The Lookout Man Part 17

So with Kate, lying on the couch near the fire and with two steaming cups of chocolate between them on an up-ended box that st.u.r.dily did its duty as a table, Marion let go of her loyalty to one that she might make amends to another. She told Kate everything she knew about Jack Corey, down to the exact number of times she had bought cigarettes and purloined magazines and papers for him. Wherefore the next hour drew them closer to their old intimacy than they had been since first they came into the mountains; so close an intimacy that they called each other dearie while they argued the ethics of Jack's case and the wisdom--or foolishness--of Marion's champions.h.i.+p of the scapegoat.

"You really should have confided in me long ago--at the very first inkling you had of his ident.i.ty," Kate reiterated, sipping her chocolate as daintily as ever she had sipped at a reception. "I can scarcely forgive that, dearie. You were taking a tremendous risk of being maligned and misunderstood. You might have found yourself terribly involved. You are so impulsive, Marion. You should have come straight to me."

"Well, but I was afraid--"

"Afraid of Kate? Why, _dearie_!"

That is the way they talked, until they heard the professor sc.r.a.ping the snow off his feet on the edge of the flat doorstep. Kate lay back then on her piled pillows, placed a finger across her closed lips and pulled her scanty hair braid down over her left shoulder. She shut her eyes and held them so until the professor came in, when she opened them languidly.

Marion carried away the chocolate cups, her heart light. She would not have believed that a reconciliation with Kate and the unburdening of her secret could work such a change in her feelings. She wished fervently that she had told Kate at first. Now they could have Jack down at the cabin sometimes, when the men were both away. They would cook nice little dinners for him, and she could lend him all the reading matter he wanted. She would not have to sneak it away from the cabin. It was a great relief. Marion was very happy that evening.

Jack was not so happy. He was climbing slowly back to his comfortless camp, wondering whether it was worth while to keep up the struggle for sake of his freedom. Jail could not be worse than this, he kept telling himself. At least there would be other human beings--he would not be alone day after day. He would be warm and no worse off for food than here. Only for his mother and the shame it would bring her, he would gladly make the exchange. He was past caring, past the horror of being humiliated before his fellows.

It was hard work climbing to the cave, but that was not the reason why he had not wanted Marion to make the trip. He did not want Marion to know that the cave was half full of snow that had blown in with the wind, and that he was compelled to dig every stick of firewood out from under a snowdrift. Only for that pile of wood, he would have moved his camp to the other side of the peak that was more sheltered, even though it was hidden from the mountain side and the lower valleys he had learned to know so well.

But the labor of moving his camp weighed heavily against the comfort he would gain. He did not believe that he would actually freeze here, now that he had the bearskin; stiff and unwieldy though it was, when he spread it with the fur next to his blankets it was warm--especially since he had bent the edges under his bed all around and let the hide set that way.

Marion would have been astonished had she known how many hours out of every twenty-four Jack spent under the strong-odored hide. Jack himself was astonished, whenever he came out of his general apathy long enough to wonder how he endured this brutish existence. But he had to save wood, and he had to save food, and he had to kill time somehow. So he crawled into his blankets long before dark, short as the days were, and he stayed there long after daylight. That is why he smoked so many cigarettes, and craved so much reading.

Lying there under the shelter of a rock shelf that jutted out from the cave wall, he would watch the whirling snow sift down through the opening in the cave's roof and pack deeper the drift upon that side.

Twice he had moved his pile of supplies, and once he had moved his wood; and after that he did not much care whether they were buried or not.

Lying there with only his face and one hand out from under the covers so that he might smoke, Jack had time to do a great deal of thinking, though he tried not to think, since thinking seemed so profitless. He would watch the snow and listen to the wind whistling in the roof, and try to let them fill his mind. Sometimes he wondered how any one save an idiot could ever have contemplated pa.s.sing a winter apart from his kind, in a cave on a mountain-top. Holed up with the bears, he reminded himself bitterly. And yet he had planned it eagerly with Marion and had looked forward to it as an adventure--a lark with a few picturesque hards.h.i.+ps thrown in to give snap to the thing. Well, he had the hards.h.i.+ps, all right enough, and the snap, but he could not see anything picturesque or adventurous about it.

He could have given it up, of course. His two legs would have carried him down to the valley in a matter of three hours or so, even with the snow hampering his progress. He could, for instance, leave his cave in the afternoon of any day, and reach Marston in plenty of time for either of the two evening trains. He could take the "up" train, whose headlight tempted him every evening when he went out to watch for it wistfully, and land in Salt Lake the next night; or he could take the "down" train a little later, and be in San Francisco the next morning.

Then, it would be strange if he could not find a boat ready to leave port for some far-off, safe place. He could do that any day. He had money enough in his pocket to carry him out of the country if he were willing to forego the luxuries that come dear in travel--and he thought he could, with all this practice!

