“Well, what of it?” Fred demanded with brotherly bluntness.  “It takes a woman, by thunder, to knife her friends in the back.  What are you trying to build up anyway?  Take it from me, old girl, you want to cut out this picking away at Marion behind her back—­or to her face, either, for that matter.  You two women are going to see a good deal of each other between now and spring, and you’ll be ready to claw each other’s eyes out if you don’t shut them to a lot you don’t like.”

“Well, upon my word!  I was merely telling you of Marion’s adventure.  I’m not saying—­”

“No, but you’re thinking, and you want to quit it.”  Whereupon Fred went off to his tent and indulged in a much needed siesta.

Kate was angry as well as hurt.  The injustice of Fred’s condemnation stirred her to action.  She got hurriedly into her khaki skirt and tramping shoes, slung a canteen over her shoulder, tied her green veil over her hat and under her chin, put on her amber sun-glasses, and took her stout walking stick.

She was careful not to wake Fred or the professor, though that would have been more difficult than she imagined.  She did not want them to know where she was going.  If they missed her and were worried it would serve them both right; for now she remembered that the professor had also been very unsympathetic.  Neither of them had seemed to realize what a terrible night she had spent there alone, with that terrible fire raging through the forest and with Marion gone, without saying one word to Kate about where she was going or when she expected to return.

She meant to climb Mount Hough in spite of the altitude, and find out for herself what sort of a fellow that lookout man was.  Fred and Douglas might make light of the matter if they wished, but she was in a sense responsible for Marion Rose, and she considered it her duty to think of the girl’s welfare.

There was a good deal of determination in Kate’s character, once you roused her out of herself.  She climbed Mount Hough, but she did not find out what sort of a fellow the lookout man was, for Jack heard her puffing up the pack trail and retired, with the precipitateness of a hunted fox, to his niche between the boulders.  She did not stay long.  As soon as she had rested a little and made sure that the station door was locked, and had peered in and seen that everything was in perfect order, she decided that the lookout man was probably off fighting fire with the rest of the forest rangers.  Convinced of that, she straightway jumped to the conclusion that he had not been there at all since the fire started, and Marion must have stayed up there alone, and she had simply been trying to worry Kate over nothing.

Well, at any rate, she couldn’t play that trick the second time.  Kate felt well repaid for the climb even if she did not get a glimpse of the lookout man.  Let Marion pretend, if she wanted to.  Let her rave about the lookout man’s mouth and eyes and temper; Kate was armed against all future baitings.  She could go back now and be mistress of the situation.