should advance by smooth paths to a clear and utter understanding. His
one glimpse of her face dethroned his cold logic and moved him very
deeply; she was so white, so pitifully sad-looking. She, too, had
suffered; God knew that she had battled through hours of anguish. He
wanted her in his arms; he wanted to batter at the world with his fists
to save her from its flings of grief and pain. He bit savagely at his
lip and turned away. And she, seeing his haggard eyes, his drawn face,
knew that she had been unjust last night when she had hated him for
seeming a soulless man, who could smoke his pipe in all serenity and
feel nothing of the unhappiness of the night. He did not look like the
Mark King of yesterday; the glad gleam of joy had died in his eyes; the
quick resiliency had gone out of his step. He, too, had lived through
slow hours of torture. He did love her--she could never doubt that----
Had he suddenly caught her to him then, had he crushed her close in his
arms, had he cried out in headlong passion that she _must_ love him,
that he would make her love him, that she was his, that he would not
give her up--would she have wrenched away from him, hot with anger--or
would she have crept close and known at last whether or not she loved
him? But here was something else she could not know; he turned and went
off for his wood; she crouched shivering by the fire.
They breakfasted in silence, the fire between them. Neither did much
more than drink the strong coffee. Gloria sat tossing bits of bread into
the fire. It was on his lips to tell her not to do that; waste in the
wilderness is a crime. But he held his words back. He went methodically
about camp work; cleaned the plates and cups and pans; remade the two
packs. All this time she did not stir. At last he came back to her and
stood by the dying fire, ominously silent. She grew nervously restive,
wishing that he would say something.
"There's a day's work to be done," he said at last. His voice, meant to
be impersonal, was only stern. "That means an early start. And--"
"Is it very much further to the caves?" she asked.
He had paused; she had to say something.
"It will take a long day getting there. You see, we didn't come very far
yesterday."
This, she supposed, was a fling at her, and she stiffened under it. But
when she spoke it was to ignore the innuendo, intended or not. For,
wherever they might be led, she hoped it would not be into sordid
quarrelling.
"It begins to be rather obvious that I should not have come. Doesn't
it?" she asked.
"Well?"
"Now, if I turn back----"
"To the house?"
"And then to mamma and papa, in Coloma. And then to San Francisco."
"And I?"
"If you would go with me as far as the house----"
She saw how his body straightened, how his broad shoulders squared.
There was something eloquent in the gesture; Mark King, with no
toleration of a clutter of side issues, came straight to the main
barrier, which must be swept aside for good and all, or which must be
skirted and so passed and relegated to the limbo of dead hopes.
"Do you love me, Gloria?" he demanded. "As lovers love? As I have loved
you? As a wife should love her husband?"
"Didn't I explain all of that last night?" she said petulantly. "Must we
go over it all again? If I have ... have pained you, I am sorry. I can't
say any more than that, can I? I thought I made you see how I was
placed, how there was but the one thing for me to do...."
"Marry Gratton or me? And you chose me?"
She hesitated. She knew that he was angry, though he gave so little
outward sign. Nor did she fail to recognize that he had grounds for
anger. But none the less she resented his insistent questionings. She
stood looking blankly at him. If she had only obeyed her straightforward
impulse at the house to go to him and explain her predicament!
"I intended," she began in a low, strange voice, "to go to you, to tell
you----"
"Answer me," he said sternly. "Yes or no. Did you marry me without love
and just to save yourself from possible gossip of being alone all night
with a man? Is that why you married me? Yes or no?"
To Gloria, as to King, the issue was clear and not to be clouded; to her
credit be it said that she wasted no time in fruitless evasion. This
matter would demand settlement, as well now as later. There was wisdom
in ending all unpleasantness once and for ever.
"Yes," she answered defiantly.
Then suddenly it was given her to see a Mark King she had never dreamed
of, a Mark King of blazing wrath thrusting aside the man whom she knew
and who had held himself in check and throttled down his emotion until
she spoke that quiet "Yes." The word was like a spark to a train of
gunpowder. His determination to beat down his temper, no matter what
came, was gone; his memory of her ordeals was wiped out; from his whole
tense being there flashed out upon her a hot, heady anger, like stabbing
lightning from an ominous cloud. His few words seared and scorched a
place in her memory to endure always.
He clenched his hands and raised them; for an instant she thought he was
going to strike her down.
"You are utterly contemptible!" he shouted at her. "And I am done with
you!"
He turned and left her. Gloria stared after him in amazement. She saw
how he walked swiftly, his big boots crunching through the gravel down
by the creek bed, splashing through the water, carrying him up the
timbered slope toward the horses. She could not know that he was almost
running because he was telling himself in his fierce white passion that
unless he left her thus he would lose the last power of restraint, and
set his hands to her pink-and-white throat and choke her. Until the last
second he had sought not to condemn too soon. Now, after his fashion, he
condemned sweepingly. For the moment he held that she was less to him
than the grime upon his boots.
When he came to the horses he was white with anger; he lifted his hand
and looked at his fingers queerly; they were trembling. He cursed
himself for a fool, shut the hand into a hard fist as steady as rock,
and for an instant glared at it blackly. Then he opened the fingers
slowly; a hard smile made his mouth ugly and left it cruel; the fingers
had hearkened to a superb will, and gave no greater hint of trembling
than did the nigged hole of the giant cedar under which he stood.
