by B. M. Bower
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MIKE GOES SPYING ON THE SPIES
Mike sat hunched forward on a box in front of the stove in the roughlittle cabin where he and Murphy were facing together the winter inToll-Gate flat. For an hour he had stared at the broken cook stovewhere a crack disclosed the blaze within. He chewed steadily andabstractedly upon a lump of tar-weed, and now and then he unclaspedhis hands and gave his left forefinger a jerk that made the knucklecrack. Tar-weed and knuckle-cracking were two queer little habits muchaffected by Mike. The weed he chewed in the belief that it not onlykept his physical body in perfect health, but purified his soul aswell; cracking the knuckles on his left forefinger cleared the muddleof his mind when he wanted to go deep into a subject that baffled him.
Hunched forward on another box sat Murphy nursing his elbow with onegrimy palm and his pipe with the other. He would glance at Mike nowand then and with a sour grin lifting the scraggly ends of hisgrizzled mustache. Murphy was resentfully contemptuous of Mike's longsilences, but he was even more contemptuous of Mike's gobblingindistinct speech, so he let Mike alone and comforted himself withgrinning superciliously when Mike was silent, and sneering at himopenly when he spoke, and cursing his cooking when Mike cooked.
"That gurrl," Mike blurted abruptly while he cracked his knuckles,"she'd better look out!"
"A-ah," retorted Murphy scornfully, "belike ye'd better tell her sothin. Or belike ye better set yerself t' look out fer the gurrl--Idunno."
"Oh, I'll look out fer her," Mike gobbled, nodding his headmysteriously. "I bin lookin' out fer her all the time--but she ain'tas cute as what she thinks she is. Oh, maybe she's cute, but there'sthem that's cuter, an' they don't live over in Europe, neither. Don'tyou worry--"
"Which I'm not doin' at all, me fine duck," vouchsafed Murphy boredly,crowding down the tobacco in his pipe. "An' it's you that's doin' theworryin', and fer why I dunno."
"Oh, I ain't worryin'--but that gurrl, she better look out, an' theold un she better look out too."
"An' fer what, then, Mike, should the gurrl be lookin' out? Fer ahusband, maybe yer thinkin'."
Mike nodded his head in a way that did not mean assent, but merelythat he was not telling all his thoughts. He fell silent, staringagain at the glowing crack in the stove. Twice he snapped his knucklesbefore he spoke again.
"She thinks," he began again abruptly, "that everybody's blind. Butthat's where she makes a big mistake. They's nothin' the matter with_my_ eyes. An' that old un, she better look out too. Why, the gurrl,she goes spyin' around t' meet the other spy, an' the old un she goesspyin' around after the gurrl, an' me I'm spyin' on--_all_ of 'em!" Hewaved a dirt grimed, calloused hand awkwardly. "The whole bunch," hechortled. "They can't fool _me_ with their spyin' around! An' thegov'ment can't fool me nayther. I know who's the spies up here, an' Ikin fool 'em all. Why, it's like back in Minnesota one time--"
Murphy, having listened attentively thus far, settled back against thewall, swung a rough-shod foot and began nursing his pipe and elbowagain. "A-ah, an' it's the trail to Minnesota, then," he commenteddisgustedly, nodding his head derisively. "Umm-hmm--it's back inMinnesota ye're wanderin' befuddled with yer sphies. So l'aveMinnesota wance more, Mike, an' put some beans a-soakin' like Iexplained t' ye forty-wan times a're'dy. My gorry, they're likebullets the way ye bile them fer an hour and ask that I eat thim. An'since yer eyes is so foine and keen, Mike, that ye can see sphiesthick as rabbits in the woods, wud ye just pick out a few of therocks, Mike, that will not come soft with all the b'ilin' ye can givethim? For if I come down wance more with me teeth on a rock, it'slikely I might lose me temper, I dunno."
Mike grumbled and got out the beans, and Murphy went back to hissmoking and his meditations. He made so little of Mike's outburstabout the spies that he did not trouble to connect it with any one inthe basin. Mike was always talking what Murphy called fool gibberish,that no man of sense would listen to it if he could help it. So Murphyfell to calculating how much of the money he had earned might justlybe spent upon a few days' spree without endangering the grubstake heplanned to take into the farther mountains in the spring. Murphy hadbeen sober now for a couple of months, and he was beginning to thirstfor the liquid joys of Quincy. Presently he nodded his head slowly,having come to a definite conclusion in his argument with himself.
"I think I'll be goin' t' town in the marnin', Mike, av I kin git alittle money from the boss," he said, lookin' up. "It's comin' cold,an' more shnow, I'm thinkin', an' I must have shoepacs, I dunno. Sowe'll be up early in the marnin', an' it's a hefty two-hours walk t'town fer anny man--more now with the shnow. An' I be thinkin'--"
What he was thinking he did not say, and Mike did not ask. He seemednot to hear Murphy's declaration at all. Now that he had the beanssoaking, Mike was absorbed in his own thoughts again. He did not carewhat Murphy did. Murphy, in Mike's estimation, was merely a conceitedold fellow-countryman with bad eyes and a sharp tongue. Let Murphy goto town if he liked. Mike had plans of his own.
