Surely he did not expect to find money in an empty house,or anything else of any commercial value.What was he after?Finally he came back to the kitchen,crossed it,and stood before the barred door.He pushed against it tentatively,then stood still for a minute and finally went out.Jean heard him step upon the porch and pull the kitchen door shut behind him.She knew that squeal of the bottom hinge,and she knew the final gasp and click that proved the latch was fastened.She heard him step off the porch to the path,she heard the soft crunch of his feet in the sandy gravel as he went away toward the stable.Very cautiously she got off the couch and crept to the window;and with her gun gripped tight in her hand,she looked out.But he had moved into a deep shadow of the bluff,and she could see nothing of him save the deeper shadow of his swift-moving body as he went down to the corral.
Jean gave a long sigh of nervous relaxation,and crept shivering under the Navajo blanket.The gun she slid under the pillow,and her fingers rested still upon the cool comfort of the butt.
Soon she heard a horse galloping,and she went to the window again and looked out.The moon hung low over the bluff,so that the trail lay mostly in the shadow.
But down by the gate it swung out in a wide curve to the rocky knoll,and there it lay moon-lighted and empty.She fixed her eyes upon that curve and waited.In a moment the horseman galloped out upon the curve,rounded it,and disappeared in the shadows beyond.At that distance and in that deceptive light,she could not tell who it was;but it was a horseman,a man riding at night in haste,and with some purpose in mind.
Jean had thought that the prowler might be some tramp who had wandered far off the beaten path of migratory humans,and who,stumbling upon the coulee and its empty dwellings,was searching at random for whatever might be worth carrying off.A horseman did not fit that theory anywhere.That particular horseman had come there deliberately,had given the house a deliberate search,and had left in haste when he had finished.Whether he had failed or succeeded in finding what he wanted,he had left.He had not searched the stables,unless he had done that before coming into the house.He had not forced his way into her room,probably because he did not want to leave behind him the evidence of his visit which the door would have given,or because he feared to disturb the contents of Jean's room.
Jean stared up in the dark and puzzled long over the identity of that man,and his errand.And the longer she thought about it,the more completely she was at sea.All the men that she knew were aware that she kept this room habitable,and visited the ranch often.
That was no secret;it never had been a secret.No one save Lite Avery had ever been in it,so far as she knew,--unless she counted those chance trespassers who had prowled boldly through her most sacred belongings.
So that almost any one in the country,had he any object in searching the house,would know that this room was hers,and would act in that knowledge.
As to his errand.There could be no errand,so far as she knew.There were no missing papers such as plays and novels are accustomed to have cunningly hidden in empty houses.There was no stolen will,no hidden treasure,no money,no Rajah's ruby,no ransom of a king;these things Jean named over mentally,and chuckled at the idea of treasure-hunting at the Lazy A.It vas very romantic,very mysterious,she told herself.And she analyzed the sensation of little wet alligators creeping up her spine (that was her own simile),and decided that her book should certainly have a ghost in it;she was sure that she could describe with extreme vividness the effect of a ghost upon her various characters.
In this wise she recovered her composure and laughed at her fear,and planned new and thrilly incidents for her novel.
She would not tell Lite anything about it,she decided.
He would try to keep her from coming over here by herself,and that would precipitate one of those arguments between them that never seemed to get them anywhere,because Lite never would yield gracefully,and Jean never would yield at all,--which does not make for peace.
She wished,just the same,that Lite was there.It would be much more comfortable if he were near instead of away over to the Bar Nothing,sound asleep in the bunk-house.As a self-appointed guardian,Jean considered Lite something of a nuisance,when he wasn't funny.But as a big,steady-nerved friend and comrade,he certainly was a comfort.