He coiled his horse's tie-rope and led him back to camp. As he drew
near, Gloria promptly turned her back and studied her nails; she had had
encounters with men before now and had not yet gauged the profundity of
this man's emotion. She counted fully on bringing him to a full and
contrite sense of his crime before she condescended so much as to look
at him. But when she flashed him a quick, furtive glance she saw that he
had his back upon her, and that he gave neither hint of softening nor
yet of knowledge of her presence. He bridled the buckskin, saddled, tied
his rope at the saddle-horn, and began making his pack. She watched,
uneasy and concerned but not yet fully understanding. But when she noted
how he took from their breakfast-table one cup, one plate, one knife and
fork, only; how he did not appear interested in the marmalade-jar which
she knew had been brought for her; how he left half of the coffee and
bacon and sugar; a strange alarm came over her. She glanced wildly
around. The forest glowered darkly; the silence was overpowering; the
loneliness bewildering. He was going to leave her--she had not the
faintest idea in the world where the trail lay.
King went swiftly about his preparations. He did not even see her; he
studiously kept his eyes aloof. Within his soul he swore that he would
never look at her again....He took up his rifle.
Gloria stirred uneasily. She did not like to yield to him even to the
extent of saying a stiff word. But she felt that the man was not playing
a part, and that in another moment she would be alone.
"You are not going to leave me here alone, are you?" she demanded
coldly.
"I am going on," was his curt rejoinder.
"And I?" she persisted.
"What you please."
He went on with his preparations. Terror sprang up into the girl's
heart.
"I would never find my way out," she cried, jumping to her feet and
coming toward him. "I am not used to the mountains ...I don't know which
way ...I would die...."
"To be rid of you the easiest way," he returned bluntly, "I would turn
back with you until we got within striking distance of the open. But
you have made me waste time as it is, and I promised Ben that I'd be in
Gus Ingle's caves with no time lost. So I am going on."
"But," and all of her surging terror trembled in her rushing words, "I
would die, I tell you...."
"And I tell you," he snapped back at her, "that I don't care a damn if
you do. Must I tell you twice that I am through with you?"
He set his foot to the stirrup. Gloria, pride lost in panic, ran to him
and grasped his arm, crying to him:
"You mustn't leave me this way! It's brutal ... it's murder."
"I gave my promise to Ben," he said. "You are not worth breaking a
promise."
"If you won't take me back, then let me go with you."
"Worthless and selfish and cowardly! Useless and vain and brainless!
Good God! am I, a man full grown, to loiter on the trail with the like
of you? Let go!" He shook her hand off roughly and swung up into the
saddle, sending his horse with a boot-heel in the flank down to the
ford. But Gloria screamed after him, and ran after him, down to the
creek and through it, calling out:
"Mark! Mark! For God's sake don't leave me. I am afraid; I will die of
fear. Take me with you...."
He did not look back at her, but he did pause. After all, she was the
daughter of his old friend.
"The woods are free and open," he said slowly. "To even such as you. For
the third time and for the last I tell you this: I am done with you. But
if you like you may follow behind me. I will wait for you ten minutes.
Not here, but on the ridge up there. And if you have not come, I will go
on at the end of that time. That is my solemn word, Gloria Gaynor."
He rode from her, straight and massive in the saddle, up the slope among
the big-boled trees, and in a trice out of sight. She stood like one in
a sudden trance. Then, with an inarticulate moan, she ran into the grove
and grasped Blackie's rope, and dragged at him trying to make him run
with her to her saddle and few belongings. The saddle nearly
overmastered her; it was heavy, and she knew as little of it as did any
city girl. But her need was sore and her young body not without supple
strength. In half of the allotted time Gloria came riding up the ridge.
Now King glanced toward her briefly. But less at her than at her pack.
"You had better go back for the rest of the grub," he said to her. "And
for your blanket-roll. That would be my advice to the devil himself....
You can do it in the five minutes left to you."
Gloria flung up her head, opened her lips for a stinging reply, and then
held for a moment in silence and hesitation.
"You hideous brute!" she flung at him. But none the less she hastened
back for her outfit. Five minutes later they rode on into the
ever-deepening wilderness, she just keeping his form in sight, he never
turning nor speaking.
_Chapter XIX_
For his brutal treatment of her Gloria fully meant that in the ripeness
of time he should pay to the uttermost. After that first panic she felt
toward King only such anger as she had never experienced before, never
having cause for it. Perhaps the emotion was the beginning of a new
soul-life for her; certainly here was a moment of reversion to a
condition of unplumbed progenital influences; the scorching anger
arising from such a primitive situation was in itself primal. Hence the
emotion no less that the experience itself was novel; clean, searing
anger.
Following this emotion which rode her and sapped her nervous strength
came a period of faintness and nausea. She closed her eyes and dropped
her head and clung to the horn of her saddle with hands which went cold
and shook. In this mood she called out once to King. But he was far
ahead and did not turn. She did not know whether he had heard her.
Gradually the weakness passed; they topped the ridge and the sun wanned
her. Coolly and collectedly she turned her thoughts upon the
insufferable insult and came back through a sort of circle to her first
intention. Now the decision was cold and stubborn: he would pay and in
full.
