Frances of the Ranges Part 5

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 cas.e.m.e.nt. 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 pa.s.sed 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 bal.u.s.trade 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 pa.s.sed 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?

CHAPTER VI

A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION

Frances knew her way about her father's room in the dark as well as she did about her own. She knew where every piece of furniture stood. She knew where the chair was on which he carelessly threw his outer clothing at night.

Like most men who for years have slept in the open, Captain Rugley did not remove all his clothing when he went to bed. He usually lay between blankets on the outside of his bed, with his boots and trousers ready to jump into at a moment's notice. Of some of the practices of his life on the plains, with the dome of heaven for a roof-tree, he could not be broken.

She fumbled for the chair, and found it empty. She reached for the belt and holster which he usually hung on a hook at the head of the bed.

They, too, were gone, and Frances felt relieved.

She did not withdraw from the room through either of the long windows.

Instead, she crept through her father's office and out of the door of that room into the great, main hall.

Along this a little way was the door of the room to which Pratt Sanderson had been a.s.signed, and that of the treasure room as well.

Frances scarcely gave Pratt a thought. She presumed him far in the land of dreams. She did not take into consideration the fact that about now the scratches of the mountain lion would become painful, and Pratt correspondingly restless. Frances was mainly troubled by her father's absence from his room. Had he, too, seen the mysterious shadow in the court? Was he on the watch for a possible marauder?

By feeling rather than eyesight she knew the door to the treasure room was closed. Was her father there?

She doubled her fist and raised it to knock upon the panel. Then she hesitated. The slightest sound would ring through the silent house like an alarm of fire.

Inclining her ear to the door, she listened. But the oak planking was thick and there was no crevice, now the portal was closed, through which any slight sound could penetrate. She could not have even distinguished the heavy breathing of a sleeping man behind the door.

Uncertain, wondering, yet quite mistress of herself again, Frances went on along the corridor. Here was an open door before her into the court.

Had that shadow she had seen come this way? she wondered.