“Mebbe we’ll have good news for you when you come back, Frances!” called the ranchwoman, quite filling the door with her ample person as she watched the Bar-T wagon, and the girl herself, take the trail for Amarillo.
Mack Hinkman was quite wrought up over the adventure of the previous evening.
“That young Pratt Sanderson is some smart boy–believe me!” he said to Frances, who elected to ride within earshot of the wagon-seat for the first mile or two.
“How is that?” she asked, curiously.
“They tell me it was him found the place where the chest had been put aboard that punt.”
“What punt?”
“The boat the feller escaped in with the chest,” said Mack.
“Then he wasn’t the man whose wagon and one horse was burned?” queried Frances.
“Don’t know. Mebbe. But that’s no difference. This old punt has been hid down there below the ford since last duck-shooting season. Maybe he knowed ’twas there; maybe he didn’t. Howsomever, he found the boat and brought it up to the ford. Into the boat he tumbled the chest. There was the marks on the bank. John Peckham told me himself.”
“And Pratt found the trail?”