The B. M. Bower Megapack

by B. M. Bower

  “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, he was afraid.

  Ross seemed to consider the matter for a minute. Then, “N—o, as long as she’s up there, she’d better stay. We can’t spare you to go. You might call her to the phone—”

  “I can’t. She’s off somewhere on the peak, taking in the view,” Jack replied. “She grabbed my sweater and beat it, an hour or so ago, and I don’t know where she went.… No, I don’t think she tried that. She knows she couldn’t get there. She said she wanted to see all she could of it while she had the chance.… What?… Oh, sure, she’s got sense enough to take care of herself, far as that goes. Seems to be one of the independent kind.… All right. I’ll call up if she comes back, and she can talk to you herself.”

  But he did not call up the supervisor, for Marion did not come back. At daybreak, when Jack could no longer fight down his uneasiness, and went to look for her, he found her crouched between two boulders that offered some shelter from the wind without obstructing the view. She was huddled in his sweater, shivering a little with the dawn chill but scarcely conscious of the fact that she was cold. Her lids were red-rimmed from staring up too long, at the near stars and down at the remote mountains—as they looked to be that night. She seemed rather to resent interruption, but in a few minutes she became human and practical enough to admit that she was hungry, and that she supposed it was time to think about getting home.

  When she got up to follow Jack to the station, she walked stiffly because of her cramped muscles; but she didn’t seem to mind that in the least. She made only one comment upon her vigil, and that was when she stopped in the door of the station and looked back at the heaving cloud of smoke that filled the eastern sky.

  “Well, whatever happens to me from now on, I’ll have the comfort of knowing that for a few hours I have been absolutely happy.” Then, with the abruptness that marked her changes of mood, she became the slangy, pert, feather-headed Marion Rose whom Jack had met first; and remained so until she left him after breakfast to go home to Kate, who would be perfectly wild.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  KATE FINDS SOMETHING TO WORRY OVER

  Kate may have been wild, but if so she managed to maintain an admirable composure when Marion walked up to the door of the cabin. She did not greet her best friend with hysterical rejoicings, probably because she had been told of her best friend’s safety soon after dark the night before, and had since found much to resent in Marion’s predicament and the worry which she had suffered before Marion’s message came.

  “Well!” she said, and continued brushing her hair. “Have you had any breakfast?”

  “Ages ago. Where’s everybody?” Marion flung down her hat and made straight for the hammock.

  “Helping put out the forest fire, I suppose. They had to go last night, and I was left all alone. I hope I may never pass as horrible a night again. I did not sleep one minute. I was so nervous that I never closed my eyes. I walked the floor practically all night.”

  “Forevermore!” Marion murmured from the hammock, her cheek dropped upon an arm. “I simply ruined my shoes, Kate, walking through all those ashes and burnt stuff. You’ve no idea how long it stays hot. I wonder what would soften the leather again. Have we any vaseline?”

  Kate looked at her a minute and gave a sigh of resignation. “Sometimes I really envy you your absolute lack of the finer sensibilities, Marion. I should not have suffered so last night, worrying about you, if I were gifted with your lack of temperament. Yes, I believe we have a jar of vaseline, if that is what worries you most. But for my part, I should think other things would concern you more.”

  “Why shouldn’t it concern me to spoil a pair of nine dollar shoes? I don’t suppose I could get any like them in Quincy, and you know what a time I had getting fitted in Hamburger’s. And besides, I couldn’t afford another pair; not till we sell our trees anyway.”

  “How is the fire? Are they getting it put out?” Kate’s face was veiled behind her hair.

  “I don’t know, it is down the other side of the mountain now. But three hundred men are fighting it, Jack said, so I suppose—”

  “Jack!” With a sprea
d of her two palms like a swimmer cleaving the water, Kate parted her veil of hair and looked out at the girl. “Jack who? Is that the man up at the lookout station, that you—”

  “He’s not a man. He’s just a big, handsome, sulky kid. When he’s cross he pulls his eyebrows together so there’s a little lump between them. You want to pinch it. And when he smiles he’s got the sweetest expression around his mouth, Kate! As if he was just so full of the old nick he couldn’t behave if he tried. You know—little quirky creases at the corners, and a twinkle in his eyes—oh, good night! He’s just so good looking, honestly, it’s a sin. But his disposition is spoiled. He gets awfully grouchy over the least little thing—”

  “Marion, how old is he?” Kate had been holding her hair away from her face and staring all the while with shocked eyes at Marion.

