just outside the trail. His lips moved ceaselessly under his ragged,
sandy mustache. Because Marion had smiled when she looked at him, he
called her, among other things, a she-devil. He thought she had
laughed at him because she was nearly ready to have him hanged. Marion
did not look back. She was quite certain today that Kate would not
follow her, and the professor was fagged from yesterday's tramp
through the snow. She hurried, fully expecting that Jack had gone down
early to the meeting place and was waiting for her there.
Mike had no trouble in keeping close to her, for the wind blew
strongly against her face and the pines creaked and mourned overhead,
and had he called to her she would scarcely have heard him. She left
the road at the top of the hill and went across to the gully where
Kate had sprained her ankle. Today Marion did not trouble to choose
bare ground, so she went swiftly. At the top of the gully where Jack
had met her before, she stopped, her eyes inquiring of every thicket
near her. She was panting from the stiff climb, and her cheeks tingled
with the cold. But presently she "who-whoed" cautiously, and a figure
stepped out from behind a cedar and came toward her.
"Oh, there you--oh!" she cried, and stopped short. It was not Jack
Corey at all, but Hank Brown, grinning at her while he shifted his
rifle from the right hand to the left.
"Guess you thought I was somebody else," he drawled, coming up to her
and putting out his hand. "Pretty cold, ain't it? Yuh travelin' or
just goin' somewheres?" He grinned again over the ancient witticism.
"Oh, I--I was just out for a walk," Marion laughed uneasily. "Where
are you going, Mr. Brown?"
"Me, I'm travelin' fer my health. Guess you aim t' git walkin' enough,
comin' away over here, this kind of a day."
"Why, I hike all over these mountains. It gets lonesome. I just walk
and walk everywhere."
Grinning, Hank glanced down at her feet. "Yes, I've seen lots of
tracks up around this way, and up towards Taylor Kock. But I never
thought they were made by feet as little as what yours are."
"Why, forevermore! I suppose I ought to thank you for that. I make
pretty healthy looking tracks, let me tell you. And I don't claim all
the tracks, because so many hunters come up here."
Hank looked at her from under his slant eyebrows. "Guess they's some
that ain't crazy about huntin' too," he observed shrewdly. "Feller
that had the lookout last summer, guess he hangs out somewhere around
here, don't he? Must, or you wouldn't be calling him. Got a claim,
maybe."
"Why do you think so? I go all over these hills, and I--"
"I was kinder wonderin'," said Hank. "I guess you must know 'im purty
well. I just happened to notice how clost them two sets of tracks are,
over by that big tree. Like as if somebody with kinda little feet had
stood around talking to a feller for quite a spell. I kinda make a
study of tracks, you see--'cause I hunt a good deal. Ever study
tracks?"
"Why, no--" Marion's smile became set and superficial. "I do wish
you'd teach me, Mr. Brown."
"Well, come on over here and I'll show yuh somethin'." He reached over
and laid his hand on her arm, and after an involuntarily shrinking,
Marion thought it wisest to let it pass. Very likely he did not mean
anything at all beyond eagerness to show her the tracks. Why in the
world had they forgotten to be careful, she wondered. But it was hard
to remember that this wilderness was not really so untrodden as it
looked when she and Jack found themselves alone in some remote spot.
She went fearfully, with uneasy laughter, where Hank led. They stopped
beside the tree where she and Jack had talked the other day. Hank
pointed down at the telltale snow.
"It's dead easy to read tracks," he drawled, "when they's fresh and
plain as what these are. They's four cigarette butts, even, to show
how long the feller stood here talkin' to the girl. And behind the
tree it's all tromped up, where he waited fer her to come, most
likely. You kin see where his tracks comes right out from behind the
tree to the place where they stood talkin'. An' behind the tree there
ain't no cigarette butts a-tall--an' that's when a feller most
generally smokes--when he's passin' the time waitin' fer somebody. An'
here's a string--like as if it had been pulled offn a package an'
throwed away. An' over there on that bush is the paper the string was
tied aroun'--wind blowed it over there, I guess." He waded through the
snow to where the paper had lodged, and picked it up. "It's even got a
pos'mark onto it," he announced, "and part of the address. It must
a'been quite a sizable package, 'cause it took foteen cents to send it
from Los Angeles to Miss Marion--"
"Why, what do you know about that!" cried Marion abruptly, bringing
her hands together animatedly. "All that's left of my opera fudge that
one of the girls sent me!" She took the paper and glanced at it
ruefully. "I remember now--that was the time Fred was sure he'd get
a--" she stopped herself and looked at him archly--"a jack-rabbit. And
I said I'd come out and help him carry it home. But he didn't have
any luck at all--why, of course, I remember! Meeting the professor
with the mail, and bringing the candy along to eat if we got
hungry--and we did too. And Fred hid behind the tree and scared
me--why, Mr. Brown, I think you're perfectly wonderful, to figure that
all out just from the tracks! I should think you'd be a detective. I'm
sure there isn't a detective in the country that could beat
you--really, they are stupid alongside of such work as this. But I
hope the tracks won't tell you what Fred said about not getting
the--er--the rabbit he shot at!" She laughed up into his face. "You
might tell," she accused him playfully, "and get us all into trouble.
