When those with a surplus of energy started up the steep climb to the peak, he would hurry into his little glass room, hastily part and plaster his hair down as a precaution against possible recognition, and lock his door and retire to a certain niche in a certain pile of rocks, where he would be out of sight and yet be close enough to hear the telephone, and would chew gum furiously and mutter savage things under his breath. Much as he hungered for companionship he had a perverse dread of meeting those exclamatory sightseers. It seemed to Jack that they cheapened the beauty of everything they exclaimed over. He could hear them gabble about Mount Lassen, and his lip would curl with scorn over the weakness of their metaphors. He would grind his teeth when they called his glass prison "cute," and wondered if anybody really lived there. He would hear some man trying to explain what he did not know anything at all about, and he would grin pityingly at the ignorance of the human male, forgetting that he had been just as ignorant, before fate picked him up and shoved him head-foremost into a place where he had to learn. Sometimes he was not forewarned of their visits, and would be trapped fairly; and then he would have to answer their foolish questions and show them what the map was for, and what the pointer was for, and admit that it did get lonesome sometimes, and agree with them that it was a fine view, and point out where Quincy lay, and all the rest of it. It amazed him how every one who came said practically the same things, asked the same questions, linked the same adjectives together. Thus passed his second month, which might be called his pessimistic month. But he did not take his money and go. He decided that he would wait until he had grown a beard before he ventured. He realized bitterly that he was a fugitive, and that it would go hard with him now if he were caught. From the papers which Supervisor Ross had sent him every week he had learned that the police were actually and definitely looking for him. At least they had been a month ago, and he supposed that they had not given up the search, even though later events had pushed his disgrace out of print. The man they had shot was hovering close to death in a hospital, the last Jack read of the case. It certainly would be wiser to wait a while. So he took his camp outfit to Taylor Rock again and stayed there until his four days were gone. That time he killed a deer and got a shot at a young bear, and came back to his post in a fairly good humor. The little glass room had a homey look, with the late afternoon sunlight lying warm upon the map and his piles of magazines and papers stacked neatly on their shelf. Since he could not be where he wanted to be, Jack felt that he would rather be here than anywhere else. So his third month began with a bleak kind of content. CHAPTER EIGHT IN WHICH A GIRL PLAYS BILLIARDS ON THE MOUNTAIN TOP