He pointed toward the pines.
“Why?”
“To please me,” he answered.
But she caught a look in his eyes that decided her.
“Certainly, if you are so easily pleased.”
“Oh, I’m a very Lazarus at the table of life!” he retorted gaily. “Every crumb comforts me.”
She laughed, and stepped away with him among the rocks, while Huntington, still swearing at Smythe for a meddling fool, strode down the hill.
Marion surmised that Smythe had something to say to her. Had he heard already? Had the news of yesterday’s comedy, that was so near a tragedy, already spread far and wide over the Park? But that was scarcely possible, since Haig’s men would be silent, and Seth had kept Williams too busy all day for gossip.
They climbed the rocky slope without more words, clambering over bowlders and fallen tree trunks, until they reached the summit of the hill, and flung themselves down, hot and panting, on a great flat rock that commanded a sweeping view of the Park. At one side more hills rose, small mountains in themselves, thickly 115 wooded, with white peaks towering behind. On the other, the valley of the Brightwater lay green and bronze in the sun, with the white stream curling and curving among the meadows. Far across the valley, beyond the ridge that divided the Park in unequal halves––that fateful ridge!––the western range of mountains glittered, dazzling white.
Marion’s eyes at once sought out Thunder Mountain. What would it say to her to-day? Storm! Its top was half-hidden in a gray-black swirl of clouds, though the sun was bright on the snow-clad peaks around it.