I'm awfully afraid of you, Mr. Brown. I am really."
Hank Brown could read tracks fairly well, but he could not read women
at all. His puzzled gaze went from Marion's laughing face to the
tracks in the snow; from there to the paper in his hand; to the tree,
and back again to her face.
"The man's tracks went back towards Taylor Rock," he drawled out half
apologetically. "That's what made me kinda think maybe--"
"Oh, you know that, too! You know how he said he was going up there
and see if he couldn't run across a bear before sundown, and for me to
go straight home. And I'll bet," she added breathlessly, "you can
tell me exactly where it was that Kate waited for me across the
gulley, and which ankle it was that she sprained so I had to almost
carry her back to the house, and--why, I wouldn't be one bit surprised
if you could tell me what I put on it!"
"No," Hank confessed feebly, "I guess I couldn't just figure all that
out, not offhand like."
"But you knew about Fred forgetting his cigarettes, and about my
bringing him some so he wouldn't be grouchy all the way home," Marion
reminded him demurely. "I--I do think you are the cleverest boy!"
That finished Hank. Never within his recollection had a young woman so
much as hinted that she thought him wonderful or clever. Besides, Hank
was well past thirty, and it tickles a man of that age to be called a
boy.
He began to leer at her with amorous eyes when he spoke, and he began
to find frequent occasions for taking hold of her arm. He managed to
make himself odious in the extreme, so that in sheer self-defense
Marion made haste to bring his thoughts back to Jack.
"Did you say that lookout man has a claim up here somewhere?" She
started back to the road, Hank keeping close to her heels.
"I dunno--I just said maybe he had. He's up here, I know that--an' you
know it, too." He took her arm to help her up the hill, and Marion
felt as though a toad was touching her; yet she dared not show too
plainly her repulsion for fear of stirring his anger. She had a
feeling that Hank's anger would be worse than his boorish gallantry.
"I figure he's on the dodge. Ain't no other reason why he ain't never
been to town sence I packed him up to the lookout station las' spring.
'F he had a claim he'd be goin' to town sometime, anyway. He'd go in
to record his claim, an' he ain't never done that. I'll bet," he
added, walking close alongside, "you could tell more'n you let on.
Couldn't you, ay?"
"I could, if I knew anything to tell." Marion tried to free her arm
without actually jerking it, and failed.
"But you don't, ay? Say, you're pretty cute. What'll yuh give me if I
tell yuh what I do think?"
The fool was actually trying to slip his arm around her without being
too abrupt about it; as if he were taming some creature of the wild
which he wished not to frighten. Marion was drawing herself together,
balancing herself to land a blow on his jaw and then run. She believed
she could outrun him, now that they were in the trail. But at that
moment she caught sight of a figure slinking behind a stump, and she
exclaimed with relief at the sight.
"Why, there's Mike over there--I was wishing--I wanted to ask him--oh,
Mike! Mike!" She pulled herself free of Hank's relaxing fingers and
darted from the trail, straight up the park-like slope of the giant
pines. "Mike! Wait a minute, Mike. I was looking for you!"
It was an unfortunate sentence, that last one. Mike stopped long
enough to make sure that she was coming, long enough to hear what she
said. Then he ducked and ran, lumbering away toward a heavy
outcropping of rock that edged the slope like a halibut's fin. Marion
ran after him, glancing now and then over her shoulder, thankful
because Hank had stayed in the trail and she could keep the great tree
trunks between them.