The old un, for instance, stirred Mike's curiosity a good deal. Whyshould she be following the girl, when the girl went tramping aroundin the woods? They lived in the same cabin, and it seemed to Mike thatshe must know all about what the girl was doing and why she was doingit. And why didn't the men go tramping around like that, since theywere all in together? Mike decided that the two women must be spies,and the men didn't know anything about it. Probably they were spyingon the men, to get them in trouble with the government--which to Mikewas a vast, formless power only a little less than the Almighty. Itmight be that the women were spies for some other government, andmeant to have the men hanged when the time was ripe for it; in otherwords, when these queer mines with no gold in them were all done.
But a spy spying on a spy smacked of complications too deep for Mike,with all his knuckle-cracking. He was lost in a maze of conflictingconjectures whenever he tried to figure the thing out. And who was theother spy that stayed up on Taylor Rock? There was smoke up therewhere should be no smoke. Mike had seen it. There were little flashesof light up there on sunny days--Mike had seen them also. And therewas nothing in the nature of Taylor Rock itself to produce eithersmoke or flashes of light. No one but a spy would stay in so bleak aplace. That was clear enough to Mike by this time; what he must findout was why one spy followed another spy.
The very next day Marion left the cabin and set forth with a squarepackage under her arm. Mike, watching from where he was at workgetting out timbers for next year's assessment work on the claims,waited until she had passed him at a short distance, going down thetrail toward Quincy. When she had reached the line of timber thatstood thick upon the slope opposite the basin, he saw Kate, bulky insweater and coat, come from the cabin and take the trail after Marion.When she also had disappeared in the first wooded curve of the trail,up the hill, Mike struck his axe bit-deep into the green log he wasclearing of branches, and shambled after her, going by a short cutthat brought him into the trail within calling distance of Kate.
For half a mile the road climbed through deep forest. Marion walkedsteadily along, taking no pains to hide her tracks in the snow thatlay there white as the day on which it had fallen. Bluejays screamedat her as she passed, but there was no other sound. Even the uneasywind was quiet that day, and the faint scrunching of Marion's feet inthe frozen snow when she doubled back on a curve in the trail, came toKate's ears quite plainly.
At the top of the hill where the wind had lifted the snow into driftsthat left bare ground between, Marion stopped and listened, her headturned so that she could watch the winding trail behind her. Shethought she heard the scrunch of Kate's feet down there, but she wasnot sure. She looked at the scrubby manzanita bushes at her right,chose her route and stepped widely to one side, where a bare spotshowed between two bushes. Her left foot scraped the snow in makingthe awkward step, but she counted on Kate being unobserving enough topass it over. She ducked behind a chunky young cedar, waited there fora breath or two and then ran down the steep hillside,
keeping alwayson the bare ground as much as possible. Lower down, where the sun wasshut away and the wind was sent whistling overhead to the nexthilltop, the snow lay knee deep and even. But Kate would never comethis far off the trail, Marion was sure. She believed that Katesuspected her of walking down to the valley, perhaps even to town,though the distance was too great for a casual hike of three hours orso. But there was the depot, not quite at the foot of the mountain;and at the station was the agent's wife, who was a friendly littleperson. Marion had made it a point to mention the agent's wife in anintimate, personal way, as though she were in the habit of visitingthere. Mrs. Morton had an awful time getting her clothes dry withouthaving them all smudged up with engine smoke, she had said after herlast trip. Then she had stopped abruptly as though the remark hadslipped out unaware. It was easy enough to fool poor Kate.
But there was a chance that poor Kate would walk clear down to thestation, and find no Marion. In that case, Marion decided to invent avisit to one of the nearest ranches. That would be easy enough, for ifMarion did not know any of the ranchers, neither did Kate, and shewould scarcely go so far as to inquire at all the ranches. That wouldbe too ridiculous; besides, Kate was not likely to punish herself bymaking the trip just for the sake of satisfying her curiosity.
Marion plunged on down the hill, hurrying because she was later thanshe had intended to be, and it was cold for a person standing aroundin the snow. She crossed the deep gulch and climbed laboriously up theother side, over hidden shale rock and through clumps of bushes thatsnatched at her clothing like a witch's bony fingers. She had no morethan reached the top when Jack stepped out from behind a pine tree aswide of girth as a hogshead. Marion gave a little scream, and thenlaughed. After that she frowned at him.
"Say, you mustn't come down so far!" she expostulated. "You know itisn't a bit safe--I've told you so a dozen times, and every time Icome out, here I find you a mile or so nearer to camp. Why, yesterdaythere were two men up here hunting. I saw them, and so did Doug. Theygave Doug the liver of the deer they killed and the heart--so hewouldn't tell on them, I suppose. What if they had seen you?"
"One of them was Hank Brown," Jack informed her unemotionally. "I methim close as I am to you, and he swung off and went the other way.Last time we met I licked the daylights out of him, and I guess hehasn't forgotten the feel of my knuckles. Anyway, he stampeded."
