In the chair car, where he plumped himself into a seat just as the train began to creep forward, Jack pulled his hat down over his eyebrows and wondered if any one had recognized him while he was getting on the train.  He could not tell, because he had not dared to seem anxious about it, and so had not looked around him.  At any rate he had not been stopped, though the police could wire ahead and have him dragged off the train at any station they pleased.  Panic once more caught him and he did not dare look up when the conductor came for his ticket, but held his breath until the gloomy, haggard-faced man had tagged him and passed on.  Until the train had passed Newhall and was rattling across the flat country to the coast, he shivered when any one passed down the aisle.

Beyond San Francisco lay the fog bank of the unknown.  With his fishing outfit he could pass unquestioned to any part of that mysterious, vague region known as Northern California.  The Russian River country, Tahoe, Shasta Springs, Feather River—­the names revolved teasingly through Jack’s mind.  He did not know anything about them, beyond the fact that they were places where fellows went for sport, and that he hoped people would think he went for sport also.  His wading boots and his rod and creel would, he hoped, account for any haste he might betray in losing himself somewhere.

Lose himself he must.  If he did not, if his mother got the chance to put him through the tearful third-degree system that women employ with such deadly certainty of success, Jack knew that he would tell all that he knew—­perhaps more.  The very least he could hope to reveal was the damning fact that he had not been to Mount Wilson that day.  After that the rest would not need to be told.  They could patch up the evidence easily enough.

He tried to forget that man slipping down in the embrace of his friend.  It was too horrible to be true.  It must have been a trick just to scare the boys.  The world was full of joshers—­Jack knew half a dozen men capable of playing that trick, just to turn the joke.  For a few minutes he was optimistic, almost making himself believe that the man had not been shot, after all.  The fading effect of the wines he had drunk sent his mood swinging from the depths of panicky anguish over the horrible affair, to a senseless optimism that refused to see disaster when it stood by his side.

He tried again to decide where he should go from San Francisco.  He tried to remember all that he had ever heard about the various paradises for sportsmen, and he discovered that he could not remember anything except that they were all in the mountains, and that Tahoe was a big lake, and lots of people went there in the summer.  He crossed Tahoe off the list, because he did not want to land in some fashionable resort and bump into some one he knew.  Besides, thirty-one dollars would not last long at a summer resort—­and he remembered he would not have thirty-one dollars when he landed; he would have what was left after he had paid his fare from San Francisco, and had eaten once or twice.