different! The nearest he came to building an air-castle was when he
was lying luxuriously in a shallow part of the pool, where the water
was not so cold.
"She'd be different, I believe--I'd make her different if I could
just have her to myself," he mused. "I'd take a lot of that
foolishness out of her in a little while, and I wouldn't have to be
rough with her, either. All she needs is a man she can't bluff!"
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JACK SHOULD HAVE A HIDE-OUT
Kate, like the rest of the world, pretended to herself a good deal.
For instance, when she came into the mountains, she had hoped that
Fred and Marion would fall in love and get married. She felt that the
arrangement would be perfectly ideal in every way. Marion was such a
dear girl, so sweet-tempered and light-hearted; just the temperament
that Fred needed in a wife, to save him from becoming mentally heavy
and stolid and too unemotional. Fred was so matter-of-fact! Her
eagerness to have Marion come into the mining-claim scheme had not
been altogether a friendly desire for companionship, as she pretended.
Deep in the back of her mind was the matchmaker's belief that
propinquity would prove a mighty factor in bringing these two together
in marriage. If they did marry, that would throw Marion's timber land
with Fred's and give Fred a good bit more than he would have with his
own claim alone, which was another reason why Kate had considered
their marriage an ideal arrangement.
Three weeks had changed Kate's desire, however. Three weeks is a long
time for two women to spend in one small cabin together with almost no
intercourse with the outside world. Little by little, Kate's opinion
of Marion had changed considerably. To go to shows with Marion, to
have her at the house for dinner and to spend a night now and then, to
lie relaxed upon a cot in the Martha Washington's beauty booth while
Marion ministered to her with soothing fingertips and agreeable
chatter, was one thing; to live uncomfortably--albeit
picturesquely--with Marion in a log cabin in the woods was quite
another thing.
Kate began to doubt whether Marion would make a suitable wife for
Fred. She had discovered that Marion was selfish, for one thing; being
selfish, she was also mercenary. Kate began to fear that Marion had
designs upon Fred for the sake of his timber claim; which was
altogether different, of course, from Kate's designs upon Marion's
timber claim! Besides, Marion was inclined to shirk her share of the
cooking and dishwashing, and when she made their bed and tidied the
crude little room they called their bedroom, she never so much as
pretended to hang up Kate's clothes. She would appropriate the nails
on the wall to her own uses, and lay Kate's clothes on Kate's trunk
and let it go at that. Any woman, Kate told herself, would resent such
treatment.
Then Marion was always going off alone and never asking Kate if she
would like to go along. That was inconsiderate, to say the least. And
look how she had acted about climbing the peak at Mount Hough, the day
they had gone to see the lake! Kate had wanted to go down to the
lake--but no--Marion had declared that it was more beautiful from the
rim, and had insisted upon climbing clear to the top of the peak, when
she knew perfectly well that the altitude was affecting Kate's heart.
And she had gone off alone and stayed nearly two hours, so that they
were almost caught in the dark on the way home. It was the most
selfish thing Kate had ever heard of--until Marion perpetrated worse
selfishness which paled the incident.
More than that, Marion was always making little, sneering remarks
about the professor, and doing little things to annoy him. Kate could
not see how any one could do that, kind as Douglas was, and courteous.
And there were times when Marion seemed actually to be trying to
interest Fred; other times she purposely irritated him, as though she
were deliberately amusing herself with him. All this was not taking
into account Marion's penurious habit of charging Kate for every
facial massage and every manicure she gave her. When Kate looked ahead
to the long winter they must spend together in that cabin, she was
tempted to feel as though she, for one, would be paying an exorbitant
price for her timber claim.
With all that tucked away in the back of her mind, Kate still
believed--or at least she successfully pretended to believe--that she
liked Marion personally as much as she ever had liked her. She did not
see why any one must be absolutely blind to the faults of a friend.
She merely recognized Marion's faults. But if she ever criticised, she
condoned the criticism by saying that it was for Marion's own best
interests.
