not realize that he was cold, or hungry, or that as the evening wore
on his tortured muscles cried out for rest. The sight of Hank Brown
talking intimately with Marion--allied with the spies, as Mike's
warped reason interpreted the meeting--had given him the feeling that
he was hedged about with deadly foes. The sudden eagerness which
Marion had shown when she saw him, and the way she had run after him,
to him meant nothing less than an attempt to capture him then and
there. They would come to the cabin when he was asleep--he was sure of
it. So he did not intend to sleep at all. He would watch for them with
the gun. He guessed they didn't know he had a gun, because he never
used it unless he went hunting. And since the county was filled up
with spies on the government he was too cute to let them catch him
hunting out of season.
He waited and he waited. After a long while he backed to the bed and
sat down, but he kept the gun pointed toward the door and the window.
A skunk came prowling through the trampled snow before the cabin,
hunting food where Mike had thrown out slops from the cooking. It
rattled a tin can against a half-buried rock, and Mike was on his
feet, shaking with cold and excitement.
"Oh, I c'n hear yuh, all right!" he shouted fiercely, not because he
was brave, but because he was scared and could not await calmly the
next move. "Don't yuh come around here, er I'll shoot!"
In a minute he thought he heard stealthy footsteps nearing the door,
and without taking any particular aim he lifted the hammer of the gun
and pulled the trigger, in a panicky instinct to fight. The odor that
assailed his nostrils reassured him suffocatingly. It was not the
spies after all.
He put down the gun then, convinced that if the spies had been hanging
around, they would know now that he was ready for them, and would not
dare tackle him that night. He felt vaingloriously equal to them all.
Let them come! He'd show 'em a thing or two.
Groping in the dark to the old cookstove, Mike raked together the
handful of pitch-pine shavings which he had whittled that morning for
his dinner fire. He reached up to the shelf where the matches were
kept, lighted the shavings, laid them carefully in the firebox and fed
the little blaze with dry splinters. He placed wood upon the crackling
pile, rattled the stove-lids into place and crouched shivering beside
the stove, trying to absorb some warmth into his chilled old bones. He
opened the oven door, hitched himself closer and thrust his numbed
feet into the oven. He sat there mumbling threats and puny warnings,
and so coaxed a little warmth into his courage as well as his body.
So he passed the rest of that night, huddled close to the stove,
hearing the murmur of his enemies in the uneasy swashing together of
the pine branches overhead, reading a signal into every cry of the
animals that prowled through the woods. The harsh squall of a mountain
lion, somewhere down the creek, set him shivering. He did not believe
it was a mountain lion, but the call of those who watched his cabin.
So daylight found him mumbling beside the stove, his old rifle across
his knees with the muzzle pointing toward the nailed door.
He wished that Murphy would come; and in the next moment he was
cursing Murphy for being half in league with the plotters, and hoping
Murphy never showed his face again in the cabin; making threats, too,
of what he would do if Murphy came around sneering about the spies.
With daylight came a degree of sanity, and Mike built up the fire
again and cooked his breakfast. Habit reasserted itself and he went
off to his work, muttering his rambling thoughts as he shambled along
the path he and Murphy had beaten in the snow. But he carried his
rifle, which he had never done before, and he stood it close beside
him while he worked. Also he kept an eye on the trail and on
Toll-Gate cabin. He would have been as hard to catch unaware that day
as a weasel.
Once or twice he saw the professor pottering around near the cabin,
gathering pieces of bark off fallen trees to help out their scanty
supply of dry wood. The pines still mourned and swayed to the wind,
which hung in the storm quarter, and the clouds marched soddenly in
the opposite direction or hung almost motionless for a space. The
professor did not come within hailing distance, and seemed wholly
occupied with gathering what bark he could carry home before the
storm, but Mike was not reassured, nor was he thrown off his guard.
He waited until noon, expecting to see the girl come out for more
plotting. When she did not, he went back and cooked a hot dinner,
thinking that the way to get the best of spies on the government is to
watch them closer than they watch you, and to be ready to follow them
when they go off in the woods to plot. So he ate as much as he could
swallow, and filled his pockets with bacon and bread. He meant to keep
on their trail this time, and see just what they were up to.
