“I’ll send the order right away,” Marion obligingly promised him.  “But Kate will be simply furious if she sees the package.  The last lot I made her believe was candy that was sent me, and because I didn’t offer her any of it—­I couldn’t, of course—­she would hardly talk for a whole day, and she hinted about selfishness.  She thinks I carry my pockets full of candy when I start off hiking through the woods, and eat it all by myself.”  She laughed because it seemed a good joke on Kate.

The next time she climbed up to the station she found him boarding up the windows and hanging certain things from the ceiling to keep them away from rats, under the telephone directions of the supervisor.  He expected Hank’s successor up that afternoon to move down what must be taken to town for the winter.  He did not seem so cheerful over the near prospect of hiding out on King Solomon, and Marion herself seemed depressed a bit and more silent than usual.  The wind whistled keenly over the peak, whipping her khaki skirt around her ankles and searching out the open places in her sweater.  Claremont and the piled ridges beyond were hooded in clouds that seemed heavy with moisture, quite unlike the woolly fleeces of fair weather.

“Well, she’s all nailed down for the winter,” Jack said apathetically when the last board was in place.  “She’s been a queer old summer, but I kind of hate to leave the old peak, at that.”

They turned their heads involuntarily and stared across the fire-scarred mountainside to where Taylor Rock thrust bleakly up into the sky.  A summer unmarked by incidents worthy the name of events, spent on one mountain top; a winter that promised as little diversion upon another mountain top—­

“Say, a ride on a real live street car would look as big to me right now as a three-ring circus,” Jack summed up his world-hunger with a shrug.  “By the time I’ve wintered over there I’ll be running round in circles trying to catch my shadow.  Plumb bugs, that’s what I’ll be; and don’t I know it!”

“You’ll love it,” Marion predicted with elaborate cheerfulness.  “I only wish I could change places with you.  Think of me, shut up in a dark little three-room cabin with one elocutionist, one chronic grouch and one human bluebottle fly that does nothing but buzz!  You’re a lucky kid to have a whole mountain all to yourself.  Think of me!”

“Oh, I’ll think of you, all right!” Jack returned glumly and turned back to the denuded little station.  “I’ll think of you,” he repeated under his breath, feeling savagely for the top button of his thick gray sweater.  “Don’t I know it!”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MIKE GOES SPYING ON THE SPIES