“Sue Latrop and that crowd will be out to-morrow, I expect,” he said, as he departed. “Don’t know when I can get over again, Frances. I’ll have to beau them around a bit.”
“Good-bye, Pratt,” said Frances, without comment.
“By the way,” called Pratt, from his saddle and holding in his pony, “your father being so ill isn’t going to make you give up your part in the pageant, Frances?”
“Plenty of time for that,” she returned, but without smiling. “I hope father will be well before the date set for the show.”
Pratt’s departure left Frances with a sinking heart; but she did not betray her feelings. To be all alone with her father and the two Chinamen at the ranch-house seemed hard indeed; and with the responsibility of the treasure chest on her heart, too!
Her father, it was true, had insisted on having his couch placed at night in the room with the Spanish chest. He seemed to consider that, ill as he was, he could guard the treasure better than anybody else.
Frances had to devise a plan without either her father’s advice or that of anybody else. She prepared for the adventure by begging the Captain to have burlap wrapped about the chest and securely roped on.
“Then it won’t be so noticeable,” she told him, “when people come in to call on you.” For some of the other cattlemen of the Panhandle rode many miles to call at the Bar-T Ranch; and, of course, they insisted upon seeing Captain Rugley.
Ming and San Soo (the latter was very tall and enormously strong for a coolie) corded the Spanish chest as directed, and under the Captain’s eye. Then Frances threw a Navajo blanket over it and it looked like a couch or divan.
To Silent Sam she said; “I want a four-mule wagon to go to Amarillo for supplies. When can I have it?”