King led the way unfalteringly. Time and again she saw no hint of a
trail underfoot or ahead; they broke through brush or made a difficult
way through a thicket of alders or willows and invariably came again
upon a trail. It was evident that the man thought only of his journey's
end and was hastening; hence he took all the short cuts which he knew.
In one of these pathless places, where the scrub-trees and tangle of
brush were above her head, where it seemed that she must smother, she
lost all sight of him. Her horse came to a dead halt. She listened and
could not hear the hoofs of his horse. Again panic mastered her, and she
cried out wildly. But just ahead was a mad mountain stream filling the
gorge with its thunder. She knew that King could not hear her; she felt
the desperate certainty that he would not heed could he hear. Then she
struck her horse frantically with her bare hands, and pounded him with
her heels, longing for the sight of King as one athirst in the bad lands
longs for water. The horse snorted, and whirling and plunging went
ripping through the bushes which whipped at her and tore the skin of
hands and face. But in three minutes he brought her into the open and
into full sight of King, riding up a gentle slope through big red-boled
cedars. When her fear died, as it did swiftly after the way of fear, it
left not the old, hot anger, but a new elemental emotion--cold hatred.
Thus upon their second morning the honeymoon entered upon its second
phase. Every moment brought some new discomfort to her; the saddle hurt
her: her clothes were torn, her tender skin bruised and scratched;
pains came stabbingly with early fatigue As for King, he had come
abruptly to look down upon her as utterly despicable; being a man of
high honour he convicted her out of hand as one without honour;
despising her, he despised himself for having linked his life in ever so
little with hers. But yesterday he had knelt to her humbly in his
innermost heart of hearts; now he sought to shut his mind against her
quite as definitely as he turned his back on her.
What sombre, misshapen edifice they should build upon these
corner-stones of hate and contempt was a matter into which no conjecture
could enter even slightly had their compelling environment been
different. In the city they would have turned their backs and walked
away from each other. But two storm-driven men upon a raft don't
separate until land is sighted. Gloria, at least, was in her present
plight comparable to a shipwrecked sailor of little skill and less
resource. Hence, what was to be, remained to be seen.
At ten o'clock the air was sun-warmed and sweet. Half an hour later the
genial day was made over by the high wind trailing vapours into a chill
bleak sky. They had climbed to fresh altitudes; the timber through which
they progressed indicated that a height of at least seven thousand feet
above sea-level had been passed. They passed through groves of the
thin-barked tamaracks, came at the base of a rugged slope to scattering
mountain pines, which reared into lusty perfection on bleak, wind-swept
levels, where many of their companion growths were beginning to run out
in dwarfed, twisted misery, and came to a rocky pass through the
mountains where on all sides the red cedar, the juniper of the Sierra,
throve hardily among bare boulders, crowning the lofty crests like a
sparse, stiff, hirsute display upon the gigantic body of the world. The
dwarf pine lingered here, straggling along the slopes, beaten down by
many a winter of wind and heavy snow. But by noon they had made a slow,
tedious way down a rocky ridge and were once more in the heart of the
upper forest belt. In an upland meadow, through whose narrow boundaries
a thin, cold stream trickled, they nooned. Long had Gloria hungered for
the moment when she would see King swing down from the saddle; during
the last half-hour she had begun to fear that his brutality knew no
bounds and that he would spare neither the horses nor her but crowd on
until nightfall. When he did dismount by the creek she drew rein fifty
feet from him.
King slipped Buck's bridle, dropped the tie-rope, and let the animal
forage along the fringes of the brook. To Gloria, in a voice which
struck her as being as chill as the grey, overcast sky, he said:
"Better let your horse eat. We've got to go pretty steady to get
anywhere to-day."
Gloria got down stiffly from her saddle. In all the days of her life she
had never been so unutterably weary. Further, she was faint from hunger
and her throat pained her; she went to the creek and threw herself down
and put her face into the cool water, from which she rose with a long
sigh. She had seen how King did with his tie-rope; she did similarly,
but was too tired to trouble with removing the bit from her horse's
mouth. Still Blackie accepted his handicapped opportunity and joined
Buck in tearing and ripping at the lush grass. It was more inviting than
the manzanita-bushes and occasional sunflower-leaves at which he had
snatched during the day.
King made coffee and fried bacon; the horses had earned an hour of rest
and fodder, and a man has the right to bacon and coffee even though hard
miles lie before him. While he pottered with his fire he looked more
than once at the sky in the south-west. With all of his heart he wished
that he had turned back with Gloria this morning. By now he could have
set her feet in a trail which even a fool could travel back to the log
house, and he could be again hastening upon his errand. Gloria lay
inert; she chewed slowly at a bit broken from a slab of hard chocolate
and kept her eyes closed. Her face was very white; two big tears of
distress slipped out from the shut lids. But King did not come close
enough to see them.
When his coffee was ready he called to her, saying indifferently:
"Better have a cup. It helps." But Gloria did not reply. King seemed not
to notice whether she ate or not. But, when he had drunk his own coffee
and she still lay quiet on the grass, he sweetened a cup for her, put
some milk in it, and set it at her elbow. "Better drink it," he said
coldly. And Gloria gathered her strength and sat up and drank.
Thereafter she ate some bread and potted ham. Fragments of bread, the
crust, and half of the ham she threw away. King opened his mouth to
protest; then shrugged and remained silent. His back to a tree, he sat
and smoked until the hour had passed.
