Down the balsam and manzanita slope toward the little valley where she lived, Jack stared hungrily during many an empty, dragging hour. Until the darkness had twice drawn down the black curtain that shut him away from the world, he had hoped she would come. She had been so friendly, so understandingly sympathetic--she must know how long the days were up there.
On the third day Hank came riding up the trail that sought the easiest slopes. He brought coal-oil and bacon and coffee and smoking tobacco and the week's accumulation of newspapers, and three magazines; but he did not bring any word from Marion Rose, nor the magazines she had promised. When Hank had unsaddled the horses to rest their backs, and had eaten his lunch and had smoked a cigarette in the shade of a rock, his slow thoughts turned to the gossip of his little world.
He told of the latest encounter with the crabbed fireman on Claremont, grinning appreciatively because the fireman's ill temper had been directed at a tourist who had gone up with Hank. He related a small scandal that was stirring the social pond of Quincy, and at last he swung nearer to the four who had taken mining claims along Toll Gate Creek.
"Too bad you can't go down to Toll-house an' git acquainted with your neighbors," he drawled half maliciously. "There's a girl in the bunch that's sure easy to look at. Other one is an old maid--looks too much like a schoolma'm to suit me. But say--I'm liable to make a trip up here twice a week, from now on! I'm liable to eat my dinner 'fore I git here, too. Some class to that girl, now, believe me! Only trouble is, I'm kinda afraid one of the men has got a string on her. There's two of 'em in the outfit. One is one of them he schoolma'ms that goes around in a boiled shirt and a hard-boiled hat, buzzin' like a mosquito. He's sweet on the old maid. It's the other one I'm leery of. He's the brother of the old maid, and he's the kind that don't say much but does a lot uh thinkin'. Big, too.
"They've took up a bunch of minin' claims around there and are livin' in that cabin. Goin' to winter there, the old maid was tellin' me. I brought out their mail to 'em. Marion Rose is the girl's name. I guess she's got a feller or two down in Los Angeles--I brought out a couple letters today in men's writin'--different hands, at that.
"They's somethin' queer about 'em that I can't see through. They was both settin' out in the sun--on that log right by the trail as you go in to the cabin--and they'd washed their hair and had it all down their backs dryin' it. And the girl was cleanin' the old maid's finger nails for her! I come purty near astin' the old maid if she had to have somebody wash her face for her too. But they didn't seem to think it was anything outa the way at all--they went right to talkin' and visitin' like they was fixed for company. I kinda s'picion Marion bleaches her hair. Seems to me like it's a mite too yeller to be growed that way. Drugstore blonde, I'd call her. You take notice first time you see her. I'll bet you'll say--"
"Aw, can that chatter, you poor fish!" Jack exploded unexpectedly, and smote Hank on his lantern jaw with the flat of his palm. "You hick from hick-town! You brainless ape! You ain't a man--you're a missing link! Give you a four-foot tail, by harry, and you'd go down the mountain swinging from branch to branch like the monkey that you are! What are you, you poor piece of cheese, to talk about a woman?"
His hand to his jaw, Hank got up from where he had sprawled on his back. He was not a fighting man, preferring to satisfy his grudges by slurring people behind their backs. But Jack smacked him again and thought of a few other things to which he might liken Hank, and after that Hank fought like a trapped bobcat, with snarls and kicks and gouging claws. He scratched Jack's neck with his grimy fingernails, and he tried to set his unwashed teeth into Jack's left ear while the two of them rolled over and over on the slippery mat of squaw-carpet. And for that he was pummeled unmercifully before Jack tore himself loose and got up.
"Now, you beat it!" Jack finished, panting. "And after this you keep your tongue off the subject of women. Don't dare to mention even a squaw to me, or I'll pitch you clean off the peak!"
Hank mumbled an insult, and Jack went after him again. All the misery, all the pent-up bitterness of the past three months rose within him in a sudden storm that clouded his reason. He fought Hank like a crazy man--not so much because Hank was Hank and had spoken slightingly of that slim girl, but because Hank was something concrete, something which Jack could beat with his fists and that could give back blow for blow. Too long had he waged an unequal conflict with his own thoughts, his aloneness; with regrets and soul hunger and idleness. When he had spent his strength and most of his rage together, he let Hank go and felt tenderly his own bruised knuckles.
