Grinning, Hank glanced down at her feet. "Yes, I"ve seen lots of tracks up around this way, and up towards Taylor k.o.c.k. 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 pa.s.s. 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 b.u.t.ts, 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 b.u.t.ts a-tall--an" that"s when a feller most generally smokes--when he"s pa.s.sin" 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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.