Precisely at one o'clock they were on their way. Gloria caught her own
horse, coiled the rope, and mounted. As King rode across the meadow and
to the wooded slope beyond she followed. It seemed to her that this was
all a dream; she was almost light-headed; the sternest of realities
began to seem impalpable and distant and of scant moment. She knew that
she was going forward because she must; that otherwise she would lie
here in the lonely wilderness and die. In her exhaustion she noted, as
one does note his own soul-play when overwrought, that the prospect of
death seemed less terrible than that of utter desertion. The mountains
were so big they stifled her. With every tortuous step forward this
formidable land all about her had grown more severe, more lonely, more
to her like the kingdom of desolation than she had ever dreamed existed.
There were slope fields strewn with black lava rock where never a
solitary blade of grass upthrust a thin spear; there were broken
expanses across which the eye might travel wearily for what appeared
endless miles. One could call out here with never a faint hope of being
heard; one left alone here could die miserably, taunted only by the
echoes of her own choking voice. This devil's land took on a vindictive
personality; it was a hideous colossus, stooping over her, inspired with
but one cruel desire, to crush her soft white body, to stamp out her
life, to annihilate her and gloat over her shrieking despair. She felt
like some hapless little princess in a fairy-tale who had wandered into
a monstrous land of black sorcery.
By four o'clock, when it seemed to Gloria that she had reached and was
passing the limits of her endurance, came two momentous occurrences.
King, riding ahead as usual, was not quite so far in advance, and did
not have his back turned square upon her. For the first time he had
briefly mistaken the trail; they were on the steep flank of the
mountain; he turned and rode back in her general direction but some
hundred yards lower on the slope.
"The trail's down here," he announced shortly. He did not lift his eyes
to her face, did not note the droop of the weary body. His look was all
for her horse, and a new and unreasonable spurt of anger was in his
heart Through her unbounded ignorance she had needlessly fatigued her
mount, having no knowledge of the ways one employs to save his horse.
Gloria understood dully that she was too far up and must ride down to
his level. She was beyond complaining or asking questions; with a sudden
jerk upon the reins she brought Blackie about. King cursed under his
breath.
"That's too steep!" he called to her. "Want to kill your horse?"
Blackie tried to swerve and sidle down. Gloria lifted her whip and
struck him. Blackie snorted and obeyed her command. Some loose dirt gave
way underfoot, the tired beast stumbled, a dead limb caught at his legs,
tripping him, and Blackie lurched downward and fell. Through the grace
of fortune Gloria rolled clear and unhurt. Blackie got up, tottering,
with one quivering fore-leg lifted. King's face went black with rage.
But this time it was wordless rage. He dismounted and made his way up to
the lamed horse; Gloria, from where she lay, thought at first that of
course he was coming to her. But he kept his back to her as he lifted
the horse's fore-leg and felt tenderly at the wrenched muscle. Gloria,
without stirring, and without experiencing any poignant emotion, watched
him listlessly, then shut her eyes. Her most clear sensation was one of
relief; they would no doubt make camp here.
A cold drop of rain splashed on her cheek. She opened her eyes. King was
removing Blackie's saddle. Gloria closed her eyes again and sighed. A
sort of dreary thankfulness blossomed feebly in her heart that the
torturous day was over. King would make some sort of a shelter; she
would drink a cup of coffee and crawl into her blankets and go to
sleep....
"Come on," called a voice as though from some great distance. "We've got
to hurry as fast as God will let us."
Blackie was standing where King had led him, his saddle and bridle swung
up into a tree, his foot still lifted, his nostrils close to the long
grass but untempted. Gloria's canvas-rolled pack and the rifle were
across King's back. As she sat up and stared at him she read his
intentions. He was going on on foot, expecting her to take his horse.
"I can't," she said miserably.
He looked up into the sky and not at her.
"You can do what you please," he retorted curtly. "I am going on."
She rose and went stumbling down the slope. She swayed as she tried to
mount, but he did not offer his hand. When she was in the saddle he
strode on ahead. Blackie looked after them wistfully.
"The leg's not broken," King told her gruffly. "Just a bad sprain. Not
your fault it isn't worse, though. He'll take care of himself; God knows
he's got as good a chance as we have."
"What do you mean?" she asked quickly.
He merely swung up his arm toward the sky by way of answer and went on.
The second big rain-drop hit Gloria's cheek. It was chill; its dullness
seemed to drive straight to her heart.
_Chapter XX_
The storm caught them as it has caught so many a wayfarer before and
since. The wintry season was not due for a full four weeks, but the
winter had thrust sign and season aside and made his regal entry after
his own ancient fashion. There came a crash of reverberating thunder, a
scurry in the thickening mass of black clouds, a drenching downpour of
rain. For twenty minutes they crouched in what scant shelter was
afforded them by a squat, wide-limbed cedar. Then the wind went ripping
off through the tree-tops, exacting its toll of flying twigs and leaving
in its wake a brief, hushed calm. Through the still air fell scattering
flakes of snow, big and unbroken and feathery. King's eyes were filled
with concern; his face was ominous like the face of the world about him.
Again Gloria's tired body was assured of rest; again King said
expressionlessly: "Come on." This time he helped her into the saddle,
being in haste and of no mind to wait for trifles. He hurried on ahead;
she followed on Buck listlessly, clinging to the saddle, her eyes often
shut.
