etting things for
Jack? The bare possibility sickened him.

He stood and watched until they reached the trail and passed out of
sight among the trees, their voices growing fainter as the distance
and the wind blurred the sounds. Had they looked back while they were
climbing out of the gulley, they must have seen him, for he stood out
in the open, making no attempt at concealment, not even thinking of
the risk. When they had gone, he stood staring at the place and then
turned and tramped apathetically back to his cave.

What was Marion doing with Hank Brown, the one man in all this country
who held a definite grudge against Jack? What had she done, that Hank
should consider her so cute? Was the girl playing double? Loyalty was
a part of Jack's nature--a fault, he had come to call it nowadays,
since he firmly believed it was loyalty toward his father that had
cost him his mother's love; since it was loyalty to his friends, too,
that had sent him out of Los Angeles in the gray of the morning; since
it was loyalty to Marion that had held him here hiding miserably like
an animal. Loyalty to Marion made it hard now to believe his own eyes
when they testified against her.

There must be some way of explaining it, he kept telling himself
hopelessly. Marion--why, the girl simply couldn't pretend all the
time. She would forget herself some time, no matter how clever she was
at deception. She couldn't keep up a make-believe interest in his
welfare, the way she had done; if she could do that--well, like Hank
Brown, he would have to hand it to her for being a lot cleverer than
he had given her credit for being. "If she's been faking the whole
thing, she ought to go on the stage," he muttered tritely. "She'd make
Sarah Bernhardt look like a small-time extra. Yes, sir, all of that.
And I don't quite get it that way." Then he swore. "Hank Brown! That
hick--after having her choice of town boys, her taking up with that
Keystone yap! No, sir, that don't get by with me." But when he had
gone a little farther he stopped and looked blackly down toward the
Basin. A swift, hateful vision of the two figures walking close
together up that slope struck him like a slap in the face.

"All but had his arm around her," he growled. "And she let him get by
with it! And laughed at his hick talk. Huh! Hank Brown! I admire her
taste, I must say!"

Up near the peak the wind howled through the pines, bringing with it
the bite of cold. His shoulders dr