s there; maybe he didn't. Howsomever, he found the boat and
brought it up to the ford. Into the boat he tumbled the chest. There was
the marks on the bank. John Peckham told me himself."

"And Pratt found the trail?"

"That's what he did. Smart boy! The rest of 'em was up a stump when they
didn't find the chest knocked to pieces. The hold-up gent didn't even
stop to open it."

"He expected we'd set somebody on his trail," Frances said,
reflectively.

"In course. Two parties. One went up stream and t'other down."

"So Mrs. Peckham just told me."

"Wal!" said Mack. "Mebbe one of 'em will ketch the varmint!"

But Frances made no further comment. She rode on in silence, her mind
vastly troubled. And mostly her thought connected Pratt Sanderson with
the disappearance of the chest.

Why had the young fellow been so sure that the robber had gone up stream
instead of down? It did not seem reasonable that the man would have
tried to stem the current in the heavy punt--nor was the chest a light
weight.

It puzzled Frances--indeed, it made her suspicious. She was anxious to
learn whether the man who had stolen the chest had gone up, or down, the
river.

CHAPTER XX

THE BOSTON GIRL AGAIN

Frances warned Mack to say nothing about the hold-up at the ford. That
was certainly laying no cross on the teamster's shoulders, for he was
not generally garrulous.

They put up at the hotel that night and Frances did her errands in
Amarillo the next day without being disturbed by awkward questions
regarding their adventure.

Certainly, she was not obliged to go to the bank under the present
circumstances, for there was no chest now to put in the safe-keeping of
that institution.

Nor did Frances Rugley have many friends in the breezy, Western city
with whom she might spend her time. Two years make many changes in such
a fast-growing community. She was not sure that she would be able to
find many of the girls with whom she had gone to high school.

And she was, too, in haste to return to the Bar-T. Although she had left
her father better, she worried much about him. Naturally, too, she
wished to get back and report to him the adventures which had marked her
journey to Amarillo.

She would have been glad to escape stopping at the Peckham ranch over
the third night; but she could not get beyond that point--the wagon now
being heavily laden; nor did she wish to remain out on the range at
night without a shelter tent.