It was an unfortunate sentence, that last one.  Mike stopped long enough to make sure that she was coming, long enough to hear what she said.  Then he ducked and ran, lumbering away toward a heavy outcropping of rock that edged the slope like a halibut’s fin.  Marion ran after him, glancing now and then over her shoulder, thankful because Hank had stayed in the trail and she could keep the great tree trunks between them.

At the rock wall, so swift was Marion’s pursuit, Mike turned at bay, both hands lifted over his head in a threatening gesture.  “Don’t yuh chase me up,” he gobbled frenziedly.  “Yuh better look out now!  Don’t yuh think yuh can take me and hang me for a spy—­you’re a spy yourself—­You look out, now!” Then he saw that Marion kept on coming, and he turned and ran like a scared animal.

Though she could not understand what he said, nevertheless Marion stopped in sheer astonishment.  The next moment Mike had disappeared between two boulders and was gone.  Marion followed his tracks to the rocks; then, fearful of Hank, she turned and ran down the slope that seemed to slant into Toll-Gate Basin.  Hank could track her, of course, but she meant to keep well ahead of him.  So she ran until she must climb the next slope.  Once she saw Mike running ahead of her through the trees.  She wondered what ailed him, but she was too concerned over her own affairs to give him much thought.  Hank called to her; he seemed to be coming after her, and she supposed he would overtake her in time, but she kept on through brush and over fallen logs half buried in the snow that held her weight if she was careful.  And when she was almost ready to despair of reaching the open before Hank, she saw through the trees the little pasture with its log fence.  Mike was going across to his cabin, still running awkwardly.

Marion ploughed through the drifts in the edge of the timber and slowed thankfully to a walk when she reached the corner of the fence.  Across the flat the cabin stood backed against the wall of heavy forest.  Hank would not dare come any farther—­or if he did he would be careful not to offend.  She walked on more slowly, pulling herself back to composure before she went in to face the critical, censuring eyes of Kate.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

TROUBLE ROCKS THE PAN, LOOKING FOR GRAINS OF GOLD

Up on the peaks Jack was touching the heights and the depths of his own nature, while the mountains stood back and waited, it seemed to him, for the final answer.  He had lived with them too long and too intimately to disregard them now, uninfluenced by their varying moods.  He watched them in sunlight when they were all shining white and violet and soft purple, with great shadows spread over their slopes where the forests stood deepest; and they heartened him, gave him a wordless promise that better times were to come.  He saw them swathed with clouds, and felt the chill of their cold aloofness; the world was a gloomy place then, and friendship was all false and love a mockery.  He saw them at night—­then was he an outcast from everything that made life worth while; then was he almost ready to give up.