ponies fell
in behind upon the trail. Frances and Pratt looked at each other. The
young man was serious enough; but the girl was smiling.

Something she had said a little while before kept returning to Pratt's
mind. He was thinking of what would have happened had Sue Latrop, the
girl from Boston, been here instead of Frances.

"Goodness!" Pratt told himself. "They are out of two different worlds;
that's sure! And I'm an awful tenderfoot, just as Mrs. Bill Edwards
says."

"What do you think of it?" asked Frances, raising her voice to make it
heard above the roar of the fire and the rumble of the wagon ahead of
them.

"I'm scared--right down scared!" admitted Pratt Sanderson.

"Well, so was I," she admitted. "But the worst is over now. We'll reach
the river and ford it, and so put the fire all behind us. The flames
won't leap the river, that's sure."

The heat from the prairie fire was most oppressive. Over their heads the
hot smoke swirled, shutting out all sight of the stars. Now and then a
clump of brush beside the trail broke into flame again, fanned by the
wind, and the ponies snorted and leaped aside.

Suddenly Mack was heard yelling at the mules and trying to pull them
down to something milder than a wild gallop. Frances and Pratt spurred
their ponies out upon the burned ground in order to see ahead.

Something loomed up on the trail--something that smoked and flamed like
a big bonfire.

"What can it be?" gasped Pratt, riding knee to knee with the range girl.

"Not a house. There isn't one along here," she returned.

"Some old-timer got caught!" yelled the teamster, looking back at the
two pony-riders. "Hope he saved his skin."

"A wagoner!" cried Frances, startled.

"He cut his stock loose, of course," yelled Mack Hinkman.

But when they reached the burning wagon they saw that this was not
altogether true. One horse lay, charred, in the harness. The wagon had
been empty. The driver of it had evidently cut his other horse loose and
ridden away on its back to save himself.

"And why didn't he free this poor creature?" demanded Pratt. "How
cruel!"

"He was scare't," said Mack, pulling his mules out of the trail so as to
drive around the burning wagon. "Or mebbe the hawse fell. Like enough
that's it."

Frances said nothing more. She was wondering if this abandoned wagon was
the one she had seen turn into the trail from Cottonwood Bottom early in
the day? And who was its driver?

They went on, p