He never knew how close he was to death in the next five minutes, while Hank was saddling up to go. For Hank's fingers went several times to his rifle and hovered there, itching to do murder, while Hank's mind revolved the consequences. Murder would be madness--suicide, practically. The boy would be missed when he did not answer the telephone. Some one would be sent up from the Forest Service and the murder would be discovered, unless--unless Hank could hide the body. There was the lake--but the lake was so clear! Besides, there was always the chance at this season of the year that some tourist would be within sight. Some tourist might even hear the shot. It would be risky--too risky. Like Jack's, his rage cooled while he busied himself mechanically with saddling his horse. After all, Hank was not criminally inclined, except as anger drove him. He set the pack-saddle and empty sacks on the pack horse, led his horse a few feet farther away and mounted, scowling.
In the saddle he turned and looked for the first time full at Jack. "You think you're darn smart!" he snarled wryly because of a cut lip that had swollen all on one side. "You may think you're smart, but they's another day comin'. You wait--that's all I got to say!"
It did not make him feel any better when Jack laughed suddenly and loud. "R-r-r-evenge! By my heart's blood, I shall have r-r-evenge!" he intoned mockingly. "Gwan outa my sight, Hank. You ain't making any hit with me at all. Scat!"
"All right fer you!" Hank grumbled, in the futile repartee of the stupid. "You think you're smart, but I don't. You wait!" Then he rode away down the trail, glowering at the world through puffy lids and repeating to himself many crushing things he wished he had thought to say to Jack.
Jack himself had recourse to a small bottle of iodine left there by a predecessor, painting his scratches liberally, and grinning at himself in the little mirror because Hank had not once landed a bruising blow on his face. After that he washed the dishes and went to the spring for a bucket of fresh water, whistling all the way. It was amazing how that fight had cleared his mental atmosphere.
After that, he perched up on the little rock pinnacle just behind the station, and stared down the mountain toward Toll-Gate Flat, where she lived. He saw Hank ride into the balsam thicket; and he, too, thought of several things he regretted not having said to Hank. What rotten luck it was that he should be held up here on that pinnacle while Hank Brown could ride at his leisure down into that tiny valley! The government ought to gather up all the Hank Browns in the country and put them up on such places as these, and let decent fellows do the riding around.
Down there, beyond the trail, on a slope where the manzanita was not quite so matted together, he saw something move slowly. Then it stopped, and he got a gleam of light, the reflection, evidently of some bright object. He lifted the telescope and focussed it, and his heart came leaping up into his throat just as the figure came leaping into close view through the powerful lense.
It was Marion Rose, up by the hydrometer that looked something like a lone beehive perched on a wild slope by itself. She was sitting on a rock with her feet crossed, and she was inspecting her chin in the tiny mirror of her vanity bag. Some blemish--or more likely an insect bite, from the way her fingertip pressed carefully a certain point of her chin--seemed to hold all her attention. It was the sun flashing on the bit of mirror that had made the gleam.
Jack watched her hungrily; her slim shape, leaning negligently sidewise; her hat pushed back a little; her hair, the color of ripe corn, fluffed where the wind had blown it; the clear, delicate, creamy tint of her skin, her mouth curved in soft, red lines that held one's eyes fascinated when they moved in speech. He watched her, never thinking of the rudeness of it.
And then he saw her lift her face and look up to the peak, directly at him, it seemed to him. His face turned hot, and he lowered the glass guiltily. But of course she could not see him--or if she could, he looked no more than a speck on the rock. He lifted the telescope again, and her face jumped into close view. She was still looking up his way, the little mirror turning idly in her hand. Her face was thoughtful; almost wistful, he dared to think. Perhaps she was lonesome, too. She had told him that she had spells of being terribly lonesome.
Jack had an inspiration. He climbed hurriedly down off the rock, got his own looking glass and climbed back again. He turned the glass so that the sun shown on it aslant and threw a glare toward her. Then he lifted the telescope quickly to see if she noticed the sparkle. After a moment he decided that she had seen it but did not quite know what had caused it. At any rate, she was still looking that way, which was something.
Like the boy he was, he lay down on his stomach, balanced the telescope across a splintered notch in the rock so that he could steady it with one hand, and with the other he tilted the mirror; inadvertently tilted the telescope also, and came near smashing the mirror before he got the two balanced again. Well, she was still looking, at any rate. And now she was frowning a little, as though she was puzzled.
