In the cabin there was to be seen at first just one big room, with two beds at one end, a table surrounded by chairs in the middle, and a stove in the midst of kettles and pans and tubs at the other. But presently Marion noticed a kind of balcony above the beds, and she learned later that this was the “spare bedroom” in which she would be stowed away for the night.
“He was hungry too,” Mrs. Murray went on, being careful, however, to confine herself to the material side of the subject. “He ate some dinner, an’ then, after we give up tryin’ to stop him, Murray said he’d got to take somethin’ with him to eat, an’ some blankets. He hadn’t a thing, mind you, an’ didn’t want to take nothin’, but he did take a good-sized strip o’ bacon and some bread––I’d just did the bakin’––an’ a fryin’-pan an’ matches an’ a knife. Murray done ’em up in a pair o’ blankets, an’ stuck in a leather coat with sheepskin inside, an’ hung a hatchet on his saddle. He’ll need ’em––if he gits across into the Black Lake country, which’s worse some ways than Thunder Mountain––forest’t ain’t never been touched, an’ bad lands, an’–––”
Murray’s entrance interrupted this speech, which was becoming painful to her guest, in spite of the good woman’s resolution to say nothing discouraging. Murray, a bearded, rough fellow in whose face shone good 219 nature and contentment with the living he made out of his cows and chickens and few head of stock feeding in the mountain meadows, received a whispered hint, and obediently talked of other things than Haig and the runaway. They supped on bacon and eggs, with bread and butter and milk; and an hour afterwards Marion was tucked away in a comfortable bed in that queer “spare bedroom” up against the eaves of the log cabin.
Exhaustion soon brought her sleep. But in the middle of the night she was awakened by a storm that swept high over the ranch house, scarcely touching it in its sheltered hollow, but shrieking and wailing among the rocks and pines. She sat up in her bed to listen! Thunder Mountain! Before her eyes there rose, out of the dark of the cabin, a vision of Philip prone among the rocks of that terrible summit, struck down by the wind, or felled by a thunderbolt, drenched with rain, and perishing of cold. There came, above the howling of the wind, a deafening crash of thunder that rolled away in sullen bellowing. She buried her face among the pillows to shut out the frightful sound; and at length, when the tumult had died away to recur no more, she lay weeping softly until sleep came again to her relief. She did not wake again till morning.
“How much farther up can I go?” asked Marion at breakfast.
“You don’t mean–––” began Mrs. Murray in alarm.
“No,” replied Marion quickly. “I don’t mean the top. But can’t I ride near enough to see it?”
“You c’n go to timber line safe enough,” said Murray.
“Yes, I’ve been that far, but you mustn’t think o’ goin’ further,” added the woman, still suspicious. “I’ll tell you what! Murray’ll go with you.”