So she went, and Jack listened to her retreating footsteps scrunching down the trail, and heaved a deep sigh of relief when the silence flowed in behind her and the mountain top was all his own.  Nevertheless he felt uneasy over the incident.  Kate, climbing alone to the station, trying the door, waiting around for a few minutes and then going back the way she had come, did not strike Jack as being a tourist come to view the scenery.  So far as he had been able to judge as he peeped out through a narrow rift in the ledge, she had paid very little attention to the scenery.  She seemed chiefly concerned with the station, and her concern seemed mostly an impatience over its locked door.

He got his telescope and watched her as she came down through the rocks into sight.  No, she certainly did not strike him as being a tourist, in spite of her tourist’s khaki and amber glasses and heavy tan boots.  Women tourists did not climb mountains without an escort of some kind, he had learned.

“By heck, I’ll bet that’s Kate!” he exclaimed suddenly, staring at her retreating form.  “Now, what does the old girl want—?” Straightway he guessed what she wanted, and the guess brought his eyebrows together with the lump between which Marion had described.  If she had come up there to see him, it must be because she had heard something about him that had stirred her up considerably.  He remembered how she had refused to climb the peak with Marion, that first afternoon.

You know how self-conscious a secret makes a person.  Jack could think of only one reason why Kate should climb away up there to see him.  She must know who he was, and had come up to settle any doubt in her mind before she did anything.  If she knew who he was, then Marion Rose must have told her.  And if Marion Rose had gone straight and told her friends—­

Jack went so far as to pack everything he owned into his suitcase and carry it to the niche in the ledge.  He would not stay and give her the satisfaction of sending the sheriff up there.  He was a headlong youth, much given to hasty judgments.  All that night he hated Marion Rose worse than he had ever hated any one in his life.  He did not leave, however.  He could not quite bring himself to the point of leaving while his beloved mountain was being scarred with fire.  He knew that it was for the sake of having him there in just such an emergency as this fire that the government paid him a salary.  Headlong as was his nature, there was in him the quality of being loyal to a trust.  He could make all preparations for leaving—­but until the fire was out and the forest safe for the time being, he could not go.

Then, quite early the next day, Marion herself came up the trail with three movie magazines and a loaf of bread that she had purloined from Kate’s makeshift pantry.  On this day she was not so frivolous, but helpful and full of sympathy.  Jack could not believe that she had told his secret to Kate; and because he could not believe it he asked her point blank whether Kate had come spying up there deliberately, and was vastly reassured by Marion’s vehement denial.