“Hello!” exclaimed Pratt. “What’s the matter, Frances?”
“Why, Pratt! How came you and your friends to be riding this way?” returned the range girl.
She saw the red coat of the girl from Boston in the party passing the slowly moving wagon, and she was not at all sure that she was glad to see Pratt, after all!
But the young man had seen something suspicious in the manner in which Ratty M’Gill had been following Frances. The fellow now sat easily in his saddle at a little distance and rolled a cigarette, leering in the meantime at the ranch girl and her friend.
“What does that fellow want?” demanded Pratt again.
“Oh, don’t mind him,” said Frances, hurriedly. “He has been discharged from the Bar-T—”
“That’s the fellow you said made the steers stampede?” Pratt interrupted.
“Yes.”
“Don’t like his looks,” the Amarillo young man said, frankly. “Glad we came up as we did.”
“But you must go on with your friends, Pratt,” said Frances, faintly.