The Lookout Man by B. M. Bower

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~By B. M. Bower~

* * * * *

GOOD INDIAN
THE UPHILL CLIMB
THE GRINGOS
THE RANCH AT THE WOLVERINE
THE FLYING U'S LAST STAND
JEAN OF THE LAZY A
THE PHANTOM HERD
THE HERITAGE OF THE SIOUX
STARR, OF THE DESERT
THE LOOKOUT MAN

[Illustration: She was, after all, the goddess she looked, he thought
whimsically. Frontispiece. _See page_ 122.]

THE LOOKOUT MAN

By B. M. Bower

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
H. WESTON TAYLOR

BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1917

Published, August, 1917

VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK
U. S. A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I SOME TIME!

II "THANKS FOR THE CAR"

III TO THE FEATHER RIVER COUNTRY AND FREEDOM

IV JACK FINDS HIMSELF IN POSSESSION OF A JOB

V "IT'S A LONG WAY TO TIPPERARY," SANG JACK

VI MISS ROSE FORWARD

VII GUARDIAN OF THE FORESTS

VIII IN WHICH A GIRL PLAYS BILLIARDS ON THE MOUNTAIN TOP

IX LIKE THE BOY HE WAS

X WHEN FORESTS ARE ABLAZE

XI SYMPATHY AND ADVICE

XII KATE FINDS SOMETHING TO WORRY OVER

XIII JACK SHOULD HAVE A HIDE-OUT

XIV MURPHY HAS A HUMOROUS MOOD

XV A CAVE DWELLER JACK WOULD BE

XVI MIKE GOES SPYING ON THE SPIES

XVII PENITENCE, REAL AND UNREAL

XVIII HANK BROWN PROVES THAT HE CAN READ TRACKS

XIX TROUBLE ROCKS THE PAN, LOOKING FOR GRAINS OF GOLD

XX IGNORANCE TAKES THE TRAIL OF DANGER

XXI GOLD OF REPENTANCE, SUNLIGHT OF LOVE AND A MAN GONE MAD

XXII THE MISERERE OF MOTHERHOOD

XXIII GRIEF, AND HOPE THAT DIED HARD

XXIV TROUBLE FINDS THE GOLD THAT WAS IN THEM

CHAPTER ONE

SOME TIME!

From the obscurity of vast, unquiet distance the surf came booming in
with the heavy impetus of high tide, flinging long streamers of kelp
and bits of driftwood over the narrowing stretch of sand where
garishly costumed bathers had lately shrieked hilariously at their
gambols. Before the chill wind that had risen with the turn of the
tide the bathers retreated in dripping, shivering groups, to appear
later in fluffs and furs and woollen sweaters; still inclined to
hilarity, still undeniably both to leave off their pleasuring at
Venice, dedicated to cheap pleasures.

But when the wind blew stronger and the surf boomed louder and nearer,
and the faint moon-path stretched farther and farther toward the
smudgy sky-line, city-going street-cars began to fill with sunburned
passengers, and motors began to purr out of the narrow side streets
lined with shoddy buildings which housed the summer sojourners. One
more Sunday night's revelry was tapering off into shouted farewells,
clanging gongs, honking horns and the shuffling of tired feet hurrying
homeward.

In cafes and grills and private dining rooms groups of revelers, whose
pleasures were not halted by the nickel alarm-clocks ticking
inexorably all over the city and its suburbs, still lingered long
after the masses had gone home yawning and counting the fullness of
past joys by the present extent of smarting sunblisters.

Automobiles loaded with singing passengers scurried after their own
beams of silver light down the boulevards. At first a continuous line
of speeding cars; then thinning with long gaps between; then longer
gaps with only an occasional car; then the quiet, lasting for minutes
unbroken, so that the wind could be heard in the eucalyptus trees that
here and there lined the boulevard.

After the last street-car had clanged away from the deserted
bunting-draped joy zone that now was stark and joyless, a belated
seven-passenger car, painted a rich plum color and splendid in
upholstering and silver trim, swept a long row of darkened windows
with a brush of light as it swung out from a narrow alley and went
purring down to where the asphalt shone black in the night.

Full throated laughter and a medley of shouted jibes and
current witticisms went with it. The tonneau squirmed with uproarious
youth. The revolving extra seats swung erratically, propelled by
energetic hands, while some one barked the stereotyped invitation to
the deserted scenic swing, and some one else shouted to the revolving
occupants to keep their heads level, and all the others laughed
foolishly.