Just now, while she cleared away the litter of Fred's dinner, she
meditated upon the proper manner of dealing with Marion's latest
defection. Should she warn the professor to say nothing to Fred? It
might turn Fred against Marion to know what she had done; Fred was so
queer and old-fashioned about women. Still, he would be sure to hear
of it somehow, and it might be best to tell him herself, as tactfully
as possible, because she knew so well just how best to approach Fred.
She told Fred and was amazed at the result.
"Well, what of it?" Fred demanded with brotherly bluntness. "It takes
a woman, by thunder, to knife her friends in the back. What are you
trying to build up anyway? Take it from me, old girl, you want to cut
out this picking away at Marion behind her back--or to her face,
either, for that matter. You two women are going to see a good deal
of each other between now and spring, and you'll be ready to claw each
other's eyes out if you don't shut them to a lot you don't like."
"Well, upon my word! I was merely telling you of Marion's adventure.
I'm not saying--"
"No, but you're thinking, and you want to quit it." Whereupon Fred
went off to his tent and indulged in a much needed siesta.
Kate was angry as well as hurt. The injustice of Fred's condemnation
stirred her to action. She got hurriedly into her khaki skirt and
tramping shoes, slung a canteen over her shoulder, tied her green veil
over her hat and under her chin, put on her amber sun-glasses, and
took her stout walking stick.
She was careful not to wake Fred or the professor, though that would
have been more difficult than she imagined. She did not want them to
know where she was going. If they missed her and were worried it would
serve them both right; for now she remembered that the professor had
also been very unsympathetic. Neither of them had seemed to realize
what a terrible night she had spent there alone, with that terrible
fire raging through the forest and with Marion gone, without saying
one word to Kate about where she was going or when she expected to
return.
She meant to climb Mount Hough in spite of the altitude, and find out
for herself what sort of a fellow that lookout man was. Fred and
Douglas might make light of the matter if they wished, but she was in
a sense responsible for Marion Rose, and she considered it her duty to
think of the girl's welfare.
There was a good deal of determination in Kate's character, once you
roused her out of herself. She climbed Mount Hough, but she did not
find out what sort of a fellow the lookout man was, for Jack heard her
puffing up the pack trail and retired, with the precipitateness of a
hunted fox, to his niche between the boulders. She did not stay long.
As soon as she had rested a little and made sure that the station door
was locked, and had peered in and seen that everything was in perfect
order, she decided that the lookout man was probably off fighting fire
with the rest of the forest rangers. Convinced of that, she
straightway jumped to the conclusion that he had not been there at all
since the fire started, and Marion must have stayed up there alone,
and she had simply been trying to worry Kate over nothing.
Well, at any rate, she couldn't play that trick the second time. Kate
felt well repaid for the climb even if she did not get a glimpse of
the lookout man. Let Marion pretend, if she wanted to. Let her rave
about the lookout man's mouth and eyes and temper; Kate was armed
against all future baitings. She could go back now and be mistress of
the situation.
So she went, and Jack listened to her retreating footsteps scrunching
down the trail, and heaved a deep sigh of relief when the silence
flowed in behind her and the mountain top was all his own.
Nevertheless he felt uneasy over the incident. Kate, climbing alone to
the station, trying the door, waiting around for a few minutes and
then going back the way she had come, did not strike Jack as being a
tourist come to view the scenery. So far as he had been able to judge
as he peeped out through a narrow rift in the ledge, she had paid very
little attention to the scenery. She seemed chiefly concerned with the
station, and her concern seemed mostly an impatience over its locked
door.
He got his telescope and watched her as she came down through the
rocks into sight. No, she certainly did not strike him as being a
tourist, in spite of her tourist's khaki and amber glasses and heavy
tan boots. Women tourists did not climb mountains without an escort of
some kind, he had learned.
"By heck, I'll bet that's Kate!" he exclaimed suddenly, staring at her
retreating form. "Now, what does the old girl want--?" Straightway he
guessed what she wanted, and the guess brought his eyebrows together
with the lump between which Marion had described. If she had come up
there to see _him_, it must be because she had heard something about
him that had stirred her up considerably. He remembered how she had
refused to climb the peak with Marion, that first afternoon.