At the rock wall, so swift was Marion's pursuit, Mike turned at bay,
both hands lifted over his head in a threatening gesture. "Don't yuh
chase me up," he gobbled frenziedly. "Yuh better look out now! Don't
yuh think yuh can take _me_ and hang me for a spy--you're a spy
yourself--You look out, now!" Then he saw that Marion kept on coming,
and he turned and ran like a scared animal.
Though she could not understand what he said, nevertheless Marion
stopped in sheer astonishment. The next moment Mike had disappeared
between two boulders and was gone. Marion followed his tracks to the
rocks; then, fearful of Hank, she turned and ran down the slope that
seemed to slant into Toll-Gate Basin. Hank could track her, of course,
but she meant to keep well ahead of him. So she ran until she must
climb the next slope. Once she saw Mike running ahead of her through
the trees. She wondered what ailed him, but she was too concerned over
her own affairs to give him much thought. Hank called to her; he
seemed to be coming after her, and she supposed he would overtake her
in time, but she kept on through brush and over fallen logs half
buried in the snow that held her weight if she was careful. And when
she was almost ready to despair of reaching the open before Hank, she
saw through the trees the little pasture with its log fence. Mike was
going across to his cabin, still running awkwardly.
Marion ploughed through the drifts in the edge of the timber and
slowed thankfully to a walk when she reached the corner of the fence.
Across the flat the cabin stood backed against the wall of heavy
forest. Hank would not dare come any farther--or if he did he would be
careful not to offend. She walked on more slowly, pulling herself back
to composure before she went in to face the critical, censuring eyes
of Kate.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
TROUBLE ROCKS THE PAN, LOOKING FOR GRAINS OF GOLD
Up on the peaks Jack was touching the heights and the depths of his
own nature, while the mountains stood back and waited, it seemed to
him, for the final answer. He had lived with them too long and too
intimately to disregard them now, uninfluenced by their varying moods.
He watched them in sunlight when they were all shining white and
violet and soft purple, with great shadows spread over their slopes
where the forests stood deepest; and they heartened him, gave him a
wordless promise that better times were to come. He saw them swathed
with clouds, and felt the chill of their cold aloofness; the world was
a gloomy place then, and friendship was all false and love a mockery.
He saw them at night--then was he an outcast from everything that made
life worth while; then was he almost ready to give up.
When he had waited until the sun was low, and Marion did not come or
send him a signal from the little knoll behind the cabin, he told
himself that he was just a whim of hers; that he merely furnished her
with a little amusement, gave her a pleasant imitation of adventure;
that if something more exciting came into her dull life there in the
Basin, she would never bother with him again. He told himself
cynically that she would merely be proving her good sense if she
stopped meeting him or sending those brief little messages; but Lord,
how they did put heart into a fellow!--those little dots of
brightness, with now and then a wider, longer splash of radiance,
which she told him meant "forevermore"; or, if it were very long and
curved, as when she waved the glass over her head, it meant a laugh,
and "here's hoping."
But when she did not come, or even run up the hill and send him the
one-two-three signal which meant she could not meet him that day, he
faced the long night feeling that the world held not one friend upon
whom he could depend. The next day he went out, but he was so
absolutely hopeless that he persuaded himself she would not come and
that he did not want her to come. He did not want to meet any human
being that he could think of--except his mother, and his punishment
was that he should never see her again. He had to walk for exercise,
and he might get a shot at a grouse. He was not going to meet Marion
at all. Let her stay at home, if she wanted to--he could stand it if
she could.
He tramped down the mountain toward the Basin. It was a dreary journey
at best, and today his perverse mood would not let him brighten it
with the hope of seeing Marion. She had fooled him the day before,
after she had promised to come, and he had carried that chunk of bear
meat all the way down from the cave, so now he was going to fool her.
If she came he would just let her stand around in the cold, and see
how funny it was to wait for some one who did not show up.
Near their last meeting place, on the brink of the deep gulley that
divided the Crystal Lake road from the first slope of Grizzly Peak, he
stopped, half tempted to turn back. She was keen-eyed, and he did not
want her to see him first. She should not have the chance, he
reflected, to think he was crazy about meeting her every day. If she
wanted to make it once a week, she wouldn't find him whining about it.
He moved warily on down to the place, his eyes searching every open
spot for a glimpse of her.
