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The Lookout Man, a fiction by B. M. Bower |
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Chapter 15. A Cave Dweller Jack Would Be |
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_ CHAPTER FIFTEEN. A CAVE DWELLER JACK WOULD BE
"A-ah, but she's goin' t' give us the rain now, I dunno," Murphy predicted, staring up at the leaden clouds through his thick glasses. "Ye better git up some firewood, Mike, and make the camp snug agin foul weather. An' av' the both of ye ain't got yer place tight an' ready fer a sthorm, ye betther be stirrin' yerselves an' let the diggin' go fer a day. It's firewood ye'll need, an' in a dry place. An' while ye're talkin' 'bout wood, have yer got yer wood fer the winter? An' yer goin' to sthay, ye bin tellin' me." Fred looked around him at the forest where the oaks and the cottonwoods and all the trailing vines were fluttering gay red and yellow leaves in the wind. Fall was slipping on him unaware. He had thought that there was plenty of time to make ready for winter, but now he knew that the time was short--too short, maybe, with that wind booming up from the southwest. "You and Mike can knock off work here, and when your camp's in shape you can come over and cut wood for us. Doug, we'll beat it and throw that woodshed together we've been going to build. Think it'll storm today, Murphy?" Murphy stepped out where he could glimpse the southern sky, and eyed the drift of heavy clouds. "She will not bust loose t'day, I'm thinkin'," he decided. "She'll be workin' 'erself up to the pint av shnowin' er rainin' er both. Rain in the valley, shnow up here where we're at, I'm thinkin'. She'll be a rip when she does bust loose, me boy, an' ye can't have things too tight an' shnug." "I believe yuh. Come on, Doug. Murphy, you can take care of the tools and cover up the hole, will you?" "I will do that." Murphy grinned after the two tolerantly. "Will I take care av me tools, an' it buildin' a sthorm?" he sarcastically asked the swaying bushes around him. "An' do I need a pilgrim to remind me av that? An' thim wit' no wood, I dunno, whin they shud have thurrty tier at the very least, sawed an' sphlit an' ricked up under cover where it can be got at whin they want it--an' they will want it, fair enough! A-ah, but they'll find they ain't winterin' in Southern Californy, before they're t'rough with this country. They're not got their winter grub laid in, an' I'll bet money on't, an' no wood, an' they're like t' be shnowed in here, whin no rig will come up thot grade wit' a load an' I don't care how much they'll pay t' have it hauled, an' them two not able t' pack grub on their backs as I've done manny's the time, an' them wimmin wantin' all the nicks Lee's got in his sthores! Cake an' pie, it's likely they must have in the house er they think they're not eatin'." Murphy talked as he worked, putting the tools in a pile ready to be carried to camp, picking up pieces of rope and wire and boards and nails, and laying a plank roof over the windlass and weighting it with rocks. Mike had gone pacing to camp, swinging his arms and talking to himself also, though his talk was less humanly kind under the monotonous grumble. Mike was gobbling under his breath, something about law-suing anybody that come botherin' him an' tryin' t' arrest him for nothin'. But Murphy continued to harp upon the subject of domestic preparedness. "An' that leanto them men sleep in is no better than nothin' an' if it kapes the rain off their blankets it'll not kape off the shnow, an' it won't kape off the wind at all. An' they've not got the beddin' they'll be needin', an' I'll bet money on it. "They should have a cellar dug back av the cabin where's the hill the sun gets to, an' they should have it filled with spuds an' cabbages an' the like--but what have they got? A dollar's worth av sugar, maybe, an' a fifty-poun' sack av flour, an' maybe a roll av butter an' a table full of nicknacks which they could do without--an' winter comin' on like the lope av a coyote after a rabbit, an' them no better prepared than the rabbit, ner so, fer the rabbit's maybe got a hole he can duck inty an' they have nawthin' but the summer camp they've made, an' _hammicks_, by gorry, whin they should have warrm overshoes an' sourdough coats! Tenderfeet an' pilgrims they be, an' these mountains is no place fer such with winter comin' on--an' like to be a bad wan the way the squrls has been layin' away nuts." Pilgrims and tenderfeet they were, and their lack of foresight might well shock an oldtimer like Murphy. But he would have been still more shocked had he seen what poor amateurish preparations for the coming winter another young tenderfoot had been making. If he had seen the place which Jack Corey had chosen for his winter hide-out I think he would have taken a fit; and if he had seen the little pile of food which Jack referred to pridefully as his grubstake I don't know what he would have done. Under the barren, rock-upended peak of King Solomon there was a narrow cleft between two huge slabs that had slipped off the ledge when the mountain was in the making. At the farther end of the cleft there was a cave the size of a country school-house, with a jagged opening in the