et
people see you whenever they come up this way? Just for that I've a
good mind not to give you these cigarettes. I could almost smoke them
myself, anyway. Kate thinks that I do. She found out that it wasn't
candy, the last time, so I had to pretend I have a secret craving for
cigarettes, and I smoked one right before her to prove it. We had
quite a fuss over it, and I told her I'd smoke them in the woods to
save her feelings, but that I just simply must have them. She thinks
now that the Martha Washington is an awful place; that's where she
thinks I learned. She cried about it, and that made me feel like a
criminal, only I was so sick I didn't care at the time. Take them--and
please don't smoke so much, Jack! It's simply awful, the amount you
use."

"All right. I'll cut out the smoking and go plumb crazy." To prove his
absolute sincerity, he tore open the package, extracted a cigarette
and began to smoke it with a gloomy relish. "Didn't bring anything to
read, I suppose?" he queried after a minute which Marion spent in
getting her breath and in gazing drearily out over the wintry
mountainside.

"No, Kate was watching me, and I couldn't. I pretended at first that I
was lending magazines and papers to Murphy and Mike, but she has
found out that Murphy's eyes are too bad, and Mike, the ignorant old
lunatic, can't read or write. I haven't squared that with her yet.
I've been thinking that I'd invent a ranch or something to visit.
Murphy says there's one on Taylor Creek, but the people have gone down
below for the winter; and it's close enough so Kate could walk over
and find out for herself."

She began to pull bits of bark off the tree trunk and throw them
aimlessly at a snow-mounded rock. "It's fierce, living in a little pen
of a place like that, where you can't make a move without somebody
wanting to know why," she burst out savagely. "I can't write a letter
or read a book or put an extra pin in my hat, but Kate knows all about
it. She thinks I'm an awful liar. And I'm beginning to actually hate
her. And she was the very best friend I had in the world when we came
up here. Five thousand dollars' worth of timber can't pay for what
we're going through, down there!"

"You cut it out," said Jack, reaching for another cigarette. "My part
of it, I mean. It's that that's raising the deuce with you two, so you
just cut me out of it. I'll make out all right." As an afterthought he
added indifferently, "I killed a bear the