For an hour it snowed. Though there was no sun it was not dark save in
the deeper cañons. Nor was it as cold as Gloria had thought it must
be--or else she was too tired to feel the pinch of the sharp air. But
presently the flakes grew fewer and then ceased utterly. Those that lay
on the ground or clung to branches melted swiftly; and with their
departure the last light of the day was gone. Now King led the horse and
Gloria rode through a gathering darkness. She wanted to ask why they did
not stop; why they did not turn back, but lacked the spirit. Now and
then she half dozed.
At last it was pitch dark and the rain was beginning again. King had
stopped and was helping her down. She was numb now in body; her brain
was numb. The rain hardened into a rattle of hail. Thereafter the air
softened and filled with swirling snow. Gloria could not see if they
were in an open valley or shut in by canon walls or upon the slope of a
mountain. Nor did she greatly care. She waited until King prepared some
kind of a shelter, and then went wordlessly to it; she felt fir-boughs
under her aching body and was, in pure animal fashion, conscious of
blanket and canvas over her and of a grateful warmth. Through a tangle
of bushes she saw the flicker of a small fire; she smelled coffee; she
drank half of the hot cup which he brought to her. Then she let go her
grip upon a wretched world and passed like a child into a heavy sleep.
By his fire of little cheer Mark King sat, with his canvas drawn over
his slumping shoulders, his head down, his heart as black as the night,
his soul possessed by ravaging blue demons. At the end of a fool's day
came a fool's night. He should have paid heed to the first threat of a
thin film across the sky; he should have turned back with Gloria the
first thing this morning; he should have done anything in the world save
exactly what he had done. He should not have married her; he should not
have brought her with him; it was even sheer idiocy to come after this
blind fashion into the mountains in the late fall. Though the season was
early the hour was ominous. The storm might pass before dawn. There
remained the equal likelihood that it would not. Were he alone, or had
he a man, or, yes, by heaven! a real woman with him, things would not be
so bad. The wind jeered at him through the trees; the storm drenched his
fire; he cursed back at both.
"One thing," he thought when his pipe brought him a solitary instant of
peace, "I won't be worried with Gratton and Brodie and his
double-dealing crowd. If they ever started they would have sense enough
to turn back long ago."
After the cold, wet night came a sodden morning. King stood up and
looked about him curiously; his first thought was to make sure that they
had really camped upon the edge of that particular upland valley which
he had striven for. And a glint of satisfaction came into his eyes; it
is something to have followed such a trail aright upon such a night.
Down yonder, a crooked black line in a white field, was the stream which
many miles further on flowed into the American. Rising abrupt beyond it
were the broken, precipitous cliffs of granite such as beetle above the
mountain tributaries of the American. The rocks, like the river, were
black, and looked far colder than the white world which extended in all
directions.
If, in truth, there existed heaps of raw red gold somewhere in a cave in
these mountains, and there had been any exactness in the description in
Gus Ingle's Bible, then the spot was not more than three or four miles
away. That was one consideration. It was still snowing. Here was a
second consideration. King turned moody eyes to Gloria's canvas-and-fir
shelter in the lee of a little bit of cliff. There lay the third. He
prepared breakfast without delay but without enthusiasm. He felt a tired
man with shackled limbs dragging a dead weight.
When he went to wake Gloria he first stood over her, looking queerly
down upon her sleep. She showed less trace of the hard day and wild
night than he had expected to see; his preparations for her comfort,
instinctive and thorough, had been made with the cunning skill of a man
familiar with situations like the present. She had rested; she lay
curled up, snug and warm, under the covers, upon which a thin layer of
fluffy snow had gathered. Her face was against a curved arm, and the
sweetness of it in its tranquil repose was a bitter sweet to him. Her
lashes against her cheek stirred and flew apart under his steady gaze.
He looked into Gloria's eyes, sweet and soft, heavy with sleep.
"Time to be up," he said. He turned on his heel and went back in haste
to his fire.
Gloria, awake, was ravenously hungry. She came sooner than he had
expected, setting the wild disarray of her hair in some hurried order.
Her eyes were quick and curious as she looked up at him. She shrugged
her shoulders behind his back and extended her hands to the small,
wind-blown blaze.
"Are we going back?" she asked colourlessly.
"No," he returned as indifferently. "It's about four miles to the caves.
We'll be there in a couple of hours. Then we'll see what we see."
Gloria sent a long, searching, and awe-struck look across the broken
country. Yonder, then, she realized dismally, lay their destination;
bleak, black, rocky heights, at so great an altitude and in a region so
barren that but few wind-broken trees grew, and the brutal face of the
world was unmasked. She saw bare peaks, steep slopes, a tremendous gorge
like an ugly gash; on the far side of the gorge sheer cliffs. Toward
them King looked. Was it there that Gus Ingle's caves awaited them? Was
that journey's end? She shivered and drew closer to the fire, closer to
her companion, shrinking from the menace of the mountains.
"Is it going to keep on snowing?" she asked.
This time he shrugged. That was his only answer. She stared at him, a
slow flush came into her cheeks, her eyes hardened.
"Oh, very well," she said coldly.
That was the whole of their conversation save for one curt remark and an
impudent laugh in answer at the end of the scanty meal. Gloria tossed a
piece of bacon into the fire. King looked at her sternly and said:
"Young lady, we may be up against the real thing right now. Nobody but a
fool will do a trick like that."