He got his glimpse just as she and Hank were climbing the side of the
gulley to the road. It was a glimpse that shocked him out of his
youthful self-pity and stood him face to face with a very real hurt.
They were climbing in plain sight, and so close to him that he could
hear Hank's drawling voice telling Marion that she was a cute one, all
right; he'd have to hand it to her for being a whole lot cuter than
he had sized her up to be. Uncouth praise it was, bald, insincere,
boorish. Jack heard Marion laugh, just as though she enjoyed Hank's
conversation and company--and all his anger at yesterday's apparent
slight seemed childish beside this hot, man's rage that filled him.
Any man walking beside Marion would have made him wild with jealousy;
but Hank Brown! Hank Brown, holding her by the arm, walking with her
more familiarly than Jack had ever ventured to do, for all their close
friendship! Calling her cute--why cute, in particular? Did Hank, by
any chance, refer to Marion's little strategies in getting things for
Jack? The bare possibility sickened him.
He stood and watched until they reached the trail and passed out of
sight among the trees, their voices growing fainter as the distance
and the wind blurred the sounds. Had they looked back while they were
climbing out of the gulley, they must have seen him, for he stood out
in the open, making no attempt at concealment, not even thinking of
the risk. When they had gone, he stood staring at the place and then
turned and tramped apathetically back to his cave.
What was Marion doing with Hank Brown, the one man in all this country
who held a definite grudge against Jack? What had she done, that Hank
should consider her so cute? Was the girl playing double? Loyalty was
a part of Jack's nature--a fault, he had come to call it nowadays,
since he firmly believed it was loyalty toward his father that had
cost him his mother's love; since it was loyalty to his friends, too,
that had sent him out of Los Angeles in the gray of the morning; since
it was loyalty to Marion that had held him here hiding miserably like
an animal. Loyalty to Marion made it hard now to believe his own eyes
when they testified against her.
There must be some way of explaining it, he kept telling himself
hopelessly. Marion--why, the girl simply couldn't pretend all the
time. She would forget herself some time, no matter how clever she was
at deception. She couldn't keep up a make-believe interest in his
welfare, the way she had done; if she could do that--well, like Hank
Brown, he would have to hand it to her for being a lot cleverer than
he had given her credit for being. "If she's been faking the whole
thing, she ought to go on the stage," he muttered tritely. "She'd make
Sarah Bernhardt look like a small-time extra. Yes, sir, all of that.
And I don't quite get it that way." Then he swore. "Hank Brown! That
hick--after having her choice of town boys, her taking up with that
Keystone yap! No, sir, that don't get by with me." But when he had
gone a little farther he stopped and looked blackly down toward the
Basin. A swift, hateful vision of the two figures walking close
together up that slope struck him like a slap in the face.
"All but had his arm around her," he growled. "And she let him get by
with it! And laughed at his hick talk. Huh! Hank Brown! I admire her
taste, I must say!"
Up near the peak the wind howled through the pines, bringing with it
the bite of cold. His shoulders drawn together with the chill that
struck through even his heavy sweater and coat, he went on, following
the tracks he had made coming down. They were almost obliterated with
the snow, that went slithering over the drifts like a creeping cloud,
except when a heavier gust lifted it high in air and flung it out in a
blinding swirl. Battling with that wind sent the warmth through his
body again, but his hands and feet were numb when he skirted the
highest, deepest, solidest drift of them all and crept into the
desolate fissure that was the opening to his lair.
Inside it was more dismal than out on the peak, if that could be. The
wind whistled through the openings in the roof, the snow swirled down
and lay uneasily where it fell. His camp-fire was cheerless, sifted
over with white. His bed under the ledge looked cold and comfortless,
with the raw, frozen hide of the bear on top, a dingy blank fringe of
fur showing at the edges.
Jack stood just inside, his shoulders again hunched forward, his
chilled fingers doubled together in his pockets, and looked around
him. He always did that when he came back, and he always felt nearly
the same heartsick shrinking away from its cold dreariness. The sun
never shone in there, for one thing. The nearest it ever came was to
gild the north rim of the opening during the middle of the day.
Today its chill desolation struck deeper than ever, but he went
stolidly forward and started a little fire with a splinter or two of
pitch that he had carried up from a log down below. Hank had taught
him the value of pitch pine, and Jack remembered it now with a wry
twist of the lips. He supposed he ought to be grateful to Hank for
that much, but he was not.
