ss of
the situation.

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