The Lookout Man 8In Which a Girl Plays Billiards on the Mountain Top
18
Literature · Western
The Lookout Man 8
In Which a Girl Plays Billiards on the Mountain Top
BowerEnglish
Jack heard some one coming, snatched up a magazine and his pipe and promptly retired to his pet crevice in the rocks. Usually he locked the door before he went, but the climber sounded close--just over the peak of the last little knob, in fact. He pulled the door shut and ran, muttering something about darned tourists. Drive a man crazy, they would, if he were fool enough to stay and listen to their fool talk.
He crawled well back into the niche, settled himself comfortably and lighted his pipe. They never came over his way--and the wind blew from the station. He did not believe they would smell the smoke.
Darn it all, he had the wrong magazine! He half rose, meaning to scurry back and get the one he wanted; but it was too late now. He heard the pebbles knocked loose where the faint trail dipped down over the knob directly behind the station. So he settled back with his pipe for solace, and scowled down at the world, and waited for the darn tourists to go.
But this particular darn tourist had two reasons for lingering up there. Her first and greatest reason was a sheer delight in the panorama spread below and all around her, and the desire to saturate her soul with the beauty of it, her lungs with the keen elixir of the wind, heady with the eight thousand feet of altitude. Her second reason was a perverse desire to show Kate that she was not to be bossed around like a kid, and dictated to and advised and lectured whenever she wanted to do something which Kate did not want to do. Why, for instance, should she miss the pleasure of climbing to the very top of the peak just because Kate began to puff before they were half way up, and wanted to turn back?
Of course, she would do anything in the world for Kate; but that was no reason why Kate should be selfish about little things. If she didn't want to wait until Marion came down, she could walk home alone. There was a good road, and Marion certainly would never think of objecting. She believed in absolute personal liberty in little things. Therefore she meant to stay up on the peak just exactly as long as she wanted to stay, regardless of what Kate wanted to do. She had not tried to force Kate to come up with her--if Kate would just stop to think a minute. When Kate sat down on that rock and said she wouldn't climb another step, Marion had not urged her at all. She had waited until she was sure that Kate would not change her mind, and then she had come on up without any fuss or argument. And she would stay until she was ready to go down. It would be silly to spoil her pleasure now by worrying. She would like to see a sunset from up here. She had her gun with her, and anyway, she could get home easily before dark. She believed she would stay, just this once. Really, it would do Kate good to discover that Marion liked to please herself once in a while.
Which was all very well for Marion Rose, but rather hard on Jack, who was not in a mood for company. He smoked hopefully for a half hour or so. Most tourists got enough of it in a half hour. They began to feel the altitude then, or found the wind disagreeable, or they were in a hurry to climb down to the lake and fish, or they had to think about the trip home. Besides, their vocabularies were generally exhausted in half an hour, and without superlatives they could not gaze upon the "view"; not with any satisfaction, that is. But this tourist could be heard moving here and there among the rocks, with long lapses of silence when she just stood and gazed. Jack listened and waited, and grew more peevish as the lagging minutes passed. If he went out now, he would have to go through the whole performance.
The telephone rang. And while Jack was sulkily getting to his feet, he heard a girl's voice answering the phone. The nerve of her! What business had she inside, anyway? Must a fellow padlock that door every time he went out, to keep folks from going where they had no business to be? He went angrily to the station; much more angrily than was reasonable, considering the offense committed against him.
He saw a girl in a short khaki skirt and high laced boots and a pongee blouse belted trimly with leather, bending her head over the mouthpiece of the telephone. She had on a beach hat that carried the full flavor of Venice in texture and tilt, and her hair was a ripe corn color, slicked back from her temples in the fashion of the month. Graceful and young she was, groomed as though thousands were to look upon her. Normally Jack's eyes would have brightened at this sight, his lips would have curved enticingly, his voice would have taken the tone of incipient philandering. But in his present mood he snapped at her.
"I beg your pardon. This is not a public telephone booth. It's a private office."
She glanced inattentively his way, her smile directed mentally toward the person on the other end of the wire. With her free hand she waved him to silence and spoke, still smiling, into the mouthpiece.
