“Ya-as, Miss Frances,” drawled Asa, “I reckon we need a right smart of things. Mike says he’s most out o’ provisions; but for the love of home don’t send us no more beans. We’ve jest about been beaned to death! No wonder them Greasers are fighting among themselves all the endurin’ time. It’s the frijoles they eat makes ’em so fractious–sure is!”
Frances wrote out a list of the goods needed, for the next supply wagon that passed this way to drop at the camp, and looked over the outfit in general in order to report fully to Sam and her father regarding the conditions at the West Run.
It was high noon before she got in sight of the cottonwoods on her homeward trail. She was hurrying Molly, for she did not want to keep Ratty M’Gill waiting for his money. As she had told him, she wanted the reckless cowboy off the Bar-T ranges before nightfall.
She had struck the plain above the river ford when she sighted a single rider far ahead, and going in her own direction. It was plain that the man–whoever he was–was heading for the ford instead of the bridge where the new trail crossed.
Something about this fact–or about the slouching rider himself–made Frances suspicious. She was reminded of the last time she had come this way and of the dialogue she had overheard between Ratty M’Gill and the man named Pete.
“If he turns to look back, he will see me,” thought the excited girl.
Instantly she was off Molly’s back. There might be no time to ride out of sight over the ridge. Here was an old buffalo wallow, and she took advantage of it.
In the old days when the bison roamed the plains of the Panhandle the beasts made wallows in which they ground off the grass, and the grassroots as well, leaving a barren hollow from two to four feet in depth. These dust baths were used frequently by the heavily-coated buffalo in hot weather.
Holding Molly by the head the girl commanded her to lie down. The cow-pony, perfectly amenable to her young mistress now, obeyed the order, grunting as she dropped to her knees, the saddle squeaking.
“Be dead!” ordered Frances, sternly. The pinto rolled on her side, stretched out her neck, and blinked up at the girl. She was entirely hidden from any chance glance thrown back by the stranger on the trail; and when Frances dropped down, too, both of them were well out of sight of any one riding the range.