by B. M. Bower
“You cut it out,” said Jack, reaching for another cigarette. “My part of it, I mean. It’s that that’s raising the deuce with you two, so you just cut me out of it. I’ll make out all right.” As an afterthought he added indifferently, “I killed a bear the other day. I was going to bring you down a chunk. It isn’t half bad; change from deer meat and rabbits and grouse, anyway.”
Marion shook her head. “There it is again. I couldn’t take it home without lying about where I got it. And Kate would catch me up on it—she takes a perfectly fiendish delight in cornering me in a lie, lately.” She brightened a little. “I’ll tell you, Jack. We’ll go up to the cave and cook some there. Kate can’t,” she told him grimly, “tell what I’ve been eating, thank goodness, once it’s swallowed!”
“It’s too hard hiking up there through the snow,” Jack hastily objected. “Better not tackle it. Tell you what I can do though. I’ll whittle off a couple of steaks and bring them down tomorrow, and we’ll hunt a safe place to cook them. Have a barbecue,” he grinned somberly.
“Oh, all right—if I can give Kate the slip. Did you skin him?” reverting with some animation to the slaying of the bear. “It must have been keen.”
“It was keen—till I got the hide off the bear and onto my bed.”
“You don’t sound as if it was a bit thrilling.” She looked at him dubiously. “How did it happen? You act as if you had killed a chipmunk, and I want to be excited! Did the bear come at you?”
“Nothing like that. I came at the bear. I just hunted around till I found a bear that had gone byelow, and I killed him and borrowed his hide. It was a mean trick on him—but I was cold.”
“Oh, with all those blankets?”
Jack grinned with a sour kind of amusement at her tone, but his reply was an oblique answer to her question.
“Remember that nice air-hole in the top where the wind whistled in and made a kind of tune? You ought to spend a night up there now listening to it.”
Marion threw a piece of bark spitefully at a stump beyond the snow mound. “But you have a fire,” she said argumentatively. “And you have all kinds of reading, and plenty to eat.”
“Am I kicking?”
“Well, you sound as if you’d like to. You simply don’t know how lucky you are. You ought to be shut up in that little cabin with Kate and the professor.”
“Lead me to ’em,” Jack suggested with suspicious cheerfulness.
“Don’t be silly. Are there lots of bears up there, Jack?”
“Maybe, but I haven’t happened to see any, except two or three that ran into the brush soon as they got a whiff of me. And this one I hunted out of a hole under a big tree root. It’s a lie about them wintering in caves. They’d freeze to death.”
“You—you aren’t really uncomfortable, are you, Jack?”
“Oh, no.” Jack gave the “no” what Kate would have called a sliding inflection deeply surcharged with irony.
“Well, but why don’t you keep the fire going? The smoke doesn’t show at all, scarcely. And if you’re going to tramp all over the mountains and let everybody see you, it doesn’t matter a bit.”
Jack lit his third cigarette. “What’s going on in the world, anyway? Any news from—down South?”
“Well, the papers don’t say much. There’s been an awful storm that simply ruined the beaches, they say. Fred has gone down—something about your case, I think. And then he wanted to see the men who are in on this timber scheme. They aren’t coming through with the assessment money the way they promised, and Fred and Doug and Kate had to dig up more than their share to pay for the work. I didn’t because I didn’t have anything to give—and Kate has been hinting things about that, too.”
“I wish you’d take—”
“Now, don’t you dare finish that sentence! When I came up here with them they agreed to do my assessment work and take it out of the money we get when we sell, and they’re to get interest on all of it. Kate proposed it herself, because she wanted me up here with her. Let them keep the agreement. Fred isn’t complaining—Fred’s just dandy about everything. It’s only—”
“Well, I guess I’ll be getting back. It’s a tough climb up to my hangout.” Jack’s interest in the conversation waned abruptly with the mention of Fred. “Can’t you signal about ten o’clock tomorrow, if you’re coming out? Then I’ll bring down some bear meat.”
“Oh, and I’ll bring some cake and bread, if I can dodge Kate. I’ll put up a lunch as if it were for me. Kate had good luck with her bread this time. I’ll bring all I dare. And, Jack,—you aren’t really uncomfortable up there, are you? Of course, I know it gets pretty cold, and maybe it’s lonesome sometimes at night, but—you stayed alone all summer, so—”
“Oh, I’m all right. Don’t you worry a minute about me. Run along home now, before you make Kate sore at you again. And don’t forget to let me know if you’re coming. I’ll meet you right about here. So long, pardner.” He stuffed the package of cigarettes into his coat pocket and plunged into the balsam thicket behind him as though he was eager to get away from her presence.