Marion, however, did not venture out of the cabin. She was very much
afraid that Hank Brown was suspicious of Jack and was trying to locate
Jack's camp. She was also afraid of Hank on her own account, and she
did not want to see him ever again. She was certain that he had tried
hard to overtake her when she went running after Mike, and that she
had escaped him only by being as swift-footed as he, and by having the
start of him.
Then Kate could not walk at all, and with the professor busy outside,
common decency kept Marion in the house. She would like to have sent
Jack a heliograph message, but she did not dare with the professor
prowling around hunting dry limbs and bark. She had no confidence in
the professor's potential kindness toward a fellow in Jack's
predicament--the professor was too good to be trusted. He would tell
the police.
Normally she would have told Kate about Hank Brown, would have asked
Kate's advice, for Kate was practical when she forgot herself long
enough to be perfectly natural. But she and Kate were speaking only
when it was absolutely necessary to speak, and discussion was
therefore out of the question. She felt penned up, miserable. What if
Hank Brown found out about Jack and set the sheriff on his trail? He
would, she believed, if he knew--for he hated Jack because of that
fight. Jack had told her about it, keeping the cause fogged in
generalities.
All that night the wind howled up the mountainside and ranted through
the forest so that Marion could not sleep. Twice she heard a tree go
splitting down through the outstretched arms of its close neighbors,
to fall with a crash that quivered the cabin. She was glad that Jack's
camp was in a cave. She would have been terribly worried if he had to
stay out where a tree might fall upon him. She pictured the horror of
being abroad in the forest with the dark and that raging wind. She
hoped that the morning would bring calm, because she wanted to see
Jack again and take him some magazines, and tell him about Hank.
In the morning it was snowing and raining by turns, with gusty blasts
of wind. Marion looked out, even opened the door and stood upon the
step; but the storm dismayed her so that she gave up the thought of
going, until a chance sentence overheard while she was making the
professor's bed in the little lean-to changed her plan of waiting into
one of swift action. She heard Douglas say to Kate that, if Fred did
decide to inform the chief of police, they should be hearing something
very soon now. With the trial probably started, they would certainly
waste no time. They would wire up to the sheriff here.
"Oh, I wish you hadn't told Fred," Kate began to expostulate, when
Marion burst in upon them furiously.
"You told, did you?" she accused Kate tempestuously. "Doug, of all
people! You knew the little runt couldn't keep his hands off--you knew
he'd be so darned righteous he'd make all the trouble he could for
other people, because he hasn't got nerve enough to do anything wrong
himself. You couldn't keep it to yourself, for all your promises and
your crocodile tears! I ought to have known better than trust you with
anything. But I'll tell you one thing more, you two nasty nice
creatures that are worse than scrawling snakes--I'll tell you this: It
won't do you one particle of good to set the police after Jack. So go
ahead and tell, and be just as treacherous and mean as you like. You
won't have the pleasure of sending him to jail--because they'll never
catch him. My heavens, how I despise and loathe you two!"
While she spat venom at them she was stamping her feet into her
overshoes, buttoning her sweater, snatching up this thing and that
thing she wanted, drawing a woolly Tarn O'Shanter cap down over her
ears, hooking a cheap fur neckpiece that she had to tug and twist
because it fitted so tightly over her sweater collar. She took her
six-shooter--she was still deadly afraid of Hank Brown--and she got
her muff that matched the neck fur. Her eyes blazed whenever she
looked at them.
"Marion, listen to reason! You _can't_ go out in this storm!" Kate
began to whimper.
"Will you please shut up?" Marion whirled on her, primitive, fighting
rage contorting her face. "I can go anywhere I like. I only wish I
could go where I'd never see you again." She went out and pulled the
door violently shut. Stood a minute to brace herself for what she had
to do, and went into the storm as a swimmer breasts the breakers.
After her went Mike, scuttling away from his cabin with his rifle
swinging from his right hand, his left fumbling the buttons on his
coat.
At the fence corner Marion hesitated, standing with her back to the
wind, the snow driving past her with that faint hiss of clashing
particles which is the voice of a sleeting blizzard. She could take
the old, abandoned road which led up over the ridge topped by Taylor
Rock, and she would find the walking easier, perhaps. But the road
followed the line of least resistance through the hills, and that line
was by no means straight. Jack would probably be in the cave, out of
the storm; she had no hope of meeting him over on the slope on such a
day. Still, he might start down the mountain, and at any rate it would
be the shortest way up there. She turned down along the fence,
following the trail as she had done before, with Mike coming after her
as though he was stalking game: warily, swiftly, his face set and
eager, his eyes shining with the hunting lust.
