The Lookout Man Page 5

  CHAPTER FIVE

  "IT'S A LONG WAY TO TIPPERARY," SANG JACK

  Riding at a steady, climbing walk up a winding road cut into thewooded mountainside; with a pack-horse loaded with food and new, cheapbedding which Jack had bought; with chipmunks scurrying over the treetrunks that had gone crashing down in some storm and were gatheringmoss on their rotting bark; with the clear, yellow sunlight of amountain day in spring lying soft on the upper branches, Jack had aqueer sense of riding up into a new, untroubled life that could holdno shred of that from which he had fled. His mother, stately in hersilks and a serenely unapproachable manner, which seemed always to sayto her son that she was preoccupied with her own affairs, and that heraffairs were vastly more important than his youthful interests andproblems, swam vaguely before his consciousness, veiled by the swiftpassing of events and the abrupt change from city to unspoiledwilderness.

  When his companion stopped to let the horses "get their wind," Jackwould turn in the saddle and look back over the network of gulchesand deep canyons to where the valley peeped up at him shyly throughthe trees, and would think that every step made him that much safer.He did not face calmly the terror from which he had fled. Stillmentally breathless from the very unexpectedness of the catastrophe,he shrank from the thought of it as if thinking would betray him. Hehad not so far concerned himself with his future, except as it heldthe possibility of discovery. So he quizzed his companion and got himtalking about the mountains over which he was to play guardian angel.

  He heard a good deal about hunting and fishing; and when they climbeda little higher, Hank Brown pointed out to him where a bear and twohalf grown cubs had been killed the fall before. He ought to have arifle, said Hank. There was always the chance that he might get a shotat a bear; and as for deer, the woods were full of them. Then he toldmore stories and pointed out the very localities where the incidentshad occurred.

  "See that rocky peak over there? That's where the bears hole up in thewinter. Network of caves, up there. King Solomon's the name the peoplethat live here call it--but it's down on the map as Grizzly Peak.Ain't any grizzlies, though--black bear mostly. They're smaller andthey ain't so fighty."

  It was on the tip of Jack's tongue to observe that a man might hideout here for months and months and never be seen, much less caught;but he checked himself, and remarked only that he would certainly haveto get a gun. He would like, he declared, to take home some goodheads, and maybe a bear skin or two. He forced himself to speak ofhome in the careless tone of one who has nothing to hide, but thewords left an ache in his throat and a dull heaviness in his chest.

  Hank Brown went on talking and saw nothing wrong with his mood.Indeed, he never saw anything wrong with a man who would listen toHank's hunting and fishing stories and not bore him with stories ofhis own prowess. Wherefore, Jack was left alone in peace to fight thesudden, nauseating wave of homesickness, and in a little while foundhimself listening to the steady monotone of Hank Brown's voice.

  So, they came to a tiny, sunken meadow, one side of which was fencedwith poles, rimmed round with hills set thick with heavy timber. Onthe farther side of the meadow, almost hidden from sight, was a squarelog cabin, solid, gloomily shaded and staring empty-eyed at a tiny,clear stream where the horses scared an eight-inch trout out of a poolwhen they lowered eager noses to drink thirstily.

  After that they climbed up into a more open country, clothed withinterlaced manzanita bushes and buck brush and thickets of youngbalsam fir. Here, said Hank Brown, was good bear country. And a littlefarther on he pulled up and pointed down to the dust of the trail,where he said a bear had crossed that morning. Jack saw the imprint ofwhat looked like two ill-shaped short feet of a man walkingbarefooted--or perhaps two crude hands pressed into the dirt--and wasthrilled into forgetfulness of his trouble.

  Before they had gone another mile, he had bought Hank's rifle and allthe cartridges he happened to have with him. He paid as much as a newrifle would have cost, but he did not know that--though he did knowthat he had scarcely enough money left in his pocket to jingle whenthe transaction was completed. He carried the rifle across the saddlein front of him and fingered the butt pridefully while his eyes wentglancing here and there hopefully, looking for the bear that hadcrossed the trail that morning. The mere possession of the rifle benthis mood toward adventure rather than concealment. He did not thinknow of the lookout station as a refuge so much as a snug lair in theheart of a wonderful hunting ground.

  He wanted to hear more about the bear and deer which Hank Brown hadshot on these slopes. But Hank was no longer in the mood forrecounting his adventures. Hank was congratulating himself uponselling that rifle, which had lately shown a tendency to jam if heworked the lever too fast; and was trying to decide just what make andcalibre of rifle he would buy with the money now in his pocket; and hewas grinning in his sleeve at the ease with which he had "stung" thisyoung tenderfoot, who was unsuspectingly going up against aproposition which Hank, with all his love for the wild, would neverattempt of his own free will.

