THE SHADOW IN THE COURT
A dozen things she _might_ have done afterward appealed to Frances
Rugley. But as she crouched by her chamber window watching the squirming
human figure on the edge of the roof, she was interested in only one
thing:
_Who was he?_
This question so filled her thought that she was neither fearful nor
anxious. Curiosity controlled her actions entirely for the few next
minutes. And so she observed the marauder rise up, carefully balance
himself on the slates of the veranda roof, and tiptoe away to the corner
of the house. He did not come near her window; nor could she see his
face. His outlines were barely visible as he drifted into the shadow at
the 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 what
he looked like. Surely, we have no man on the ranch who would do such a
thing. Can it be that father is right? Did the fellow who hailed us
to-night come here to the Bar-T for some bad purpose?"
She waited several minutes by her window. Then she bethought her that
there was a window at the end of a cross-hall on the side of the house
where the man had disappeared, out of which she might catch another
glimpse of him.
So she thrust her bare feet into slippers, tied the robe more firmly
about her, and hurried out of the room. Nor did she think now of the
charged weapon hanging at the head of her bed.
She believed nobody would be astir in the great house. The Chinamen
slept at the extreme rear over the kitchen. Their guest, Pratt
Sanderson, was on the lower floor and at the opposite side, with his
windows opening upon the court around which the _hacienda_ was
built.
Captain Rugley's rooms were below, too. Frances knew herself to be alone
in this part of the house.
Nothing had ever happened to Frances Rugley to really terrify her. Why
should she be afraid now? She walked swiftly, her robe trailing behind,
her slippered feet twinkling in and out under the nightgown she wore. In
the 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 the
bars? There was no light behind her and she did not fear being seen from
without.
Tiptoeing, she came to the sill. Her ears were quick to distinguish
sounds of any character. There _was_ a strange, faint creaking not
far from that wide-open casement. She could not thrust her head between
the bars now (she remembered vividly the last time she had done that and
got stuck, and had to shriek for Daddy to come and help her out), but
she could press her face close against them and stare into the blackness
of the outer world.
There! something stirred. Her eyes, growing more accustomed to the
darkness, 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 was
renewed. Frances almost cried aloud!
It was the man she had before seen. He was mounting directly into the
air. The over-thrust of the ranch-house roof made the shadow very thick
against the house-wall. The man was swinging in the air just beyond this
deeper shadow.
"What can he be doing?" Frances thought.
She had almost spoken the question aloud. But she did not want to
startle him--not yet.
First, she must learn what he was about. Then she would run and tell her
father. This night raider was dangerous--there was no doubt of that.
"Oh!" quavered Frances, suddenly, and under her breath. The uncertain
bulk 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 she
first saw him roll over the edge of the veranda roof and sit up--had
melted into thin air.
And then she saw something swinging, pendulum-like, before her. She
thrust an arm between the bars and seized the thing. It was a rope
ladder.
The whole matter, then, was as plain as daylight. The man had climbed to
the porch roof, with the rope ladder wound around his body. That was
what had made him seem so bulky.
Selecting this spot as a favorable one, he had flung the grappling-hook
over the eaves. There must be some break in the slates which held the
hook. Once fastened there, the man had quickly worked his way up to the
roof, and Frances had arrived just in time to see him squirm out of
sight.
There were a dozen questions in Frances' mind. How did he get here? Who
was he? What did he want? Was he the man Captain Rugley had seemed to be
expecting to try to make a raid upon the ranch-house? Was he alone? How
did he know he could make the hook of his ladder fast at this point? Was
there a traitor about who had broken a slate in the roof? Or was the
broken place the result of an accident, and the marauder had noted it by
daylight from the ground?
Question after question flashed through her mind. But there was one
query 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 it
the fellow above might become alarmed.
She turned from the window and darted back along the hall. At the end
was a door leading out onto the balcony which surrounded the inner court
of the house at the level of the second story. The roof sloped out from
the main wall of the building at this inner side, just as it did in
front--indeed, the eaves were even longer. But the pillars of the
balcony met the overhang at its verge, making it very easy indeed for an
active person to swarm down from the roof.
Once on the balcony, the interior of the house was open to a marauder by
a dozen doors, while there were likewise two flights of stairs
descending directly into the court.
There were no lamps in the court now. It was a well, filled with grey
shadows. Frances leaned over the balustrade and heard no sound. She
looked up. The edge of the roof was a sharply defined line against the
lighter background of the sky. But there was no moving figure
silhouetted against that background.
Where had the man gone who had climbed the rope ladder? He could not so
quickly have descended into the court; Frances was positive of that.
She shivered a little. There was something quite disturbing about this
mysterious marauder. She wished now she had aroused her father
immediately on first descrying the man.
She started around the gallery. Her father's room lay upon the other
side of the house. She could reach his windows by descending the outside
stairway there. Her slippered feet made no sound; the wool robe did not
rustle. Had she been seen by anybody she might have been taken for a
ghost. But the black shadow of the roof of the gallery swathed Frances
about, 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 held
her motionless again. She halted with a gasp, while before her, from the
direction of the softly playing fountain, a figure drifted in.
Frances held her breath. Was _this_ the man who had come over the
roof of the house? Or was it another?
She crouched silently behind the railing. The figure passed her, going
toward her father's windows. She dared not whisper, for she did not
think it bulky enough for her father's huge frame.
On the trail of the figure she started, her heart palpitating with
excitement, yet never for a moment considering her own peril.
There were other bedrooms beside that of Captain Rugley in this
direction. And there was that small apartment in which the old Spanish
chest was so carefully locked.
Captain Rugley never allowed the key of this door or the key of the
chest to go out of his possession. He had always intimated that if a
thief ever tried to break into the Bar-T ranch-house, he would first of
all try to get at the treasure chest.
There were plenty of valuable things scattered about the house, but they
were bulky--hard for a thief to remove. Although Frances did not know
just what her father's treasure consisted of, she believed it must be of
such a nature that it could be removed by a thief.
Frances, her eyes now well used to the gloom, hurried along in the wake
of the drifting shadow, without sound. She came to the first window
opening into her father's sleeping apartment. Like a wraith she glided
in, believing at last that her duty was to awaken her father.
But when she reached his bed she found it undisturbed. It seemed his
pillow had not been lain upon that night. She felt swiftly over the
smooth bed, and with growing alarm--not for herself, but alarm for the
missing man.
Where could he have gone? What had happened here since the lights went
out and that mysterious marauder had come in over the ranch-house roof?