"You're sure I won't do? I believe I could qualify, and I want--"
"If you please, this is not a public--"
But she waved her hand again impatiently and listened, engrossed and smiling. "Oh, just because I wanted to hear a human voice, I guess. I'd forgotten what a phone looks like, and so when I heard ... No, I am not a tourist. I'm a neighbor, and I'm the lonesomest neighbor in these mountains.... What?... Oh, down the road in a spooky little valley where there's a log cabin and a trout stream--only I haven't caught any yet. They bite, but they simply won't stay hooked. What?... Oh, just worms, and those fuzzy flies made with a hook on them--you know.... Oh, thanks! I surely do wish you could.... The what?... Oh! well, I don't know, I'm sure. There's an excited young man here who keeps telling me this is not a public telephone booth--do you mean him, I wonder?... He does look something like a fireman, now you mention it. What do you use him for? a signal fire, or something?... Oh! You do? Why, forevermore! Is he nice to talk to?... No, I haven't. He just keeps telling me this is not a public ... Oh, I don't! I don't see how anybody could mind him--do you?... Well, of course, a person doesn't look for politeness away up ... Ha-ha--why, does the altitude make a difference? Maybe that's what ails me, then-- That's awfully nice of you, man ... No, never mind what my name is. Don't let's be ordinary. I'm just a voice from the mountain top, and you're just a voice from the valley. So be it.... Without an invitation? I only thanked you ..."
"Keep on," interjected Jack savagely, "and you'll have his wife trailing you up with a gun!"
"Well--we'll see.... But do come sometime when you can--and bring your wife! I'd love to meet some woman.... Oh, all right. Good-by."
With a gloved palm pressed hard over the mouthpiece she turned reproachfully upon Jack. "Now you did fix things, didn't you? Of course, you knew I couldn't be nice to a man with a wife, so you had to go and spoil everything. And I was just beginning to have a lovely time!"
"Help yourself," Jack offered with heavy sarcasm. "Don't mind me at all."
"Well, he wants to talk to you," she said. She put her lips again to the mouthpiece and added a postscript. "Pardon me, but I held the line a minute while I quarreled with your fireman. You're wrong--I don't find him so nice to talk to. You may talk to him if you want to--I'm sure you're welcome!" Whereupon she surrendered the receiver and walked around the high, map-covered table, and amused herself by playing an imaginary game of billiards with the pointer for a cue and two little spruce cones which she took from her pocket for balls.
When Jack had finished talking and had hung up the receiver, he leaned back against the shelf and watched her, his hands thrust deep into his trousers pockets. He still scowled--but one got the impression that he was holding that frown consciously and stubbornly and not because his mood matched it.
Marion placed a cone at a point on the chart which was marked Greenville, aimed for Spring Garden and landed the cone neatly in the middle of Jack's belt.
"Missed the pocket a mile," he taunted grudgingly, hating to be pleasant and yet helpless against the girl's perfect composure and good humor.
"Give it back, and I'll try it again. There's a place called the Pocket. I'll try that, for luck." Then she added carelessly--"What would have happened, if you hadn't answered that man at all?"
"I'd have been canned, maybe."
"Forevermore." She pretended to chalk her cue with a tiny powder puff which she took from a ridiculous vanity bag that swung from her belt. "Wouldn't you kind of like to be canned--under the circumstances?"
"No, I wouldn't. I need the money." Jack bit his lips to keep from grinning at the powder-puff play.
"Oh, I see." She tried another shot. "Why don't you cut the legs off this table? I would. It's miles too high."
"I don't monkey with government property, myself." He placed a peculiar accent on the last word, thus pointing his meaning very clearly.
"Now, what do you know about that? Missed it--with a government cone, shot by a government stick on a government table, while a government scowl fairly shrieks: 'Cut out this desecration!'" She chalked her cue gravely, powdered her nose afterward, using a round scrap of a mirror not much bigger than a silver dollar. "Do you stay up here all the time and scowl, all by yourself?"
"All the time and scowl, all by myself." Jack took his hands from his pockets that he might light his pipe; which was a sign that he was nearly ready to treat the girl kindly. "If you object to smoke--" and he waved one hand significantly toward the open door.
"All the time--all by yourself. And you don't want to be canned, either." With the pointer Marion drew aimless little invisible volutes upon the map, connecting the two spruce cones with an imaginary scroll design. "How touching!" she said enigmatically.
"Sure, you're heart-broken over the pathos of it. I can see that. You ought to put in about a week here--that's all I've got to say."
"Think I couldn't?" She looked across at him queerly.
"You wouldn't dare go any farther away than the spring. You'd have to stay right here on this peak every minute of the twenty-four hours. They call up at all kinds of ungodly times, just to see if you're on the job, if they think you're snitching. They'd catch you gone sometime--you couldn't get by with it--and then--"
"The can," finished Miss Marion gravely. "But what I want to know is, what have you done?"
"Done?" Jack's jaw dropped slack away from the pipestem. "What yuh mean, done?"