He signalled again, and this time he managed to keep her in the field of the telescope. He saw her smile suddenly and glance down at her vanity mirror. Still smiling, she lifted it and turned it to the sun, looking from it to the peak.
"She's on! I'll be John Browned if she ain't on to it already!" Jack chortled to the birds, and sent her a signal. She answered that with a flash. He managed two flashes without losing her in the telescope, and she immediately sent two flashes in reply. Three he gave, and she answered with three. He could see her laughing like a child with a new game. He could see the impish light in her eyes when she glanced up, like a woman engrossed in her favorite pastime of be-deviling some man. He laughed back at her, as though she was as near to him as she looked to be. He quite forgot that she was not, and spoke to her aloud.
"Some little heliographing--what? Come on up, and we'll make up a code, so we can talk! Aw, come on--it ain't so far! Husky girl like you can climb it in no time at all. Aw, come on!"
A couple of tourists, panting up to the peak with unsightly amber goggles and a kodak and a dog, found him addressing empty air and looked at him queerly. Jack could have murdered them both when he turned his head and saw them gaping open-mouthed at his performance. But he did not. He climbed shame-facedly down and answered the usual questions with his usual patient courtesy, and hoped fervently that they would either die at once of heart failure or go back to the lake and leave him alone. Instead, they took pictures of the station and the rocks and of him--though Jack was keen-witted enough to keep in the shade and turn his face away from the camera.
They were such bores of tourists! The woman was sunburned and frowsy, and her khaki outing suit was tight where it should be loose, and hung in unsightly wrinkles where it should fit snugly. Her high-laced mountain boots were heavy and shapeless, and she climbed here and there, and stood dumpily and stared down at Jack's beloved woods through her amber glasses until she nearly drove him frantic. She kept saying: "Oh, papa, don't you wish you could get a snap of that?" and "Oh, papa, come and see if you can't snap this!"
Papa was not much better. Papa's khaki suit had come off a pile on the counter of some department store--the wrong pile. Papa kept taking off his hat and wiping his bald spot, and hitching his camera case into a different position, so that it made a new set of wrinkles in the middle of his back. The coat belt strained against its buttons over papa's prosperous paunch, and he wheezed when he talked.
And down there on the manzanita slope, little flashes of light kept calling, calling, and Jack dared not answer. One, two--one, two, three--could anything in the world be more maddening?
Then all at once a puff of smoke came ballooning up through the trees, down beyond the girl and well to the right of the balsam thicket. Jack whirled and dove into the station, his angry eyes flashing at the tourists.
"There's a forest fire started, down the mountain," he told them harshly. "You better beat it for Keddie while you can get there!" He slammed the door in their startled faces and laid the pointer on its pivot and swung it toward the smoke.
The smoke was curling up already in an ugly yellowish brown cloud, spreading in long leaps before the wind. Jack's hand shook when he reached for the telephone to report the fire. The chart and his own first-hand knowledge of the mountainside told him that the fire was sweeping down north of Toll-Gate Creek toward the heavily timbered ridge beyond.
Heedless of the presence or absence of the tourists, he snatched the telescope and climbed the rock where he could view the slope where the girl had been. The smoke was rolling now over the manzanita slope, and he could not pierce its murkiness. He knew that the slope was not yet afire, but the wind was bearing the flames that way, and the manzanita would burn with a zipping rush once it started. He knew. He had stood up there and watched the flames sweep over patches of the shrub.
He rushed back into the station, seized the telephone and called again the main office.
"For the Lord sake, hustle up here and do something!" he shouted aggressively. "The whole blamed mountain's afire!" That, of course, was exaggeration, but Jack was scared.
Out again on the rock, he swept the slope beneath him with his telescope. He could not see anything of the girl, and the swirling smoke filled him with a horror too great for any clear thought. He climbed down and began running down the pack trail like one gone mad, never stopping to wonder what he could do to save her; never thinking that he would simply be sharing her fate, if what he feared was true--if the flames swept over that slope.
He stumbled over a root and fell headlong, picked himself up and went on again, taking great leaps, like a scared deer. She was down there. And when the fire struck that manzanita it would just go swoosh in every direction at once.... And so he, brave, impulsive young fool that he was, rushed down into it as though he were indeed a god and could hold back the flames until she was safe away from the place.