He played with the idea. He pictured himself taking the down train, and the next day s.h.i.+pping out of San Francisco on a sailing vessel bound for j.a.pan or Panama or Seattle--it did not greatly matter which.

He would have to make sure first that the boat was not equipped with wireless, so he supposed he must choose a small sailing vessel, or perhaps a tramp steamer. At other times he pictured himself landing in Salt Lake and hiking out from there to find work on some ranch. Who would ever identify him there as Jack Corey?

He dreamed those things over his cigarettes, smoked parsimoniously through a cheap holder until the stub was no longer than one of Marion's fingernails that Jack loved to look at because they were always so daintily manicured. He dreamed, but he could not bring himself to the point of making one of his dreams come true. He could not, because of Marion. She had helped him to plan this retreat, she had helped him carry some of the lighter supplies up to the cave, she had stood by him like the game little pal she was. He could dream, but he could not show himself ungrateful to Marion by leaving the place.

Truth to tell, when he could be with her he did not want to leave. But the times when he could be with her were so dishearteningly few that they could not hold his courage steady. She upbraided him for going so far down the mountain to meet her--what would she have said if she knew that once, when the moon was full, he had gone down to the very walls of the cabin where she slept, and had stood there like a lonesome ghost, just for the comfort her nearness gave him? Jack did not tell her that!

Jack did not tell her anything at all of his misery. He felt that it would not be "square" to worry Marion, who was doing so much for him and doing it with such whole-souled gladness, to serve a fellow being in distress. Jack did not flatter himself that she would not have done exactly as much for any other likable fellow. It was an adventure that helped to fill her empty days. He understood that perfectly, and as far as was humanly possible he let her think the adventure a pleasant one for him. He could not always control his tongue and his tones, but he made it a point to leave her as soon as he saw her beginning to doubt his contentment and well-being.

He would not even let Marion see that thoughts of his mother gnawed at him like a physical pain. He tried to hold to his old, childish resentment against her because she never spoke of his dad and did not show any affection for his dad's boy. Once she had sighed and said, "I never will forgive you, Jack, for not being a girl!" and Jack had never forgotten that, though he did forget the little laugh and the playful push she had given him afterwards. Such remarks had been always in the back of his mind, hardening him against his mother. Now they turned against Jack accusingly. Why couldn't he have been a girl?

She would have gotten some comfort out of him then, instead of being always afraid that he would do something awful. She would have had him with her more, and they would have become really acquainted instead of being half strangers.

He would stare at the rock walls of the cave and remember little things he had forgotten in his roistering quest of fun. He remembered a certain wistfulness in her eyes when she was caught unawares with her gaze upon him. He remembered that never had she seemed to grudge him money--and as for clothes, he bought what he liked and never thought of the cost, and she paid the bills and never seemed to think them too large, though Jack was ashamed now at the recollection of some of them.

Why, only the week before his world had come to an end, he had said at dinner one evening that he wished he had a racing car of a certain expensive type, and his mother had done no more than lecture him mildly on the tendency of youth toward recklessness, and wonder afterwards how in the world the garage was going to be made larger without altogether destroying its symmetry and throwing it out of proportion to the rest of the place. It would make the yard look very cramped, she complained, and she should be compelled to have her row of poinsettias moved. And she very much doubted whether Jack would exercise any judgment at all about speed. Boys were so wild and rough, nowadays!

Well, poor mother! She had not been compelled to enlarge the garage; but Jack's throat ached when he thought of that conversation. What kind of a mother would she have been, he wondered, if he had petted her a little now and then? He had an odd longing to give her a real bear-hug and rumple up her marcelled pompadour and kiss her--and see if she wouldn't turn out to be a human-being kind of a mother, after all. He looked back and saw what a selfish, unfeeling young cub he had always been; how he had always taken, and had given nothing in return save a grudging obedience when he must, and a petty kind of deception when he might.

"Bless her heart, she'd have got me that racer and never batted an eye over the price of it," he groaned, and turned over with his face hidden even from his bleak cave. "I was always kicking over little things that don't amount to a whoop--and she was always handing out everything I asked for and never getting a square deal in her life."

Then, to mark more definitely the change that was taking place in Jack's soul, he added a question that a year before would have been utterly impossible. "How do I know that dad ever gave her a square deal, either? I never saw dad since I was a kid. She's proud as the deuce--there must be some reason--"

Once full-formed in his mind, the conviction that he had been a poor sort of a son to a mother whose life had held much bitterness grew and flourished. He had called her cold and selfish; but after all, her life was spent mostly in doing things for the betterment of others--as she interpreted the word. Showy, yes; but Jack told himself now that she certainly got away with it better than any woman he knew. And when it came to being cold and selfish, it struck Jack forcibly that he had been pretty much that way himself; that he had been just as fully occupied in playing with life as his mother had been in messing around trying to reform life. When he came to think of it, he could see that a woman of Mrs. Singleton Corey's type might find it rather difficult to manifest tenderness toward a husky young son who stood off from her the way Jack had done. Judgment is, after all, a point of view, and Jack's viewpoint was undergoing a radical change.