Up the hill she went, bracing herself against the wind where it swept
through open spaces, shivering with the cold of it, fearful of the
great roaring overhead where the pinetops swayed drunkenly with
clashing branches: Dead limbs broke and came crashing down, bringing
showers of snow and bark and broken twigs and stripped needles from
the resisting branches in their path. She was afraid, so she went as
fast as she could, consoling her fear with the shrewd thought that the
storm would serve to hold back the sheriff and give Jack time to get
away somewhere. No one would dream of his traveling on such a day as
this, she kept telling herself over and over. It was getting worse
instead of better; the snow was coming thicker and the sleet was
lessening. It was going to be quite a climb to the cave; the wind must
be simply terrible up there, but she could see now that Jack would
never expect her out in such weather, and so he would stay close to
the camp fire.
At the top of the hill the wind swooped upon her and flung clouds of
snow into her face so that she was half blinded. She turned her back
upon it, blinked rapidly until her vision cleared again, and stood
there panting, tempted to turn back. No one would be crazy enough to
venture out today. They would wait until the storm cleared.
She looked back down the trail she had followed. Wherever the wind
had a clean sweep her tracks were filling already with snow. If she
did not wait, and if Jack got away now, they couldn't track him at
all. She really owed him that much of a chance to beat them. She put
up her muff, shielded her face from the sting of frozen snowflakes,
and went on, buffeted down the steep slope where Kate had sprained her
ankle, and thinking that she must be careful where she set her feet,
because it would be frightful if she had such an accident herself.
She did not expect to meet Jack on the farther edge of the gulch, but
she stood a minute beside the great pine, looking at the trampled snow
and thinking of Hank Brown's leering insinuations. Whatever had
started the fellow to suspecting such things? Uneasily she followed
Hank's cunning reasoning: Because Jack had never once gone in to
Quincy, except to settle with the Forest Service for his summer's
work; because Jack had not filed upon any claim in the mountains, yet
stayed there apart from his kind; because he avoided people--such
little things they were that made up the sum of Hank's suspicions!
Well, she was to blame for this present emergency, at any rate. If she
had not told Kate something she had no right to tell, she would not
have quite so much to worry about.
She turned and began to climb again, making her way through the
thicket that fringed the long ridge beyond; like a great, swollen
tongue reaching out toward the valley was this ridge, and she followed
it in spite of the tangled masses of young trees and bushes which she
must fight through to reach the more open timber. At least the danger
of falling trees and branches was not so great here, and the wind was
not quite so keen.
Behind her Mike followed doggedly, trailing her like a hound. Days
spent in watching, nights spent crouched and waiting had brought him
to the high pitch of desperation, that would stop at nothing which
seemed to his crazed brain necessary to save his life and his freedom.
Even the disdainful Murphy would have known the man was insane; but
Murphy was sitting warm and snug beside a small table with a glass
ready to his right hand, and Murphy was not worrying about Mike's
sanity, but about the next card that would fall before him. Murphy
thought how lucky he was to be in Quincy during this storm, instead of
cooped up in the little cabin with Mike, who would sit all day and
mumble, and never say anything worth listening to. So Mike kept to the
hunt--like a gentle-natured dog gone mad and dangerous and taking the
man-trail unhindered and unsuspected.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
GOLD OF REPENTANCE, SUNLIGHT OF LOVE AND A MAN GONE MAD
Marion was up at the foot of the last grilling climb, the steep
acclivity where manzanita shrubs locked arms and laughed at the
climber. Fearful of a sprained ankle like Kate's, she had watched
carefully where she set down her feet and had not considered that it
would be wise to choose just as carefully the route she should follow
to gain the top; so long as she was climbing in that general direction
she felt no uneasiness, because Taylor Rock topped it all, and she was
bound to come out somewhere close to the point at which she was
aiming.
But the wall of manzanita stopped her before she had penetrated a rod
into it. One solid mass blanketed with snow it looked to be when she
stepped carefully upon a rock and surveyed the slope. She had borne
too far to the right, away from the staggering rush of wind. She hated
to turn now and face the storm while she made her way around to the
line of timber, but she had no choice. So she retreated from the
manzanita and fought her way around it--finding it farther than she
had dreamed; finding, too, that the storm was a desperate thing, if
one had to face it for long in the open.
