Frances warned Mack to say nothing about the hold-up at the ford. That was certainly laying no cross on the teamster’s shoulders, for he was not generally garrulous.
They put up at the hotel that night and Frances did her errands in Amarillo the next day without being disturbed by awkward questions regarding their adventure.
Certainly, she was not obliged to go to the bank under the present circumstances, for there was no chest now to put in the safe-keeping of that institution.
Nor did Frances Rugley have many friends in the breezy, Western city with whom she might spend her time. Two years make many changes in such a fast-growing community. She was not sure that she would be able to find many of the girls with whom she had gone to high school.
And she was, too, in haste to return to the Bar-T. Although she had left her father better, she worried much about him. Naturally, too, she wished to get back and report to him the adventures which had marked her journey to Amarillo.
She would have been glad to escape stopping at the Peckham ranch over the third night; but she could not get beyond that point–the wagon now being heavily laden; nor did she wish to remain out on the range at night without a shelter tent.
The hold-up at the ford naturally made Frances feel somewhat timid, too. Mack was not armed, and she had only the revolver that she usually carried in her saddle holster and wouldn’t have thought of defending herself with it from any human being.
So she rode ahead when it became dark, and reached the Peckham ranch at supper time, finding both a warm welcome and much news awaiting her.
“Glad to see ye back again, Frances,” declared Mrs. Peckham. “We done been talking about you and your hold-up most of the time since you went to Amarillo. Beats all how little it does take to set folks’ tongues wagging in the country. Ain’t it so?
“Well! that feller got clean away. And he took chest and all. Them fellers that went down stream found the old punt. But they never found no place where he’d shifted the trunk ashore. And it must have been heavy, Frances?”