Marion felt it, and looked after him with hurt questioning in her eyes. “He’s got his cigarettes—that’s all he cares about,” she told herself resentfully. “Well, if he thinks I care—!”
She went slipping and stumbling down the steep wall of the gulch, crossed it and climbed the other side and came upon Kate, sitting in the snow and holding her right ankle in both hands and moaning pitiably.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
PENITENCE, REAL AND UNREAL
Kate rocked back and forth, and tears of pain rolled down her cheeks. She leaned her shoulder against a tree and moaned, with her eyes shut. It frightened Marion to look at her. She went up and put her hand on Kate’s shoulder with more real tenderness than she had felt for months.
“What’s the matter, Kate? Did you hurt yourself? Is it your ankle?” she asked insipidly.
“O-oh! Marion, you keep me nearly distracted! You must know I only want to guard you against—oh—gossip and trouble. You seem to look upon me as an enemy, lately—Oh!—And I only want to consider your best interests. Who is that man, Marion? I believe he is a criminal, and I’m going to send word to the sheriff. If he isn’t, he is welcome at the cabin—you know it, Marion. You—you hurt me so, when you meet him out here in this sly way—just as if you couldn’t trust me. And I have always been your friend.” She stopped and began moaning again.
“Now, don’t cry, dear! You’re simply upset and nervous. Let me help you up, Kate. Is it your ankle?”
“Oh, it pains dreadfully—but the shock of seeing you meet that strange man out here and knowing that you will not trust me—”
“Why, forevermore! I do trust you, Kate. But you have been so different—you don’t trust me, is the trouble. I’m not doing anything awful, only you won’t see anything but the wrong side of everything I do. I’d tell you about the man, only—” Marion glanced guiltily across at the place where Jack had disappeared, “—it’s his secret, and I can’t.”
Kate wept in that subdued, heartbroken way which is so demoralizing to the person who has caused the tears. Like a hurt child she rubbed her ankle and huddled there in the snow.
“We never used to have secrets,” she mourned dismally. “This place has changed you so—oh, I am simply too miserable to care for anything any more. Go on, Marion—I’ll get home somehow. I shouldn’t have followed, but I was so hurt at your coldness and your lack of confidence! And I was sure you were deceiving me. I simply could not endure the suspense another day. You—you don’t know what I have suffered! Go on—you’ll get cold standing here. I’ll come—after awhile. But I’d as soon be dead as go on in this way. Please go on!”
Kate may have been a bit hysterical; at any rate, she really believed herself utterly indifferent to her sprained ankle and the chance of freezing. She closed her eyes again and waved Marion away, and Marion immediately held her closer and patted her shoulder and kissed
her remorsefully.
“Now, don’t cry, dear—you’ll have me crying in a minute. Be a good sport and see if you can’t walk a little. I’ll help you. And once you’re back by the fire, and have your ankle all comfy, and a cup of hot chocolate, you’ll feel heaps better. Hang tight to me, dear, and I’ll help you up.”
It was a long walk for a freshly sprained ankle, and the whiteness of Kate’s face stamped deeper into Marion’s conscience the guilty sense of being to blame for it all. She had started in by teasing Kate over little things, just because Kate was so inquisitive and so lacking in any sense of humor. She could see now that she had antagonized Kate where she should have humored her little whims. It wouldn’t have done any harm, Marion reflected penitently, to have confided more in Kate. She used to tell her everything, and Kate had always been so loyal and sympathetic.
Penitence of that sort may go to dangerous lengths of confession if it is not stopped in time. Nothing checked Marion’s excited conscience. The ankle which she bared and bathed was so swollen and purple that any lurking suspicion of the reality of the hurt vanished, and Marion cried over it with sheer pity for the torture of that long walk. Kate’s subdued sadness did the rest.
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 sturdily 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 championship of the scapegoat.
“You really should have confided in me long ago—at the very first inkling you had of his identity,” 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 scraping 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 passing 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 hardships thrown in to give snap to the thing. Well, he had the hardships, 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 shipping out of San Francisco on a sailing vessel bound for Japan 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 cou
rage 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.
