The Lookout Man 3To the Feather River Country and Freedom
18
Literature · Western
The Lookout Man 3
To the Feather River Country and Freedom
BowerEnglish
In the chair car, where he plumped himself into a seat just as the train began to creep forward, Jack pulled his hat down over his eyebrows and wondered if any one had recognized him while he was getting on the train. He could not tell, because he had not dared to seem anxious about it, and so had not looked around him. At any rate he had not been stopped, though the police could wire ahead and have him dragged off the train at any station they pleased. Panic once more caught him and he did not dare look up when the conductor came for his ticket, but held his breath until the gloomy, haggard-faced man had tagged him and passed on. Until the train had passed Newhall and was rattling across the flat country to the coast, he shivered when any one passed down the aisle.
Beyond San Francisco lay the fog bank of the unknown. With his fishing outfit he could pass unquestioned to any part of that mysterious, vague region known as Northern California. The Russian River country, Tahoe, Shasta Springs, Feather River--the names revolved teasingly through Jack's mind. He did not know anything about them, beyond the fact that they were places where fellows went for sport, and that he hoped people would think he went for sport also. His wading boots and his rod and creel would, he hoped, account for any haste he might betray in losing himself somewhere.
Lose himself he must. If he did not, if his mother got the chance to put him through the tearful third-degree system that women employ with such deadly certainty of success, Jack knew that he would tell all that he knew--perhaps more. The very least he could hope to reveal was the damning fact that he had not been to Mount Wilson that day. After that the rest would not need to be told. They could patch up the evidence easily enough.
He tried to forget that man slipping down in the embrace of his friend. It was too horrible to be true. It must have been a trick just to scare the boys. The world was full of joshers--Jack knew half a dozen men capable of playing that trick, just to turn the joke. For a few minutes he was optimistic, almost making himself believe that the man had not been shot, after all. The fading effect of the wines he had drunk sent his mood swinging from the depths of panicky anguish over the horrible affair, to a senseless optimism that refused to see disaster when it stood by his side.
He tried again to decide where he should go from San Francisco. He tried to remember all that he had ever heard about the various paradises for sportsmen, and he discovered that he could not remember anything except that they were all in the mountains, and that Tahoe was a big lake, and lots of people went there in the summer. He crossed Tahoe off the list, because he did not want to land in some fashionable resort and bump into some one he knew. Besides, thirty-one dollars would not last long at a summer resort--and he remembered he would not have thirty-one dollars when he landed; he would have what was left after he had paid his fare from San Francisco, and had eaten once or twice.
Straightway he became hungry, perhaps because a porter came down the aisle announcing the interesting fact that breakfast was now being served in the diner--fourth car rear. Jack felt as though he could eat about five dollars' worth of breakfast. He was only a month or so past twenty-two, remember, and he himself had not committed any crime save the crime of foolishness.
He slid farther down upon his spine, pulled his nice new sombrero lower on the bridge of his tanned nose, and tried to forget that back there in the diner they would give him grapefruit on ice, and after that rolled oats with thick yellow cream, and after that ham and eggs or a tenderloin steak or broiled squab on toast; and tried to remember only that the check would make five dollars look sick. He wished he knew how much the fare would be to some of those places where he meant to lose himself. With all that classy-looking paraphernalia he would not dare attempt to beat his way on a freight. He had a keen sense of relative values; dressed as he was he must keep "in the part." He must be able to show that he had money. He sighed heavily and turned his back definitely upon a dining-car breakfast. After that he went to sleep.
At noon he was awake and too ravenous to worry so much over the possibility of being arrested for complicity in a murder. He collided violently with the porter who came down the aisle announcing luncheon. He raced back through two chair cars and a tourist sleeper, and he entered the dining car with an emphasis that kept the screen door swinging for a full half minute. He tipped the waiter who came to fill his water glass, and told him to wake up and show some speed. Any waiter will wake up for half a dollar, these hard times. This one stood looking down over Jack's shoulder while he wrote, so that he was back with the boullion before Jack had reached the bottom of the order blank--which is the reason why you have not read anything about a certain young man dying of starvation while seated at table number five in a diner, somewhere in the neighborhood of Paso Robles.
When he returned to his place in the chair car he knew he must try to find out what isolated fishing country was closest. So he fraternized with the "peanut butcher," if you know who he is: the fellow who is put on trains to pester passengers to death with all sorts of readable and eatable indigestibles.
He bought two packages of gum and thereby won favor. Then, nonchalantly picking up his wading boots and placing them in a different position, he casually asked the boy how the fishing was, up this way. The peanut butcher balanced his tray of chewing gum and candy on the arm of a vacant chair beside Jack, and observed tentatively that it was fine, and that Jack must be going fishing. Jack confessed that such was his intention, and the vender of things-you-never-want made a shrewd guess at his destination.
"Going up into the Feather River country, I bet. Fellow I know just come back. Caught the limit, he claims. They say Lake Almanor has got the best fishing in the State, right now. Fellow I know seen a ten-pounder pulled outa there. He brought back one himself that tipped the scales at seven-and-a-half. He says a pound is about as small as they run up there. I'm going to try to 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.
