CHAPTER 6


The house would have been more in place on the main street of a town
than here in the mountain desert; but when the first John Merchant had
made his stake and could build his home as it pleased him to build, his
imagination harked back to a mid-Victorian model, built of wood, with
high, pointed roofs, many carved balconies and windows, and several
towers. Here the second John Merchant lived with his son Charles, whose
taste had quite outgrown the house.

But to the uneducated eye of Andrew Lanning it was a great and dignified
building. He reined the pinto under the trees to look up at that tall,
black mass. It was doubly dark against the sky, for now the first
streaks of gray light were pale along the eastern horizon, and the house
seemed to tower up into the center of the heavens. Andy sighed at the
thought of stealing through the great halls 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 fingertips on his revolver butt.

That false alarm determined him to make his attempt without further