"Well, forevermore!" Marion was indignant. "What's the use of yourhiding out in a cave, for goodness' sake, if you're going to letpeople see you whenever they come up this way? Just for that I've agood mind not to give you these cigarettes. I could almost smoke themmyself, anyway. Kate thinks that I do. She found out that it wasn'tcandy, the last time, so I had to pretend I have a secret craving forcigarettes, and I smoked one right before her to prove it. We hadquite a fuss over it, and I told her I'd smoke them in the woods tosave her feelings, but that I just simply must have them. She thinksnow that the Martha Washington is an awful place; that's where shethinks I learned. She cried about it, and that made me feel like acriminal, only I was so sick I didn't care at the time. Take them--andplease don't smoke so much, Jack! It's simply awful, the amount youuse."
"All right. I'll cut out the smoking and go plumb crazy." To prove hisabsolute sincerity, he tore open the package, extracted a cigaretteand began to smoke it with a gloomy relish. "Didn't bring anything toread, I suppose?" he queried after a minute which Marion spent ingetting her breath and in gazing drearily out over the wintrymountainside.
"No, Kate was watching me, and I couldn't. I pretended at first that Iwas lending magazines and papers to Murphy and Mike, but she hasfound out that Murphy's eyes are too bad, and Mike, the ignorant oldlunatic, can't read or write. I haven't squared that with her yet.I've been thinking that I'd invent a ranch or something to visit.Murphy says there's one on Taylor Creek, but the people have gone downbelow for the winter; and it's close enough so Kate could walk overand find out for herself."
She began to pull bits of bark off the tree trunk and throw themaimlessly at a snow-mounded rock. "It's fierce, living in a little penof a place like that, where you can't make a move without somebodywanting to know why," she burst out savagely. "I can't write a letteror read a book or put an extra pin in my hat, but Kate knows all aboutit. She thinks I'm an awful liar. And I'm beginning to actually hateher. And she was the very best friend I had in the world when we cameup here. Five thousand dollars' worth of timber can't pay for whatwe're going through, down there!"
"You cut it out," said Jack, reaching for another cigarette. "My partof it, I mean. It's that that's raising the deuce with you two, so youjust cut me out of it. I'll make out all right." As an afterthought headded indifferently, "I killed a bear the other day. I was going tobring you down a chunk. It isn't half bad; change from deer meat andrabbits and grouse, anyway."
Marion shook her head. "There it is again. I couldn't take it homewithout lying about where I got it. And Kate would catch me up onit--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 tothe cave and cook some there. Kate can't," she told him grimly, "tellwhat I've been eating, thank goodness, once it's swallowed!"
"It's too hard hiking up there through the snow," Jack hastilyobjected. "Better not tackle it. Tell you what I can do though. I'llwhittle off a couple of steaks and bring them down tomorrow, and we'llhunt 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 musthave 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 himdubiously. "How did it happen? You act as if you had killed achipmunk, 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 Ifound a bear that had gone byelow, and I killed him and borrowed hishide. 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 replywas an oblique answer to her question.
"Remember that nice air-hole in the top where the wind whistled in andmade a kind of tune? You ought to spend a night up there now listeningto it."
Marion threw a piece of bark spitefully at a stump beyond the snowmound. "But you have a fire," she said argumentatively. "And you haveall 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 luckyyou are. You ought to be shut up in that little cabin with Kate andthe 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 thatran into the brush soon as they got a whiff of me. And this one Ihunted out of a hole under a big tree root. It's a lie about themwintering 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 slidinginflection deeply surcharged with irony.
"Well, but why don't you keep the fire going? The smoke doesn't showat all, scarcely. And if you're going to tramp all over the mountainsand 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 thatsimply ruined the beaches, they say. Fred has gone down--somethingabout your case, I think. And then he wanted to see the men who are inon this timber scheme. They aren't coming through with the assessmentmoney the way they promised, and Fred and Doug and Kate had to dig upmore than their share to pay for the work. I didn't because I didn'thave 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 withthem they agreed to do my assessment work and take it out of themoney 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. Letthem keep the agreement. Fred isn't complaining--Fred's just dandyabout everything. It's only--"
"Well, I guess I'll be getting back. It's a tough climb up to myhangout." Jack's interest in the conversation waned abruptly with themention of Fred. "Can't you signal about ten o'clock tomorrow, ifyou'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 putup a lunch as if it were for me. Kate had good luck with her breadthis time. I'll bring all I dare. And, Jack,--you aren't reallyuncomfortable up there, are you? Of course, I know it gets prettycold, and maybe it's lonesome sometimes at night, but--you stayedalone all summer, so--"
"Oh, I'm all right. Don't you worry a minute about me. Run along homenow, before you make Kate sore at you again. And don't forget to letme know if you're coming. I'll meet you right about here. So long,pardner." He stuffed the package of cigarettes into his coat pocketand plunged into the balsam thicket behind him as though he was eagerto get away from her presence.
Marion felt it, and looked after him with hurt questioning in hereyes. "He's got his cigarettes--that's all he cares about," she toldherself 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 inthe snow and holding her right ankle in both hands and moaningpitiably.