That very change added much to his misery, because it robbed him of the comfort of pitying himself. He could do nothing now but pity his mother. As he saw it now, the crime of lying to her about that Sunday's frolic loomed blacker than the pa.s.sive part he had played in the tragedy of the night. He had lied to her and thought it a joke. He had taken a car worth more than five thousand dollars--more than his young hide was worth, he told himself now--and he had driven it recklessly in the pursuit of fun that nauseated him now just to remember. Summing up that last display of ingrat.i.tude toward the mother who made his selfish life soft and easy, Jack decided that he had given her a pretty raw deal all his life, and the rawest of all on the tenth of last May.

All the while he was coaxing his fire to burn in the little rock fireplace he had built near his bed; all the while, he was whittling off a slice of frozen bear meat and broiling it over the fire for his supper, Jack was steeped in self-condemnation and in pity of his mother. More than was usual she haunted him that night. Even when he crept s.h.i.+vering under the bearskin and blankets, and huddled there for warmth, her face was as clear before him as Marion's. Tears swelled his eyelids and slid down his cheeks. And when he brushed away those tears others came--since boyhood these were the first tears he had ever shed because of a poignant longing for his mother.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

HANK BROWN PROVES THAT HE CAN READ TRACKS

To begin with, Kate knew Mrs. Singleton Corey, just as well as a pa.s.sably popular elocutionist may expect to know one of the recognized leaders of society and club life. Kate had recited at open meetings of the clubs over which Mrs. Singleton Corey had presided with that smiling composure which was so invulnerable to those without the favored circle. Kate had once talked with Mrs. Singleton Corey for at least five minutes, but she was not at all certain that she would be remembered the next time they met. She would like very much to be remembered, because an elocutionist's success depends so much upon the recognition which society gives to her personality and her talents.

Now, here was Jack Corey hiding in her very dooryard, one might say; and his mother absolutely distracted over him. How could she make any claim to human sympathy for a mother's sorrow if she withheld the message that would bring relief? She was astonished that Marion had been so thoughtless as never once to think of the terrible distress of Mrs. Singleton Corey. Of course, she had promised--but surely that did not exclude the boy's mother from the solace of knowing where he was! That would be outrageous! Very carefully she sounded Marion upon the subject, and found her unreasonable.

"Why, Jack would murder me if I told his mother! I should say I wouldn't tell her! Why, it was because his mother was going to be so mean about it and turn against him, that Jack ran away! He'd go back, if it wasn't for her--he said so. He'd rather go to jail than face her. Why, if I thought for a minute that you'd take that stand, I never would have told you, Kate! Don't you _dare_--" Then Marion dropped a saucer that she was wiping, and when her consternation over the mishap had subsided she awoke to the fact that Kate had dropped the subject also and had gone to read her limp little _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, that Marion never could see any sense in.

Marion must have had a remarkably trustful nature, else she would have been suspicious. Kate was not paying any attention to what she read.

She was mentally rounding periods and coining new phrases of sympathy that should not humiliate but draw close to the writer the soul of Mrs. Singleton Corey when she read them. She was planning the letter she fully intended to write. Later that evening, when Marion was curled up in bed with a book that held her oblivious to un.o.btrusive deeds, such as letter-writing, Kate put the phrases and the carefully constructed sentences upon a sheet of her thickest, creamiest stationery. She did not feel in the slightest degree disloyal to Marion or to Jack. Hot-headed, selfish children, what did they know about the deeper problems of life? Of course his mother must be told.

And of course, Kate was the person who could best write so difficult a letter. So she wrote it, and explained just how she came to know about Jack. But the professor was a conscientious man. He believed that the authorities should be notified at once. Jack Corey was a fugitive from the law, and to conceal the knowledge of his whereabouts would be nothing short of compounding a felony. It was thoughtful to write his mother, of course. But duty demanded that the chief of police in Los Angeles should be notified also, and as speedily as possible. By George, the case warranted telegraphing the news!

Now, it was one thing to write sympathetically to a social leader that her wayward son has been found, but it is quite another thing to turn the wayward son over to the police. Kate had not considered the moral uprightness of the professor when she showed him the letter, but she managed the difficulty very nicely. She pleaded a little, and flattered a little, and cried a good deal, and finally persuaded the professor's conscience to compound a felony to the extent of writing Fred instead of wiring the chief of police. Fred could notify the authorities if he chose--and Kate was wise enough to pretend that she was satisfied to leave the matter in Fred's hands.

