peak, he would hurry into his little glass room, hastily part and
plaster his hair down as a precaution against possible recognition,
and lock his door and retire to a certain niche in a certain pile of
rocks, where he would be out of sight and yet be close enough to hear
the telephone, and would chew gum furiously and mutter savage things
under his breath. Much as he hungered for companionship he had a
perverse dread of meeting those exclamatory sightseers. It seemed to
Jack that they cheapened the beauty of everything they exclaimed over.
He could hear them gabble about Mount Lassen, and his lip would curl
with scorn over the weakness of their metaphors. He would grind his
teeth when they called his glass prison "cute," and wondered if
anybody really lived there. He would hear some man trying to explain
what he did not know anything at all about, and he would grin
pityingly at the ignorance of the human male, forgetting that he had
been just as ignorant, before fate picked him up and shoved him
head-foremost into a place where he had to learn.
Sometimes he was not forewarned of their visits, and would be trapped
fairly; and then he would have to answer their foolish questions and
show them what the map was for, and what the pointer was for, and
admit that it did get lonesome sometimes, and agree with them that it
was a fine view, and point out where Quincy lay, and all the rest of
it. It amazed him how every one who came said practically the same
things, asked the same questions, linked the same adjectives together.
Thus passed his second month, which might be called his pessimistic
month. But he did not take his money and go. He decided that he would
wait until he had grown a beard before he ventured. He realized
bitterly that he was a fugitive, and that it would go hard with him
now if he were caught. From the papers which Supervisor Ross had sent
him every week he had learned that the police were actually and
definitely looking for him. At least they had been a month ago, and he
supposed that they had not given up the search, even though later
events had pushed his disgrace out of print. The man they had shot was
hovering close to death in a hospital, the last Jack read of the case.
It certainly would be wiser to wait a while. So he took his camp
outfit to Taylor Rock again and stayed there until his four days were
gone.
That time he killed a deer and got a shot at a young bear, and came
back to his post in a fairly good humor. The little glass room had a
homey look, with the late afternoon sunlight lying warm upon the map
and his piles of magazines and papers stacked neatly on their shelf.
Since he could not be where he wanted to be, Jack felt that he would
rather be here than anywhere else. So his third month began with a
bleak kind of content.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IN WHICH A GIRL PLAYS BILLIARDS ON THE MOUNTAIN TOP
Jack heard some one coming, snatched up a magazine and his pipe and
promptly retired to his pet crevice in the rocks. Usually he locked
the door before he went, but the climber sounded close--just over the
peak of the last little knob, in fact. He pulled the door shut and
ran, muttering something about darned tourists. Drive a man crazy,
they would, if he were fool enough to stay and listen to their fool
talk.
He crawled well back into the niche, settled himself comfortably and
lighted his pipe. They never came over his way--and the wind blew from
the station. He did not believe they would smell the smoke.
Darn it all, he had the wrong magazine! He half rose, meaning to
scurry back and get the one he wanted; but it was too late now. He
heard the pebbles knocked loose where the faint trail dipped down over
the knob directly behind the station. So he settled back with his pipe
for solace, and scowled down at the world, and waited for the darn
tourists to go.
But this particular darn tourist had two reasons for lingering up
there. Her first and greatest reason was a sheer delight in the
panorama spread below and all around her, and the desire to saturate
her soul with the beauty of it, her lungs with the keen elixir of the
wind, heady with the eight thousand feet of altitude. Her second
reason was a perverse desire to show Kate that she was not to be
bossed around like a kid, and dictated to and advised and lectured
whenever she wanted to do something which Kate did not want to do.
Why, for instance, should she miss the pleasure of climbing to the
very top of the peak just because Kate began to puff before they were
half way up, and wanted to turn back?
Of course, she would do anything in the world for Kate; but that was
no reason why Kate should be selfish about little things. If she
didn't want to wait until Marion came down, she could walk home alone.
There was a good road, and Marion certainly would never think of
objecting. She believed in absolute personal liberty in little things.
