Any man walking beside Marion would have made him wild with jealousy; but Hank Brown!  Hank Brown, holding her by the arm, walking with her more familiarly than Jack had ever ventured to do, for all their close friendship!  Calling her cute—­why cute, in particular?  Did Hank, by any chance, refer to Marion’s little strategies in getting things for Jack?  The bare possibility sickened him.

He stood and watched until they reached the trail and passed out of sight among the trees, their voices growing fainter as the distance and the wind blurred the sounds.  Had they looked back while they were climbing out of the gulley, they must have seen him, for he stood out in the open, making no attempt at concealment, not even thinking of the risk.  When they had gone, he stood staring at the place and then turned and tramped apathetically back to his cave.

What was Marion doing with Hank Brown, the one man in all this country who held a definite grudge against Jack?  What had she done, that Hank should consider her so cute?  Was the girl playing double?  Loyalty was a part of Jack’s nature—­a fault, he had come to call it nowadays, since he firmly believed it was loyalty toward his father that had cost him his mother’s love; since it was loyalty to his friends, too, that had sent him out of Los Angeles in the gray of the morning; since it was loyalty to Marion that had held him here hiding miserably like an animal.  Loyalty to Marion made it hard now to believe his own eyes when they testified against her.

There must be some way of explaining it, he kept telling himself hopelessly.  Marion—­why, the girl simply couldn’t pretend all the time.  She would forget herself some time, no matter how clever she was at deception.  She couldn’t keep up a make-believe interest in his welfare, the way she had done; if she could do that—­well, like Hank Brown, he would have to hand it to her for being a lot cleverer than he had given her credit for being.  “If she’s been faking the whole thing, she ought to go on the stage,” he muttered tritely.  “She’d make Sarah Bernhardt look like a small-time extra.  Yes, sir, all of that.  And I don’t quite get it that way.”  Then he swore.  “Hank Brown!  That hick—­after having her choice of town boys, her taking up with that Keystone yap!  No, sir, that don’t get by with me.”  But when he had gone a little farther he stopped and looked blackly down toward the Basin.  A swift, hateful vision of the two figures walking close together up that slope struck him like a slap in the face.

“All but had his arm around her,” he growled.  “And she let him get by with it!  And laughed at his hick talk.  Huh!  Hank Brown!  I admire her taste, I must say!”

Up near the peak the wind howled through the pines, bringing with it the bite of cold.  His shoulders drawn together with the chill that struck through even his heavy sweater and coat, he went on, following the tracks he had made coming down.  They were almost obliterated with the snow, that went slithering over the drifts like a creeping cloud, except when a heavier gust lifted it high in air and flung it out in a blinding swirl.  Battling with that wind sent the warmth through his body again, but his hands and feet were numb when he skirted the highest, deepest, solidest drift of them all and crept into the desolate fissure that was the opening to his lair.