, man! I had the team all ready and waiting the other night, and I could have got the thing if I'd had luck."

"You didn't have luck," chuckled Ratty M'Gill. "And I don't believe you'd 'a' had much more luck if you'd got away with the old Cap's chest."

"I tell you there's a fortune in it!"

"You don't know----"

"And I suppose you do?" snarled Pete.

"I know no sane man ain't going to keep a whole mess of jewels and such, what you talk about, right in his house. He'd take 'em to a bank at Amarillo, or somewhere."

"Not that old codger. He'd keep 'em under his own eye. He wouldn't trust a bank like he would himself. Humph! I know his kind.

"Why," continued Pete, excitedly, "that old feller at Bylittle is another one just like him. These old-timers dug gold, and made their piles half a dozen times, and never trusted banks--there warn't no banks!"

"Not in them days," admitted Ratty. "But there's a plenty now."

"You say yourself he's got the chest."

"Sure! I seen it once or twice. Old Spanish carving and all that. But I bet there ain't much in it, Pete."

"You'd ought to have heard that doddering old idiot, Lonergan, talk about it," sniffed Pete. "Then your mouth would have watered. I tell you that's about all he's been talkin' about the last few months, there at Bylittle. And I was orderly on his side of the barracks and heard it all.

"I know that the parson, Mr. Tooley, was goin' to write to this Cap Rugley. Has, before now, it's likely. Then something will be done about the treasure----"

"Waugh!" shouted Ratty. "Treasure! You sound like a silly boy with a dime story book."