"Mebbe we'll have good news for you when you come back, Frances!" called the ranchwoman, quite filling the door with her ample person as she watched the Bar-T wagon, and the girl herself, take the trail for Amarillo. Mack Hinkman was quite wrought up over the adventure of the previous evening. "That young Pratt Sanderson is some smart boy--believe me!" he said to Frances, who elected to ride within earshot of the wagon-seat for the first mile or two. "How is that?" she asked, curiously. "They tell me it was him found the place where the chest had been put aboard that punt." "What punt?" "The boat the feller escaped in with the chest," said Mack. "Then he wasn't the man whose wagon and one horse was burned?" queried Frances. "Don't know. Mebbe. But that's no difference. This old punt has been hid down there below the ford since last duck-shooting season. Maybe he knowed 'twas 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.