CHAPTER NINE

LIKE THE BOY HE WAS

Down the balsam and manzanita slope toward the little valley where she lived, Jack stared hungrily during many an empty, dragging hour.  Until the darkness had twice drawn down the black curtain that shut him away from the world, he had hoped she would come.  She had been so friendly, so understandingly sympathetic—­she must know how long the days were up there.

On the third day Hank came riding up the trail that sought the easiest slopes.  He brought coal-oil and bacon and coffee and smoking tobacco and the week’s accumulation of newspapers, and three magazines; but he did not bring any word from Marion Rose, nor the magazines she had promised.  When Hank had unsaddled the horses to rest their backs, and had eaten his lunch and had smoked a cigarette in the shade of a rock, his slow thoughts turned to the gossip of his little world.

He told of the latest encounter with the crabbed fireman on Claremont, grinning appreciatively because the fireman’s ill temper had been directed at a tourist who had gone up with Hank.  He related a small scandal that was stirring the social pond of Quincy, and at last he swung nearer to the four who had taken mining claims along Toll Gate Creek.

“Too bad you can’t go down to Toll-house an’ git acquainted with your neighbors,” he drawled half maliciously.  “There’s a girl in the bunch that’s sure easy to look at.  Other one is an old maid—­looks too much like a schoolma’m to suit me.  But say—­I’m liable to make a trip up here twice a week, from now on!  I’m liable to eat my dinner ’fore I git here, too.  Some class to that girl, now, believe me!  Only trouble is, I’m kinda afraid one of the men has got a string on her.  There’s two of ’em in the outfit.  One is one of them he schoolma’ms that goes around in a boiled shirt and a hard-boiled hat, buzzin’ like a mosquito.  He’s sweet on the old maid.  It’s the other one I’m leery of.  He’s the brother of the old maid, and he’s the kind that don’t say much but does a lot uh thinkin’.  Big, too.

“They’ve took up a bunch of minin’ claims around there and are livin’ in that cabin.  Goin’ to winter there, the old maid was tellin’ me.  I brought out their mail to ’em.  Marion Rose is the girl’s name.  I guess she’s got a feller or two down in Los Angeles—­I brought out a couple letters today in men’s writin’—­different hands, at that.

“They’s somethin’ queer about ’em that I can’t see through.  They was both settin’ out in the sun—­on that log right by the trail as you go in to the cabin—­and they’d washed their hair and had it all down their backs dryin’ it.  And the girl was cleanin’ the old maid’s finger nails for her!  I come purty near astin’ the old maid if she had to have somebody wash her face for her too.  But they didn’t seem to think it was anything outa the way at all—­they went right to talkin’ and visitin’ like they was fixed for company.  I kinda s’picion Marion bleaches her hair.  Seems to me like it’s a mite too yeller to be growed that way.  Drugstore blonde, I’d call her.  You take notice first time you see her.  I’ll bet you’ll say—­”