The girl's interest in the forthcoming pageant had called the attention of other people to her more than ever before; but to tell the truth the young folk were rather awe-stricken by Frances' abilities as displayed in the preparation for the entertainment, while the older people did not know just how to treat the wealthy ranchman's daughter--whether as a person of mature years, or as a child. Riding back from the railroad station, where one of the boys with the buckboard three hours later would meet the physician, she thought of these facts. Somehow, she had never felt so lonely--so cut off from other people as she did right now. The railroad crossed one corner of the Bar-T's vast fenced ranges; but there were twenty long miles between the house and the station. She had ridden Molly hard coming over to speak to the doctor on the telephone; but she took it easy going back. Somewhere along the trail she would meet the buckboard and ponies going over to meet the doctor. And as she walked her pony down the slope of the trail into Cottonwood Bottom, she thought she heard the rattle of the buckboard wheels ahead. A clump of trees hid the trail for a bit; when she rounded it the way was empty. Whoever she had heard had turned off the trail into the cottonwoods. "Maybe he didn't water the ponies before he started," thought Frances, "and has gone down to the ford. 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.