The Lookout Man - B. M. Bower

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care much about fishing. He liked the fun the gang could have together in the wilds, but that was all; like last summer when Hen had run into the hornet's nest hanging on a bush and thought it was an oriole's basket! Alone and weighed down with horror as he was, Jack could not stir up any enthusiasm for the sport. But he found out that it would not cost much to reach the little town called Quincy, of which he had never before heard.

      No one, surely, would ever think of looking there for him. He could take the evening train out of San Francisco, and in the morning he would be there. And if he were not sufficiently lost in Quincy, he could take to the mountains all around. There were mountains, he guessed from what the boy had told him; and canyons and heavy timber. The thought of having some definite, attainable goal cheered him so much that he went to sleep again, sitting hunched down in the seat with his hat over his eyes, so that no one could see his face; and since no one but the man who sold it had ever seen him in that sport suit, he felt almost safe.

      He left the train reluctantly at the big, new station in San Francisco, and took a street car to the ferry depot. There he kept out of sight behind a newspaper in the entrance to the waiting room until he was permitted to pass through the iron gate to the big, resounding room where passengers for the train ferry were herded together like corralled sheep. It seemed very quiet there, to be the terminal station in a large city.

      Jack judged nervously that people did not flock to the best fishing in the State, in spite of all the peanut butcher had told him. He was glad of that, so long as he was not so alone as to be conspicuous. Aside from the thin sprinkling of passengers, everything was just as the boy had told him. He was ferried in a big, empty boat across the darkling bay to the train that stood backed down on the mole waiting for him and the half dozen other passengers. He chose the rear seat in another chair car very much like the one he had left, gave up his ticket and was tagged, pulled his hat down over his nose and slept again, stirring now and then because of his cramped legs.

      When he awoke finally it was daylight, and the train was puffing into a tunnel. He could see the engine dive into the black hole, dragging the coaches after it like the tail of a snake. When they emerged, Jack looked down upon a green-and-white-scurrying river; away down—so far that it startled him a little. And he looked up steep pine-clad slopes to the rugged peaks of the mountains. He heaved a sigh of relief. Surely no one could possibly find him in a place like this.

      After a while he was told to change for Quincy, and descended into a fresh, green-and-blue world edged with white clouds. There was no town—nothing but green hills and a deep-set, unbelievable valley floor marked off with fences, and a little yellow station with a red roof, and a toy engine panting importantly in front of its one tiny baggage-and-passenger coach, with a freight car for ballast.

      Jack threw back his shoulders and took a long, deep, satisfying breath. He looked around him gloatingly and climbed into the little make-believe train, and smiled as he settled back in a seat. There was not another soul going to Quincy that morning, save the conductor and engineer. The conductor looked at his passenger as boredly as the wife of a professional humorist looks at her husband, took his ticket and left him.

      Jack lighted a cigarette and blew the smoke out of the open window while the little train bore him down through the green forest into the valley. He was in a new world. He was safe here—he was lost.

       Table of Contents

      JACK FINDS HIMSELF IN POSSESSION OF A JOB

      Writing his name on the hotel register was an embarrassing ceremony that had not occurred to Jack until he walked up the steps and into the bare little office. Some instinct of pride made him shrink from taking a name that did not belong to him, and he was afraid to write his own in so public a place. So he ducked into the dining room whence came the muffled clatter of dishes and an odor of fried beefsteak, as a perfectly plausible means of dodging the issue for a while.

      He ate as slowly as he dared and as long as he could swallow, and when he left was lucky enough to find the office occupied only by a big yellow cat curled up on the desk with the pen between its paws. It seemed a shame to disturb the cat. He went by it on his toes and passed on down the steps and into the full face of the town lying there cupped in green hills and with a sunshiny quiet that made the world seem farther away than ever.

      A couple of men were walking down the street and stopping now and then to talk to those they met. Jack followed aimlessly, his hands in his pockets, his new Stetson—that did not look so unusual here in Quincy—pulled well down over his eyebrows and giving his face an unaccustomed look of purposefulness. Those he met carried letters and papers in their hands; those he followed went empty handed, so Jack guessed that he was observing the regular morning pilgrimage to the postoffice—which, had he only known it, really begins the day in Quincy.

      He did not expect any mail, of course; but there seemed nothing else for him to do, no other place for him to go; and he was afraid that if he stayed around the hotel some one might ask him to register. He went, therefore, to the postoffice and stood just outside the door with his hands still in his pockets and the purposeful look on his face; whereas no man was ever more completely adrift and purposeless than was Jack Corey. Now that he had lost himself from the world—buried himself up here in these wonderfully green mountains where no one would ever think of looking for him—there seemed nothing at all to do. He did not even want to go fishing. And as for journeying on to that lake which the peanut butcher had talked so much about, Jack had never for one minute intended going there.

      A tall man with shrewd blue eyes twinkling behind goldrimmed glasses came out and stood in the pleasant warmth of the sun. He had a lot of mail under his arm and a San Francisco paper spread before him. Jack slanted a glance or two toward the paper, and at the second glance he gulped.

      "Los Angeles Auto Bandits Trailed" stared out at him accusingly like a pointed finger. Underneath, in smaller type, that was black as the meaning that it bore for him, were the words: "Sensational Developments Expected."

      Jack did not dare look again, lest he betray to the shrewd eyes behind the glasses a guilty interest in the article. He took his cigarette from his mouth and moistened his lips, and tried to hide the trembling of his fingers by flicking off the ash. As soon as he dared he walked on down the street, and straightway found that he was walking himself out of town altogether. He turned his head and looked back, saw the tall man glancing after him, and went on briskly, with some effort holding himself back from running like a fool. He felt that he had blundered in coming down this way, where there was nothing but a blacksmith shop and a few small cottages set in trim lawns. The tall man would know that he had no business down here, and he would wonder who he was and what he was after. And once that tall man began to wonder. …

      "Auto Bandits Trailed!" seemed to Jack to be painted on his back. That headline must mean him, because he did not believe that any of the others would think to get out of town before daylight as he had done. Probably that article had Jack's description in it.

      He no longer felt that he had lost himself; instead, he felt trapped by the very mountains that five minutes ago had seemed so like a sheltering wall between him and his world. He wanted to get into the deepest forest that clothed their sides; he wanted to hide in some remote canyon.

      He turned his head again and looked back. A man was coming behind him down the pathway which served as a pavement. He thought it was the tall man who had been reading about him in the paper, and again panic seized him—only now he had but his two feet to carry him away into safety, instead of his mother's big new car. He glanced at the houses like a harried animal seeking desperately for some hole to crawl into, and he saw that the little, square cottage that he had judged to be a dwelling, was in reality a United States Forest Service headquarters. He had only the haziest idea of what that meant, but at least it was a public office, and it had a door which he could close between himself and the man that followed.

      He hurried up the walk laid across the neat little grass plot, sent a humbly grateful glance up to the stars-and-stripes that

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