He melted snow in a smoky tin bucket and made a little coffee in
another bucket quite as black. All his food was frozen, of course, but
he stirred up a little batter with self-rising buckwheat flour and
what was left of the snow water, whittled off a few slices of bacon,
fried that and afterwards cooked the batter in the grease, watching
lest the thick cake burn before it had cooked in the center. He laid
the slices of bacon upon half of the cake, folded the other half over
upon them, squatted on his heels beside the fire and ate the ungainly
sandwich and drank the hot black coffee sweetened and with a few of
the coarser grains floating on top. While he ate he stared unseeingly
into the fire, that sputtered and hissed when an extra sifting of snow
came down upon it. The cave was dusky by now, so that the leaping
flames made strange shadows on the uneven rock walls. The whistle of
the wind had risen to a shriek.
Jack roused himself when the fire began to die; he stood up and looked
around him, and down at his ungainly clothes and heavy, high-cut shoes
laced over thick gray socks whose tops were turned down in a roll over
his baggy, dirt-stained trousers. He laughed without any sound of
mirth, thinking that this was the Jack Corey who had quarreled over
the exact shade of tie that properly belonged to a certain shade of
shirt; whose personal taste in sport clothes had been aped and
imitated by half the fellows he knew. What would they think if they
could look upon him now? He wondered if Stit Duffy would wag his head
and say "So-me cave, bo, so-me cave!"
Then his mind snapped back to Hank Brown with his hand clasping
Marion's arm in that leisurely climb to the trail. His black mood
returned, pressing the dead weight of hopelessness upon him. He might
as well settle the whole thing with a bullet, he told himself again.
After all, what would it matter? Who would care? Last night he had
thought instantly of Marion and his mother, and he had felt that two
women would grieve for him. Tonight he thought of Marion and cast the
thought away with a curse and a sneer. As for his mother--would his
mother care so very much? Had he given her any reason for caring,
beyond the natural maternal instinct which is in all motherhood? He
did not know. If he could be sure that his mother would grieve for
him--but he did not know. Perhaps she had grieved over him in the past
until she had worn out all emotions where he was concerned. He
wondered, and he wished that he knew.
CHAPTER TWENTY
IGNORANCE TAXES THE TRAIL OF DANGER
Mike, looking frequently over his shoulder, sought the sanctuary of
his own cabin, slammed the door shut and pulled the heavy table as a
barricade against it until he could find the hammer and some nails.
His hands shook so that he struck his thumb twice, but he did not seem
to notice the pain at all. When the door was nailed shut he pulled a
side off a box and nailed the two boards over the window. Then he
grabbed his rifle out of a corner and defied the spies to do their
worst, and hang him if they dared.
A long time he waited, mumbling there in the middle of the room, the
rifle pointed toward the door. Shadows flowed into the valley and
filled it so that only the tops of the tallest pines were lighted by
the sun. The lonesome gloom deepened and the pines swung their limber
tops and talked with the sound of moving waters along a sandy shore.
An owl flapped heavily into a tall pine near by, settled his feet
comfortably upon a smooth place in the limb, craned his neck and
blinked into the wind, fluffed his feathers and in a deep baritone
voice he called aloud upon his errant mate.
"Who! Who! Who-who!"
Mike jumped and swung his rifle toward the sound! "Oh, yuh needn't
think yuh can fool me, makin' si'nals like an owl," he cried in his
indistinct gobble. "I know what you're up to. Yuh can't fool me!"
Far across the basin the mate, in a lighter, more spirited tone,
called reassuring reply:
"Who-who-who-o-o!"
"Who! Who! Who-who!" admonished the owl by the cabin, and flapped away
to the other.
Mike's sandy hair lifted on the back of his neck. His face turned
pasty gray in the deep gloom of the cabin. Spies they were, and they
were laying their trap for him. The one who had called like an owl was
Hank Brown. The one who had answered across the flat was the girl,
maybe--or perhaps it was that other spy up on top of the mountain;
Mike was not sure, but the menace to himself remained as great,
whichever spy answered Hank Brown. Hank Brown had trailed him to the
cabin, and was telling the others about it. Mike was so certain of it
that he actually believed he had seen Hank's form dimly revealed
beside a pine tree.