The laugh was Gloria's.
* * * * *
Once on their way they climbed almost steadily. The air grew rarer and
colder. The snowflakes became smaller, at last a fine sifting like sand
particles that cut at hands and face viciously. No longer were there
groves to shelter them; on all sides bare, hostile rocks, and only
occasionally a sparse growth of sprawling, earth-hugging dwarf pine and
cedar, over which King strode as over so much low, tangled brush. Then
came a long ridge, a spine from which the world dropped almost sheer on
both sides, with the wind raging so that it seemed Buck must be blown
off his feet, or the girl torn from the saddle and borne far out like a
thistledown. With frightened eyes, which she strove vainly to keep
closed, she saw long, broken slopes; occasionally when the air cleared,
a frothing torrent; and once, at the end of a couple of hours, far down
in a distant level land, a growth of giant timber. She thought that King
was making his way down there. But his purpose soon became plain even to
her; he was keeping high on the ridges, going about the head of the
ravine which lower down cut like a knife across the timbered tract,
headed for what he took to be Gus Ingle's cave. A mile away she saw it;
a great, ragged, black hole in a high mass of rock, close to the crest
of the next ridge.
She was wrapped warmly and yet here the icy breath of the wind pierced
the fabric of her wrappings and hurt her to the bone. She watched King
wonderingly as he hastened on; did the man have no sense of bodily
discomfort? Certainly he gave no sign. He was like an animal; she found
room for a flash of scorn in the thought. For so she was pleased to
consider him lower in the scale than herself.
At another time she might have seen the world about her clothed in
grandeur; now its sublimity was lost I upon her. It was a ravening
beast, an ugly thing, big and brutal, and ... like King. Oh, how she
hated it and him!
When at last he waited for her and told her to get down she had the
suspicion that he had gone mad. Certainly here was no spot to tarry; it
was on her lips to demur. But she looked at his face and slipped stiffly
from the saddle. They were high up on the ridge; Gloria, on foot beside
him, clutched at the wind-twisted branch of one of the sprawling cliff
growths, in sudden panic that she was being swept from her feet. Just
below them was the deepening cleft in the mountain-side which, further
down, widened and descended into the steep-walled gorge. Through it
shot a mad, frothy stream. A hundred yards further on, high up in the
cliffs, was the yawning hole in the rocks. King, holding Buck's bridle,
looked about him and at the sky. Gloria read in his manner a hint of
uncertainty. Hoping to influence his decision, she said quickly:
"Hadn't we better turn back now?"
He looked at her steadily before answering.
"In what," he replied in that impersonal way which maddened her, "have
you so altered as to be worth a man's broken promise?" And then she knew
that no thought of going back had had any part in his brief indecision.
He was going forward, would go forward in anything he undertook; that
was a part of his make-up. He was merely seeking the best place to
unpack and a convenient spot to tether Buck. They were going to make
camp either right here or nearer the cave, perhaps in it. She looked at
the uninviting hole and shivered. She would know his decision when King
saw fit to enlighten her.
Now he merely dumped at her feet the roll from the horse's back, setting
his rifle down against it. Then he led Buck away, zigzagging tediously,
at last passing from sight beyond an out jutting monster crag. Gloria
crouched, seeking to shield herself from the whiplashes of the wind. She
listened to it as it shrieked about the slabs and boulders of granite;
the sound was indescribably eerie, filled with unrest, eloquent of the
brutal contempt of the eternal for the feeble and transient. The
universe grew utterly lonely; the wind was a whining thing cutting
through the silence. And King was so long in coming back....
The terrifying thought electrified her: "What if he had deserted her?
What if he had no intention of coming back?" She should have known
better; perhaps, deep down within her, she did know better. But the
suspicion brought its wild flutter; she sprang up and grew rigid in
tense fright; she felt a strange, glad rush of joy as she saw his hat
bobbing up and toward her along the mountain flank. When he rejoined
her she was staring off at nothingness, her back to him.
He lashed the two canvas rolls together, swung them up to his shoulders,
took frying-pan, coffee-pot, and rifle in his free hand, and nodded
toward the small pack of provisions which had been left over from lunch.
"Better bring those," he advised briefly. "There's no telling what may
be in the cards." He went on along the knife-edge of the ridge, down
into a little depression, up beyond. She hesitated, saw that he had not
looked, bit her lip angrily, and snatched up the parcel. Then she
followed him, stooping against the wind.
When she came up with him he had thrown down his pack at the very edge
of the gorge. She came to his side, leaned forward, and looked down. Far
below plunged the wildest torrent she had ever seen; it hurled itself in
mad haste between boulders; it shot down over dizzy falls; it made for
itself a white mantle of frothing waters; it looked as black as ebony in
sections of smoother channel and as cold as death; it spun in
whirlpools, it filled the air with its din. And King meant to go down to
it; to cross it; to climb the dizzy cliff upon the further side! She
knew from his look, without asking. For just across the chasm from them
in the highest of the cliffs was the yawning black-mouthed place of
horrors. If one slipped on those bare rocks, clambering down or climbing
on the further side! She sat down suddenly; now when her lip was caught
between her teeth it was to fight back the tears. The world was so cold
and stern and brutal; this man was so much like the environment; she was
so woefully, desperately heart-sick. On this lofty crest of a
devil-tossed land she felt the insignificance of a fly clinging to the
brow of an abyss.
