The Lookout Man Part 12

"Oh, no, I suppose not. But when it comes to getting herself caught on the other side of the fire, and going up to that lookout station and staying all night, and n.o.body up there except the lookout man--"

"No! By George, did she do that?"

"Yes, she did, and I think it's perfectly awful! I don't suppose she could get back, after the fire got started," she admitted grudgingly, "but she might have done _something_, don't you think? She could have gone down the other side, it seems to me. I know I'd have gotten back somehow. And what hurts me, Douglas, is the way she pa.s.sed it over, as though it was nothing! She knew how worried I was, and she didn't seem to care at all. She made a joke of it."

"Well! By George, I am surprised. But Marion is inclined to be a trifle self-centered, I have noticed. Probably she doesn't realize your point of view at all. I am sure she likes you too much to hurt you deliberately, Kate. And young people nowadays have such different standards of morals. She may actually feel that it isn't shocking, and she may be hurt at your apparent lack of confidence in her."

"She couldn't possibly think that." Kate was too loyal at heart to contemplate that possibility for a moment. "Marion knows better than that. But it does hurt me to see her so careless of her own dignity and good name. We're strangers in this community, and people are going to judge us by appearances. They have nothing else to go by. I care more for Marion, it seems to me, than she cares for herself. Why, Douglas, that girl even telephoned down to the Forest Service that she was up there and going to stay, and wanted them to send word to me.

And they are men in that office--human beings, that are bound to think things. What _can_ they think, not knowing Marion at all, and just judging by appearances?"

"I suppose they understood perfectly that it would be impossible for her to get home across the fire, Kate. By George! I can see myself that she couldn't do it. I shouldn't blame the girl for that, Kate.

And I can see also that it was a consideration for you that prompted her to send word in the only way she could. Poor girl, you are completely worn out. Now be a good girl and go in and rest, and don't worry any more about it. I shall stay here and keep an eye on camp--and I want you to promise that you will lie down and take a good, long sleep. Go--you need it more than you realize."

Tears--unreasoning, woman tears--stood in Kate's eyes at the tender solicitude of his tone. Very submissively she picked up the pitcher and the gla.s.ses and went into the cabin. The professor sighed when she was gone, kneaded the pillows into a more comfortable position and proceeded to keep an eye on camp by falling into so sound a sleep that within five minutes he was snoring gently. It would be cruel to suspect him of wanting to be rid of Kate and her troubles so that he could sleep, but he certainly lost no time in profiting by her absence. Nature had skimped her material when she fashioned Professor Harrison. He was not much taller than Kate--not so tall as Marion by a full inch--and he was narrow shouldered and shallow chested, with thin, bony wrists and a bulging forehead that seemed to bulge worse than it really did because of his scanty growth of hair. He was a kind hearted little man, but the forest rangers had worked him hard all night. One cannot blame him for wanting to sleep in peace, with no sound but the gurgle of the creek two rods away, and the warbling call of a little, yellow-breasted bird in the alders near by.

It was Fred Humphrey tramping wearily into camp three hours later, who awoke him. Fred was an altogether different type of man, and he was not so careful to conceal his own desires. Just now he was hungry, and so he called for Kate. Moreover, he had with him two men, and they were just as hungry as he was, even if they did suppress the fact politely.

"Oh, Kate! Can you scare up something right away for us to eat? Make a lot of coffee, will you? And never mind fancy fixings--real grub is what we want right now. Where's Marion? She can help you get it ready, can't she?"

Kate was heard moving inside the cabin when Fred first called her. Now she looked out of the door, and dodged back embarra.s.sed when she saw the two strangers. She was in a kimono, and had her hair down; evidently she had obeyed the professor implicitly in the matter of going to sleep.

"Oh!" she said, "I don't know where Marion is--as usual; but I can have luncheon ready in a very short time, I'm sure. Is the fire--"

"'Luncheon!'" snorted Fred, laughing a little. "Don't you palm off any luncheon on us! That sounds like a dab of salad and a dab of sauce and two peas in a platter and a prayer for dinner to hurry up and come around! Cook us some grub, old girl--lots of it. Coffee and bacon and flour gravy and spuds. We'd rather wait a few minutes longer and get a square meal, wouldn't we, boys? Make yourselves at home. There's all the ground there is, to sit down on, and there's the whole creek to wash in, if the basin down there is too small. I'm going to get some clean clothes and go down to the big hole and take a plunge. How long will it be before chuck's ready, Kate?"

Kate told him half an hour, and he went off down the creek, keeping at the edge of the little meadow, with a change of clothing under his arm and a big bath towel hung over his shoulder. The two men followed him listlessly, too tired, evidently, to care much what they did.

Fred, leading the way, plunged through the willow fringe and came upon the creek bank three feet from where Marion lay curled up on her cushions. He stood for a minute looking down at her before his present, material needs dominated his admiration of her beauty--for beautiful she was, lying there in a nest of green, with her yellow hair falling loosely about her face.

"h.e.l.lo! Asleep?" he called to her, much as he had called to Kate.

"Afraid we'll have to ask you to move on, sister. We want to take a swim right here. And anyway, Kate wants you right away, quick. Wake up, like a good girl, and run along."

"I don't want to wake up. Go away and let me sleep." Marion opened her eyes long enough to make sure that he was standing right there waiting, and closed them again. "Go somewhere else and swim. There's lots of creek that isn't in use."

"No sir, by heck, I'm going to take my swim right here. I'm too doggone tired to walk another yard. Suit yourself about going, though.

Don't let me hurry you at all." He sat down and began to unlace his shoes, grinning back over his shoulder at the other two who had not ventured down to the creek when they heard the voice of a woman there.

Marion sat up indignantly. "Go on down the creek, why don't you?"

"Oh, this place suits me fine." Fred, having removed one shoe, turned it upside down and shook out the sand, and began unlacing the other.

Marion waited stubbornly until he was pulling that shoe off, and then she gathered up her cushions and fled, flushed and angry. She was frequently angry with Fred, who never yielded an inch and never would argue or cajole. She firmly believed that Fred would actually have gone in swimming with her sitting there on the bank; he was just that stubborn. For that she sometimes hated him--since no one detests stubbornness so much as an obstinate person.

Fred looked after her, still smiling oddly because he had known so well how to persuade her to go back to the house and help Kate. Fred almost loved Marion Rose. He admitted to himself that he almost loved her--which is going pretty far for a man like Fred Humphrey. But he also admitted to himself that she could not make him happy, nor he her. To make Marion happy he believed that he would need to have about a million dollars to spend. To make him happy, Marion would need to take a little more interest in home making and not so much interest in beauty making. The frivolous vanity bag of hers, and her bland way of using it, like the movie actresses, in public, served to check his imagination before it actually began building air-castles wherein she reigned the queen.

He could have loved her so faithfully if only she were a little different! The nearest he came to building an air-castle was when he was lying luxuriously in a shallow part of the pool, where the water was not so cold.

"She'd be different, I believe--I'd make her different if I could just have her to myself," he mused. "I'd take a lot of that foolishness out of her in a little while, and I wouldn't have to be rough with her, either. All she needs is a man she can't bluff!"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

JACK SHOULD HAVE A HIDE-OUT

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 alt.i.tude 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 ma.s.sage 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-gla.s.ses, 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 alt.i.tude, 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.