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.
