The Lookout Man, B. M. Bower [free ebooks for android .TXT] 📗

get on the W.P. that runs up the canyon. Then some day I'll drop off and try my luck—"

"Don't run to Lake Almanor, does it? First I ever heard—"

"No, sure it don't! The lake's away off the railroad—thirty or forty miles. I don't look for a chance to go there fishing. I mean Feather River—anywhere along up the canyon. They say it's great. You can sure catch fish! Lots of little creeks coming down outa the canyon, and all of them full of trout. You'll have all kinds of sport."

"Aw, Russian River's the place to go," Jack dissented craftily, and got the reply that he was waiting for.

"Aw, what's the use of going away up there? And not get half the fish? Why, you can take the train at the ferry and in the morning you are right in the middle of the best fishing in the State. Buh-lieve me, it'll be Feather River for mine, if I can make the change I want to! Them that have got the money to travel on, can take the far-off places—me for the fish, bo, every day in the week." He took up his tray and went down the car, offering his wares to the bored, frowsy passengers who wanted only to reach journey's end.

The next round he made, he stopped again beside Jack. They talked of fishing—Jack saw to that!—and Jack learned that Lake Almanor was nothing more nor less than an immense reservoir behind a great dam put in by a certain power company at a cost that seemed impossible. The reservoir had been made by the simple process of backing up the water over a large mountain valley. You could look across the lake and see Mount Lassen as plain as the nose on your face, the peanut butcher declared relishfully. And the trout in that artificial lake passed all belief.

Every time the boy passed, he stopped for a few remarks. Pound by pound the trout in Lake Almanor grew larger. Sentence by sentence Jack learned much that was useful, a little that was needful. There were several routes to Lake Almanor, for instance. One could get in by way of Chico, but the winter snow had not left the high summits, so that route was unfeasible for the time being. The best way just now was by the way of Quincy, a little town up near the head of Feather River Canyon. The fare was only seven or eight dollars, and since the season had opened one could get reduced rates for the round trip. That was the way the friend of the peanut butcher had gone in—only he had stopped off at Keddie and had gone up to the dam with a fellow he knew that worked there. And he had brought back a trout that weighed practically eight pounds, dressed. The peanut butcher knew; he had seen it with his own eyes. They had it hanging in the window of the California Market, and there was a crowd around the window all the time. He knew; he had seen the crowd, and he had seen the fish; and he knew the fellow who had caught it.

Unless he could go with a crowd, Jack did not care much about fishing. He liked the fun the gang could have together in the wilds, but that was all; like last summer when Hen had run into the hornet's nest hanging on a bush and thought it was an oriole's basket! Alone and weighed down with horror as he was, Jack could not stir up any enthusiasm for the sport. But he found out that it would not cost much to reach the little town called Quincy, of which he had never before heard.

No one, surely, would ever think of looking there for him. He could take the evening train out of San Francisco, and in the morning he would be there. And if he were not sufficiently lost in Quincy, he could take to the mountains all around. There were mountains, he guessed from what the boy had told him; and canyons and heavy timber. The thought of having some definite, attainable goal cheered him so much that he went to sleep again, sitting hunched down in the seat with his hat over his eyes, so that no one could see his face; and since no one but the man who sold it had ever seen him in that sport suit, he felt almost safe.

He left the train reluctantly at the big, new station in San Francisco, and took a street car to the ferry depot. There he kept out of sight behind a newspaper in the entrance to the waiting room until he was permitted to pass through the iron gate to the big, resounding room where passengers for the train ferry were herded together like corralled sheep. It seemed very quiet there, to be the terminal station in a large city.

Jack judged nervously that people did not flock to the best fishing in the State, in spite of all the peanut butcher had told him. He was glad of that, so long as he was not so alone as to be conspicuous. Aside from the thin sprinkling of passengers, everything was just as the boy had told him. He was ferried in a big, empty boat across the darkling bay to the train that stood backed down on the mole waiting for him and the half dozen other passengers. He chose the rear seat in another chair car very much like the one he had left, gave up his ticket and was tagged, pulled his hat down over his nose and slept again, stirring now and then because of his cramped legs.

When he awoke finally it was daylight, and the train was puffing into a tunnel. He could see the engine dive into the black hole, dragging the coaches after it like the tail of a snake. When they emerged, Jack looked down upon a green-and-white-scurrying river; away down—so far that it startled him a little. And he looked up steep pine-clad slopes to the rugged peaks of the mountains. He heaved a sigh of relief. Surely no one could possibly find him in a place like this.

After a while he was told to change for Quincy, and descended into a fresh, green-and-blue world edged with white clouds. There was no town—nothing but green hills and a deep-set, unbelievable valley floor marked off with fences, and a little yellow station with a red roof, and a toy engine panting importantly in front of its one tiny baggage-and-passenger coach, with a freight car for ballast.

Jack threw back his shoulders and took a long, deep, satisfying breath. He looked around him gloatingly and climbed into the little make-believe train, and smiled as he settled back in a seat. There was not another soul going to Quincy that morning, save the conductor and engineer. The conductor looked at his passenger as boredly as the wife of a professional humorist looks at her husband, took his ticket and left him.

Jack lighted a cigarette and blew the smoke out of the open window while the little train bore him down through the green forest into the valley. He was in a new world. He was safe here—he was lost.

CHAPTER FOUR

 

JACK FINDS HIMSELF IN POSSESSION OF A JOB

 

Writing his name on the hotel register was an embarrassing ceremony that had not occurred to Jack until he walked up the