  “Oh, I don’t know—old enough to drive a girl perfectly crazy if he smiled at her often enough. Do you want to go up and meet him? He’d like you, Kate—you’re so superior. He simply can’t stand me, I’m such a mental lightweight. His eyes keep saying, ‘So young and lovely, and—nobody home,’ when he looks at me. You go, Kate. Take him up a loaf of bread; that he had brought from town tastes sour.”

  “Marion, I don’t believe a word you’re saying! I can tell by your eyes when you’re trying to throw me off the track. But old or young, handsome or ugly, it was a dreadful thing for you to spend the night up there, alone with a strange man. I simply walked the floor all night, worrying about you! I’d have gone up there in spite of the altitude, if the fire had not been between. I only hope Fred and the professor don’t get to hear of it. I was so afraid they would reach home before you did! But since they didn’t, there’s no need of saying anything about it. They left right away, before any of us had gotten anxious about you. If the man who told me doesn’t blurt it to every one he sees—what in the world possessed you, Marion, to phone down to the Forest Service that you were up there and going to stay?”

  “Well, forevermore!” Marion lifted her head from her arm to stare at Kate. Then she laughed and lay back luxuriously. “I was afraid you wouldn’t know where to look for the bread,” she explained meekly, and turned her face away from the sunlight and took a nap.

  Kate finished with her hair rather abruptly, considering the leisurely manner in which she had been brushing it. She glanced often at Marion sprawled gracefully and unconventionally in the hammock with one cinder-blackened boot sticking boyishly out over the edge. Kate’s eyes held an expression of baffled curiosity. They often held that expression when she looked at Marion.

  But presently the professor came, dragging his feet wearily and mopping his soot-blackened face with a handkerchief as black. He gave the hammock a longing look, as though he had been counting on easing his aching body into it. Seeing Marion there asleep, he dropped to the pine needle carpet under a great tree, and began to fan himself with his stiff-brimmed straw hat that was grimed with smoke and torn by branches.

  “By George!” he exclaimed, glancing toward Kate as she came hurrying from the cabin. “That was an ordeal!”

  “Oh, did you get it put out? And where is Fred? Shall I make you some lemonade, Douglas?”

  “A glass of lemonade would be refreshing, Kate, after the experience I have gone through. By George! A forest fire is a tremendous problem, once the conflagration attains any size. We worked like galley slaves all night long, with absolutely no respite. Fred, by the way, is still working like a demon.”

  While Kate was hurrying lemons and sugar into a pitcher, the professor reclined his work-wearied body upon the pine needles and cast hungry glances toward the hammock. He cleared his throat loudly once or twice, and soliloquized aloud: “By George! I wish I could stretch out comfortably somewhere.”

  But Marion did not hear him—apparently being asleep; though the professor wondered how one could sleep and at the same time keep a hammock swinging with one’s toes, as Marion was doing. He cleared his throat again, sighed and inquired mildly: “Are you asleep, Marion?” Getting no answer, he sighed again and hitched himself closer to the tree, so that a certain protruding root should not gouge him so disagreeably in the side.

  “Shall I fix you something to eat, Douglas?” The voice of Kate crooned over him solicitously. “I can poach you a couple of eggs in just a minute, over the oil stove, and make you a cup of tea. Is the fire out? And, oh, Douglas! Has it burned any of our timber? I have been so worried, I did not close my eyes once, all night.”

  “Our timber is safe, I’m happy to say. It really is safer, if anything, than it was before the fire started. There will be no further possibility of fire creeping upon us from that quarter.” He quaffed the lemonade with little, restrained sighs of enjoyment. “It also occurred to me that every forest fire must necessarily increase the value of what timber is left. I should say then, strictly between you and me, Kate, that this fire may be looked upon privately as an asset.”

