The Lookout Man

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  IGNORANCE TAXES THE TRAIL OF DANGER

  Mike, looking frequently over his shoulder, sought the sanctuary ofhis own cabin, slammed the door shut and pulled the heavy table as abarricade against it until he could find the hammer and some nails.His hands shook so that he struck his thumb twice, but he did not seemto notice the pain at all. When the door was nailed shut he pulled aside off a box and nailed the two boards over the window. Then hegrabbed his rifle out of a corner and defied the spies to do theirworst, and hang him if they dared.

  A long time he waited, mumbling there in the middle of the room, therifle pointed toward the door. Shadows flowed into the valley andfilled it so that only the tops of the tallest pines were lighted bythe sun. The lonesome gloom deepened and the pines swung their limbertops and talked with the sound of moving waters along a sandy shore.

  An owl flapped heavily into a tall pine near by, settled his feetcomfortably upon a smooth place in the limb, craned his neck andblinked into the wind, fluffed his feathers and in a deep baritonevoice he called aloud upon his errant mate.

  "Who! Who! Who-who!"

  Mike jumped and swung his rifle toward the sound! "Oh, yuh needn'tthink yuh can fool me, makin' si'nals like an owl," he cried in hisindistinct gobble. "I know what you're up to. Yuh can't fool me!"

  Far across the basin the mate, in a lighter, more spirited tone,called reassuring reply:

  "Who-who-who-o-o!"

  "Who! Who! Who-who!" admonished the owl by the cabin, and flapped awayto the other.

  Mike's sandy hair lifted on the back of his neck. His face turnedpasty gray in the deep gloom of the cabin. Spies they were, and theywere laying their trap for him. The one who had called like an owl wasHank Brown. The one who had answered across the flat was the girl,maybe--or perhaps it was that other spy up on top of the mountain;Mike was not sure, but the menace to himself remained as great,whichever spy answered Hank Brown. Hank Brown had trailed him to thecabin, and was telling the others about it. Mike was so certain of itthat he actually believed he had seen Hank's form dimly revealedbeside a pine tree.

  He waited, the gun in his hands. He did not think of supper. He didnot realize that he was cold, or hungry, or that as the evening woreon his tortured muscles cried out for rest. The sight of Hank Browntalking intimately with Marion--allied with the spies, as Mike'swarped reason interpreted the meeting--had given him the feeling thathe was hedged about with deadly foes. The sudden eagerness whichMarion had shown when she saw him, and the way she had run after him,to him meant nothing less than an attempt to capture him then andthere. They would come to the cabin when he was asleep--he was sure ofit. So he did not intend to sleep at all. He would watch for them withthe gun. He guessed they didn't know he had a gun, because he neverused it unless he went hunting. And since the county was filled upwith spies on the government he was too cute to let them catch himhunting out of season.

  He waited and he waited. After a long while he backed to the bed andsat down, but he kept the gun pointed toward the door and the window.A skunk came prowling through the trampled snow before the cabin,hunting food where Mike had thrown out slops from the cooking. Itrattled a tin can against a half-buried rock, and Mike was on hisfeet, shaking with cold and excitement.

  "Oh, I c'n hear yuh, all right!" he shouted fiercely, not because hewas brave, but because he was scared and could not await calmly thenext move. "Don't yuh come around here, er I'll shoot!"

  In a minute he thought he heard stealthy footsteps nearing the door,and without taking any particular aim he lifted the hammer of the gunand pulled the trigger, in a panicky instinct to fight. The odor thatassailed his nostrils reassured him suffocatingly. It was not thespies after all.

  He put down the gun then, convinced that if the spies had been hangingaround, they would know now that he was ready for them, and would notdare tackle him that night. He felt vaingloriously equal to them all.Let them come! He'd show 'em a thing or two.

  Groping in the dark to the old cookstove, Mike raked together thehandful of pitch-pine shavings which he had whittled that morning forhis dinner fire. He reached up to the shelf where the matches werekept, lighted the shavings, laid them carefully in the firebox and fedthe little blaze with dry splinters. He placed wood upon the cracklingpile, rattled the stove-lids into place and crouched shivering besidethe stove, trying to absorb some warmth into his chilled old bones. Heopened the oven door, hitched himself closer and thrust his numbedfeet into the oven. He sat there mumbling threats and puny warnings,and so coaxed a little warmth into his courage as well as his body.

  So he passed the rest of that night, huddled close to the stove,hearing the murmur of his enemies in the uneasy swashing together ofthe pine branches overhead, reading a signal into every cry of theanimals that prowled through the woods. The harsh squall of a mountainlion, somewhere down the creek, set him shivering. He did not believeit was a mountain lion, but the call of those who watched his cabin.So daylight found him mumbling beside the stove, his old rifle acrosshis knees with the muzzle pointing toward the nailed door.