roof at one side, and with a "back-door" opening that let one out into a network of clefts and caves. It was cool and quiet in there when Jack discovered the hiding place, and the wind blowing directly from the south that day, did not more than whistle pleasantly through a big fissure somewhere in the roof. Jack thought it must have been made to order, and hastened down to their meeting place and told Marion so. And the very next day she insisted upon meeting him on the ridge beyond Toll-Gate basin and climbing with him to the cave. As soon as she had breath enough to talk, she agreed with him as emphatically as her vocabulary and her flexible voice would permit. Made to order? She should say it was! Why, it was perfect, and she was just as jealous of him as she could be. Why, look at the view! And the campfire smoke wouldn't show but would drift away through all those caves; or if it did show, people would simply think that a new volcano had bursted loose, and they would be afraid to climb the peak for fear of getting caught in an eruption. Even if they did come up, Jack could see them hours before they got there, and he could hide. And anyway, they never would find his cave. It was perfect, just like a moonshiner story or something. Speaking of smoke reminded Jack that he would have to lay in a supply of wood, which was some distance below the rock crest. Manzanita was the closest, and that was brushy stuff. He also told Marion gravely that he must do it before any snow came, or his tracks would be a dead give-away to the place. He must get all his grubstake in too, and after snowfall he would have to be mighty careful about making tracks around any place. Marion thought that snow on the mountain would be "keen," and suggested that Jack try a pair of her shoes, and see if he couldn't manage to wear them whenever there was snow. His feet were very small for a man's, and hers were--well, not tiny for a woman, and she would spend so much time hiking around over the hills that a person would think, of course, she had made the tracks. Being an impulsive young woman who believed in doing things on the spot, she thereupon retired behind a corner of rock, and presently threw one of her high-lace boots out to Jack. It crumpled his toes, but Jack thought he could wear it if he had to. So that point was settled satisfactorily, and they went on planning impossibilities with a naive enthusiasm that would have horrified Murphy. Any man could have told Jack things to dampen his enthusiasm for wintering on the top of King Solomon. But Jack, for perfectly obvious reasons, was not asking any man for information or advice upon that subject. Hank Brown would have rambled along the trail of many words and eventually have told Jack some things that he ought to know--only Hank Brown came no more to Mount Hough lookout station. A stranger brought Jack's weekly pack-load of supplies; a laconic type of man who held his mind and his tongue strictly to the business at hand. The other men who came there were tourists, and with them Jack would not talk at all if he could help it. So he went blandly on with his camp building, four precious days out of every month. He chopped dead manzanita bush and carried it on his back to his hide-out, and was tickled with the pile he managed to store away in one end of the cave. Working in warm weather, it seemed to be a great deal of wood. From the lookout station he watched the slow building of the storm that so worried Murphy because of the Toll-Gate people. He watched the circled sweep of the clouds rushing from mountain ridge to mountain ridge. Straight off Claremont they came, and tangled themselves in the treetops of the higher slopes. The wind howled over the mountain so fiercely that he could scarcely force his way against it to the spring for water. And when he filled his bucket the wind sloshed half of it out before he could reach the puny shelter of his station. If he had ever wondered why that station was banked solid to the window-sills with rocks, he wondered no more when he felt that gale pushing and tugging at it and shrieking as if it were enraged because it could not pick the station up bodily and fling it down into the lake below. "Gee! I'm glad I've got a cave the wind can't monkey with, to winter in," he congratulated himself fatuously once, when the little boxlike building shook in the blast. That night the wind slept, and the mountain lay hushed after the tumult. But the clouds hung heavy and gray at dark, and in the morning they had not drifted on. It was as though the mountain tops had corralled all the clouds in the country and held them penned like sheep over the valleys. With the gray sunrise came the wind again, and howled and trumpeted and bullied the harassed forests until dark. And then, with dark came the stinging slap of rain upon the windows, and pressed Jack's loneliness deep into the soul of him. "They'll be shutting up this joint for the winter," he told himself many times that night, half hopefully, half regretfully. "They won't pay a man to watch forests that are soaking wet. I guess my job's done here." The next morning a thin white blanket of snow fresh sifted from the clouds lay all over the summit and far down the sides. Beyond its edges