You know how self-conscious a secret makes a person. Jack could think
of only one reason why Kate should climb away up there to see him. She
must know who he was, and had come up to settle any doubt in her mind
before she did anything. If she knew who he was, then Marion Rose must
have told her. And if Marion Rose had gone straight and told her
friends--
Jack went so far as to pack everything he owned into his suitcase and
carry it to the niche in the ledge. He would not stay and give her the
satisfaction of sending the sheriff up there. He was a headlong youth,
much given to hasty judgments. All that night he hated Marion Rose
worse than he had ever hated any one in his life. He did not leave,
however. He could not quite bring himself to the point of leaving
while his beloved mountain was being scarred with fire. He knew that
it was for the sake of having him there in just such an emergency as
this fire that the government paid him a salary. Headlong as was his
nature, there was in him the quality of being loyal to a trust. He
could make all preparations for leaving--but until the fire was out
and the forest safe for the time being, he could not go.
Then, quite early the next day, Marion herself came up the trail with
three movie magazines and a loaf of bread that she had purloined from
Kate's makeshift pantry. On this day she was not so frivolous, but
helpful and full of sympathy. Jack could not believe that she had told
his secret to Kate; and because he could not believe it he asked her
point blank whether Kate had come spying up there deliberately, and
was vastly reassured by Marion's vehement denial.
They worked out a heliograph code that day, and they planned an
exploring trip to Taylor Rock the next time Jack was relieved. It
seemed very important that Jack should have a picturesque hide-out
there; a secret cave, perhaps, with a tilting rock to cover the
doorway.
"It would be great," declared Marion, clasping her hands together with
her favorite ecstatic gesture. "If we could just find a cave with a
spring away back in it, don't you know, and a ledge outside where you
could watch for enemies--wouldn't that be keen? It makes me wish I had
done something, so I had to hide out in the hills. And every day at a
certain time, I can come up here where that hydrometer thing was
before it burned, and signal to you. And we'll find a place where I
can leave magazines and things like that, and you can come and get
them. Honestly, I've always wished I could be an outlaw--if I could be
one without doing anything really bad, you know. I'd love having to
live in a cave somewhere. You're lucky, Jack--Johnny Carew--if you
only knew it."
"I do know it. I never found it out till today, though," Jack told her
with what he fancied was an enigmatic smile.
"Now listen. If you want me to help you enjoy being an outlaw, Jack
Corey, you simply must cut out the sentimental stuff. Let me tell you
how I feel about it. It's nothing new to have men make love--any kind
of a man will sit up and say 'bow-wow' if you snap your fingers at
him. That's deadly common. But here you are, a bandit and an outlaw
without being bad or tough--I don't think you are, anyway. You didn't
do such awful things to get in bad with the law, you see. But you're
hiding out just the same, with the police sleuthing around after you,
and disowned by your mother and all, just like the real thing. Why,
it's a story in real life! And I want to live in that story, too, and
help you just like a book heroine. I think we can make it awfully
interesting, being real enough so it isn't just make-believe. It's
keen, I tell you. But for once I want to see if a boy and a girl can't
cut out the love interest and be just good pals, like two boys
together." Marion got up and stood before him, plainly as ready to go
as to stay. "If you'll agree to that I'll go and help you find your
cave. Otherwise, I'll go back to camp and stay there, and you can look
after yourself."
"Be calm! Be calm!" Jack pushed back his mop of hair and grinned
derisively. "You should worry about any lovemaking from me. Take the
bunch out at the beach, or at a dance, and I can rattle off the
sentimental patter to beat the band. But it doesn't seem to fit in up
here--unless a fellow meant it honest-to-goodness. And I ain't going
to mean it, my dear girl. Not with you. I like you as a friend, but I
fear I can never be more than a step-brother to you." He pulled off a
dead twig from the bush beside him, snapped it in two and flipped the
pieces down the slope. "I'd look nice, making love to a girl, the fix
I'm in!" he added with a savage bitterness that gave the lie to his
smiling indifference. "A fellow ought to make sure his canoe is going
to stay right side up before he asks a girl to step into it."
