d. He realized
bitterly that he was a fugitive, and that it would go hard with him
now if he were caught. From the papers which Supervisor Ross had sent
him every week he had learned that the police were actually and
definitely looking for him. At least they had been a month ago, and he
supposed that they had not given up the search, even though later
events had pushed his disgrace out of print. The man they had shot was
hovering close to death in a hospital, the last Jack read of the case.
It certainly would be wiser to wait a while. So he took his camp
outfit to Taylor Rock again and stayed there until his four days were
gone.

That time he killed a deer and got a shot at a young bear, and came
back to his post in a fairly good humor. The little glass room had a
homey look, with the late afternoon sunlight lying warm upon the map
and his piles of magazines and papers stacked neatly on their shelf.
Since he could not be where he wanted to be, Jack felt that he would
rather be here than anywhere else. So his third month began with a
bleak kind of content.

CHAPTER EIGHT

IN WHICH A GIRL PLAYS BILLIARDS ON THE MOUNTAIN TOP

Jack heard some one coming, snatched up a magazine and his pipe and
promptly retired to his pet crevice in the rocks. Usually he locked
the door before he went, but the climber sounded close--just over the
peak of the last little knob, in fact. He pulled the door shut and
ran, muttering something about darned tourists. Drive a man crazy,
they would, if he were fool enough to stay and listen to their fool
talk.

He crawled well back into the niche, settled himself comfortably and
lighted his pipe. They never came over his way--and the wind blew from
the station. He did not believe they would smell the smoke.

Darn it all, he had the wrong magazine! He half rose, meaning to
scurry back and get the one he wanted; but it was too late now. He
heard the pebbles knocked loose where the faint trail dipped down over
the knob directly behind the station. So he settled back with his pipe
for solace, and scowled down at the world, and waited for the darn
tourists to go.

But this particular darn tourist had two reasons for lingering up
there. Her first and greatest reason was a sheer delight in the
panorama spread below and all around her, and the desire to saturate
her soul with the beauty of it, her lungs with the keen elixir of the
wind, heady with the eight thousand feet of altitude. Her sec