Frances of the Ranges Part 45

"But we'll fix all that, Lon," the Captain a.s.sured him. "Once we get you out to the Bar-T we'll build you up in a jiffy. We'll get you out of doors. Humph! soldiers' home, indeed! Why, you've got a long stretch of life ahead of you yet. I've beat out old Mr. Rheumatism myself these last few weeks.

"We'll fight our bodily ills and old age together, Lon--just as we used to fight other enemies. Back to back and never give up or ask for quarter, eh?"

"That's the talk, Dan!" cried the other old fellow.

But Mr. Lonergan was glad to ride out to the Bar-T in the comfortably-cus.h.i.+oned carriage that Mack Hinkman had driven to town. The party arrived at the ranch-house--Mr. Tooley and all--after daybreak.

The Captain had insisted upon Pratt's going, too.

"What?" Lonergan demanded. "_You_ a bank clerk, looking out through the wires of a cage like a monkey in the Zoo we saw years ago at Kansas City?"

"That _is_ a nice job for your nephew, hey Lon?" put in the Captain.

"Drop it, boy, drop it. You're the heir of a rich man now--isn't that so, Captain?"

"That's so," agreed Captain Dan Rugley. "He'd better write in to his bank and tell 'em to excuse him indefinitely; and write to his mother to come out here and visit a spell with her brother. The Bar-T's big enough, I should hope--hey, Frances? What do you say?"

"I am sure it would be nice to have Pratt's mother with us. I'd be delighted to have somebody's mother in the house, Daddy," said Frances, smiling. "You know, you're the best father that ever lived; but you can't be mother, too."

"It's what you've missed since you were a tiny little girl, Frances,"

agreed Captain Rugley, gravely. "But just the same--I want 'em to show me a girl in all this blessed Panhandle that's a better or finer girl than my Frances. Am I right, Pratt?"

"You most certainly are, Captain," the young man agreed. "Or anywhere outside the Panhandle."

Frances smiled at him roguishly. "Even from Boston, Pratt?" she whispered.

But Pratt forgave her for that.

Another picture of the Bar-T ranch-house on a late afternoon. The slanting rays of a westering sun lie across the floor of the main veranda. The family party idling there need no introduction save in a single particular.

A tall, well-built lady in black, and with grey hair, and who looks so much like Pratt Sanderson that the relations.h.i.+p between them could be seen at a glance, has the chair of honor. Mrs. Sanderson is making her first of many visits to the Bar-T.

Old Jonas P. Lonergan, his crutch beside him, is lying comfortably in another lounging chair. But he already looks much more vigorous.

Captain Dan Rugley, as ever, is tipped back against the wall in his favorite position. Frances is with her sewing at a low table, while Pratt is lying on the rug at his mother's feet.

"What's that Mr. Tooley said in his letter, Frances?" asked Pratt. "Is he sure the man who was killed on the railroad when he went home from here was a man named Pete Marin, who once was orderly at the soldiers'

home?"

"Yes," said Frances, gravely. "He was walking the track, they thought.

Either he was intoxicated or he did not hear the train. Poor fellow!"

"Blamed rascal!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Jonas P. Lonergan.

"He made us some trouble--but it's over," said Pratt.

"You showed what sort of stuff you were made of, young man," said the Captain, thoughtfully, "at that very time. Maybe you've got something to thank that Pete for."

"And Ratty M'Gill?" asked Pratt, smiling.

"Poor Ratty!" said Frances again.

"He's gone down to the Pecos country," said the Captain, briskly. "Best place for him. Maybe he will know enough not to get in with such fellows as that Pete again."

"I should have been much afraid had I known what Pratt was getting into out here," Mrs. Sanderson ventured.

"Now, now, Sister! Don't try to make a mollycoddle out o' the boy," said Jonas P. Lonergan. "I tell you we're going to make a man out o' Pratt here. I've bought an interest in the Bar-T for him. He's going to take some of the work off the Captain's shoulders when we get him broke in, hey, Dan?"

"Right you are, Lon!" agreed the other old man.

Frances smiled quietly to hear them plan. She put her needle in and out of the work she was doing slowly. By and by her fingers stopped altogether and she looked away across the ranges.

She, too, was planning. She was seeing herself living in a college town the next winter, with daddy for company, while Mr. Lonergan and Pratt and his mother remained on at the Bar-T.

She saw herself graduating after a few years from some advanced school, quite the equal of Pratt in education. Meanwhile he would be learning to change the vast Bar-T ranges into wheat and milo fields, and taking up the new farming that is revolutionizing the Panhandle.

And after that--and after that----?

"How about Ming bringing us a pitcher of nice cool lemonade, eh, Frances?" said the Captain, breaking in upon her day-dream.

"All right, Daddy. I'll tell him," said Frances of the Ranges.

THE END