A REUNION
There had been a delay on the railroad caused by a washout; therefore
Jonas Lonergan and Mr. Decimus Tooley, the chaplain of the Bylittle
Soldiers' Home, did not arrive at Jackleg in time for the night of the
spectacle of the Pageant of the Panhandle.
But the party from the Bar-T Ranch, after the show was over and Frances
and the Captain had both been congratulated, rode down to the station to
meet the belated train to which was attached the special car Captain
Rugley had engaged for the service of his old partner and the minister.
With the Bar-T party was Pratt, although he proposed going back to the
Edwards ranch that night. He wanted to get away from the crowd of
enthusiastic and excited young people who had accompanied Mr. and Mrs.
Bill Edwards into town to the show.
This train that was stopping to cast loose the special car at Jackleg
was the last to stop at that station at night. Some few of the
spectators of the pageant would board it for stations farther west; so
there was a small group on the station platform.
The young folk, Pratt and Frances, sighted the headlight up the track.
They were walking up and down the platform, arm in arm and talking over
the successful completion of the play, when they spied it.
"It's coming, Daddy!" cried Frances, running into the station to warn
the old Captain.
To tell the truth, he had been leaning back against the wall--in a hard
and straight-backed chair, of course--taking a "cat-nap." But he awoke
instantly and with all his senses alert.
"All right, Frances--all right, my girl," he said. "I'm with you.
Hurrah! My old partner will be as glad to see me as I am to see him."
But when the train rolled in there was some delay. The special car had
to be shunted onto the siding before Captain Rugley could go aboard.
"Come on, Frances," urged her father, as eager as a boy. He ran across
the tracks and Frances dutifully followed him. Pratt remained on the
platform and looked rather wistfully after her. Their conversation had
been broken off abruptly. He had not had an opportunity to say all that
he wanted to say and he was to go back to Amarillo the next day.
He saw the Captain and his daughter climb the steps, helped by the negro
porter. They disappeared within the lighted car. Pratt still lingered.
His pony was hitched up the street a block or so. There really was
nothing further for him to wait for.
Suddenly shadows appeared on a curtain of one section of the car. The
shade flew up and the window was raised.
The young man from Amarillo stood right where the lamplight fell upon
his features. He found himself staring into the face of a grey-visaged,
sharp-eyed old man, who had a great shock of grey hair on the top of his
head like a cockatoo's tuft.
The stranger stared at Pratt earnestly, and then beckoned him with both
hands, shouting:
"Hey, you boy! You there, with the plaid cap. Come here!"
Rather startled, and not a little amused, Pratt started slowly in the
direction of the car.
"Hey! Lift your feet there," called out the old man. "You act like you
had the hookworm. Git a move on!"
"What do you want?" demanded Pratt, coming under the window. He could
see into the lighted car now, and he observed Frances and her father
standing back of the stranger, the Captain broadly agrin.
The man reached down suddenly and grabbed Pratt by the lobe of his right
ear--pinching it between thumb and finger.
"Say! what are you about?" demanded Pratt. But for a very good reason he
did not seek to pull away.
"Let me look at you again," commanded the man who had taken this
liberty. "Turn your face up this way--you hear me? My soul! I knew I
couldn't be mistaken. What did you say this boy's name was, Dan?" he
shot at the Captain over his shoulder.
"That's Pratt Sanderson," chuckled Captain Rugley. "Something of a
tenderfoot, but a good lad, Lon, a good lad."
"You bet he is!" declared Jonas P. Lonergan, vigorously. "I knew his
name when you spoke it, and now I know his face. He's the image of his
mother--that's what he is."
Then he turned to Pratt again and roared: "Do you know who I am, boy?"
"I fancy you are the--the old partner of Captain Rugley whom he has
expected so long," Pratt said, puzzled but smiling. He had never chanced
to hear the expected guest called by any other name than "Lon."
"I'm Jonas P. Lonergan!" exclaimed the old man. "_Now_ do you know
me. I'm your mother's half-brother. I knew you folks lived out this way
somewhere, but I've not seen you since you were a little shaver.
"But I'll never forget how my little half-sister used to look, and you
are just like her when she was young," declared Mr. Lonergan. "Come in
here, you young rascal, and let me get a closer look at you."
"My Uncle Jonas?" gasped Pratt, in amazement.
"That's what I am!" declared Mr. Lonergan. "Your old uncle who never did
much of anything for you--or the rest of the fam'ly--all his life. But
he's goin' to be able to do something now.
"Listen here: Captain Dan Rugley says the treasure chest old Senor
Morales gave us so long ago is all right. It's chock-full of jewels and
gold and money---- Shucks! I'm as crazy as a child about it," laughed
the old man.
"After bein' through what I have, and livin' poor so many years, it's
enough to scatter the brains of an old man like me to come into a
fortune. Yes, sir! And what's mine is yours, Pratt. They tell me you are
a mighty good boy. Captain Dan speaks well of you----"
"And I ought to," growled the old ranchman from the background. "I owe
something to him, too, for what he did for Frances."
"Heh?" exclaimed Lonergan. He turned short around and stared at the
blushing Frances. "She's a mighty fine girl, I reckon?"
"The best in the Panhandle," declared the old ranchman, nodding
understandingly.
"And this boy of my sister's is a pretty good fellow, Dan?" asked
Lonergan.
"Mighty fine--mighty fine," admitted Captain Dan Rugley.
"I tell you what," whispered Jonas, in the Captain's ear, "this dividin'
up the contents of that old treasure chest will only be temporary after
all--just temporary, eh?"
"We'll see--we'll see, Lon," said Captain Dan, carefully. "They're young
yet, they're over-young. But 'twould certain sure be a romantic outcome
of all our adventures together years ago, eh?"
"Right you are, Captain, right you are!" agreed Lonergan.
Frances and Pratt heard none of this. Pratt had entered the car and the
two young people were talking to the Reverend Mr. Tooley, who was a
demure little man in clerical black, who seemed quite happy over the
reunion of the two old friends, Captain Dan Rugley and Jonas P.
Lonergan.
Lonergan was a lean old man who walked with a crutch. Although he had a
very vigorous voice, he showed his age and his state of ill health when
he began to move about.
"But we'll fix all that, Lon," the Captain assured 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-cushioned 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 relationship 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!" ejaculated 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
End of Project Gutenberg's Frances of the Ranges, by Amy Bell Marlowe