She made the timber, and stood leaning against the sheltered side of a
dark-trunked spruce whose branches were thick and wide-spread enough
to shield her. The physical labor of fighting her way thus far, and
the high altitude to which she had attained, made her pant like a
runner just after the race. She held her muff to her face again for
the sense of warmth and well-being its soft fur gave to her cheeks.
Certainly, no one else would be fool enough to come out on such a day,
she thought. And what a surprise to Jack, seeing her come puffing into
his cave! She had not been there since the snow fell, just before
Thanksgiving. Now it was nearly Christmas--a month of solitary
grandeur Jack had endured.
She glanced up at the tossing boughs above her; felt the great tree
trunk quiver when a fresh blast swept the top; looked out at the misty
whiteness of the storm, clouded with swaying pine branches. What a
world it was! But she was not afraid of it; somehow she felt its big,
rough friendliness even now. It did not occur to her that the
mountains could work her ill, though she reminded herself that
standing still was not the best way to keep warm on such a day.
She started up again, ignorantly keeping among the trees, that a
mountaineer would have shunned. But straightway she stopped and looked
around her puzzled. Surely she had not come down this way when she
skirted the manzanita. She remembered coming in among the trees from
the right. She turned and went that way, saw her filling footprints in
the snow, and plodded back. There were tracks coming down the hill,
and she had not made them. They must surely be Jack's.
With the new wisdom of having tramped nearly every day through snow,
she studied these new tracks and her own where she had come to the
spruce tree. These other tracks, she decided, had been made
lately--she must have missed by minutes seeing him pass before her.
Perhaps she could overtake him. So she faced the wind and ran gasping
down the slope, following the tracks. She nearly caught Mike unaware,
but she did not know it. She hurried unsuspectingly past the tree
where he was hiding, his rifle held ready to fire if she looked his
way. He was hesitating, mumbling there with his finger on the trigger
when she went out of sight around a bush, still following where the
tracks led. Mike stepped out from behind the tree and came bowlegging
after her, walking with that peculiar, flat-footed gait of the
mountain trained man.
Luck was with her. Jack had gone down a gully rim, thinking to cross
it farther on, ran into rocks and a precipitous bank, and was coming
back upon his trail. He met Marion face to face. She gave a cry that
had in it both tears and laughter, and stood looking at him big-eyed
over her muff.
"Well, forevermore! I thought I never would catch you! I was going to
the cave--" Something in Jack's scrutinizing, unfriendly eyes stopped
her.
"Sorry, but I'm not at home," he said. There was more than a sulky
mood in his tone. Marion was long since accustomed to the boyish
gruffness with which Jack strove to hide heartaches. This was
different. It froze her superficial cheerfulness to a panicky
conviction that Jack had in some manner discovered her betrayal of
him; or else he had taken alarm at Hank's prowling.
"What's the matter, Jack? Did you find out about--anybody knowing
you're here? Are you beating it, now?"
"I don't know what you mean." Jack still eyed her with that
disconcerting, measuring look that seemed to accuse without making
clear just what the specific accusation might be. "How do you
mean--beating it?"
"I mean--oh, Jack, I did an awful thing, and I came up to tell you.
And Hank Brown knows something, I'm sure, and that worries me, too. I
came out to see if I could meet you, the other day, while Doug stayed
with Kate. And I ran right onto Hank Brown, and he began asking about
you right away, Jack, and hinting things and talking about tracks. He
showed me where you had waited behind the tree, and where we stood and
talked, and he guessed about my bringing cigarettes, even. He's the
foxiest thing--he just worked it all out and kept grinning so
mean--but I fooled him, though. I made him think it was Fred that had
been out hunting, and that I met him, and the package had candy in it.
I had to kid him away from the subject of you--and then the big rube
got so fresh--I had the awfullest time you ever saw, Jack, getting
away from the fool.