Therefore she meant to stay up on the peak just exactly as long as she
wanted to stay, regardless of what Kate wanted to do. She had not
tried to force Kate to come up with her--if Kate would just stop to
think a minute. When Kate sat down on that rock and said she wouldn't
climb another step, Marion had not urged her at all. She had waited
until she was sure that Kate would not change her mind, and then she
had come on up without any fuss or argument. And she would stay until
she was ready to go down. It would be silly to spoil her pleasure now
by worrying. She would like to see a sunset from up here. She had her
gun with her, and anyway, she could get home easily before dark. She
believed she would stay, just this once. Really, it would do Kate good
to discover that Marion liked to please herself once in a while.
Which was all very well for Marion Rose, but rather hard on Jack, who
was not in a mood for company. He smoked hopefully for a half hour or
so. Most tourists got enough of it in a half hour. They began to feel
the altitude then, or found the wind disagreeable, or they were in a
hurry to climb down to the lake and fish, or they had to think about
the trip home. Besides, their vocabularies were generally exhausted in
half an hour, and without superlatives they could not gaze upon the
"view"; not with any satisfaction, that is. But this tourist could be
heard moving here and there among the rocks, with long lapses of
silence when she just stood and gazed. Jack listened and waited, and
grew more peevish as the lagging minutes passed. If he went out now,
he would have to go through the whole performance.
The telephone rang. And while Jack was sulkily getting to his feet, he
heard a girl's voice answering the phone. The nerve of her! What
business had she inside, anyway? Must a fellow padlock that door every
time he went out, to keep folks from going where they had no business
to be? He went angrily to the station; much more angrily than was
reasonable, considering the offense committed against him.
He saw a girl in a short khaki skirt and high laced boots and a pongee
blouse belted trimly with leather, bending her head over the
mouthpiece of the telephone. She had on a beach hat that carried the
full flavor of Venice in texture and tilt, and her hair was a ripe
corn color, slicked back from her temples in the fashion of the month.
Graceful and young she was, groomed as though thousands were to look
upon her. Normally Jack's eyes would have brightened at this sight,
his lips would have curved enticingly, his voice would have taken the
tone of incipient philandering. But in his present mood he snapped at
her.
"I beg your pardon. This is not a public telephone booth. It's a
private office."
She glanced inattentively his way, her smile directed mentally toward
the person on the other end of the wire. With her free hand she waved
him to silence and spoke, still smiling, into the mouthpiece.
"You're sure I won't do? I believe I could qualify, and I want--"
"If you please, this is not a public--"
But she waved her hand again impatiently and listened, engrossed and
smiling. "Oh, just because I wanted to hear a human voice, I guess.
I'd forgotten what a phone looks like, and so when I heard ... No, I
am not a tourist. I'm a neighbor, and I'm the lonesomest neighbor in
these mountains.... What?... Oh, down the road in a spooky little
valley where there's a log cabin and a trout stream--only I haven't
caught any yet. They bite, but they simply _won't_ stay hooked.
What?... Oh, just worms, and those fuzzy flies made with a hook on
them--_you_ know.... Oh, thanks! I surely do wish you could.... The
what?... Oh! well, I don't know, I'm sure. There's an excited young
man here who keeps telling me this is _not_ a public telephone
booth--do you mean him, I wonder?... He does look something like a
fireman, now you mention it. What do you use him for? a signal fire,
or something?... Oh! You _do_? Why, forevermore! Is he nice to talk
to?... No, I haven't. He just keeps telling me this is _not_ a
public ... Oh, I don't! I don't see how anybody could mind him--do
you?... Well, of course, a person doesn't look for politeness away
up ... Ha-ha--why, does the altitude make a difference? Maybe that's what
ails me, then-- That's awfully nice of you, man ... No, never mind
what my name is. Don't let's be ordinary. I'm just a voice from the
mountain top, and you're just a voice from the valley. So be it.... Without
an invitation? I only thanked you ..."
"Keep on," interjected Jack savagely, "and you'll have his wife
trailing you up with a gun!"
"Well--we'll see.... But do come sometime when you can--and bring your
wife! I'd love to meet some woman.... Oh, all right. Good-by."
With a gloved palm pressed hard over the mouthpiece she turned
reproachfully upon Jack. "Now you _did_ fix things, didn't you? Of
course, you knew I couldn't be nice to a man with a wife, so you had
to go and spoil everything. And I was just beginning to have a lovely
time!"
