"What's tickling you, Pratt?" asked Frances, in her most matter-of-fact tone.

"I was just wondering," the Amarillo young man replied, "what Sue Latrop will think of you when she comes out here."

"Who's she?" asked Frances, a little puzzled frown marring her smooth forehead. She was trying to remember any girl of that name with whom she had gone to school at the Amarillo High.

"Sue Latrop's a distant cousin of Mrs. Bill Edwards, and she's from Boston. She's Eastern to the tips of her fingers--and talk about 'culchaw'! She has it to burn," chuckled Pratt. "Bill Edwards says she is just 'putting on dog' to show us natives how awfully crude we are.

But I guess she doesn't know any better."

The steers had swept by, and Pratt was just a little hysterical. He laughed too easily and his hand shook as he wiped the perspiration and dust from his face.

"I shouldn't think she would be a nice girl at all," Frances said, bluntly.

"Oh, she's not at all bad. Rather pretty and--my word--some dresser! No end of clothes she's brought with her. She's coming out to the Edwards ranch before long, and you'll probably see her."

Frances bit her lip and said nothing for a moment. The big steer struggled again and groaned. The girl and Pratt were afoot and the stampede of cattle had swept their mounts away. Even Molly, the pinto, was out of call.

The half dozen punchers who followed the maddened steers had no time for Frances and her companion. A great cloud of dust hung over the departing herd and that was the last the castaways on the prairie would see of either cattle or punchers that day.

"We've got to walk, I reckon," Frances said, slowly.

"How about this steer?" asked the young man, curiously.

"I think he's tamed enough for the time," said the girl, with a smile.

"Anyway I want my rope. It's a good one."

She began to untangle the bald-faced steer. He struggled and grunted and tossed his wide, wicked horns free. To tell the truth Pratt was more than a little afraid of him. But he saw that Frances had reloaded the revolver she carried, and he merely stepped aside and waited. The girl knew so much better what to do that he could be of no a.s.sistance.

"Now, Pratt," she said, at last, "stand from under! Hoop-la!"

She swung the looped lariat and brought it down smartly upon the beast's back as it struggled to its shaking legs. The steer bellowed, shook himself like a dog coming out of the water, or a mule out of the harness, and trotted away briskly.

"He'll follow the herd, I reckon," Frances said, smiling again. "If he doesn't they'll pick him out at the next round-up. His brand is too plain to miss."

"And now we're afoot," said Pratt. "It's a long walk for you back to the house, Frances."

"And longer for you to the Edwards ranch," she laughed. "But perhaps you will fall in with some of Mr. Bill's herders. They'll have an extra mount or two. I'll maybe catch Molly. She's a good pinto."

"But oughtn't I to go back with you?" questioned Pratt, doubtfully. "You see--you're alone--and afoot----"

"Why! it isn't the first time, Pratt," laughed the girl. "Don't fret about me. This range to me is just like your backyard to you."

"I suppose it sounds silly," admitted Pratt. "But I haven't been used to seeing girls quite as independent as you are, Frances Rugley."

"No? The girls you know don't live the sort of life I do," said the range girl, rather wistfully.

"I don't know that they have anything on you," put in Pratt, stoutly. "I think you're just wonderful!"

"Because I am doing something different from what you are used to seeing girls do," she said, with gravity. "That is no compliment, Pratt."

"Well! I meant it as such," he said, earnestly. He offered his hand, knowing better than to urge his company upon her. "And I hope you know how much obliged to you I am. I feel as though you had saved my life twice. I would not have known what to do in the face of that stampede."

"Every man to his trade," quoted Frances, carelessly. "Good-bye, Pratt.

Come over again to see us," and she gave his hand a quick clasp and turned away briskly.

He stood and watched her for some moments; then, fearing she might look back and see him, he faced around himself and set forth on his long tramp to the Edwards ranch.

It was true Frances did not turn around; but she knew well enough Pratt gazed after her. He would have been amazed had he known her reason for showing no further interest in him--for not even turning to wave her hand at him in good-bye. There were tears on her cheeks, and she was afraid he would see them.

"I am foolish--wicked!" she told herself. "Of course he knows other--and nicer--girls than _me_. And it isn't just that, either," she added, rather enigmatically. "But to remember all those girls I knew in Amarillo! How different their lives are from mine!

"How different they must look and behave. Why, I'm a perfect _tomboy_. Pratt said I was wonderful--just as though I were a trick pony, or an educated goose!

"I do things he never saw a girl do before, and he thinks it strange and odd. But if that Sue Latrop should see me and say that I was not nice, he'd begin to see, too, that it is a fact.

"Riding with the boys here on the ranch, and officiating at the branding-pen, riding herd, cutting out beeves and playing the cowboy generally, has not added to my 'culchaw,' that is sure. I don't know that I'd be able to 'act up' in decent society again.

"Pratt looked at me big-eyed last evening when I dressed for dinner. But he was only astonished and amused, I suppose. He didn't expect me to look like that after seeing me in this old riding dress.

"Oh, dear!" sighed Frances of the ranges. "I wouldn't leave daddy, or do anything to displease him, poor dear! But I wish he could be content to live nearer to civilization.

"We've got enough money. _I_ don't want any more, I'm sure. We could sell the cattle and turn our ranges into wheat and milo fields.

Then we could live in town part of the year--in Amarillo, perhaps!"

The thought was a daring one. Indeed, she was not wholly confident that it was not a wicked thought.

Just then she reached the summit of a slight ridge from which she could behold the home corrals of the _hacienda_ itself, still a long distance ahead, and glowing like jewels in the morning sunshine.

Such a beautiful place! After all, Frances Rugley loved it. It was home, and every tender tie of her life bound her to it and to the old man who she knew was sitting somewhere on the veranda, with his pipe and his memories.

There never was such another beautiful place as the old Bar-T! Frances was sure of that. She longed for Amarillo and what the old Captain called "the frills of society"; but could she give up the ranch for them?

"I reckon I want to keep my cake and eat it, too," she sighed. "And that, daddy would say, 'is plumb impossible!'"

CHAPTER IX

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.