A few hundred yards up the
hill the line of green timber ended against the black ruin of the
fire. There the chute ended also. Hollister walked on across the rocky
point, passed the waterfall that was shrinking under the summer heat,
up to a low cliff where he sat for a long time looking down on the
river.
When he came back at last to the house, Myra was there, busy at her
self-imposed tasks in those neglected rooms. Hollister sat down on the
porch steps. He felt a little uneasy about her being there, uneasy for
her. In nearly two weeks of fighting fire he had been thrown in
intimate daily contact with Jim Bland, and his appraisal of Bland's
character was less and less flattering the more he revised his
estimate of the man. He felt that Myra was inviting upon herself
something she might possibly not suspect. He decided to tell her it
would be wiser to keep away; but when he did so, she merely laughed.
There was a defiant recklessness in her tone when she said:
"Do you think I need a chaperone? Must one, even in this desolate
place, kow-tow to the conventions devised to prop up the weak and
untrustworthy? If Jim can't trust me, I may as well learn it now as
any other time.
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