Page:Frederick Faust--Free Range Lanning.djvu/47

Rh within. Even if he could find an open window, or if the door were unlatched, how could he find the girl? Another thing troubled him. He kept canting his ear with eternal expectation of hearing the chorus of many hoofs swinging toward him out of the darkness. After all, it was not a simple thing to put Bill Dozier off the trail. When a horse neighed in one of the corrals Andy started violently and laid his finger tips on his revolver butt.

That false alarm determined him to make his attempt without further waste of time. He swung from the stirrups and went lightly up the front steps. A board creaked slightly beneath him, and Andy paused with one foot raised. He listened, but there was no stir of alarm in the house. Thereafter his footfall was a feathery thing that carried him like a shadow to the door. It yielded at once under his hand, and, stepping through, he found himself lost in utter blackness.

He closed the door, taking care that the spring did not make the lock click, and then stood perfectly motionless, listening, probing the dark.

After a time the shadows gave way before his eyes, and he could make out that he was in a hall with lofty ceiling. Opposite him there was a faint glimmer; that was a big mirror. Something wound down from above at a little distance, and he made out that this was the stairway. Obviously the bedrooms would be in the second story.

Andy began the ascent.

He had occasion to bless the thick carpet before he was at the head of the stairs; he could have run up if he had wished, and never have made a sound. At the edge of the second hall he paused again. The sense of people surrounded him. That indescribable odor of a house