rd. That's a bit of carelessness that I do
not like. Whom could Sam have sent with the bronchos for the doctor?"

She turned Molly off the trail beyond the bridge. The wood was not a
jungle, but she could not see far ahead, nor be seen. By and by she
smelled tobacco smoke--the everlasting cigarette of the cattle puncher.
Then she heard the sound of voices.

Why this latter fact should have made Frances suspicious, she could not
have told. It was her womanly intuition, perhaps.

Slipping out of the saddle, she tied Molly with her head up-wind. She
was afraid the pinto would smell her fellows from the ranch, and signal
them, as horses will.

Once away from her mount, she passed between the trees and around the
brush clumps until she saw the ford of the river sparkling below her.
There were the hard-driven ponies, their heads drooping, their flanks
heaving, standing knee-deep in the stream--this fact in itself an
offense that she could not overlook.

The animals had been overdriven, and now the employee of the ranch who
had them in charge was allowing them to cool off too quickly--and in the
cold stream, too!

But who was he? For a moment Frances could not conceive.

The figure of the driver was humped over on the seat in a slouching
attitude, sitting sideways, and with his back toward the direction from
which the range girl was approaching. He faced a man on a shabby horse,
whose mount likewise stood in the stream and who had been fording the
river from the opposite direction.

This horseman was a stranger to Frances. He wore a broad-brimmed black
hat, no chaps, no cartridge belt or gun in sight, and a white shirt and a
vest under his coat, while shoes instead of boots were on his feet. He
was neither puncher nor farmer in appearance. And his face was bad.

There could be no doubt of that latter fact. He wore a stubble of beard
that did not disguise the sneering mouth, or the wickedly leering
expression of his eyes.

"Well, I done my part, old fellow," drawled the man in the seat of the
buckboard, just as Frances came within earshot. "'Tain't my fault you
bungled it."

Frances stopped instead of going on. It was Ratty M'Gill!

She could not understand why he was not on the range, or why Sam had
sent the ne'er-do-well to meet the doctor. It puzzled her before the
puncher's continued speech began to arouse her curiosity.

"You'll sure find yourself in a skillet of hot water, old fellow,"
pursued Ratty, inhal