the rain beat steadily upon the matted leaves and branches. Surely his job was ended with that storm, Jack kept telling himself, while he stared out at his drenched world capped with white. It was the nearest he had ever been to snow, except once or twice when he had gone frolicking up Mount Wilson with snowballing parties. He scooped up handfuls of it with a dreary kind of gleefulness--dreary because he must be gleeful alone--he made tracks all around just for the novelty of it; he snowballed the rocks. He would soon go into a different kind of exile, without rules and regulations to hamper his movements; without seventy-five dollars a month salary, too, by the way! But he would have the freedom of the mountains. He would be snug and safe in his cave over there, and Marion would climb up to meet him every day or so and bring him magazines and news of the outside world. And he would fill in the time hunting, and maybe do a little prospecting, as he had vaguely hinted to the man who brought his supplies. It would not be so bad. But his job did not end with that storm. The storm passed after a few days of dreary drizzle in the lower country and howling winds over the crest and a few hours of daytime snowfall that interested Jack hugely because he had never in his life before seen snow actually falling out of the sky. Then the sun came out and dried the forests, and Supervisor Ross said nothing whatever about closing the lookout station for the winter. A week of beautiful weather brought other beautiful weeks. He had another four days' relief and, warned by the storm, he spent the time in laboriously carrying dead pine wood and spruce bark up to his cave. It wouldn't do any harm to have a lot of wood stored away. It might get pretty cold, some stormy days. Already the nights were pretty nippy, even to a warm blooded young fellow who had never in his life really suffered from cold. Some instinct of self-preservation impelled him to phone in for a canvas bed sheet--a "tarp," he had heard Hank Brown call it--and two pairs of the heaviest blankets to be had in Quincy. You bet a fellow ought to be prepared for the worst when he is planning to winter in a cave! Especially when he must do his preparing now, or tough it out till spring. With his mirror he heliographed a signal to Marion, and when she came he said he must have more cigarettes, because he might smoke harder when he was really settled down to roughing it. What he should have ordered was more bacon and flour, but he did not know that, his mind dwelling upon the luxuries of life rather than the necessities--he who had never met real necessity face to face. "I'll send the order right away," Marion obligingly promised him. "But Kate will be simply furious if she sees the package. The last lot I made her believe was candy that was sent me, and because I didn't offer her any of it--I couldn't, of course--she would hardly talk for a whole day, and she hinted about selfishness. She thinks I carry my pockets full of candy when I start off hiking through the woods, and eat it all by myself." She laughed because it seemed a good joke on Kate. The next time she climbed up to the station she found him boarding up the windows and hanging certain things from the ceiling to keep them away from rats, under the telephone directions of the supervisor. He expected Hank's successor up that afternoon to move down what must be taken to town for the winter. He did not seem so cheerful over the near prospect of hiding out on King Solomon, and Marion herself seemed depressed a bit and more silent than usual. The wind whistled keenly over the peak, whipping her khaki skirt around her ankles and searching out the open places in her sweater. Claremont and the piled ridges beyond were hooded in clouds that seemed heavy with moisture, quite unlike the woolly fleeces of fair weather. "Well, she's all nailed down for the winter," Jack said apathetically when the last board was in place. "She's been a queer old summer, but I kind of hate to leave the old peak, at that." They turned their heads involuntarily and stared across the fire-scarred mountainside to where Taylor Rock thrust bleakly up into the sky. A summer unmarked by incidents worthy the name of events, spent on one mountain top; a winter that promised as little diversion upon another mountain top-- "Say, a ride on a real live street car would look as big to me right now as a three-ring circus," Jack summed up his world-hunger with a shrug. "By the time I've wintered over there I'll be running round in circles trying to catch my shadow. Plumb bugs, that's what I'll be; and don't I know it!" "You'll love it," Marion predicted with elaborate cheerfulness. "I only wish I could change places with you. Think of me, shut up in a dark little three-room cabin with one elocutionist, one chronic grouch and one human bluebottle fly that does nothing but buzz! You're a lucky kid to have a whole mountain all to yourself. Think of me!" "Oh, I'll think of you, all right!" Jack returned glumly and turned back to the denuded little station. "I'll think of you," he repeated under his breath, feeling savagely for the top button of his thick gray sweater. "Don't I know it!" _ |
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