"But the point I'm getting at is that he suspects something. He said
you hadn't been near Quincy, and there must be some reason. He said
you didn't have any mine located, because you hadn't filed any claim,
or anything. But that isn't the worst--"
"I don't care what Hank thinks." Jack pulled the collar of his coat
closer to his ears, because of the seeking wind and snow. "Get under
the cedar, while I tell you. I was going without seeing you, because I
saw you and Hank together and I didn't like the looks of it. I was
sore as a goat, Marion, and that's the truth. But it's like this: I'm
going back home. I can't stand it any longer--I don't mean the way
I've been living, though that ain't any soft graft either. But it's
mother, I'm thinking of. I never gave her a square deal, Marion.
"I--you know how I have felt about her, but that's all wrong. She's
been all right--she's a brick. I'm the one that's given the raw deal.
I've been a selfish, overbearing, good-for-nothing ass ever since I
could walk, and if she wasn't a saint she'd have kicked me out long
ago. Why, I sneaked off and left a lie on her dresser, and never gave
her a chance to get the thing straight, or anything. I tell you,
Marion, if I was in her place, and had a measly cub of a son like I've
been, I'd drown him in a tub, or something. Honest to John, I wouldn't
have a brat like that on the place! How she's managed to put up with
me all these years is more than I can figure; it gets my goat to look
back at the kinda mark I've been--strutting around, spending money I
never earned, and never thanking her--feeling abused, by thunder,
because she didn't--oh, it's hell! I can't talk about it. I'm going
back and see her, and tell her where I stand. She'll kick me out if
she's got any sense, but that'll be all right. I'll see her, and then
I'm going to the chief of police and straighten out that bandit
stuff. I'm going to tell just how the play came up--just a josh, it
was. I'll tell 'em--it'll be bad enough, at that, but maybe it'll do
some good--make other kids think twice before they get to acting
smart-alecky.
"So you run along home, Marion, and maybe some day--if they don't send
me up for life, or anything like that--maybe I'll have the nerve to
tell yuh--" A dark flush showed on his cheek-bones, that were gaunt
from worry and hard living. He moved uneasily, tugging at the collar
of his sweater.
"You've got your nerve now, Jack Corey, if you want to know what I
think," Marion retorted indignantly. "Why, you're going up against an
awfully critical time! And do you think for a minute, you big silly
kid, that I'll let you go alone? I--I never did--ah--respect you as
much as I do right now. I--well, I'm going right along with you. I'm
going to see that chief of police myself, and I'm going to see your
mother. And if they don't give you a square deal, I'm going to tell
them a few things! I--"
"You can't go. Don't be a fool, sweetheart. You mustn't let on that
you've thrown in with me at all, and helped me, and all that. I
appreciate it--but my friendship ain't going to be any help to--"
"Jack Corey, I could shake you! The very idea of you talking that way
makes me wild! I am going. You can't stop me from riding on the train,
can you? And you can't stop me from seeing the chief--"
"I'd look nice, letting your name get mixed up with mine! Sweetheart,
have some sense!" Jack may not have known what name he had twice
called her, but Marion's eyes lighted with blue flames.
"Some things are better than sense--sweetheart," she said, with a shy
boldness that startled her. The last word was spoken into the
snow-matted fur of her muff, but Jack heard it.
"You--oh, God! Marion, do you--care?" He reached out and caught her by
the shoulders. "You mustn't. I'm not fit for a girl like you. Maybe
some day--"
"Some day doesn't mean anything at all. This part of today is what
counts. I'm going with you. I--I feel as if I'd die if I didn't. If
they send you to jail, I'll make them send me too--if I have to rob a
Chinaman!" She laughed confusedly, hiding her face. "It's awful, but I
simply couldn't live without--without--"
"Me? Say, that's the way I've been feeling about you, ever since Lord
knows how long. But I didn't suppose you'd ever--"
"Say, my feet are simply freezing!" Marion interrupted him.
"We'll have to start on. It would be terrible if we missed the train,
Jack."
"You oughtn't to go. Honestly, I mean it. Unless we get married, it
would--"
"Why, of course we'll get married! Have I got to simply propose to
you? We'll have to change at Sacramento anyway--or we can change there
just as well as not--and we'll get married while we're waiting for the
train south. I hope you didn't think for a minute that I'd--"
"It isn't fair to you." Jack moved out from under the sheltering cedar
and led the way up the gully's rim, looking mechanically for an easy
crossing. "I'm a selfish enough brute without letting you--"
Marion plucked at his sleeve and stopped him.