"Help yourself," Jack offered with heavy sarcasm. "Don't mind me at
all."
"Well, he wants to talk to you," she said. She put her lips again to
the mouthpiece and added a postscript. "Pardon me, but I held the line
a minute while I quarreled with your fireman. You're wrong--I don't
find him so nice to talk to. You may talk to him if you want to--I'm
sure you're welcome!" Whereupon she surrendered the receiver and
walked around the high, map-covered table, and amused herself by
playing an imaginary game of billiards with the pointer for a cue and
two little spruce cones which she took from her pocket for balls.
When Jack had finished talking and had hung up the receiver, he leaned
back against the shelf and watched her, his hands thrust deep into his
trousers pockets. He still scowled--but one got the impression that he
was holding that frown consciously and stubbornly and not because his
mood matched it.
Marion placed a cone at a point on the chart which was marked
Greenville, aimed for Spring Garden and landed the cone neatly in the
middle of Jack's belt.
"Missed the pocket a mile," he taunted grudgingly, hating to be
pleasant and yet helpless against the girl's perfect composure and
good humor.
"Give it back, and I'll try it again. There's a place called the
Pocket. I'll try that, for luck." Then she added carelessly--"What
would have happened, if you hadn't answered that man at all?"
"I'd have been canned, maybe."
"Forevermore." She pretended to chalk her cue with a tiny powder puff
which she took from a ridiculous vanity bag that swung from her belt.
"Wouldn't you kind of like to be canned--under the circumstances?"
"No, I wouldn't. I need the money." Jack bit his lips to keep from
grinning at the powder-puff play.
"Oh, I see." She tried another shot. "Why don't you cut the legs off
this table? I would. It's miles too high."
"I don't monkey with government property, myself." He placed a
peculiar accent on the last word, thus pointing his meaning very
clearly.
"Now, _what_ do you know about _that_? Missed it--with a government
cone, shot by a government stick on a government table, while a
government scowl fairly shrieks: 'Cut out this desecration!'" She
chalked her cue gravely, powdered her nose afterward, using a round
scrap of a mirror not much bigger than a silver dollar. "Do you stay
up here all the time and scowl, all by yourself?"
"All the time and scowl, all by myself." Jack took his hands from his
pockets that he might light his pipe; which was a sign that he was
nearly ready to treat the girl kindly. "If you object to smoke--" and
he waved one hand significantly toward the open door.
"All the time--all by yourself. And you don't want to be canned,
either." With the pointer Marion drew aimless little invisible volutes
upon the map, connecting the two spruce cones with an imaginary scroll
design. "How touching!" she said enigmatically.
"Sure, you're heart-broken over the pathos of it. I can see that. You
ought to put in about a week here--that's all I've got to say."
"Think I couldn't?" She looked across at him queerly.
"You wouldn't dare go any farther away than the spring. You'd have to
stay right here on this peak every minute of the twenty-four hours.
They call up at all kinds of ungodly times, just to see if you're on
the job, if they think you're snitching. They'd catch you gone
sometime--you couldn't get by with it--and then--"
"The can," finished Miss Marion gravely. "But what I want to know is,
what have you done?"
"Done?" Jack's jaw dropped slack away from the pipestem. "What yuh
mean, done?"
"Yes. What have you done that they should put you up here and make you
stay up here? It sounds--"
"Now, even a tourist knows that this is a Forest Service lookout
station, and that I'm here to watch out for fires down below! I'm your
guardian angel, young lady. Treat me with respect, if not with
kindness."
"I'm a member of the no-treat reform club. Honestly, don't they let
you leave here at all?"
"Four days a month." He heaved a heavy sigh and waved his pipe toward
the great outdoors. "'S big world, when it's all spread out in sight,"
he volunteered.
"Can't you--can't you even go down to the lake and fish, when you want
to?"
"Nope. Four days a month--and if they didn't happen to have a spare
man lying round handy, to send up here to take my place, I couldn't go
then even."
Marion regarded him meditatively. "You can have an hour's recess now,
if you like," she offered generously after a minute. "I'll stay and
answer the phone, and stand them off if they want to talk to you. I'm
good at that. You can go and climb down to the lake and fish, and have
fun."
