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?
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 assigned, 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.
The hiss of a voice, almost in her ear, did startle her:
“My goodness! is it you, Miss Frances?”
A clammy hand clutched her wrist. She knew that Pratt Sanderson must have been horribly wrought up and nervous, for he was trembling.
“What is the matter? Why are you out of your bed, Pratt?” she asked, quite calmly.
“I couldn’t sleep. Fever in those scratches, I s’pose,” said the young man. “I got up and went outside to get a drink at the fountain–and to bathe my face and wrists. Isn’t it hot?”
“You are feverish,” whispered Frances, cautiously. “Have you seen daddy?”
“The Captain?” returned Pratt, wonderingly. “Oh, no. He isn’t up, is he?”
“He’s not in his room – ”
“And you’re not in yours,” said Pratt, with a nervous laugh. “We all seem to be out of our beds at the hour when graveyards yawn, eh?”
Frances had a reassuring laugh ready.
“I think you would better go to bed again, Pratt,” she said. “You–you saw nothing in the court?”
“No. But I thought I heard a big bird overhead when I was splashing the water about out there. Imagination, of course,” he added. “There are no big night-flying birds out here on the plains?”
“Not that I know of,” returned she.
“I made some noise. I didn’t know what it was I scared up. Seemed to be on the roof of the house.”
Frances thought of the mysterious man and his rope ladder. But she did not mention them to Pratt.
“Put