"That's all right then. It's best to understand each other. Now, if I
were you, I'd have things brought up here, a little at a time, that
you'll need for your secret camp. Groceries, you know, and things. You
can make a place to keep them in till you get your vacation--and
listen! When I go to town I can buy you things that would look queer
if you sent for them. Towels and napkins and--"
Jack gave a whoop at that, though his ignorance of primitive living
did not fall far short of hers. But in the main, he took her advice
with praiseworthy gratitude. He had never expected to enjoy being an
outlaw. But under the influence of her enthusiasm and his own
youthfulness, he began to take a certain interest in the details of
her scheme--to plan with her as though it was going to be merely a
camping out for pleasure. That, of course, was the boy in him rising
to the bait of a secret cave in the mountains, and exchanging
heliograph signals with the heroine of the adventure, and lying upon a
ledge before his cave watching for enemies. There would be the bears,
too, that Hank Brown had said would be ambling up there to their
winter quarters. And there would be the scream of the mountain
lions--Jack had more than once heard them at night down in the forest
below him, and had thrilled to the sound. He would stalk the shy deer
and carry meat to his cave and broil the flesh over his tiny
campfire--don't tell me that the boy in any normal young man would not
rise enthusiastically to that bait!
But there were other times, when Marion was not there; when Jack was
alone with the stars and the dark bulk of the wooded slopes beneath
him; times when the adventure paled and grew bleak before his soul, so
that he shrank from it appalled. Times when he could not shut out the
picture of the proud, stately Mrs. Singleton Corey, hiding humiliated
and broken of spirit in a sanatorium, shamed before the world because
he was her son. Not all the secret caves the mountains held could dull
the pain of that thought when it assailed him in the dark stillness of
the peak.
For Jack was her true offspring in pride, if no more. He had been a
sensitive youngster who had resented passionately his mother's slights
upon his vague memory of the dad who had given him his adventurous
spirit and his rebellion against the restraints of mere convention,
which was his mother's dearest god. Unknown to Mrs. Singleton Corey,
he had ardently espoused the cause of his wandering dad, and had
withdrawn his love from the arrogant lady-mother, who never once spoke
affectionately of the man Jack loved. He had taken what money she gave
him. It was his dad's money, for his dad had suffered hardship to
wrest it from the earth, in the mines that kept Mrs. Singleton Corey
in soft, perfumed luxury. His dad would have wanted Jack to have it,
so Jack took all she would give him and did not feel particularly
grateful to her because she was fairly generous in giving.
But now the very pride that he had inherited from her turned upon him
the savage weapons of memory. He had swift visions of his mother
mounting the steps of some mansion, going graciously to make a
fashionable ten-minute call upon some friend, while Jack played
chauffeur for the occasion. She couldn't go calling now on the
Westlake millionaires' wives, taunted memory. Neither could she
preside at the club teas; nor invite forty or fifty twittery women
into her big double parlors and queen it over them as Jack had so
often seen her do. She could not do any of the things that had made up
her life, and Jack was the reason why she could not do them.
He tried to shut out the picture of his mother, and there were times
when for a few hours he succeeded. Those were the hours he spent with
Marion or in watching for her to come, or in perfecting the details of
the plan she had helped him to form. By the time he had his next four
days of freedom, he had also a good-sized cache of food ready to carry
to Grizzly Peak where his makeshift camping outfit was hidden. Marion
had told him that when the fire-season was over and the lookout
station closed for the winter, which would be when the first snow had
come to stay, he ought to be ready to disappear altogether from the
ken of the Forest Service and all of the rest of Quincy.
"You can say you're going prospecting," she planned, "and then beat it
to your cave and make it snug for the winter. Anything you must buy
after that, you can tell me about it, and I'll manage to get it and
leave it for you at our secret meeting place. I don't know how I'll
manage about Kate, but I'll manage somehow--and that'll be fun, too.
Kate will be perfectly wild if she sees me doing mysterious
things--but she won't find out what it's all about, and I'll have more
fun! I do love to badger her, poor thing. She's a dear, really, you
know. But she wants to know everything a person does and says and
thinks; and she hasn't any more imagination than a white rabbit, and
so she wouldn't understand if you told her every little thing.
"So I'll have the time of my life doing it, but I'll get things just
the same, and leave them for you. And I'll bring you reading--oh, have
you put down candles, Jack? You'll need a lot of them, so you can read
evenings."
