Frances of the Ranges Part 40

Edwards and each of the girls but that Boston one, right now. And I wouldn't miss your show in Jackleg, Frances, for a penny!

"I only wish Lon were here to enjoy it. I got a letter from that minister saying that Lon and he will reach here next week. If they'd come early in the week they'd get here in time for the pageant, anyway."

With so much bustle and preparation about the Bar-T ranch-house, there was not much likelihood of anybody being reckless enough to attempt stealing the old Spanish chest, or its contents.

These days the Captain kept the room in which the chest of treasure lay double-locked, and at night slept in the room himself. From sunset to sunrise a relay of cowboys rode around the huge house and compound, and although Pete Marin, as Ratty M'Gill's friend from Mississippi was called, was still at large, there was no fear that he, or anybody else, would get into the _hacienda_ at night.

Frances, with all her duties, had less time to devote to Pratt's entertainment now. In truth, as soon as he was able to get downstairs by himself he complained that he lost his nurse.

When the crowd came over from the Edwards ranch, and sat around on the porch, Frances was not always with them. One afternoon--the very day before the dinner and dance, in fact--she came through one of the long, open windows upon the veranda, right behind a group of three of the girls. It was by chance she heard one of them say:

"Well, I don't care, Sue, I think she is real nice. You are awfully critical."

"I can't bear dowdy people," drawled Sue Latrop. "I know she'll be a sight at that dinner to-morrow night. My goodness! if for nothing else I'd come to see how she looks in her 'best bib and tucker' and how that queer old man acts when he is what he calls 'all dolled up.'"

"Sh!" warned the third girl. "Somebody will hear you."

"Pooh! If they do?" returned Sue Latrop, carelessly.

"If I were you," said the other girl, with warmth, "I wouldn't accept an invitation to dine with people whom I expected to make fun of."

"Silly!" laughed the girl from Boston. "I've got to find enjoyment somewhere--and there's little enough of it in this Panhandle. I'll be glad when father writes saying that I can come home once again."

"How about your going to this dance, Sue?" chuckled one of the girls, suddenly. "I thought your doctor had forbidden dancing for this summer?"

"I think I see myself dancing with these cowboys that they are going to invite," scoffed Sue. "And Pratt can't dance yet. There isn't anybody worth dancing with in our crowd now."

"Hasn't the Captain asked you for a dance?" queried her friend, roguishly.

"I should say not!" gasped Sue. "Fancy!"

"You must not act as though his invitation insulted you, Sue Latrop,"

said one of the other girls, rather tartly. "You might as well understand, first as last, that we are all fond of Captain Rugley.

Besides, he's a very influential man and one of the wealthiest in this part of the Panhandle."

"_Nouveau-riche_," sniffed Miss Sue, with a toss of her head.

"If that means newly rich, why, he's not!" exclaimed the other girl, with continued warmth. "It's true, he didn't make his money baking beans, or bean-pots; nor by drying and selling pollock and calling it 'codfish.' I believe one has to make his money in some such way to break into Boston society?"

"Something like that," responded Sue, calmly.

"Well, the old Captain is very, very wealthy," went on his champion. "If you'd ever been much inside this big house, you'd see it is so. And they say he has a treasure chest containing jewels of fabulous value."

"A treasure chest!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Boston girl.

"Yes, Ma'am!"

"Now you are trying to fool me," declared Sue Latrop.

"You wait! I expect Frances will wear at the dinner some of those wonderful old jewels the Captain digs out of his chest once in a while.

I've heard they are really amazing----

"Jewels to deck out the Cattle Queen!" interrupted Sue, tauntingly.

"Nose ring and anklets included, I s'pose?"

"Now, Sue! how can you be so mean?" cried one of the other girls.

"Pshaw! I suppose she'll be a wondrous sight in her 'best bib and tucker.' Loaded down with silver ornaments, like a Mexican belle at a fair, or an Indian squaw at a poodle-dog feast. She will undoubtedly throw all us girls in the shade," and Sue burst into a gale of laughter.

"I declare! you're cruel, Sue!" cried one of the girls from Amarillo.

"I'd like to know how you make that out, Miss?" demanded the girl from Boston.

"Frances has never done you a bit of harm. Why! you are accepting her hospitality this very moment. And yet, you haven't a good word to say for her."

"I don't see that I am called upon to give her a good word," sneered Miss Latrop. "She is a rough, rude, quite impossible person. I fail to see wherein she deserves any consideration at my hands. I declare! to hear you girls, one would think this cowgirl was of some importance."

Frances came quietly away from the window, postponing her dusting in that quarter until later. But she was tempted--very sorely tempted indeed.

Sue expected her to look like a cross between an Indian squaw and a Mexican belle at dinner--and Frances was sorely tempted to fulfil the Boston girl's idea of what a "cattle queen" should look like at a society function!

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE BURSTING OF THE CHRYSALIS

Frances Durham Rugley was growing up. At least, she felt a great many years older now than she did that day so short a time before when, riding along the trail, she had heard Pratt and the mountain lion fighting in Brother's Coulie.

She looked at her reflection in the long dressing-mirror in her own room, and could not see that she had added to her stature in this time "one jot or t.i.ttle." But inside she felt worlds older.

It was the afternoon of the dinner-party day. She had come upstairs to make ready to receive her guests. The dinner was for seven and Frances had given herself plenty of time to dress.

Pratt was off on his pony, "getting the stiffness out of himself," he declared. The old Captain was just as busy as a bee, and just as fussy as a clucking hen, about the last preparations for the party.

And meanwhile Frances was undecided. She almost wished she might run away from the ordeal before her. To face all these people whom, after all, she knew so slightly, and play hostess at her father's table, and be criticised by them all, was an ordeal hard for the range girl to face.

She was not particularly shy; but she shrank from unkind remarks, and she was sure of having at least one critic-extraordinary at the table--Sue Latrop.

This was really Frances' "coming out party" but she didn't want to "come out" at all!

"Oh! I wish they had never come here. I wish daddy had not asked them to this dinner. Dear me!" groaned the girl of the ranges, "I almost wish I had never met Pratt at all."

For, looking into the future, she saw a long vista of range work and quiet living, with merely the minor incidents of ranch life to break the monotony. This "dip" into society would not even leave a pleasant remembrance, she was afraid.

And it might be years before she would be called upon to play hostess in such a way as this again. She sighed and unbraided her hair. At that moment there sounded a knock upon her door.