"Tell me to go and jump in the lake and I might do it," Jack returned
gloomily. He found it rather pleasant to be sympathized with and
pitied. "What if a fire broke out while I was gone?"
"Well, what if? I could do what you would do, couldn't I? What do you
do when a fire breaks out?"
That gave Jack a fair excuse for leaving his place by the shelf, and
coming around to her side of the table, and for taking the pointer
from her and standing close beside her while he explained the chart.
Needless to say, he made use of the excuse immediately.
"First off," he instructed, "you don't want to be a boob and go
reporting train smoke, like I did the first day I was here. Picked up
a black smoke down below, here--right down there! I got the number on
the chart and phoned it in, and the lookout on Claremont didn't yeep
about it. So they called up and asked him to come alive and report. By
that time the smoke had moved from where I saw it, and the whole train
was in sight from his station, coming round the hill into Marston. He
never thought of that being it, he said afterward. They got busy in
the office and called me up again, and I located her again--only in a
different place. Fellow on Claremont--that's it away over there; see
that white speck? That's the station, just like this one. He's an old
crab, Hank tells me. He said I must be bugs. Had him squinting around
some, I bet! Then they got wise that I was reporting a through
freight, and they kid me about it yet. But they fell for it at first
all right!"
"What do you know about that!" Marion melodiously exclaimed, and
laughed companionably.
She wanted to know all the things that real tourists want to know, and
Jack forgot that he hated to answer foolish questions. The piles of
empty coal-oil cans, for instance--she should have known that they had
been packed up there full, to run the oil stove in the corner. The
spring--he had to take his bucket and go down with her and show her
where the spring was, but he did not seem to mind that, either. The
flag, whipping over the station on its short staff, interested her
too, and he helped her guess how long it would be before the stars and
stripes snapped themselves to ribbons. The book on astronomy she
dipped into, turning it to look at the full-page illustrations of
certain constellations that were to Jack like old friends. The books
on forestry she glanced at, and the magazines she inspected with less
interest.
"Oh, I've got the latest movie magazines. I could bring them up
sometime if you like--or send them by the man who brings your stuff
up, if you'll tell him to stop at the cabin."
"You bring them yourself," Jack urged, his eagerness so open and
unashamed that Marion blushed, and suddenly remembered Kate down the
slope there waiting for her. She must go, she said; and she went,
almost as suddenly as she came, and never mentioned her half-formed
determination to wait up there for the sunset.
Jack went with her as far as he dared, and stood under a wind-tortured
balsam fir and watched her out of sight. On the last ledge before the
trail dipped down over the hump that would hide her for good, she
turned and looked up at him. She stood there poised--so it
seemed--between mountain-crest and the sky. The lake lay quiet and
shadowed, deep below her, as though God had dropped a tear and the
mountain was holding it reverently cupped, sheltering it from the keen
winds of the heights. Beyond, painted with the delicate shadings of
distance and yellow sunlight, Indian Valley lay quietly across the lap
of the world, its farms and roads and fences sketched in lightly, as
with the swift pencil strokes of an artist; its meandering,
willowfringed streams making contrast with the yellowed fields of
early harvest time.
She stood there poised like a bird on the rim of the world. Her
slimness, her sure grace, her yellow hair shining under the beach hat
she wore tilted back from her face, struck him like a blow in the face
from that pleasurable past wherein woman beauty had been so abundant.
She was of the town; moreover, he felt that she was of the town from
which he had fled in guilt and terror. She stood for a long minute,
taking in the full sweep of the rugged peak. She was not looking at
him especially, until she turned to go on. Then she waved her hand
carelessly--slightingly, he felt in his misery--and went down the
steep slope.
Until he could no longer see the crown of her hat he looked after her.
Then, the sickness of his terrible loneliness upon him again, he
turned and slowly climbed back to his glass-walled prison.
CHAPTER NINE
LIKE THE BOY HE WAS
Down the balsam and manzanita slope toward the little valley where she
lived, Jack stared hungrily during many an empty, dragging hour. Until
the darkness had twice drawn down the black curtain that shut him away
from the world, he had hoped she would come. She had been so friendly,
so understandingly sympathetic--she must know how long the days were
up there.