  At first sight, the odd little glass observatory, perched upon thevery tip-top of all the wilderness around, fascinated Jack. He hadnever credited himself with a streak of idealism, nor even with animagination, yet his pulse quickened when they topped the last steepslope and stood upon the peak of the world--this immediate, sunlitworld.

  The unconcealed joy on the face of the lookout when they arrived didnot mean anything at all to him. He stood taking great breaths of thelight, heady air that seemed to lift him above everything he had everknown and to place him a close neighbor of the clouds.

  "This is great!" he said over and over, baring his head to the keenbreeze that blew straight out of the violet tinted distance. "Believeme, fellows, this is simply _great!_"

  Whereupon the fireman who had spent two weeks there looked at him andgrinned.

  "You can have it," he said with a queer inflection. "Mount Lassen'sblowing off steam again. Look at her over there! She's sure on thepeck, last day or so--you can have her for company. I donate her alongwith the sun-parlor and the oil stove and the telescope and the view.And I wish you all kinds of luck. How soon you going back, Hank? Iguess I better be showing this fellow how to use the chart; maybeyou'd like something to eat. I'm all packed and ready to hit thetrail, myself."

  In the center of the little square room, mounted on a high table, wasa detail map of all the country within sight of the station--and thatmeant a good many miles of up and down scenery. Over it a slenderpointer was fitted to a pin, in the center of the map, that let itmove like a compass. And so cunningly was the chart drawn and placedupon the table that wherever one sighted along the pointer--as whenpointing at a distant smudge of smoke in the valley or on themountainside--there on the chart was the number by which thatparticular spot was designated.

  "Now, you see, suppose there's a fire starts at Massack--or along inthere," Ed, the lookout fireman, explained, pointing to a distantwrinkle in the bluish green distance, "you swing this pointer tillit's drawing a bead on the smoke, and then you phone in the number ofthe section it picks up on the chart. The lookout on Claremont, he'lldraw a bead on it too, and phone in _his_ number--see? And where themtwo numbers intersect on the chart, there's your fire, boy."

  Jack studied the chart like a boy investigating a new mechanical toy.He was so interested that he forgot himself and pushed his hairstraight back off his forehead with the gesture that had become anunconscious mannerism, spoiling utterly the plastered effect which hehad with so much pains given to his hair. But Hank and the firemanwere neither suspicious nor observing, and only laughed at hisexuberance, which they believed was going to die a violent death whenJack had spent a night or two there alone.

  "Is _that_ all I have to do?" he demanded, when he had located a halfdozen imaginary fires.

  "That's all you get paid for doing, but that ain't all you have to do,by a long shot!" the fireman retorted significantly. But he would notexplain until he had packed his bed on the horse that
had brought upJack's bedding and the fresh supplies, and was ready to go down themountain with Hank. Then he looked at Jack pityingly.

  "Well--you sure have got my sympathy, kid. I wouldn't stay hereanother month for a thousand dollars. You've got your work cut out foryou, just to keep from going crazy. So long."

  Jack stood on a little jutting pinnacle of rock and watched them outof sight. He thought the great crater behind the station looked like acrude, unfinished cup of clay and rocks; and that Crystal Lake,reflecting the craggy slope from the deeps below, was like blueing inthe bottom of the cup. He picked up a rock the size of his fist anddrew back his arm for the throw, remembered what the supervisor hadtold him about throwing stones into the lake, and dropped the rockguiltily. It was queer how a fellow wanted to roll a rock down andshatter that unearthly blue mirror into a million ripples.

  He looked away to the northwest, where Mount Lassen sent a lazy columnof thin, grayish vapor trailing high into the air, and thought howlittle he had expected to see this much-talked-of volcano; howcompletely and irrevocably the past two days had changed his life.Why, this was only Tuesday! Day before yesterday he had been whoopingalong the beach at Venice, wading out and diving under the breakersjust as they combed for the booming lunge against the sand clutteredwith humanity at play. He had blandly expected to go on playing therewhenever the mood and the bunch invited. Night before last he haddanced--and he had drunk much wine, and had made impulsive love to agirl he had never seen in his life until just before he had held herin his arms as they went swaying and gliding and dipping togetheracross the polished floor, carefree as the gulls outside on the sand.Night before last he had driven home--but he winced there, and pulledhis thoughts back from that drive.