"What's the matter with pine knots?" Jack inquired. "Daniel Boone was
great on pine-knot torches, if I remember right. One thing I wish you
would do, Marion. I'll give you the money to send for about a million
Araby cigarettes. I'll write down the address--where I always bought
them. Think you could get by with it?
"You just watch me. Say, I do think this is going to be the best kind
of a winter! I wouldn't miss being up here for anything."
Jack looked at her doubtfully, but he finally nodded his head in
assent. "It could be worse," he qualified optimistically.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MURPHY HAS A HUMOROUS MOOD
Though Fred and the professor shouldered pick and shovel at sunrise
every morning and laid them down thankfully at dusk every night, they
could not hope to work out the assessment upon eight mining claims in
a year. The professor was not a success as a pick-and-shovel man,
though he did his best. He acquired a row of callouses on each hand
and a chronic ache in his back, but beyond that he did not accomplish
very much. Fred was really the brawn of the undertaking, and in a
practical way he was the brains also. Fred saw at once that the task
required more muscle than he and the professor could furnish, so he
hired a couple of men and set them to work on the claims of the
speculators.
Two little old Irishmen, these were; men who had dried down to pure
muscle and bone as to their bodies, and to pure mining craft and
tenacious memory for the details of their narrow lives as to brains.
The mountains produce such men. In the barren plains country they
would be called desert rats, but in the mountains they are called
prospectors.
They set up their own camp half a mile down the creek, so that Kate
and Marion seldom saw them. They did their own cooking and divided
their work to suit themselves, and they did not charge as much for
their labor as Fred charged the claim-owners for the work, so Fred
considered that he had done very well in hiring them. He could turn
his attention to his own claim and the claims of Marion and Kate, and
let the professor peck away at a hole in the hillside where he vaguely
hoped to find gold. Why not? People did, in these mountains. Why,
nuggets of gold had been picked up in the main street of Quincy, so
they told him. One man in town had solemnly assured him that all these
hills were "lousy with gold"; and while the professor did not like the
phrase, he did like the heartening assurance it bore to his wistful
heart, and he began examining his twenty-acre claim with a new
interest. Surely the early-day miners had not gleaned all the gold!
Why, nearly every time he talked with any of the natives he heard of
fresh strikes. Old prospectors like Murphy and Mike were always coming
in town for supplies and then hurrying back to far canyons where they
fully expected to become rich.
The professor got a book on mineralogy and read it faithfully. Certain
points which he was not sure that he understood he memorized and meant
to ask Murphy, who had a memory like a trap and had mined from Mexico
to Alaska and from Montana to the sea.
Murphy poised his shovel, since he happened to be working, twinkled
his eyes at the professor through thick, silver-rimmed glasses, and
demanded: "For why do ye be readin' a buke about it? For why don't ye
get down wit yer pick, man, and _see_ what's in the ground? My gorry,
I been minin' now for forty-wan year, ever sence I come from the auld
country, an' _I_ never read no buke t' see what I had in me claim. I
got down inty the ground, an' I seen for meself what I got there--an'
whin I found out, my gorry, I didn't need no _buke_ t' tell me was she
wort' the powder I'd put inty 'er. An' them that made their millions
outy their mines, _they_ didn't go walkin' around wit' a buke in their
hands! My gorry, they hired jackasses like me an' Mike here t' dig fer
all they wanted t' know about.
"And if ye want to find out what's there in yer claim, I'd advise ye
t' throw away yer buke, young feller, an' git busy wit' yer two hands,
an' ye'll be like t' know a dom sight more than wit' all yer readin'.
An' if ye like to bring me a sample of what ye git, I'll be the wan t'
tell ye by sight what ye have, and I don't need no _buke_ t' tell it
by nayther."
Whereat Mike, who was silly from being struck on the head with a
railroad tie somewhere down the long trail of years behind him, gulped
his lean Adam's apple into a laugh, and began to gobble a long,
rambling tale about a feller he knew once in Minnesota who could
locate mines with a crooked stick, and wherever he pinted the stick
you could dig....