  The hammock gave an extra swing and then stopped. Kate, being somewhat sensitive to a third presence when she and the professor were talking together, looked fixedly at the hammock.

  “If you are awake, dear, it would be tremendously thoughtful to let the professor have the hammock for a while. He is utterly exhausted from fighting fire all night,” she said with sugar-coated annoyance in her tone.

  “Oh, don’t disturb her—I’m doing very well here for the present,” the professor made feeble protest when Marion showed no sign of having heard the hint. “Let the child sleep.”

  “The child certainly needs sleep, if I am any judge,” Kate snapped pettishly, and closed her lips upon further revelations. “Shall I poach you some eggs? And then if the child continues to sleep, I suppose we can bring your cot out under the trees. It is terribly stuffy in the tent. You’d roast.”

  “Please don’t put yourself to any inconvenience at all, Kate. I am really not hungry at all. Provisions were furnished those who fought the fire. I had coffee, and a really substantial breakfast before I left them. I shall lie here for a while and enjoy the luxury of doing nothing for a while. By George, Kate! The Forest Service certainly does make a man work! Think of felling trees all night long! That is the way they go about it, I find. They cut down trees and clear away a strip across the front of the fire where there seems to be the greatest possibility of keeping the flames from jumping across. They even go so far as to rake back the pine needles and dry cones as thoroughly as possible, and in that manner they prevent the flames from creeping along the ground. It is really wonderfully effective when they can get to work in the light growth. I was astounded to see what may be accomplished with axes and picks and rakes and shovels. But it is work, though. By George, it is work!”

  “Don’t try to root in those needles for a soft spot,” Kate advised him practically. “Not when some persons have more cushions than they need or can use.” Whereupon she went over and took two pillows from under Marion’s feet, and pulled another from under her shoulder.

  These made the professor comfortable enough. He lay back smiling gratefully—even affectionately—upon her.

  “You certainly do know how to make a man glad that he is alive,” he thanked her. “Now, if I could lie here and look up through these branches and listen while a dear little woman I know recites Shelley’s The Cloud, I could feel that paradise holds no greater joys than this sheltered little vale.”

  The hammock became suddenly and violently agitated. Marion was turning over with a movement that, in one less gracefully slim, might be called a flop.

  “Well, good night! I hope you’ll excuse me, Kate, for beating it,” she said, sitting up. “But I’ve heard The Cloud till I could say it backwards with my tongue paralyzed. I’ll go down by the creek and finish my sleep.” She took the three remaining cushions under her arms and departed. At the creek she paused, her ear turned toward the shady spot beyond the cabin. She heard Kate’s elocutionary voice declaiming brightly:

  “From my wings are shaken the dews that waken<
br />
  The sweet buds, every one—”

  She went on a little farther, until she could hear only the higher tones of Kate’s voice above the happy gurgle of the stream. She scrambled through a willow tangle, stopped on the farther side to listen, and smiled when the water talked to her with no interruption of human voices.

  “And Doug thinks he’s a real nature lover!” she commented, throwing her cushions down into a grassy little hollow under the bank. “But if he would rather hear Kate elocute about it than to lie and listen to the real thing, he’s nothing more or less than a nature pirate.” She curled herself down among the cushions and stared up through the slender willow branches into the top of an alder that leaned over the bank and dangled its finger-tip branches playfully toward her.

  “You pretty thing!” she cooed to it. “What does ail people, that they sit around and talk about you and make up rhymes about you, when you just want them to come out and love you! You darling! Words only make you cheap. Now whisper to me, all about when you woke up last spring and found the sun warm and waiting—Go on—tell me about it, and what you said to the creek, and all.”

  Having listened to Kate’s dramatic rendition of the poem he liked, the professor went over and made himself comfortable in the hammock and began talking again about the fire. It was a magnificent spectacle, he declared, although he was really too close to it to obtain the best view. A lot of fine timber was ruined, of course; but fortunately not a tree on any of their claims had been touched. The wind had blown the flames in another direction.

  “It would have been terrible to have a fire start in our timber,” he went on. “We should lose all that we have put into the venture so far—and that would mean a good deal to us all. As it stands now, we have had a narrow escape. Did you go up where you could obtain a view of the fire, Kate?”