The revolving ones rebelled, and in the scuffle some one lurched
forward against the driver at a critical turn in the road, throwing
him against the wheel. The big car swerved almost into the ditch, was
brought back just in the nick of time and sped on, while Death, who
had looked into that tonneau, turned away with a shrug.

The driver, bareheaded and with the wind blowing his thick mop of wavy
hair straight back from his forehead, glanced back with swift disfavor
at the scuffling bunch.

"Hey--you want to go in the ditch?" he expostulated, chewing
vigorously upon gum that still tasted sweet and full-flavored. "You
wanta cut out that rough stuff over this way!"

"_All_ right, Jackie, old boy, anything to please!" chanted the
offender, cuffing the cap off the fellow next him. "Some time," he
added with vague relish. "S-o-m-e time! What?"

"Some time is right!" came the exuberant chorus. "Hey, Jack! _u_ had
some time, all right--you and that brown-eyed queen that danced like
Mrs. Castle. Um-um! Floatin' round with your arms full of
sunshine--oh, you thought you was puttin' something over on the rest
of us--what?"

"Cut it out!" Jack retorted, flinging the words over his shoulder.
"Don't talk to me. Road's flopping around like a snake with its head
cut off--" He laughed apologetically, his eyes staring straight ahead
over the lowered windshield.

"Aw, step on her, Jack! Show some class, boy--show some class! Good
old boat! If you're too stewed to drive 'er, _e_ knows the way home.
Say, Jackie, if this old car could talk, wouldn't momma get an
ear-full on Monday, hey? What if she--"

"Cut it _out_--or I'll throw you out!" came back over Jack's
shirt-clad shoulder. He at least had the wit to use what little sense
he had in driving the car, and he had plenty of reason to believe that
he could carry out his threat, even if the boulevard did heave itself
up at him like the writhings of a great snake. If his head was not fit
for the job, his trained muscles would still drive with automatic
precision. Only his vision was clouded; not the mechanical skill
necessary to pilot his mother's big car safely into the garage.

Whim held the five in the rear seats absorbed in their own maudlin
comicalities. The fellow beside Jack did not seem to take any interest
in his surroundings, and the five gave the front seat no further
attention. Jack drove circumspectly, leaning a little forward, his
bare arms laid up across the wheel and grasping the top of it. Brown
as bronze, those arms, as were his face and neck and chest down to
where the open V of his sport shirt was held closed with the loose
knot of a crimson tie that whipped his shoulder as he drove. A fine
looking fellow he was, sitting there like the incarnation of strength
and youth and fullblooded optimism. It was a pity that he was
drunk--he would have been a perfect specimen of young manhood, else.

The young man on the front seat beside him turned suddenly on those
behind. The lower half of his face was covered with a black muffler.
He had a gun, and he "cut down" on the group with disconcerting
realism.

"Hands up!" he intoned fearsomely. "I am the mysterious lone bandit of
the boulevards. Your jewels are the price of your lives!" The
six-shooter wavered, looking bleakly at one and then another.

After the first stunned interval, a shout of laughter went up from
those behind. "Good! Good idea!" one approved. And another, having some
familiarity with the mechanics of screen melodrama, shouted, "Camera!"

"Lone bandit nothing! We're _all_ mysterious auto bandits out seeking
whom we may devour!" cried a young man with a naturally attractive
face and beautiful teeth, hastily folding his handkerchief cornerwise
for a mask, and tying it behind his head--to the great discomfort of
his neighbors, who complained bitterly at having their eyes jabbed out
with his elbows.

The bandit play caught the crowd. For a few tumultuous minutes elbows
were up, mufflers and handkerchiefs flapping. There emerged from the
confusion six masked bandits, and three of them flourished
six-shooters with a recklessness that would have given a Texas man
cold chills down his spine. Jack, not daring to take his eyes off the
heaving asphalt, or his hands off the wheel, retained his natural
appearance until some generous soul behind him proceeded, in spite of
his impatient "Cut it out, fellows!" to confiscate his flapping, red
tie and bind it across his nose; which transformed Jack Corey into a
speeding fiend, if looks meant anything. Thereafter they threw
themselves back upon the suffering upholstery and commented gleefully
upon their banditish qualifications.

That grew tame, of course. They thirsted for mock horrors,
and two glaring moons rising swiftly over a hill gave the
psychological fillip to their imaginations.

"Come on-let's hold 'em up!" cried the young man on the front seat.
"Naw-I'll tell you! Slow down, Jack, and everybody keep your faces
shut. When we're just past I'll shoot down at the ground by a hind
wheel. Make 'em think they've got a blowout--get the idea?"

"Some idea!" promptly came approval, and the six subsided immediately.