She thought it best, however, to add a postscript to her letter, saying that she feared for Jack's safety, as the authorities had begun to be very inquisitive and hard to put off; but that she would do all in her power to protect the poor boy. She did not feel that it would be wise to write Fred, because the professor would think she was working against him and would be angry. Besides, she knew that it would be of no use to write Fred. He would do as he pleased anyway; he always did.

In the face of a keen wind the professor started down the mountain to leave the letters at Marston with the agent, who was very obliging and would see that they were put on the "down" train that evening.

Marion did not see any sense in his going away that day, and she told Kate so very bluntly. With the professor gone she could not meet Jack and have those broiled bear steaks, because some one had to stay with Kate. When Kate suggested that she have Jack come to the cabin with his bear steaks, she discovered that she could not do that either. She was afraid to tell Jack that Kate knew. Of course, it was all right--Kate had promised faithfully never to tell; but Jack was awfully queer, lately, and the least little thing offended him. He would refuse to see that it was the best to take Kate into the secret, because it gave Marion more freedom to do things for his comfort. He would consider that she had been tattling secrets just because she could not hold her tongue, and she resented in advance his att.i.tude.

Guiltily conscious of having betrayed him, she still believed that she had done him a real service in the betrayal.

It was a complicated and uncomfortable state of mind to be in, and Kate's state of mind was not much more complacent. She also had broken a promise and betrayed a trust, and she also believed she had done it for the good of the betrayed. To their discomforting sense of guilt was added Marion's disappointment at not meeting Jack, and Kate's sprained ankle, which was as swollen and painful as a sprained ankle usually is. They began by arguing, they continued by reminding each other of past slights and injuries, they ended by speaking plain truths that were unpalatable chiefly because they were true. When the professor tramped home at sundown he walked into an atmosphere of icy silence. Kate and Marion were not on speaking terms, if you please.

The next day was cold and windy, but Marion hurried the housework in a way that made Kate sniff disgustedly, and started out to signal Jack and bring him down to their last meeting place. Flash after flash she sent that way, until the sun went altogether behind the clouds and she could signal no more. Not a glimmer of an answering twinkle could she win from the peak. The most she did was to stimulate old Mike to the point of mumbling wild harangues to the uneasy pines, the gist of which was that folks better look out how they went spyin' around after _him_, an' makin' signs back and forth with gla.s.ses. They better look out, because he had good eyes, if Murphy didn't have, and they couldn't run over _him_ and tromp on him.

He was still gesticulating like a bear fighting yellow-jackets when Marion walked past him, going up the trail. She looked at him and smiled as she went by, partly because he looked funny, waving his arms over his head like that, and partly by way of greeting. She never talked to Mike, because she could not understand anything he said. She did not consider him at all bright, so she did not pay much attention to him at any time; certainly not now, when her mind was divided between her emotions concerning Jack and her fresh quarrel with Kate.

Mike struck his axe into a log and followed her, keeping in the brush just outside the trail. His lips moved ceaselessly under his ragged, sandy mustache. Because Marion had smiled when she looked at him, he called her, among other things, a she-devil. He thought she had laughed at him because she was nearly ready to have him hanged. Marion did not look back. She was quite certain today that Kate would not follow her, and the professor was f.a.gged from yesterday's tramp through the snow. She hurried, fully expecting that Jack had gone down early to the meeting place and was waiting for her there.

Mike had no trouble in keeping close to her, for the wind blew strongly against her face and the pines creaked and mourned overhead, and had he called to her she would scarcely have heard him. She left the road at the top of the hill and went across to the gully where Kate had sprained her ankle. Today Marion did not trouble to choose bare ground, so she went swiftly. At the top of the gully where Jack had met her before, she stopped, her eyes inquiring of every thicket near her. She was panting from the stiff climb, and her cheeks tingled with the cold. But presently she "who-whoed" cautiously, and a figure stepped out from behind a cedar and came toward her.

"Oh, there you--oh!" she cried, and stopped short. It was not Jack Corey at all, but Hank Brown, grinning at her while he s.h.i.+fted his rifle from the right hand to the left.

"Guess you thought I was somebody else," he drawled, coming up to her and putting out his hand. "Pretty cold, ain't it? Yuh travelin' or just goin' somewheres?" He grinned again over the ancient witticism.

"Oh, I--I was just out for a walk," Marion laughed uneasily. "Where are you going, Mr. Brown?"

"Me, I'm travelin' fer my health. Guess you aim t' git walkin' enough, comin' away over here, this kind of a day."

"Why, I hike all over these mountains. It gets lonesome. I just walk and walk everywhere."