  He wished that Murphy would come; and in the next moment he wascursing Murphy for being half in league with the plotters, and hopingMurphy never showed his face again in the cabin; making threats, too,of what he would do if Murphy came around sneering about the spies.

  With daylight came a degree of sanity, and Mike built up the fireagain and cooked his breakfast. Habit reasserted itself and he wentoff to his work, muttering his rambling thoughts as he shambled alongthe path he and Murphy had beaten in the snow. But he carried hisrifle, which he had never done before, and he stood it close besidehim while he worked. Also he kept an eye on the trail and onToll-Gate cabin. He would have been as hard to catch unaware that dayas a weasel.

  Once or twice he saw the professor pottering around near the cabin,gathering pieces of bark off fallen trees to help out their scantysupply of dry wood. The pines still mourned and swayed to the wind,which hung in the storm quarter, and the clouds marched soddenly inthe opposite direction or hung almost motionless for a space. Theprofessor did not come within hailing distance, and seemed whollyoccupied with gathering what bark he could carry home before thestorm, but Mike was not reassured, nor was he thrown off his guard.

  He waited until noon, expecting to see the girl come out for moreplotting. When she did not, he went back and cooked a hot dinner,thinking that the way to get the best of spies on the government is towatch them closer than they watch you, and to be ready to follow themwhen they go off in the woods to plot. So he ate as much as he couldswallow, and filled his pockets with bacon and bread. He meant to keepon their trail this time, and see just what they were up to.

  Marion, however, did not venture out of the cabin. She was very muchafraid that Hank Brown was suspicious of Jack and was trying to locateJack's camp. She was also afraid of Hank on her own account, and shedid not want to see him ever again. She was certain that he had triedhard to overtake her when she went running after Mike, and that shehad escaped him only by being as swift-footed as he, and by having thestart of him.

  Then Kate could not walk at all, and with the professor busy outside,common decency kept Marion in the house. She would like to have sentJack a heliograph message, but she did not dare with the professorprowling around hunting dry limbs and bark. She had no confidence inthe professor's potential kindness toward a fellow in Jack'spredicament--the professor was too good to be trusted. He would tellthe police.

  Normally she would have told Kate about Hank Brown, would have askedKate's advice, for Kate was practical when she forgot herself longenough to be perfectly natural. But she and Kate were speaking onlywhen it was absolutely necessary to speak, and discussion wastherefore out of the question. She felt penned up, miserable. What ifHank Brown found out about Jack and set the sheriff on his trail? Hewould, she believed, if he knew--for he hated Jack because of thatfight. Jack had told her about it, keeping the cause fogged ingeneralities.

  All tha
t night the wind howled up the mountainside and ranted throughthe forest so that Marion could not sleep. Twice she heard a tree gosplitting down through the outstretched arms of its close neighbors,to fall with a crash that quivered the cabin. She was glad that Jack'scamp was in a cave. She would have been terribly worried if he had tostay out where a tree might fall upon him. She pictured the horror ofbeing abroad in the forest with the dark and that raging wind. Shehoped that the morning would bring calm, because she wanted to seeJack again and take him some magazines, and tell him about Hank.

  In the morning it was snowing and raining by turns, with gusty blastsof wind. Marion looked out, even opened the door and stood upon thestep; but the storm dismayed her so that she gave up the thought ofgoing, until a chance sentence overheard while she was making theprofessor's bed in the little lean-to changed her plan of waiting intoone of swift action. She heard Douglas say to Kate that, if Fred diddecide to inform the chief of police, they should be hearing somethingvery soon now. With the trial probably started, they would certainlywaste no time. They would wire up to the sheriff here.

  "Oh, I wish you hadn't told Fred," Kate began to expostulate, whenMarion burst in upon them furiously.

  "You told, did you?" she accused Kate tempestuously. "Doug, of allpeople! You knew the little runt couldn't keep his hands off--you knewhe'd be so darned righteous he'd make all the trouble he could forother people, because he hasn't got nerve enough to do anything wronghimself. You couldn't keep it to yourself, for all your promises andyour crocodile tears! I ought to have known better than trust you withanything. But I'll tell you one thing more, you two nasty nicecreatures that are worse than scrawling snakes--I'll tell you this: Itwon't do you one particle of good to set the police after Jack. So goahead and tell, and be just as treacherous and mean as you like. Youwon't have the pleasure of sending him to jail--because they'll nevercatch him. My heavens, how I despise and loathe you two!"