The coming car neared swiftly, the driver shaving as close to the
speed limit as he dared. Unsuspectingly he swerved to give plenty of
space in passing, and as he did so a loud bang startled him. The brake
squealed as he made an emergency stop. "Blowout, by thunder!" they
heard him call to his companions, as he piled out and ran to the wheel
he thought had suffered the accident.

Jack obligingly slowed down so that the six, leaning far out and
craning back at their victims, got the full benefit of their joke.
When he sped on they fell back into their seats and howled with glee.

It was funny. They laughed and slapped one another on the backs, and
the more they laughed the funnier it seemed. They rocked with mirth,
they bounced up and down on the cushions and whooped.

All but Jack. He kept his eyes on the still-heaving asphalt, and
chewed gum and grinned while he drove, with the persistent sensation
that he was driving a hydro-aeroplane across a heaving ocean. Still,
he knew what the fellows were up to, and he was perfectly willing to
let them have all the fun they wanted, so long as they didn't
interfere with his driving.

In the back of his mind was a large, looming sense of responsibility
for the car. It was his mother's car, and it was new and shiny, and
his mother liked to drive flocks of fluttery, middle-aged ladies to
benefit teas and the like. It had taken a full hour of coaxing to get
the car for the day, and Jack knew what would be the penalty if
anything happened to mar its costly beauty. A scratch would be almost
as much as his life was worth. He hoped dazedly that the fellows would
keep their feet off the cushions, and that they would refrain from
kicking the back seat.

Mrs. Singleton Corey was a large, firm woman who wore her white hair
in a marcelled pompadour, and frequently managed to have a flattering
picture of herself in the Sunday papers--on the
Society-and-Club-Doings page, of course. She figured prominently in
civic betterment movements, and was loud in her denunciation of Sunday
dances and cabarets and the frivolities of Venice and lesser beach
resorts. She did a lot of worrying over immodest bathing suits, and
never went near the beach except as a member of a purity committee, to
see how awfully young girls behaved in those public places.

She let Jack have the car only because she believed that he was going
to take a party of young Christian Endeavorers up Mount Wilson to view
the city after dark. She could readily apprehend that such a sight
might be inspiring, and that it would act as a spur upon the worthy
ambitions of the young men, urging them to great achievements. Mrs.
Singleton Corey had plenty of enthusiasm for the betterment of young
lives, but she had a humanly selfish regard for the immaculateness of
her new automobile, and she feared that the roads on the mountain
might be very dusty and rough, and that overhanging branches might
snag the top. Jack had to promise that he would be very careful of
overhanging branches.

Poor lady, she never dreamed that her son was out at Venice gamboling
on the beach with bold hussies in striped bathing trunks and no
skirts; fox-trotting with a brown-eyed imp from the telephone office,
and drinking various bottled refreshments--carousing shamelessly, as
she would have said of a neighbor's son--or that, at one-thirty in the
morning, he was chewing a strong-flavored gum to kill the odor of
alcohol.

She was not sitting up waiting for him and wondering why he did not
come. Jack had been careful to impress upon her that the party might
want to view the stars until very late, and that he, of course, could
not hurry them down from the mountain top.

You will see then why Jack was burdened with a sense of deep
responsibility for the car, and why he drove almost as circumspectly
as if he were sober, and why he would not join in the hilarity of the
party.

"Hist! Here comes a flivver!" warned the young man on the front seat,
waving his revolver backward to impress silence on the others. "Let's
_all_ shoot! Make 'em think they've run into a mess of tacks!"

"Aw, take a wheel off their tin wagon!" a laughter-hoarse voice
bettered the plan.

"Hold 'em up and take a nickel off 'em--if they carry that much on
their persons after dark," another suggested.

"You're on, bo! This is a hold-up. Hist!"

A hold-up they proceeded to make it. They halted the little car with a
series of explosions as it passed. The driver was alone, and as he
climbed out to inspect his tires, he confronted what looked to his
startled eyes like a dozen masked men. Solemnly they went through his
pockets while he stood with his hands high above him. They took his
half-plug of chewing tobacco and a ten-cent stick-pin from his tie,
and afterwards made him crank his car and climb back into the seat and
go on. He went--with the throttle wide open and the little car loping
down the boulevard like a scared pup.

"Watch him went!" shrieked one they called Hen, doubling himself
together in a spasm of laughter.

"'He was--here--when we _started_, b-but he was--gone--when we got
th'ough!'" chanted another, crudely imitating a favorite black-faced
comedian.

Jack, one arm thrown across the wheel, leaned out and looked back,
grinning under the red band stretched across the middle of his face.
"Ah, pile in!" he cried, squeezing his gum between his teeth and
starting the engine. "He might come back with a cop."

