Jean of the Lazy A
CHAPTER X
JEAN LEARNS WHAT FEAR IS LIKE
Sometime in the still part of the night which comes after midnight,Jean woke slowly from dreaming of the old days that had been so vividin her mind when she went to sleep. Just at first she did not knowwhat it was that awakened her, though her eyes were open and fixed uponthe lighted square of the window. She knew that she was in her room atthe Lazy A, but just at first it seemed to her that she was therebecause she had always been sleeping in that room. She sighed andturned her face away from the moonlight, and closed her eyes againcontentedly.
Half dreaming she opened them again and stared up at the low ceiling.Somewhere in the house she heard footsteps. Very slowly she wakenedenough to listen. They were footsteps,--the heavy, measured tread ofsome man. They were in the room that had been her father's bedroom,and at first they seemed perfectly natural and right; they seemed to beher dad's footsteps, and she wondered mildly what he was doing, up atthat time of night.
The footsteps passed from there into the kitchen and stopped in thecorner where stood the old-fashioned cupboard with perforated tinpanels in the doors and at the sides, and the little drawers at thetop,--the kind that old people call a "safe." She heard a drawerpulled out. Without giving any conscious thought to it, she knew whichdrawer it was; it was the one next the wall,--the one that did not pullout straight, and so had to be jerked out. What was her dad...?
Jean thrilled then with a tremor of fear. She had wakened fully enoughto remember. That was not her dad, out there in the kitchen. She didnot know who it was; it was some strange man prowling through thehouse, hunting for something. She felt again the tremor of fear thatis the heritage of womanhood alone in the dark. She pulled the Navajoblanket up to her ears with the instinct of the woman to hide, becauseshe is not strong enough to face and fight the danger that comes in thedark. She listened to the sound of that drawer being pushed back, andthe other drawer being pulled out, and she shivered under the blanket.
Then she reached out her hand and got hold of her six-shooter which shehad laid down unthinkingly upon a chair near the couch. She wonderedif she had locked the outside door when she came in. She could notremember having done so; probably she had not, since it is not thehabit of honest ranch-dwellers to lock their doors at night. Shewanted to get up and see, and fasten it somehow; but she was afraid theman out there might hear her. As it was, she reasoned nervously withherself, he probably did not suspect that there was any one in thehouse. It was an empty house. And unless he had seen Pard in theclosed stall.... She wondered if he had heard Pard there, and hadinvestigated and found him. She wondered if he would come into thisroom. She remembered how securely she had nailed up the door from thekitchen, and she breathed freer. She remembered also that she had hergun, there under her hand. She closed her trembling fingers on thefamiliar grip of it, and the feel of it comforted her and steadied her.
Yet she had no desire, no slightest impulse to get up and see who wasthere. She was careful not to move, except to cover the doorway to thekitchen with her gun.
After a few minutes the man came and tried the door, and Jean liftedherself cautiously upon her elbow and waited in grim desperation. Ifhe forced that door open, if he came in, she certainly would shoot; andif she shot,--well, you remember the fate of that hawk on the wing.
The man did not force the door open, which was perhaps the luckiestthing that ever happened to him. He fussed there until he must havemade sure that it was fastened firmly upon the inside, and then he leftit and went into what had been the living-room. Jean did not move fromher half-sitting position, nor did she change the aim of her gun. Hemight come back and try again.
She heard him moving about in the living-room. Surely he did not expectto find money in an empty house, or anything else of any commercialvalue. What was he after? Finally he came back to the kitchen,crossed it, and stood before the barred door. He pushed against ittentatively, then stood still for a minute and finally went out. Jeanheard him step upon the porch and pull the kitchen door shut behindhim. She knew that squeal of the bottom hinge, and she knew the finalgasp and click that proved the latch was fastened. She heard him stepoff the porch to the path, she heard the soft crunch of his feet in thesandy gravel as he went away toward the stable. Very cautiously shegot off the couch and crept to the window; and with her gun grippedtight in her hand, she looked out. But he had moved into a deep shadowof the bluff, and she could see nothing of him save the deeper shadowof his swift-moving body as he went down to the corral. Jean gave along sigh of nervous relaxation, and crept shivering under the Navajoblanket. The gun she slid under the pillow, and her fingers restedstill upon the cool comfort of the butt.
Soon she heard a horse galloping, and she went to the window again andlooked out. The moon hung low over the bluff, so that the trail laymostly in the shadow. But down by the gate it swung out in a wide curveto the rocky knoll, and there it lay moon-lighted and empty. She fixedher eyes upon that curve and waited. In a moment the horseman gallopedout upon the curve, rounded it, and disappeared in the shadows beyond.At that distance and in that deceptive light, she could not tell who itwas; but it was a horseman, a man riding at night in haste, and withsome purpose in mind.
Jean had thought that the prowler might be some tramp who had wanderedfar off the beaten path of migratory humans, and who, stumbling uponthe coulee and its empty dwellings, was searching at random forwhatever might be worth carrying off. A horseman did not fit thattheory anywhere. That particular horseman had come there deliberately,had given the house a deliberate search, and had left in haste when hehad finished. Whether he had failed or succeeded in finding what hewanted, he had left. He had not searched the stables, unless he haddone that before coming into the house. He had not forced his way intoher room, probably because he did not want to leave behind him theevidence of his visit which the door would have given, or because hefeared to disturb the contents of Jean's room.
Jean stared up in the dark and puzzled long over the identity of thatman, and his errand. And the longer she thought about it, the morecompletely she was at sea. All the men that she knew were aware thatshe kept this room habitable, and visited the ranch often. That was nosecret; it never had been a secret. No one save Lite Avery had everbeen in it, so far as she knew,--unless she counted those chancetrespassers who had prowled boldly through her most sacred belongings.So that almost any one in the country, had he any object in searchingthe house, would know that this room was hers, and would act in thatknowledge.
As to his errand. There could be no errand, so far as she knew. Therewere no missing papers such as plays and novels are accustomed to havecunningly hidden in empty houses. There was no stolen will, no hiddentreasure, no money, no Rajah's ruby, no ransom of a king; these thingsJean named over mentally, and chuckled at the idea of treasure-huntingat the Lazy A. It vas very romantic, very mysterious, she toldherself. And she analyzed the sensation of little wet alligatorscreeping up her spine (that was her own simile), and decided that herbook should certainly have a ghost in it; she was sure that she coulddescribe with extreme vividness the effect of a ghost upon her variouscharacters.
In this wise she recovered her composure and laughed at her fear, andplanned new and thrilly incidents for her novel.
She would not tell Lite anything about it, she decided. He would try tokeep her from coming over here by herself, and that would precipitateone of those arguments between them that never seemed to get themanywhere, because Lite never would yield gracefully, and Jean neverwould yield at all,--which does not make for peace.
She wished, just the same, that Lite was there. It would be much morecomfortable if he were near instead of away over to the Bar Nothing,sound asleep in the bunk-house. As a self-appointed guardian, Jeanconsidered Lite something of a nuisance, when he wasn't funny. But asa big, steady-nerved friend and comrade, he certainly was a comfort.