  While she spat venom at them she was stamping her feet into herovershoes, buttoning her sweater, snatching up this thing and thatthing she wanted, drawing a woolly Tarn O'Shanter cap down over herears, hooking a cheap fur neckpiece that she had to tug and twistbecause it fitted so tightly over her sweater collar. She took hersix-shooter--she was still deadly afraid of Hank Brown--and she gother muff that matched the neck fur. Her eyes blazed whenever shelooked at them.

  "Marion, listen to reason! You _can't_ go out in this storm!" Katebegan to whimper.

  "Will you please shut up?" Marion whirled on her, primitive, fightingrage contorting her face. "I can go anywhere I like. I only wish Icould go where I'd never see you again." She went out and pulled thedoor violently shut. Stood a minute to brace herself for what she hadto do, and went into the storm as a swimmer breasts the breakers.

  After her went Mike, scuttling away from his cabin with his rifleswinging from his right hand, his left fumbling the buttons on hiscoat.

  At the fence corner Marion hesitated, standing with her back to thewind, the snow driving past her with that faint hiss of clashingparticles which is the voice of a sleeting blizzard. She could takethe old, abandoned road which led up over the ridge topped by TaylorRock, and she would find the walking easier, perhaps. But the roadfollowed the line of least resistance through the hills, and that linewas by no means straight. Jack would probably be in the cave, out ofthe storm; she had no hope of meeting him over on the slope on such aday. Still, he might start down the mountain, and at any rate it wouldbe the shortest way up there. She turned down along the fence,following the trail as she had done before, with Mike coming after heras though he was stalking game: warily, swiftly, his face set andeager, his eyes shining with the hunting lust.

  Up the hill she went, bracing herself against the wind where it sweptthrough open spaces, shivering with the cold of it, fearful of thegreat roaring overhead where the pinetops swayed drunkenly withclashing branches: Dead limbs broke and came crashing down, bringingshowers of snow and bark and broken twigs and stripped needles fromthe resisting branches in their path. She was afraid, so she went asfast as she could, consoling her fear with the shrewd thought that thestorm would serve to hold back the sheriff and give Jack time to getaway somewhere. No one would dream of his traveling on such a day asthis, she kept telling herself over and over. It was getting worseinstead of better; the snow was coming thicker and the sleet waslessening. It was going to be quite a climb to the cave; the wind mustbe simply terrible up there, but she could see now that Jack wouldnever expect her out in such weather, and so he would stay close tothe camp fire.

  At the top of the hill the wind swooped upon her and flung clouds ofsnow into her face so that she was half blinded. She turned her backupon it, blinked rapidly until her vision cleared again, and stoodthere panting, tempted to turn back. No one would be crazy enough toventure out today. They would wait until the storm cleared.

  She looked back down the trail she had followed. Wherever the windhad a clean sweep her tracks were filling already with snow. If shedid not wait, and if Jack got away now, they couldn't track him atall. She really owed him that much of a chance to beat them. She putup her muff, shielded her face from the sting of frozen snowflakes,and went on, buffeted down the steep slope where Kate had sprained herankle, and thinking that she must be careful where she set her feet,because it would be frightful if she had such an accident herself.

  She did not expect to meet Jack on the farther edge of the gulch, butshe stood a minute beside the great pine, looking at the trampled snowand thinking of Hank Brown's leering insinuations. Whatever hadstarted the fellow to suspecting such things? Uneasily she followedHank's cunning reasoning: Because Jack had never once gone in toQuincy, except to settle with the Forest Service for his summer'swork; because Jack had not filed upon any claim in the mountains, yetstayed there apart from his kind; because he avoided people--suchlittle things they were that made up the sum of Hank's suspicions!Well, she was to blame for this present emergency, at any rate. If shehad not told Kate something she had no right to tell, she would nothave quite so much to worry about.

  She turned and began to climb again, making her way through thethicket that fringed the long ridge beyond; like a great, swollentongue reaching out toward the valley was this ridge, and she followedit in spite of the tangled masses of young trees and bushes which shemust fight through to reach the more open timber. At least the dangerof falling trees and branches was not so great here, and the wind wasnot quite so keen.

  Behind her Mike followed doggedly, trailing her like a hound. Daysspent in watching, nights spent crouched and waiting had brought himto the high pitch of desperation, that would stop at nothing whichseemed to his crazed brain necessary to save his life and his freedom.Even the disdainful Murphy would have known the man was insane; butMurphy was sitting warm and snug beside a small table with a glassready to his right hand, and Murphy was not worrying about Mike'ssanity, but about the next card that would fall before him. Murphythought how lucky he was to be in Quincy during this storm, instead ofcooped up in the little cabin with Mike, who would sit all day andmumble, and never say anything worth listening to. So Mike kept to thehunt--like a gentle-natured dog gone mad and dangerous and taking theman-trail unhindered and unsuspected.