  Here were no girls to listen to foolish speeches; no wine, no music,no boom of breakers, no gulls. There never would be any. He was as farfrom all that as though he had taken flight to the moon. There was nosound save the whispering rush of the wind that blew over the baremountain top. He was above the pines and he could only faintly hearthe murmur of their branches. Below him the world lay hushed, silentwith the silence of far distances. The shadows that lay on the slopeand far canyons moved like ghosts across the tumbled wilderness.

  For a minute the immensity of silence and blue distance lulled histhoughts again with the feeling of security and peace. He breatheddeep, his nostrils flared like a thoroughbred horse, his face turnedthis way and that, his eyes drinking deep, satisfying draughts of abeauty such as he had never before known. His lips were parted alittle, half smiling at the wonderful kindness of fate, that hadpicked him up and set him away up here at the top o' the world.

  He glanced downward, to his right. There went two objects--three, hecounted them a moment later. He stepped inside, snatched up thetelescope and focussed it eagerly on the slow-moving, black specks.Why, there went Hank Brown and the fireman, Ed somebody, and the packhorse with Ed's bedding lashed on its back. For perhaps a mile hewatched them going down through the manzanita and buck brush towardthe massed line of balsam firs that marked the nearest edge of theheavy timber line.

  So that was the trail that led up to his eyrie! He marked it well,thinking that it might be a good plan to keep an eye on that trail, incase an officer came looking for him here.

  He watched Hank and Ed go down into the balsam firs. Dark shadowscrept after them down the slope to the edge of the thicket where theyhad disappeared.

  He watched the shadows until they gave him a vague feeling ofdiscomfort and loneliness. He turned away and looked down into thebottom of the mountain's cup. The lake lay darkling there, hooded withshadows like a nun, the snow banks at the edge indicating the band ofwhite against the calm face. It looked cold and lonesome down there;terribly cold and lonesome.

  Mount Lassen, when he sent a comfort-seeking glance that way, sent upa spurt of grayish black smoke with a vicious suddenness that made himjump. With bulging eyes he watched it mount higher and higher until heheld his breath in fear that it would never stop. He saw the columnhalt and spread and fall....

  When it was over he became conscious of itching palms where his nailshad dug into them and left little red marks. He discovered that he wasshaking as with a nervous chill, and that his knees were bending underhim. He sent a wild-eyed glance to the still, purple lake down therewhere the snowbanks lingered, though it was the middle of May; to thefar hills that were purpling already with the dropping of the sunbehind the high peaks; to the manzanita slope where the trail lay inshadow now. It was terribly still and empty--this piled wilderness.

  He turned and hurried into his little glass-sided house and shut thedoor behind him. A red beam of the sinking sun shone in and laid a barof light across the chart like a grin.

  The silence was terrible. The emptiness pressed upon him like a weightthat crushed from him his youth and his strength and all his youthfuloptimism, and left him old and weak and faded, a shadow of humanitylike those shadows down there in the canyon.

  Stealthily, as if he were afraid of some tangible shape reaching outof the silence, his hand went to the telephone receiver. He clutchedit as drowning fingers clutch at seaweed. He leaned and jerked thereceiver to his ear, and waited for the human voice that would bringhim once more into the world of men. He did not know then that thetelephone was the kind that must be rung by the user; or if he hadbeen told that he had forgotten. So he waited, his ears strained tocatch the heavenly sound of a human voice.

  Shame crept in on the panic of his soul; shame and something thatstiffened it into the courage of a man. He felt his cheeks burn withthe flush that stained them, and he slowly lowered the receiver intoits hook.

  With his hands thrust deep into his pockets and his mouth pulled downat the corners, he stood leaning back against the desk shelf andforced himself to look down across the wooded slopes to the valley,where a light twinkled now like a fallen star. After a while he foundthat he could see once more the beauty, and not so much theloneliness. Then, just to prove to himself that he was not going to bebluffed by the silence, he began to whistle. And the tune carriedwith it an impish streak of that grim humor in which, so they tellus, the song was born. It is completely out of date now, that song,but then it was being sung around the world. And sometimes it waswhistled just as Jack was whistling it now, to brace a man's courageagainst the press of circumstances.

  "It's a long way to Tipperary," sang Jack, when he had whistled thechorus twice; and grinned at the joke upon himself. After that hebegan to fuss with the oil stove and to experiment with the food theyhad left him, and whistled deliberately all the while.

  In this wise Jack Corey lost himself from his world and entered intohis exile on a mountain top.