Neither could she preside at the club teas; nor invite forty or fifty twittery women into her big double parlors and queen it over them as Jack had so often seen her do.

She could not do any of the things that had made up her life, and Jack was the reason why she could not do them.
He tried to shut out the picture of his mother, and there were times when for a few hours he succeeded.

Those were the hours he spent with Marion or in watching for her to come, or in perfecting the details of the plan she had helped him to form.

By the time he had his next four days of freedom, he had also a good-sized cache of food ready to carry to Grizzly Peak where his makeshift camping outfit was hidden.

Marion had told him that when the fire-season was over and the lookout station closed for the winter, which would be when the first snow had come to stay, he ought to be ready to disappear altogether from the ken of the Forest Service and all of the rest of Quincy.
"You can say you're going prospecting," she planned, "and then beat it to your cave and make it snug for the winter.