her hair in plaits.

The Captain looked as though he had never worn anything but the loose
alpaca coat he now had on, with the carpet-slippers upon his
blue-stockinged feet.

"Re'lly!" Sue whispered to Pratt, as they all arose to return to the
front of the house, "they are quite too impossible, aren't they?"

"Who?" asked Pratt, with narrowing gaze.

"Why--er--this cowgirl and her father."

"I only see that they are very hospitable," the young man said,
pointedly, and he kept away from the Boston girl for the remainder of
their visit to the Bar-T ranch-house.

CHAPTER XXI

IN THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY

Silent Sam had reported some jack-rabbits on one of the southern ranges,
and the Captain thought it would interest the party from the Edwards
ranch to come over the next day and help run them.

Jack-rabbits have become such a nuisance in certain parts of the West of
late years that a price has been set upon their heads, and the farmers
and ranchmen often organize big drives to clear the ranges of the pests.

This was only a small drive on the Bar-T; but Captain Rugley had several
good dogs, and the occasion was an interesting one--for everybody but
the jacks.

Of course, the old ranchman could not go; but Frances and Sam were at
Cottonwood Bottom soon after sunrise, waiting for the party from Mr.
Bill Edwards' ranch.

Jose Reposa had the dogs in leash--two long-legged, sharp-nosed,
mouse-colored creatures, more than half greyhound, but with enough
mongrel in their make-up to make them bite when they ran down the
long-eared pests that they were trained to drive.

The branch of the river that ran through Cottonwood Bottom was too
shallow--at least, at this season--to float even a punt. Frances gazed
down the wooded and winding hollow and asked Silent Sam a question:

"Do you know of any place along the river where a man might hide
out--that fellow who stopped us at the ford the other evening, for
instance?"

"There's a right smart patch of small growth down below Bill Edwards'
line," said Sam. "The boys from Peckham's, with that Pratt Sanderson,
didn't more'n skirt that rubbish, I reckon, by what Mack said," Sam
observed. "Mebbe that hombre might have laid up there for a while."

"Before or after he robbed us?" Frances asked quietly.

"Wal, now!" ejaculated Sam. "If he took that chest aboard the punt, and
the punt was found below the ford----"

"You know, Sam," said the girl, thoughtfully, "that