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!