King went about his task methodically. Gloria watched him rather than
look across the rocky gorges. Slowly and with difficulty he made his way
down the steep wall of rocks, dragging and pulling the roll of bedding
and provisions after him. It required perhaps twenty minutes for him to
get to the bottom. She wondered where he would attempt a crossing; the
water looked so black in the pools, so violent over the rapids. He went
up-stream; there lay an old cedar log so that it spanned the current,
its sturdy old trunk ten feet above the water. For a moment King
disappeared under an out-thrust ledge; then she saw him again, the pack
on his shoulders. He had climbed up to the top of the log; he was
crossing. Where he went now she must follow!
Fascinated, she watched him. Once she thought he was going to fall. But
unerringly he trod the rude bridge underfoot, gained the other side
without mishap, tossed down his bundle, and lowered himself from the log
after it. Gloria marvelled at him; she could see his face and it was
impassive. Could he not hear the hostile voices of the raging waters?
Could he not feel the ominous threat of the bleak day and the monster
cliffs? Was he a man without imagination as he seemed to be without
fear?
On he went, down-stream again, clinging to the steep pitch of the gorge,
until he was almost under the mouth of the cavern. He put back his head
and looked up; it was a hundred feet above him and the cliffs, from
where Gloria sat numb with cold and dread, looked unsurmountable. Yet he
was going up them!
"And where he goes you will follow." It was as though the wild waters
below were chanting it into her ears and thereafter filling the gorge
with the mockery of derisive laughter.
Slowly, tediously, but with never a sign of hesitation, King made his
way up the cliff. He had been here before; he knew and remembered every
foothold and handhold. Nor was the task the impossible one it looked
from a distance. There were cracks and crevices; there were seams of a
harder material which, better withstanding the attacks of time, were
thrust out beyond the general level; on them a man might stand. There
were spots of softer material, scooped out into pockets by wind and
water; there were flinty splinters; there were places where the wall,
looking from across the cañon to be sheer and perpendicular, sloped more
gently, and a man might crawl up them.
King had drawn up after him, stage after stage, the roll of bedding,
using Blackie's tie-rope to haul it up and to moor it briefly. Gloria
saw it swing at times like a huge, misshapen pendulum; watched it crawl
up after him. She saw the wind snatch at it and set it scraping back and
forth when he let it dangle at rope's end; she saw King's coat flap in
the wind. Once she cried out aloud, thinking a second time that King was
falling. If he fell from that height--if he were killed--what then would
be the fate of Gloria Gaynor!
But at length he came safely to the cave's mouth. He stood upright and
looked about him. Then he drew up to his feet the dangling roll; with it
in his arms he was gone into that yawning hole. She waited breathlessly
for his return. She saw him come again into the light; he had the rope
in his hand, was coiling it. He began to come down. He was returning for
her.
She did not stir while he made the slow descent, nor while he recrossed
on the log and climbed the steep bank to her.
"I am going to spend the day up there," he told her in his studied aloof
manner. "I'll know soon enough now what truth there is in the story of
Gus Ingle's gold. There's room in the cave to sleep, and there's shelter
of a sort. To-morrow morning, if I find nothing, I'll start back with
you. If you care to come up now I'll help you."
"What else is there to do?" cried Gloria, with the first flash of
passion. "What else do you leave me?"
He slipped a loop of the rope about her waist, taking slow pains not to
touch her with his hands, and turned downward again. She followed,
filled with sudden fear when they had climbed down ten feet, obeying him
hastily when he commanded her to stand still or to move on, feeling her
fear grow mightily as they progressed. The wind, strengthening abruptly,
tore at her in angry gusts. She was panting and shaking visibly when
finally she reached the log spanning the stream. He was up before her,
offering her his hand. How she hated to touch it! How she feared to
follow him! But her hand went into his, her steps followed his, and
without hesitation; for there was nothing left now to choice. She looked
down and saw the water raging below; it was like a monster leaping at
her, snatching at her. She wanted to look away and could not. Like one
moving through the fearsome steps of a nightmare she went on, clinging
to King's hand, his hand tight upon hers, cold hands which met because
they must. At last the torrent was behind her; she came down into King's
arms from the log; she was faint and would have sat down. But he urged
her on.
It was another nightmare climbing up the cliffs to the cave. He went
ahead; he stopped and braced himself; he tautened the rope about her
waist and said: "Come on. Slow and careful does it." She clutched with
her cold, sore fingers at the rocks, felt the rope tighten, and went up
and up. The wind, as though in a fury at losing its quarry, shrieked in
her ears, and in mighty gusts strove to drag her hands from the rocks
and to set her swinging as it had swung the roll of bedding. She climbed
on. King ordered and she obeyed; she waited for him to go up, further
ahead; for him to call to her and draw in on the rope. Stage by stage,
weary stages fraught with terror, she toiled up and up and up. And so at
last, when it seemed to her that no strength remained in her, she came
to King's side at the gloomy entrance of Gus Ingle's cave. The formless
black void before her which under other circumstances would have
repelled, now invited. It offered shelter and rest and protection. She
crept by King with never a backward glance, and threw herself face down
on the uneven floor.
