The Lookout Man by B. M. Bower (electronic reader txt) 📕

But she waved her hand again impatiently and listened, engrossed and smiling. "Oh, just because I wanted to hear a human voice, I guess. I'd forgotten what a phone looks like, and so when I heard ... No, I am not a tourist. I'm a neighbor, and I'm the lonesomest neighbor in these mountains.... What?... Oh, down the road in a spooky little valley where there's a log cabin and a trout stream—only I haven't caught any yet. They bite, but they simply won't stay hooked. What?... Oh, just worms, and those fuzzy flies made with a hook on them—you know.... Oh, thanks! I surely do wish you could.... The what?... Oh! well, I don't know, I'm sure. There's an excited young man here who keeps telling me this is not a public telephone booth—do you mean him, I wonder?... He does look something like a fireman, now you mention it. What do you use him for? a signal fire, or something?... Oh! You do? Why, forevermore! Is he nice to talk to?... No, I haven't. He just keeps telling me this is not a public ... Oh, I don't! I don't see how anybody could mind him—do you?... Well, of course, a person doesn't look for politeness away up ... Ha-ha—why, does the altitude make a difference? Maybe that's what ails me, then— That's awfully nice of you, man ... No, never mind what my name is. Don't let's be ordinary. I'm just a voice from the mountain top, and you're just a voice from the valley. So be it.... Without an invitation? I only thanked you ..."

"Keep on," interjected Jack savagely, "and you'll have his wife trailing you up with a gun!"

"Well—we'll see.... But do come sometime when you can—and bring your wife! I'd love to meet some woman.... Oh, all right. Good-by."

With a gloved palm pressed hard over the mouthpiece she turned reproachfully upon Jack. "Now you did fix things, didn't you? Of course, you knew I couldn't be nice to a man with a wife, so you had to go and spoil everything. And I was just beginning to have a lovely time!"

"Help yourself," Jack offered with heavy sarcasm. "Don't mind me at all."

"Well, he wants to talk to you," she said. She put her lips again to the mouthpiece and added a postscript. "Pardon me, but I held the line a minute while I quarreled with your fireman. You're wrong—I don't find him so nice to talk to. You may talk to him if you want to—I'm sure you're welcome!" Whereupon she surrendered the receiver and walked around the high, map-covered table, and amused herself by playing an imaginary game of billiards with the pointer for a cue and two little spruce cones which she took from her pocket for balls.

When Jack had finished talking and had hung up the receiver, he leaned back against the shelf and watched her, his hands thrust deep into his trousers pockets. He still scowled—but one got the impression that he was holding that frown consciously and stubbornly and not because his mood matched it.

Marion placed a cone at a point on the chart which was marked Greenville, aimed for Spring Garden and landed the cone neatly in the middle of Jack's belt.

"Missed the pocket a mile," he taunted grudgingly, hating to be pleasant and yet helpless against the girl's perfect composure and good humor.

"Give it back, and I'll try it again. There's a place called the Pocket. I'll try that, for luck." Then she added carelessly—"What would have happened, if you hadn't answered that man at all?"

"I'd have been canned, maybe."

"Forevermore." She pretended to chalk her cue with a tiny powder puff which she took from a ridiculous vanity bag that swung from her belt. "Wouldn't you kind of like to be canned—under the circumstances?"

"No, I wouldn't. I need the money." Jack bit his lips to keep from grinning at the powder-puff play.

"Oh, I see." She tried another shot. "Why don't you cut the legs off this table? I would. It's miles too high."

"I don't monkey with government property, myself." He placed a peculiar accent on the last word, thus pointing his meaning very clearly.

"Now, what do you know about that? Missed it—with a government cone, shot by a government stick on a government table, while a government scowl fairly shrieks: 'Cut out this desecration!'" She chalked her cue gravely, powdered her nose afterward, using a round scrap of a mirror not much bigger than a silver dollar. "Do you stay up here all the time and scowl, all by yourself?"

"All the time and scowl, all by myself." Jack took his hands from his pockets that he might light his pipe; which was a sign that he was nearly ready to treat the girl kindly. "If you object to smoke—" and he waved one hand significantly toward the open door.

"All the time—all by yourself. And you don't want to be canned, either." With the pointer Marion drew aimless little invisible volutes upon the map, connecting the two spruce cones with an imaginary scroll design. "How touching!" she said enigmatically.

"Sure, you're heart-broken over the pathos of it. I can see that. You ought to put in about a week here—that's all I've got to say."

"Think I couldn't?" She looked across at him queerly.

"You wouldn't dare go any farther away than the spring. You'd have to stay right here on this peak every minute of the twenty-four hours. They call up at all kinds of ungodly times, just to see if you're on the job, if they think you're snitching. They'd catch you gone sometime—you couldn't get by with it—and then—"

"The can," finished Miss Marion gravely. "But what I want to know is, what have you done?"

"Done?" Jack's jaw dropped slack away from the pipestem. "What yuh mean, done?"

"Yes. What have you done that they should put you up here and make you stay up here? It sounds—"

"Now, even a tourist knows that this is a Forest Service lookout station, and that I'm here to watch out for fires down below! I'm your guardian angel, young lady. Treat me with respect, if not with kindness."

"I'm a member of the no-treat reform club. Honestly, don't they let you leave here at all?"

"Four days a month." He heaved a heavy sigh and waved his pipe toward the great outdoors. "'S big world, when it's all spread out in sight," he volunteered.

"Can't you—can't you even go down to the lake and fish, when you want to?"

"Nope. Four days a month—and if they didn't happen to have a spare man lying round handy, to send up here to take my place, I couldn't go then even."

Marion regarded him meditatively. "You can have an hour's