ch-house, overlooking the porch roof,
were barred with iron rods set in the cement, like those on the first
floor. The Bar-T ranch-house was a veritable fort.

There was a reason for this that the girl did not entirely understand,
although her father often hinted at it. His stories of his adventures as
a Texas Ranger, and over the Border into Mexico, amused her; but they
had not impressed her much. Perhaps, because the Captain always skimmed
over the particulars of those desperate adventures which had so spiced
his early years--those years before the gentle influence of Frances'
mother came into his life.

He had mentioned his partner, "Lon," on this evening. But he seldom
particularized about him.

Frances could not remember when her father had gone into Arizona and
returned from thence with a wagon-train loaded with many of the most
beautiful of their household possessions. It was when she was a very
little girl.

With the other things, Captain Rugley had brought back the old Spanish
chest which he guarded so anxiously. She did not know what was in the
chest--not all its treasures. It was the one secret her father kept from
her.

Out of it he brought certain barbarous ornaments that he allowed her to
wear now and then. She was as much enamored of jewelry and beautiful
adornments as other girls, was Frances of the ranges.

There was perfect trust between her father and herself; but not perfect
confidence. No more than Pratt Sanderson, for instance, did she know
just how the old ranchman had become possessed of the great store of
Indian and Spanish ornaments, or of the old Spanish chest.

Certain she was that he could not have obtained them in a manner to
wrong anybody else. He spoke of them as "the loot of old Don Milo
Morales' _hacienda_"; but Frances knew well enough that her good
father, Captain Dan Rugley, had been no land pirate, no so-called Border
ruffian, who had robbed some peaceful Spanish ranch-owner across the Rio
Grande of his possessions.

Frances was a bit worried to-night. There were two topics of thought
that disturbed her.

Motherless, and with few female friends even, she had been shut away
with her own girlish thoughts and fears and wonderings more than most
girls of her age. Life was a mystery to her. She lived in books and in
romances and in imagination's pictures more than she did in the workaday
world about her.

There seems to be little romance attached to the everyday lives we liv