Frances of the Ranges; Or, The Old Ranchman's Treasure Read online

  CHAPTER V

  THE SHADOW IN THE COURT

  A dozen things she _might_ have done afterward appealed to FrancesRugley. But as she crouched by her chamber window watching the squirminghuman figure on the edge of the roof, she was interested in only onething:

  _Who was he?_

  This question so filled her thought that she was neither fearful noranxious. Curiosity controlled her actions entirely for the few nextminutes. And so she observed the marauder rise up, carefully balancehimself on the slates of the veranda roof, and tiptoe away to the cornerof the house. He did not come near her window; nor could she see hisface. His outlines were barely visible as he drifted into the shadow atthe corner--soundless of step now. Only the cracking of the dry branch,as he climbed up, had betrayed him.

  "I wish he had come this way," thought Frances. "I might have seen whathe looked like. Surely, we have no man on the ranch who would do such athing. Can it be that father is right? Did the fellow who hailed usto-night come here to the Bar-T for some bad purpose?"

  She waited several minutes by her window. Then she bethought her thatthere was a window at the end of a cross-hall on the side of the housewhere the man had disappeared, out of which she might catch anotherglimpse of him.

  So she thrust her bare feet into slippers, tied the robe more firmlyabout her, and hurried out of the room. Nor did she think now of thecharged weapon hanging at the head of her bed.

  She believed nobody would be astir in the great house. The Chinamenslept at the extreme rear over the kitchen. Their guest, PrattSanderson, was on the lower floor and at the opposite side, with hiswindows opening upon the court around which the _hacienda_ wasbuilt.

  Captain Rugley's rooms were below, too. Frances knew herself to be alonein this part of the house.

  Nothing had ever happened to Frances Rugley to really terrify her. Whyshould she be afraid now? She walked swiftly, her robe trailing behind,her slippered feet twinkling in and out under the nightgown she wore. Inthe cross-hall she almost ran. There, at the end, was the open window.Indeed, there were no sashes in these hall windows at this time of year;only the bars.

  The night air breathed in upon her. Was that a rustling just outside thebars? There was no light behind her and she did not fear being seen fromwithout.

  Tiptoeing, she came to the sill. Her ears were quick to distinguishsounds of any character. There _was_ a strange, faint creaking notfar from that wide-open casement. She could not thrust her head betweenthe bars now (she remembered vividly the last time she had done that andgot stuck, and had to shriek for Daddy to come and help her out), butshe could press her face close against them and stare into the blacknessof the outer world.

  There! something stirred. Her eyes, growing more accustomed to thedarkness, caught the shadow of something writhing in the air.

  What could it be? Was it alive? A man, or----

  Then the bulk of it passed higher, and the strange creaking sound wasrenewed. Frances almost cried aloud!

  It was the man she had before seen. He was mounting directly into theair. The over-thrust of the ranch-house roof made the shadow very thickagainst the house-wall. The man was swinging in the air just beyond thisdeeper shadow.

  "What can he be doing?" Frances thought.

  She had almost spoken the question aloud. But she did not want tostartle him--not yet.

  First, she must learn what he was about. Then she would run and tell herfather. This night raider was dangerous--there was no doubt of that.

  "Oh!" quavered Frances, suddenly, and under her breath. The uncertainbulk of the man hanging in the air had disappeared!

  For a minute she could not understand. He had disappeared like magic.His very corporeal body--and she noted that it had been bulky when shefirst saw him roll over the edge of the veranda roof and sit up--hadmelted into thin air.

  And then she saw something swinging, pendulum-like, before her. Shethrust an arm between the bars and seized the thing. It was a ropeladder.

  The whole matter, then, was as plain as daylight. The man had climbed tothe porch roof, with the rope ladder wound around his body. That waswhat had made him seem so bulky.

  Selecting this spot as a favorable one, he had flung the grappling-hookover the eaves. There must be some break in the slates which held thehook. Once fastened there, the man had quickly worked his way up to theroof, and Frances had arrived just in time to see him squirm out ofsight.

  There were a dozen questions in Frances' mind. How did he get here? Whowas he? What did he want? Was he the man Captain Rugley had seemed to beexpecting to try to make a raid upon the ranch-house? Was he alone? Howdid he know he could make the hook of his ladder fast at this point? Wasthere a traitor about who had broken a slate in the roof? Or was thebroken place the result of an accident, and the marauder had noted it bydaylight from the ground?

  Question after question flashed through her mind. But there was onequery far more important than all the others:

  Where was the man going over the roof?

  Frances let the ladder swing away from her clutch again. If she held itthe fellow above might become alarmed.

  She turned from the window and darted back along the hall. At the endwas a door leading out onto the balcony which surrounded the inner courtof the house at the level of the second story. The roof sloped out fromthe main wall of the building at this inner side, just as it did infront--indeed, the eaves were even longer. But the pillars of thebalcony met the overhang at its verge, making it very easy indeed for anactive person to swarm down from the roof.

  Once on the balcony, the interior of the house was open to a marauder bya dozen doors, while there were likewise two flights of stairsdescending directly into the court.

  There were no lamps in the court now. It was a well, filled with greyshadows. Frances leaned over the balustrade and heard no sound. Shelooked up. The edge of the roof was a sharply defined line against thelighter background of the sky. But there was no moving figuresilhouetted against that background.

  Where had the man gone who had climbed the rope ladder? He could not soquickly have descended into the court; Frances was positive of that.

  She shivered a little. There was something quite disturbing about thismysterious marauder. She wished now she had aroused her fatherimmediately on first descrying the man.

  She started around the gallery. Her father's room lay upon the otherside of the house. She could reach his windows by descending the outsidestairway there. Her slippered feet made no sound; the wool robe did notrustle. Had she been seen by anybody she might have been taken for aghost. But the black shadow of the roof of the gallery swathed Francesabout, and it would have taken keen eyes indeed to distinguish her form.

  Down the stair she sped. She was almost at its foot when something heldher motionless again. She halted with a gasp, while before her, from thedirection of the softly playing fountain, a figure drifted in.

  Frances held her breath. Was _this_ the man who had come over theroof of the house? Or was it another?

  She crouched silently behind the railing. The figure passed her, goingtoward her father's windows. She dared not whisper, for she did notthink it bulky enough for her father's huge frame.

  On the trail of the figure she started, her heart palpitating withexcitement, yet never for a moment considering her own peril.

  There were other bedrooms beside that of Captain Rugley in thisdirection. And there was that small apartment in which the old Spanishchest was so carefully locked.

  Captain Rugley never allowed the key of this door or the key of thechest to go out of his possession. He had always intimated that if athief ever tried to break into the Bar-T ranch-house, he would first ofall try to get at the treasure chest.

  There were plenty of valuable things scattered about the house, but theywere bulky--hard for a thief to remove. Although Frances did not knowjust what her father's treasure consisted of, she believed it must be ofsuch a nature that it could be removed by a thief.

  Fra
nces, her eyes now well used to the gloom, hurried along in the wakeof the drifting shadow, without sound. She came to the first windowopening into her father's sleeping apartment. Like a wraith she glidedin, believing at last that her duty was to awaken her father.

  But when she reached his bed she found it undisturbed. It seemed hispillow had not been lain upon that night. She felt swiftly over thesmooth bed, and with growing alarm--not for herself, but alarm for themissing man.

  Where could he have gone? What had happened here since the lights wentout and that mysterious marauder had come in over the ranch-house roof?