Up near the peak the wind howled through the pines, bringing with it the bite of cold. His shoulders drawn together with the chill that struck through even his heavy sweater and coat, he went on, following the tracks he had made coming down. They were almost obliterated with the snow, that went slithering over the drifts like a creeping cloud, except when a heavier gust lifted it high in air and flung it out in a blinding swirl. Battling with that wind sent the warmth through his body again, but his hands and feet were numb when he skirted the highest, deepest, solidest drift of them all and crept into the desolate fissure that was the opening to his lair.
Inside it was more dismal than out on the peak, if that could be. The wind whistled through the openings in the roof, the snow swirled down and lay uneasily where it fell. His camp-fire was cheerless, sifted over with white. His bed under the ledge looked cold and comfortless, with the raw, frozen hide of the bear on top, a dingy blank fringe of fur showing at the edges.
Jack stood just inside, his shoulders again hunched forward, his chilled fingers doubled together in his pockets, and looked around him. He always did that when he came back, and he always felt nearly the same heartsick shrinking away from its cold dreariness. The sun never shone in there, for one thing. The nearest it ever came was to gild the north rim of the opening during the middle of the day.
Today its chill desolation struck deeper than ever, but he went stolidly forward and started a little fire with a splinter or two of pitch that he had carried up from a log down below. Hank had taught him the value of pitch pine, and Jack remembered it now with a wry twist of the lips. He supposed he ought to be grateful to Hank for that much, but he was not.
He melted snow in a smoky tin bucket and made a little coffee in another bucket quite as black. All his food was frozen, of course, but he stirred up a little batter with self-rising buckwheat flour and what was left of the snow water, whittled off a few slices of bacon, fried that and afterwards cooked the batter in the grease, watching lest the thick cake burn before it had cooked in the center. He laid the slices of bacon upon half of the cake, folded the other half over upon them, squatted on his heels beside the fire and ate the ungainly sandwich and drank the hot black coffee sweetened and with a few of the coarser grains floating on top. While he ate he stared unseeingly into the fire, that sputtered and hissed when an extra sifting of snow came down upon it. The cave was dusky by now, so that the leaping flames made strange shadows on the uneven rock walls. The whistle of the wind had risen to a shriek.
Jack roused himself when the fire began to die; he stood up and looked around him, and down at his ungainly clothes and heavy, high-cut shoes laced over thick gray socks whose tops were turned down in a roll over his baggy, dirt-stained trousers. He laughed without any sound of mirth, thinking that this was the Jack Corey who had quarreled over the exact shade of tie that properly belonged to a certain shade of shirt; whose personal taste in sport clothes had been aped and imitated by half the fellows he knew. What would they think if they could look upon him now? He wondered if Stit Duffy would wag his head and say "So-me cave, bo, so-me cave!"
Then his mind snapped back to Hank Brown with his hand clasping Marion's arm in that leisurely climb to the trail. His black mood returned, pressing the dead weight of hopelessness upon him. He might as well settle the whole thing with a bullet, he told himself again. After all, what would it matter? Who would care? Last night he had thought instantly of Marion and his mother, and he had felt that two women would grieve for him. Tonight he thought of Marion and cast the thought away with a curse and a sneer. As for his mother—would his mother care so very much? Had he given her any reason for caring, beyond the natural maternal instinct which is in all motherhood? He did not know. If he could be sure that his mother would grieve for him—but he did not know. Perhaps she had grieved over him in the past until she had worn out all emotions where he was concerned. He wondered, and he wished that he knew.
CHAPTER TWENTY
IGNORANCE TAXES THE TRAIL OF DANGER