"Yes. What have you done that they should put you up here and make you stay up here? It sounds--"
"Now, even a tourist knows that this is a Forest Service lookout station, and that I'm here to watch out for fires down below! I'm your guardian angel, young lady. Treat me with respect, if not with kindness."
"I'm a member of the no-treat reform club. Honestly, don't they let you leave here at all?"
"Four days a month." He heaved a heavy sigh and waved his pipe toward the great outdoors. "'S big world, when it's all spread out in sight," he volunteered.
"Can't you--can't you even go down to the lake and fish, when you want to?"
"Nope. Four days a month--and if they didn't happen to have a spare man lying round handy, to send up here to take my place, I couldn't go then even."
Marion regarded him meditatively. "You can have an hour's recess now, if you like," she offered generously after a minute. "I'll stay and answer the phone, and stand them off if they want to talk to you. I'm good at that. You can go and climb down to the lake and fish, and have fun."
"Tell me to go and jump in the lake and I might do it," Jack returned gloomily. He found it rather pleasant to be sympathized with and pitied. "What if a fire broke out while I was gone?"
"Well, what if? I could do what you would do, couldn't I? What do you do when a fire breaks out?"
That gave Jack a fair excuse for leaving his place by the shelf, and coming around to her side of the table, and for taking the pointer from her and standing close beside her while he explained the chart. Needless to say, he made use of the excuse immediately.
"First off," he instructed, "you don't want to be a boob and go reporting train smoke, like I did the first day I was here. Picked up a black smoke down below, here--right down there! I got the number on the chart and phoned it in, and the lookout on Claremont didn't yeep about it. So they called up and asked him to come alive and report. By that time the smoke had moved from where I saw it, and the whole train was in sight from his station, coming round the hill into Marston. He never thought of that being it, he said afterward. They got busy in the office and called me up again, and I located her again--only in a different place. Fellow on Claremont--that's it away over there; see that white speck? That's the station, just like this one. He's an old crab, Hank tells me. He said I must be bugs. Had him squinting around some, I bet! Then they got wise that I was reporting a through freight, and they kid me about it yet. But they fell for it at first all right!"
"What do you know about that!" Marion melodiously exclaimed, and laughed companionably.
She wanted to know all the things that real tourists want to know, and Jack forgot that he hated to answer foolish questions. The piles of empty coal-oil cans, for instance--she should have known that they had been packed up there full, to run the oil stove in the corner. The spring--he had to take his bucket and go down with her and show her where the spring was, but he did not seem to mind that, either. The flag, whipping over the station on its short staff, interested her too, and he helped her guess how long it would be before the stars and stripes snapped themselves to ribbons. The book on astronomy she dipped into, turning it to look at the full-page illustrations of certain constellations that were to Jack like old friends. The books on forestry she glanced at, and the magazines she inspected with less interest.
"Oh, I've got the latest movie magazines. I could bring them up sometime if you like--or send them by the man who brings your stuff up, if you'll tell him to stop at the cabin."
"You bring them yourself," Jack urged, his eagerness so open and unashamed that Marion blushed, and suddenly remembered Kate down the slope there waiting for her. She must go, she said; and she went, almost as suddenly as she came, and never mentioned her half-formed determination to wait up there for the sunset.
Jack went with her as far as he dared, and stood under a wind-tortured balsam fir and watched her out of sight. On the last ledge before the trail dipped down over the hump that would hide her for good, she turned and looked up at him. She stood there poised--so it seemed--between mountain-crest and the sky. The lake lay quiet and shadowed, deep below her, as though God had dropped a tear and the mountain was holding it reverently cupped, sheltering it from the keen winds of the heights. Beyond, painted with the delicate shadings of distance and yellow sunlight, Indian Valley lay quietly across the lap of the world, its farms and roads and fences sketched in lightly, as with the swift pencil strokes of an artist; its meandering, willowfringed streams making contrast with the yellowed fields of early harvest time.
She stood there poised like a bird on the rim of the world. Her slimness, her sure grace, her yellow hair shining under the beach hat she wore tilted back from her face, struck him like a blow in the face from that pleasurable past wherein woman beauty had been so abundant. She was of the town; moreover, he felt that she was of the town from which he had fled in guilt and terror. She stood for a long minute, taking in the full sweep of the rugged peak. She was not looking at him especially, until she turned to go on. Then she waved her hand carelessly--slightingly, he felt in his misery--and went down the steep slope.
Until he could no longer see the crown of her hat he looked after her. Then, the sickness of his terrible loneliness upon him again, he turned and slowly climbed back to his glass-walled prison.