That tickled them more than ever. They could hardly get back into the
car for laughing. "S-o-m-e little bandits!--what?" they asked one
another over and over again.

"S-o-m-e little bandits is--right!" the approving answer came
promptly.

"S-o-m-e _time_, bo, s-o-m-e _time!_" a drink-solemn voice croaked in
a corner of the big seat.

Thus did the party of Christian Endeavorers return sedately from their
trip to Mount Wilson.

CHAPTER TWO

"THANKS FOR THE CAR"

They held up another car with two men in it, and robbed them of
insignificant trifles in what they believed to be a most ludicrous
manner. Afterward they enjoyed prolonged spasms of mirth, their
cachinnations carrying far out over the flat lands disturbing
inoffensive truck gardeners in their sleep. They cried "S-o-m-e time!"
so often that the phrase struck even their fuddled brains as being
silly.

They met another car--a large car with three women in the tonneau.
These, evidently, were home-going theatre patrons who had indulged
themselves in a supper afterwards. They were talking quietly as they
came unsuspectingly up to the big, shiny machine that was traveling
slowly townward, and they gave it no more than a glance as they
passed.

Then came the explosion, that sounded surprisingly like a blowout. The
driver stopped and got out to look for trouble, his companion at his
heels. They confronted six masked men, three of them displaying
six-shooters.

"Throw up your hands!" commanded a carefully disguised voice.

The driver obeyed--but his right hand came up with an automatic pistol
in it. He fired straight into the bunch--foolishly, perhaps; at any
rate harmlessly, though they heard the bullet sing as it went by.
Startled, one of the six fired back impulsively, and the other two
followed his example. Had they tried to kill, in the night and drunk
as they were, they probably would have failed; but firing at random,
one bullet struck flesh. The man with the automatic flinched backward,
reeled forward drunkenly and went down slowly, his companion grasping
futilely at his slipping body.

"Hey, you darn mutts, whatcha shootin' for? Hell of a josh, that is!"
Jack shouted angrily and unguardedly. "Cut that out and pile in here!"

While the last man was clawing in through the door, Jack let in the
clutch, slamming the gear-lever from low to high and skipping
altogether the intermediate. The big car leaped forward and Hen bit
his tongue so that it bled. Behind them was confused shouting.

"Better go back and help--what? You hit one," Jack suggested over his
shoulder, slowing down as reason cooled his first hot impulse for
flight.

"Go back _nothing!_ And let 'em get our number? Nothing doing!"

"Aw, that mark that was with him took it. I saw him give it the
once-over when he came back."

"He did not!" some one contradicted hotly. "He was too scared."

"Well, do we go back?" Jack was already edging the car to the right so
that he would have room for a turn.

"No! Step on 'er! Let 'er out, why don't yuh? Damn it, what yuh
killin' time for? Yuh trying to throw us down? Want that guy to call a
cop and pinch the outfit? Fine pal you are! We've got to beat it while
the beatin's good. Go on, Jack--that's a good boy. Step on 'er!"

With all that tumult of urging, Jack went on, panic again growing
within him as the car picked up speed. The faster he went the faster
he wanted to go. His foot pressed harder and harder on the
accelerator. He glanced at the speedometer, saw it flirting with the
figures forty-five, and sent that number off the dial and forced fifty
and then sixty into sight. He rode the wheel, holding the great car
true as a bullet down the black streak of boulevard that came sliding
to meet him like a wide belt between whirring wheels.

The solemn voice that had croaked "S-o-m-e time!" so frequently,
took to monotonous, recriminating speech. "No-body home!
No-body home! Had to spill the beans, you simps! Nobody home a-tall!
Had to shoot a man--got us all in wrong, you simps! Nobody home!" He
waggled his head and flapped his hands in drunken self-righteousness,
because he had not possessed a gun and therefore could not have
committed the blunder of shooting the man.

"Aw, can that stuff! You're as much to blame as anybody," snapped the
man nearest him, and gave the croaker a vicious jab with his elbow.

"Don't believe that guy got hep to our number! Didn't have time," an
optimist found courage to declare.

"What darn fool was it that shot first? Oughta be crowned for that!"

"Aw, the boob started it himself! He fired on us--and we were only
joshing!"

"He got his, all right!"

"Don't believe we killed him--sure, he was more scared than hurt," put
in the optimist dubiously.

"No-body home," croaked the solemn one again, having recovered his
breath.

