es
Rugley--Frances Durham Rugley."

She lifted the heavy lion easily, flung it across Molly, and lashed it
to the saddle; then she mounted in a hurry and the ponies started for
the ranch trail which Frances had been following before she heard the
report of the shotgun.

The youth watched her narrowly as they rode along through the dropping
darkness. She was a well-matured girl for her age, not too tall, her
limbs rounded, but without an ounce of superfluous flesh. Perhaps she
knew of his scrutiny; but her face remained calm and she did not return
his gaze. They talked of inconsequential things as they rode along.

Pratt Sanderson thought: "_What_ a girl she is! Mrs. Edwards is
right--she's the finest specimen of girlhood on the range, bar none! And
she is more than a little intelligent--quite literary, don't you know,
if what they say is true of her. Where did _she_ learn to plan
pageants? Not in one of these schoolhouses on the ranges, I bet an
apple! And she's a cowgirl, too. Rides like a female Centaur; shoots, of
course, and throws a rope. Bet she knows the whole trade of cattle
herding.

"Yet there isn't a girl who went to school with me at the Amarillo High
who looks so well-bred, or who is so sure of herself and so easy to
converse with."

For her part, Frances was thinking: "And he doesn't remember a thing
about me! Of course, he was a senior when I was in the junior class. He
has already forgotten most of his schoolmates, I suppose.

"But that night of Cora Grimshaw's party he danced with me six times. He
was in the bank then, and had forgotten all 'us kids,' I suppose. Funny
how suddenly a boy grows up when he gets out of school and into
business. But me----

"Well! I should have known him if we hadn't met for twenty years.
Perhaps that's because he is the first boy I ever danced with--in town,
I mean. The boys on the ranch don't count."

Her tranquil face and manner had not betrayed--nor did they betray
now--any of her thoughts about this young fellow whom she remembered so
clearly, but who plainly had not taxed his memory with her.

That was the way of Frances Durham Rugley. A great deal went on in her
mind of which nobody--not even Captain Dan Rugley, her father--dreamed.

Left motherless at an early age, the ranchman's daughter had grown to
her sixteenth year different from most girls. Even different from most
other girls of the plains and ranges.

For ten years there was not a woman's face--