第40章 PICTURES AND PLANS AND MYSTERIOUS FOOTSTEPS(2)

Jean started a savings account in the little bank where her father had opened an account before she was born,and Lite was made to writhe inwardly with her boasting.Lite,if you please,had long ago started a savings account at that same bank,and had lately cut out poker,and even pool,from among his joys,that his account might fatten the faster.He had the same object which Jean had lately adopted so zealously,but he did not tell her these things.He listened instead while Jean read gloatingly her balance,and talked of what she would do when she had enough saved to buy back the ranch.She had stolen unwittingly the air castle which Lite had been three years building,but he did not say a word about it to Jean.Wistful eyed,but smiling with his lips,he would sit while Jean spoiled whole sheets of perfectly good story-paper,just figuring and estimating and building castles with the dollar sign.If Robert Grant Burns persisted in his mania for "feature-stuff"and "punches"in his pictures,Jean believed that she would have a fair start toward buying back the Lazy A long before her book was published and had brought her the thousands and thousands of dollars she was sure it would bring.Very soon she could go boldly to a lawyer and ask him to do something about her father's case.Just what he should do she did not quite know;and Lite did not seem to be able to tell her,but she thought she ought to find out just how much the trial had cost.And she wished she knew how to get about setting some one on the trail of Art Osgood.

Jean was sure that Art Osgood knew something about the murder,and she frequently tried to make Lite agree with her.Sometimes she was sure that Art Osgood was the murderer,and would argue and point out her reasons to Lite.Art had been working for her uncle,and rode often to the Lazy A.He had not been friendly with Johnny Croft,--but then,nobody had been very friendly with Johnny Croft.Still,Art Osgood was less friendly with Johnny than most of the men in the country,and just after the murder he had left the country.Jean laid a good deal of stress upon the circumstance of Art Osgood's leaving on that particular afternoon,and she seemed to resent it because no one had tried to find Art.No one had seemed to think his going at that time had any significance,or any bearing upon the murder,because he had been planning to leave,and had announced that he would go that day.

Jean's mind,as her bank account grew steadily to something approaching dignity,worked back and forth incessantly over the circumstances surrounding the murder,in spite of Lite's peculiar attitude toward the subject,which Jean felt but could not understand,since he invariably assured her that he believed her dad was innocent,when she asked him outright.

Sometimes,in the throes of literary composition,she could not think of the word that she wanted.Her eyes then would wander around familiar objects in the shabby little room,and frequently they would come to rest upon her father's saddle or her father's chaps:the chaps especially seemed potent reminders of her father,and drew her thoughts to him and held them there.

The worn leather,stained with years of hard usage and wrinkled permanently where they had shaped themselves to his legs in the saddle,brought his big,bluff presence vividly before her,when she was in a certain receptive mood.She would forget all about her story,and the riding and shooting and roping she had done that day to appease the clamorous,professional appetite of Robert Grant Burns,and would sit and stare,and think and think.Always her thoughts traveled in a wide circle and came back finally to the starting point: to free her father,and to give him back his home,she must have money.To have money,she must earn it;she must work for it.So then she would give a great sigh of relaxed nervous tension and go back to her heroine and the Indians and the mysterious footsteps that marched on moonlight nights up and down a long porch just outside windows that frequently framed white,scared faces with wide,horror-stricken eyes which saw nothing of the marcher,though the steps still went up and down.

It was very creepy,in spots.It was so creepy that one evening when Lite had come to smoke a cigarette or two in her company and to listen to her account of the day's happenings,Lite noticed that when she read the creepy passages in her story,she glanced frequently over her shoulder.

"You want to cut out this story writing,"he said abruptly,when she paused to find the next page."It's bad enough to work like you do in the pictures.This is going a little too strong;you're as jumpy to-night as a guilty conscience.Cut it out.""I'm all right.I'm just doing that for dramatic effect.This is very weird,Lite.I ought to have a green shade on the lamp,to get the proper effect.I--don't you think--er--those footsteps are terribly mysterious?"Lite looked at her sharply for a minute."I sure do,"he said drily."Where did you get the idea,Jean?""Out of my head,"she told him airily,and went on reading while Lite studied her curiously.

That night Jean awoke and heard stealthy footsteps,like a man walking in his socks and no boots,going all through the house but never coming to her room.She did not get up to see who it was,but lay perfectly still and heard her heart thump.When she saw a dim,yellow ray of light under the door which opened into the kitchen,she drew the blanket over her head,and got no comfort whatever from the feel of her six-shooter close against her hand.

The next morning she told herself that she had given in to a fine case of nerves,and that the mysterious footsteps of her story had become mixed up with the midnight wanderings of a pack-rat that had somehow gotten into the house.Then she remembered the bar of light under the door,and the pack-rat theory was spoiled.