They wrangled dismally and unconvincingly together, but no one put
into speech the fear that rode them hard. Fast as Jack drove, they
kept urging him to "Step on 'er!" A bottle that had been circulating
intermittently among the crowd was drained and thrown out on the
boulevard, there to menace the tires of other travelers. The keen wind
whipped their hot faces and cleared a little their fuddled senses, now
that the bottle was empty. A glimmer of caution prompted Jack to drive
around through Beverly Hills and into Sunset Boulevard, when he might
have taken a shorter course home. It would be better, he thought, to
come into town from another direction, even if it took them longer to
reach home. He was careful to keep on a quiet residence street when he
passed through. Hollywood, and he turned at Vermont Avenue and drove
out into Griffith Park, swung into a crossroad and came out on a road
from Glendale. He made another turn or two, and finally slid into Los
Angeles on the main road from Pasadena, well within the speed limit
and with his heart beating a little nearer to normal.

"We've been to Mount Wilson, fellows. Don't forget that," he warned
his passengers. "Stick to it. If they got our number back there we can
bluff them into thinking they got it wrong. I'll let yuh out here and
you can walk home. Mum's the word--get that?"

He had taken only a passive part in the egregious folly of their play,
but they climbed out now without protest, subdued and willing to own
his leadership. Perhaps they realized suddenly that he was the
soberest man of the lot. Only once had he drunk on the way home, and
that sparingly, when the bottle had made the rounds. Like whipped
schoolboys the six slunk off to their homes, and as they disappeared,
Jack felt as though the full burden of the senseless crime had been
dropped crushingly upon his shoulders.

He drove the big car quietly up the palm-shaded street to where his
mother's wide-porched bungalow sprawled across two lots. He was sober
now, for the tragedy had shocked him into clear thinking. He shivered
when he turned in across the cement walk and slid slowly down the
driveway to the garage. He climbed stiffly out, rolled the big doors
shut, turned on the electric lights and then methodically switched off
the lights of the car. He looked at the clock imbedded in the
instrument board and saw that it lacked twenty minutes of three. It
would soon be daylight. It seemed to him that there was a good deal to
be done before daylight.

Preoccupiedly he took a big handful of waste and began to polish the
hood and fenders of the car. His mother would want to drive, and she
always made a fuss if he left any dust to dim its glossy splendor. He
walked around behind and contemplated the number plate, wondering if
the man who was said to be "hep" would remember that there were three
ciphers together. He might see only two--being in a hurry and excited.
He rubbed the plate thoughtfully, trying to guess just how that
number, 170007, would look to a stranger who was excited by being shot
at.

No use doctoring the number now. If the man had it, he had it--and it
was easy enough to find the car that carried it. Easy enough, too, to
prove who was in the car. Jack had named every one of the fellows who
were to make up the party. He had to, before his mother would let him
take the car. The names were just names to her--since she believed
that they were Christian young men!--but she had insisted upon knowing
who was going, and she would remember them. She had a memory like
glue. She would also give the names to any officer that asked. Jack
knew that well enough. For, besides having a memory that would never
let go, Mrs. Singleton Corey had a conscience that was inexorable
toward the faults of others. She would consider it her duty as a
Christian woman and the president of the Purity League to hand those
six young men over to the law. That she had been deceived as to their
morals would add fire to her fervor.

Whether she would hand Jack over with them was a detail which did not
greatly concern her son. He believed she would do it, if thereby she
might win the plaudits of her world as a mother martyred to her fine
sense of duty. Jack had lived with his mother for twenty-two years,
and although he was very much afraid of her, he felt that he had no
illusions concerning Mrs. Singleton Corey. He felt that she would
sacrifice nearly everything to her greed for public approbation.
Whether she would sacrifice her pride of family--twist it into a lofty
pride of duty--he did not know. There are queer psychological quirks
which may not be foreseen by youth.

Looking back on the whole sickening affair while he sat on the running
board and smoked a cigarette, Jack could not see how his mother could
consistently avoid laying him on the altar of justice. He had driven
the party, and he had stopped the car for them to play their damnable
joke. The law would call him an accomplice, he supposed. His mother
could not save him, unless she pleaded well the excuse that he had
been led astray by evil companions. In lesser crises, Jack remembered
that she had played successfully that card. She might try it now....

On the other hand, she might make a virtue of necessity and volunteer
the information that he had in the first place lied about their
destination. That, he supposed, would imply a premeditated plan of
holding up automobiles. She might wash her hands of him altogether.
He could see her doing that, too. He could, in fact, see Mrs.
Singleton Corey doing several things that would work him ill and
redound to her glory. What he could not see was a mother who would
cling to him and cry over him and for him, and stick by him, just
because she loved him.

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