tched for curing.

"Come right in, Pratt," said the girl, with frank cordiality. "You'll
have a chance for a wash and a brush before supper. And dad will find
you some clean clothes.

"There's dad on the porch, though he's forbidden the night air unless he
puts a coat on. Oh, he's a very, very bad patient, indeed!"

CHAPTER III

THE OLD SPANISH CHEST

Pratt saw a tall, lean man--a man of massive frame, indeed, with a heavy
mustache that had once been yellow but had now turned grey, teetering on
the rear legs of a hard-bottomed chair, with his shoulders against the
wall of the house.

There were plenty of inviting-looking chairs scattered about the
veranda. There were rugs, and potted plants, and a lounge-swing, with a
big lamp suspended from the ceiling, giving light enough over all.

But the master of the Bar-T had selected a straight-backed,
hard-bottomed chair, of a kind that he had been used to for half a
century and more. He brought the front legs down with a bang as the girl
and youth approached.

"What's kept you, Frances?" he asked, mellowly. "Evening, sir! I take it
your health's well?"

He put out a hairy hand into which Pratt confided his own and, the next
moment, vowed secretly he would never risk it there again! His left hand
tingled badly enough since the attentions of the mountain lion. Now his
right felt as though it had been in an ore-crusher.

"This is Pratt Sanderson, from Amarillo," the daughter of the ranchman
said first of all. "He's a friend of Mrs. Bill Edwards. He was having
trouble with a lion over in Brother's Coulie, when I came along. We got
the lion; but Pratt got some scratches. Can't Ming find him a flannel
shirt, Dad?"

"Of course," agreed Captain Rugley, his eyes twinkling just as Frances'
had a little while before. "You tell him as you go in. Come on, Pratt
Sanderson. I'll take a look at your scratches myself."

A shuffle-footed Chinaman brought the shirt to the room Pratt Sanderson
had been ushered to by the cordial old ranchman. The Chinaman assisted
the youth to get into the garment, too, for Captain Rugley had already
swathed the scratches on Pratt's chest and arm with linen, after
treating the wounds with a pungent-smelling but soothing salve.

"San Soo, him alle same have dlinner ready sloon," said Ming, sprinkling
'l's' indiscriminately in his information. "Clapen an' Misse Flank wait
on pleaza."

The young fellow, when he was presentable, started back