On the third day Hank came riding up the trail that sought the easiest
slopes. He brought coal-oil and bacon and coffee and smoking tobacco
and the week's accumulation of newspapers, and three magazines; but he
did not bring any word from Marion Rose, nor the magazines she had
promised. When Hank had unsaddled the horses to rest their backs, and
had eaten his lunch and had smoked a cigarette in the shade of a rock,
his slow thoughts turned to the gossip of his little world.
He told of the latest encounter with the crabbed fireman on Claremont,
grinning appreciatively because the fireman's ill temper had been
directed at a tourist who had gone up with Hank. He related a small
scandal that was stirring the social pond of Quincy, and at last he
swung nearer to the four who had taken mining claims along Toll Gate
Creek.
"Too bad you can't go down to Toll-house an' git acquainted with your
neighbors," he drawled half maliciously. "There's a girl in the bunch
that's sure easy to look at. Other one is an old maid--looks too much
like a schoolma'm to suit me. But say--I'm liable to make a trip up
here twice a week, from now on! I'm liable to eat my dinner 'fore I
git here, too. Some class to that girl, now, believe me! Only trouble
is, I'm kinda afraid one of the men has got a string on her. There's
two of 'em in the outfit. One is one of them he schoolma'ms that goes
around in a boiled shirt and a hard-boiled hat, buzzin' like a
mosquito. He's sweet on the old maid. It's the other one I'm leery of.
He's the brother of the old maid, and he's the kind that don't say
much but does a lot uh thinkin'. Big, too.
"They've took up a bunch of minin' claims around there and are livin'
in that cabin. Goin' to winter there, the old maid was tellin' me. I
brought out their mail to 'em. Marion Rose is the girl's name. I guess
she's got a feller or two down in Los Angeles--I brought out a couple
letters today in men's writin'--different hands, at that.
"They's somethin' queer about 'em that I can't see through. They was
both settin' out in the sun--on that log right by the trail as you go
in to the cabin--and they'd washed their hair and had it all down
their backs dryin' it. And the girl was cleanin' the old maid's finger
nails for her! I come purty near astin' the old maid if she had to
have somebody wash her face for her too. But they didn't seem to think
it was anything outa the way at all--they went right to talkin' and
visitin' like they was fixed for company. I kinda s'picion Marion
bleaches her hair. Seems to me like it's a mite too yeller to be
growed that way. Drugstore blonde, I'd call her. You take notice first
time you see her. I'll bet you'll say--"
"Aw, can that chatter, you poor fish!" Jack exploded unexpectedly, and
smote Hank on his lantern jaw with the flat of his palm. "You hick
from hick-town! You brainless ape! You ain't a man--you're a missing
link! Give you a four-foot tail, by harry, and you'd go down the
mountain swinging from branch to branch like the monkey that you are!
What are _you_, you poor piece of cheese, to talk about a woman?"
His hand to his jaw, Hank got up from where he had sprawled on his
back. He was not a fighting man, preferring to satisfy his grudges by
slurring people behind their backs. But Jack smacked him again and
thought of a few other things to which he might liken Hank, and after
that Hank fought like a trapped bobcat, with snarls and kicks and
gouging claws. He scratched Jack's neck with his grimy fingernails,
and he tried to set his unwashed teeth into Jack's left ear while the
two of them rolled over and over on the slippery mat of squaw-carpet.
And for that he was pummeled unmercifully before Jack tore himself
loose and got up.
"Now, you beat it!" Jack finished, panting. "And after this you keep
your tongue off the subject of women. Don't dare to mention even a
squaw to me, or I'll pitch you clean off the peak!"
Hank mumbled an insult, and Jack went after him again. All the misery,
all the pent-up bitterness of the past three months rose within him in
a sudden storm that clouded his reason. He fought Hank like a crazy
man--not so much because Hank was Hank and had spoken slightingly of
that slim girl, but because Hank was something concrete, something
which Jack could beat with his fists and that could give back blow for
blow. Too long had he waged an unequal conflict with his own thoughts,
his aloneness; with regrets and soul hunger and idleness. When he had
spent his strength and most of his rage together, he let Hank go and
felt tenderly his own bruised knuckles.