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

"She still waves," Jack assented somberly, picking up the wash basin. Why couldn't he enter the girl's foolery? He used to be full of it himself, and he used to consider that the natural form of companionship. He must be getting queer like all other hermits he had ever heard of. It occurred to him that possibly Marion Rose was not really feather-brained, but that the trouble was in himself, because he was getting a chronic grouch.

He was thinking while he ate. He had plenty of encouragement for thinking, because Marion herself seemed to be absorbed in her own thoughts. When she was filling his coffee cup the second time, she spoke quite abruptly.

"It would be terribly foolish for you to leave here, Jack Corey—or whatever you would rather be called. I don't believe any one has the faintest notion that you came up here into this country. If they had, they would have come after you before this. But they're still on the watch for you in other places, and I suppose every police station in the country has your description tacked on the wall or some place.

"I believe you'd better stay right where you are, and wait till something turns up to clear you. Maybe that man will get well, and then it won't be so serious; though, of course, being right through his lungs, the doctors claim it's pretty bad. I'll know if he dies or not, because he's a friend of Fred's, and Fred would hear right away. And we can make up a set of signals, and flash them with glasses, like we were doing just for fun this afternoon. Then I won't have to climb clear up here if something happens that you ought to know about—don't you see? I can walk out in sight of here and signal with my vanity mirror. It will be fun.

"And when you're through here, if I were you I'd find some nice place here in the hills to camp. It isn't half as bad to stay right in the mountains, as it would be to stay in town and imagine that every strange man you see has come after you. Sometimes I wish I could get right out where there's not a soul, and just stay there. Being in the woods with people around is not like being in the woods with just the woods. I've found that out. People kind of keep your mind tied down to little things that part of you hates, don't you know? Like when I'm with Kate, I think about facial massage and manicuring, and shows that I'd like to see and can't, and places where I'd like to go and eat and watch the people and dance and listen to the music, and can't; and going to the beaches when I can't, and taking automobile trips when I can't, and boys—and all that sort of thing. But when I'm all by myself in the woods, I never think of those things."

"I saw you down there by the hydrometer, all by yourself. And you were using your powder puff to beat the band." A twinkle lived for a second or two in the somber brown of Jack's eyes.

"You did? Well, that was second nature. I wasn't thinking about it, anyway."

"What were you thinking about when you kept staring up here? Not the beauties of nature, I bet." A perverse spirit made Jack try to push her back into the frivolous talk he had so lately and so bitterly deplored.

"Well, I was wondering if you had gumption enough to appreciate being up where you could watch the mountains all the while, and see them by day and by night and get really acquainted with them, so that they would tell you things they remember about the world a thousand years ago. I wondered if you had it in you to appreciate them, and know every little whim of a shadow and every little laugh of the sun—or whether you just stayed up here because they pay you money for staying. I've been so jealous of you, up here in your little glass house! I've lain awake the last three nights, peeking through the tree-tops at the little speck of sky I could see with stars in it, and thinking how you had them spread out all around you—and you asleep, maybe, and never looking!

"I'm awful sorry you're in trouble, and about your mother and all. But I think you're the luckiest boy I know, because you just happened to get to this place. Sometimes when I look at you I just want to take you by the shoulder and shake you!—because you don't half know how lucky you are. Why, all that makes the world such a rotten place to live in is because the people are starved all the while for beauty. Not beauty you can buy, but beauty like this around us, that you can feast on—"

"And I get pretty well fed up on it, too, sometimes," Jack put in, still perverse.

"And for that I pity you. I was going to wash the dishes, but you can do it yourself. I'm going out where I can forget there are any people in the world. I'll never have another night like this—it would be too much luck for one person."

She set down her cup, which she had been tilting back and forth in her fingers while she spoke. She got up, pulled Jack's heavy sweater off a nail in the corner, and went out without another word to him or a look toward him. She seemed to be absolutely sincere in her calm disposal of him as something superfluous and annoying. She seemed also to be just as sincere in her desire for a close companionship with the solitude that surrounded them.

Jack looked after her, puzzled. But he had discovered too many contradictory moods and emotions in his own nature to puzzle long over Marion's sudden changes. Three months ago he would have called her crazy, or accused her of posing. Now, however, he understood well enough the spell of that tremendous view. He had felt it too often and too deeply to grudge her one long feast for her imagination. So he took her at her word and let her go.

He tidied the small room and sent in another report of the headlong rush of the fire and the direction of the wind that fanned it. He learned that all Genessee was out, fighting to keep the flames from sweeping down across the valley. Three hundred men were fighting it, the supervisor told him. They would check it on the downhill slope, where it would burn more slowly; and if the wind did not change in the night it would probably be brought under control by morning. After that the supervisor very discreetly inquired after the welfare of the young lady who had telephoned. Had she found any means of getting back to her camp, or of sending any word?

Jack replied she had not, and that there was no likelihood of her getting away before daylight. There were too many burning trees and stumps and brush piles on the ground in the burned strip, he explained. It would bother a man to get down there now. But he offered to try it, if he might be excused from the station for a few hours. He said he would be willing to go down and tell them she was all right, or, a little later, he might even take a chance of getting her across. But it would take some time,