"I--I'd ought to be," he breathed, solemnly. "You--you're a beauty!

Isn't she, Pratt?"

"Save my blushes," Frances begged, but not lightly. "If I suit you exactly, Daddy, I shall appear at dinner this way."

"Sure! Show them to our guests. There's not another woman in the Panhandle can make such a show."

Frances, with a sharp pain at her heart, thought this was probably true.

"Wait, Daddy," she said. "Let me run back and make one little change.

You wait there in the cool reception-room, and see how I look next time."

She could no longer bear the expression of Pratt's eyes. Turning, she gathered up her skirts and scuttled back to her room. Her cheeks were afire. Her lips trembled. She had to fight back the tears.

One by one she removed the gaudy ornaments. She left the crescent in her wavy brown hair and the old-fashioned brooch at her breast. Everything else she stripped off and flung into a drawer, and locked it.

These two pieces of jewelry might be heirlooms that any young girl could wear with taste at her "coming out" party.

She ran to the vases and took a great bunch of Pratt's flowers which she carried in her gloved hand when she went down for the second time to show herself to her father.

This time she tripped lightly. Her cheeks were becomingly flushed. Her bare throat, brown and firm, rose from the soft laces of her dress in its unadorned beauty. The very dress she wore seemed more simple and girlish--but a thousand times more fitting for her wearing.

"Daddy!"

She burst into the dimly lighted room. He wheeled in his chair, removed the pipe from his mouth, and stared at her again.

This time there was a new light in his eyes, as there was in hers. He stood up and something caught him by the throat--or seemed to--and he swallowed hard.

"How do you like me now?" she whispered, stretching her arms out to him.

"My--my little girl!" murmured the old Captain, and his voice broke.

"Then--then you are not grown up, after all?"

"Nor do I want to be, for ever and ever so long yet, Daddy!" she cried, and ran to enfold him in her warm embrace.

"Humph!" said the old Captain, confidentially. "I was half afraid of that young person who was just down here, Frances. I can kiss you now without mussing you all up, eh?"

Pratt had stolen out of the room through one of the windows to the veranda.

His heart was swelling and salt tears stung his eyes.

Like the old Captain, the youth had felt some awe of the richly-bedecked young girl who had displayed to such advantage the stunning and wonderful old jewelry that had once adorned Spanish senoras or Aztec princesses. Despite the fact that he disapproved of such a barbarous display, Pratt had been impressed.

He had an inkling, too, as to Sue Latrop's att.i.tude toward the range girl and believed that some unkind expression of the Boston girl's feelings had tempted Frances to show herself in barbaric guise at the dinner. Pratt could not have blamed the Western girl if she had "knocked their eyes out," to use Tom Gallup's expression, with an exhibition of the gorgeous jewels Captain Rugley had got out of the treasure chest.

Without much doubt the old ranchman would have been very proud of his daughter's beauty, set off by the glitter of the wonderful old gems. It was his nature to boast of his possessions, although his pride in them was innocent enough. His wealth would never in this wide world make Captain Dan Rugley either purse-proud or arrogant!

The old man's sweetness of temper, kindliness of manner, and open-handedness had been inherited by Frances. She was a true daughter of her father. But she was her mother's child, too. The well-bred, quiet, tactful lady whom the old Border fighter had married had left her mark upon the range girl. Frances possessed natural refinement and good taste. It was that which had caused her to go to her chamber after the display of the jewels, and return for a second "review."

The appearance of the simply-dressed girl who had come downstairs the second time had so impressed Pratt Sanderson that he wished to get off here on the porch by himself for a minute or two.

The first load of visitors was just driving up to the gate of the compound.

He watched the girls from Amarillo, and Sue, and all the others descend, shake out their ruffles, and run up the steps.

"My!" sighed Pratt Sanderson in his soul. "Frances has got them all beat in every little way. That's as sure as sure!"

CHAPTER XXIX

"THE PANHANDLE--PAST AND PRESENT"

Jackleg was in holiday attire. It was a raw Western settlement, it was true; but there was more business ambition and public spirit in the place than in half a dozen Eastern towns of its population.

The schoolhouse was a long, low structure, seating as many people as the ordinary town hall. It was situated upon a flat bit of prairie on the outskirts of the town. Rather, the town had grown from the schoolhouse to the railroad station, on either side of a long, dusty street.

Railroads in the West do not go out of their way to touch immature settlements. The settlements have to stretch tentacles out to the place where the railroad company determines to build a station.

This was so at Jackleg, but it gave a long vista of Main Street from the heart of the town to its outlying suburbs. This street was now gay with flags and bunting, while there were many arches of colored electric lights to burn at night.

Almost before the plans for the pageant had been formed, the business men of Jackleg had subscribed a liberal sum to defray expenses. As the plans for the entertainment progressed, and it was whispered about what a really fine thing it was to be, more subscriptions rolled in.

But Captain Dan Rugley had deposited a guarantee with the Committee that he would pay any debts over the subscriptions received, therefore Frances and her helpers had gone ahead along rather lavish lines.

The end wall of the school building had been actually removed. The framework of the wall was rearranged by the carpenters like the proscenium arch of a stage, and a drop of canvas faced the spectators where the teacher's desk and platform had been.

Behind the schoolhouse was a vacant lot. This had been surrounded with a high board fence. The enclosure made the great stage for the spectacle which the Jackleg people, the ranchers and farmers from around about, and the visitors from Amarillo and other towns, had come to see.

At the back of this enclosure, or stage, was a big sheet, or screen, on which moving pictures could be thrown. On a platform built outside, and over the open end of the building, were two moving picture machines with operators who had come on from California where some of the pictures had been made by a very famous film company.

Some of the pictures had been made in Oklahoma, too, where one public-spirited American citizen has saved a herd of the almost extinct bison that once roamed our Western plains in such numbers.

At either side of the fenced yard behind the schoolhouse stood the actors in the spectacle--both human and dumb--with all the paraphernalia. A director had come on from the film company to stage the show; but the story as developed was strictly in accordance with Frances Rugley's "plans and specifications."

"She's a wonder, that little girl," declared the professional. "She'd make her mark as a scenario writer--no doubt of that. I'd like to get her for our company; but they say her father is one of the richest men in the Panhandle."

Pratt Sanderson, to whom he happened to say this, nodded. "And one of the best," he a.s.sured the Californian. "Captain Dan Rugley is a n.o.ble old man, a gentleman of the old school, and one who has seen the West grow up and develop from the times of its swaddling clothes until now."

"Wonderful country," sighed the director. "Look at its beginnings almost within the memory of the present generation, and now--why! there's half a hundred automobiles parked right outside this show to-night!"

Captain Dan Rugley secured a front seat. He was as excited as a boy over the event. He admitted to Mrs. Bill Edwards that he hadn't been to a "regular show" a dozen times in his life.

"And I expect this is going to knock the spots out of anything I ever saw--even the Grand Opera at Chicago, when my wife and I went on our honeymoon."

The young folks from the Edwards ranch were scattered about the old Captain. Sue Latrop had a.s.sumed her most critical att.i.tude. But Sue had been wonderfully silent about Frances and her father since the dinner dance.

That occasion had turned out to be something entirely different from what the girl from Boston expected. In the first place, her young hostess was better and more tastefully--though simply--dressed than any of her guests.