“What can it be?” gasped Pratt, riding knee to knee with the range girl.
“Not a house. There isn’t one along here,” she returned.
“Some old-timer got caught!” yelled the teamster, looking back at the two pony-riders. “Hope he saved his skin.”
“A wagoner!” cried Frances, startled.
“He cut his stock loose, of course,” yelled Mack Hinkman.
But when they reached the burning wagon they saw that this was not altogether true. One horse lay, charred, in the harness. The wagon had been empty. The driver of it had evidently cut his other horse loose and ridden away on its back to save himself.
“And why didn’t he free this poor creature?” demanded Pratt. “How cruel!”
“He was scare’t,” said Mack, pulling his mules out of the trail so as to drive around the burning wagon. “Or mebbe the hawse fell. Like enough that’s it.”
Frances said nothing more. She was wondering if this abandoned wagon was the one she had seen turn into the trail from Cottonwood Bottom early in the day? And who was its driver?
They went on, puzzled by this incident. At least, Frances and Pratt were puzzled by it.