In the camp of the Black Rider

by Capwell Wyckoff

A flash of the lantern showed the slope of the roof and a broken tin gutter. Plainly the intention of the man was to mount this roof and the watching boy wondered how he was going to do it, as there was a decided slope to the house covering. But the man with the lantern evidently knew his territory, for he stepped from the top of the ladder and his foot descended to the roof, resting in a hole which the elements had eaten through the shingles. He began to climb upward, picking his way along the top of the roof with a certain foot, knowing the breaks and the rough spots where he could travel in safety. Without wavering he pressed on and reached the top of the house, where a crooked chimney was shadowily revealed in the glow of the light. The man raised the lantern.

Ted peered eagerly from his post in the bushes, hoping to get a good look at the man but he was doomed to disappointment, at least as far as the man’s face was concerned. He had his back to the boy and only the general outline was disclosed by his act of raising the lantern. He was outlined against the sky in a blurred picture, and he seemed to be tall and thin. His clothing was of the roughest sort and his hat was a relic which might, at one time, have been a soldier’s campaign hat. The roof seemed to be familiar to the man, for he proceeded to business as coolly as though he was standing on the firm ground instead of on the slope of a rotting roof on a solitary house in the mountains.

He rested the lantern on the top of the tilted chimney and then dropped his hands to his waist, fumbling there for a few moments and puzzling Ted, who could not make out this latest move. At length the question was cleared up, for the man began to pull on something which revealed itself as a rope and which was coiled around his waist. In a few minutes it slipped off of his person and then he proceeded to tie one end of it to the handle of the lantern. Then he dropped the lantern down the mouth of the chimney, paying the rope out gradually, his body bent over so that he could look down the shaft.

Ted was rooted to the spot by the strangeness of the thing. The light had ceased to shine abroad, instead, it now shot up a feeble shaft from the interior of the chimney, bathing the head and shoulders of the lone man in its wavering, uncertain gleam. The lower part of the man’s body was lost to sight and the upper portion, half disclosed, gave a weird appearance, as though the man was a half-spirit materializing in the air. With absorbed attention the man lowered the lantern until the end of his rope put an end to the process and then he began what looked to be a profound search of the depth of the brick shaft. He moved the rope from side to side, backward and forward, the ray of light shifting as he did so, becoming larger and smaller as the man persisted in his efforts.

Whether or not his work proved profitable Ted never knew, for he could not see the face of the man and there was nothing to be learned as long as the purpose of the thing was a mystery. But the man concluded his search in short order, drawing up the rope rapidly and pulling out the lantern. Rapidly he untied the rope, wound it around his waist and then descended the roof, finding the places where he dared to walk. His foot found the top rung of the ladder and he reached the earth a few seconds later.

The lantern was once more deposited on the ground. The ladder was removed and placed in the bushes, and the work of the man seemed to be finished. He picked up the lantern and walked off, passing so close to the hiding Ted that the boy felt the perspiration start suddenly as he realized that the faltering rays of the lantern might disclose his hiding place. The looks of the man were unknown and the prospect of being seen by a man whose features were still formless in his mind did not look inviting to Ted. But the man passed the spot while he was thinking of these things and started down the mountain, leaving him to lie there and wait until it was safe to go on.

It was manifestly not safe to go on just then. The man was below him and in the darkness Ted might start a stone down and advertise his presence, in which case the game would be very much against him, for the man with the light knew the country and he was a stranger in a strange land. He watched the lantern bobbing down the slope until it was out of sight and then he sat up, turning the whole thing over in his mind.

“By George, that surely was a funny one!” he thought. “What in the world should he go and lower the lantern down the chimney for?”

The whole circumstance was so unusual that he was forced to give up the solution as a bad job and one far beyond his powers to figure out. The house which the boy had caught brief glimpses of was apparently a deserted old place of no value whatsoever and why any one should take the trouble to search it with a lantern for was beyond him.

“Can it be possible that there is something of value in the house?” he wondered, as he stood up and looked in vain for the light. “I can’t see why else a man should look around a place in the night. I wonder why he doesn’t look around in the daytime? Probably he would have to have a lantern in the daytime as well as in the night if he wanted to explore the bottom of that chimney.”