_Chapter XXI_
A long time King stood at the mouth of the cave, looking forth upon the
newly whitened world. The look of the thickening sky, the wintry sting
of the rushing air, the businesslike way in which the snow swirled and
fell created a condition upon which he had not counted and for which he
had no relish. This was more like a mid-winter blizzard than any storm
had any business being so early in the season. For many hours already
the snow had been falling, piling up in the mountain passes; if it kept
on at this rate through another day and night--well, he and Gloria had
best be getting out without any loitering.
He looked at his watch; not yet eleven o'clock. Need for haste; the day
would be short. Before darkness shut down he had half a dozen hours,
hours for methodical search. Here was one of Gus Ingle's caves; another,
he knew, was directly below and at the base of the cliffs; the third
should be near. It was the third that he was chiefly interested in. He
recalled the words in the old Bible: "We come to the First Caive and
then we come to Caive number three and two!" There lay significance in
the order of Ingle's numerals; first, three, and two. Two of the caves
were for any one to see; before now King had been in both of them. Hence
it must be that Gus Ingle's treasure lay in the third. That one King
must locate. And without too much delay. He looked down at Gloria. She
lay motionless just as she had thrown herself down.
Taking his rope with him King made what haste he could going down the
cliffs. The sides of the ravine were littered with dead wood, drift and
limbs that had broken off the few battered trees above. He gathered as
heavy a load of dry branches as he could handle, bound them about with
his rope, and, fighting his way all the way up, clambered again to the
upper cave. Gloria had not stirred. He moved about her, went a dozen
paces deeper into the great cavern, and threw down his wood. Breaking
branches into short lengths he quickly got a fire going. The flames
spurted up eagerly, bright and cheery, and threw dancing light among the
wavering shadows. He brought the bedding-roll closer and opened it into
a rough-and-ready bed. Then he called to Gloria.
"You'd better lie here by the fire," he told her. "You're apt to catch
cold there."
She was sitting up, watching him. Now she rose listlessly and came
forward, dropping down into a sitting position upon the blankets, her
chilled hands out toward the blaze.
"I don't like the look of this storm," he told her. "It is up to us to
hurry. I am going to look around now. I think you had better rest all
you can so as to be ready to make a start back as soon as I find out
whether we are on a wild-goose chase or not."
"You mean--we may start back to-day?"
"I don't know what I am going to find, of course; whether I am going to
find anything. But if we can get only a couple of hours on our way
to-day, it's just that much gained."
"You are going to leave me here?"
"I won't be far." With that he set fire to a dry pine faggot, the best
torch available, and left her, going deeper into the cave. She watched
him, marvelling at the size of the cavern. He went on a score of paces;
he seemed to be ascending a steepening slant floor and then to have gone
over a sort of ridge and to be descending again. But still going further
from her. Presently she knew that the tunnel had turned sharply to the
right; she could hear the thud of his boots and for a little while could
see the flare of his torch against a wall of rock; he himself had passed
out of her sight.
But she knew that he had not gone a great deal further. For he was not
so far away that she could not hear him; he was going back and forth; at
irregular intervals she saw a dim, ghostly light playing upon the dark
cavern walls. And, despite the weary ache of a hardship-tortured body,
she began to be interested in his search. If there were, in truth, such
gold here somewhere as he and her father with him had dreamed of--gold
for which seven men had died sixty years ago, for which old Loony
Honeycutt had hungered all these years, for which Brodie and his
following and even a city man like Gratton were like so many ravening
wolves on the trail--gold in quantity to make even toughened old
gold-seekers delirious with the dreams of it--why, then, that gold was
half Mark King's and half Ben Gaynor's! And it might be that now, at
this very instant, Mark King was finding it; was standing over it,
staring down at it by the ghostly flare of a smoking torch. She sat,
tense and still, listening, trying to probe with tired but suddenly
bright eyes through the dark.
She started, realizing that no longer could she hear King searching back
and forth. It was very silent about her, only the crackle of the flames
making a sound to be heard against the rush of air outside. It seemed to
her that King had been gone a long time. She rose to her feet, tempted
to follow him. She was curious to know what he was doing; why he was so
silent; where he had gone. But in the end pride restrained her and she
sat down again to wait in an attitude of indifference.
But the minutes dragged on and never a sound came back from the far,
dark depths of the cavern; fifteen minutes, half an hour. She grew
restless and walked up and down; she went to the mouth of the cave and
stood looking out into the swirling snow-storm; she returned to the
fire, throwing on more wood. She felt sure that an hour had passed--two
hours--she began to grow alarmed. Always that dread thought was ready to
spring out upon her: "If something had happened to him!" She went a
little way in the direction he had taken; stood peering into the dark,
listening breathless and rigid. Never a sound. She went back to the
front of the cave, looking down, staring out into the grey sky, across
the ridge....
Gloria, trembling with a new excitement, was down on her knees before
the pack when King returned. She sprang up to face him. And each, with
the other's emotions and experiences of the past two or three hours
unknown to him, marvelled at what was to be read in the other's face.
Gloria was excited; King's excitement was no less. Where she had at
least the clue to his altered expression, he had none to hers.
"It's here!" he burst out. "And I've found it. Tons and tons of it, such
knobs and nuggets of pure gold as never man laid eyes on! We have here
the Magic Lamp to rub: a castle in Spain and an ocean-going yacht and
the newest thing in motor-cars and a trip around the world and a
presentation to royalty--a fragment of heaven and a very large slice of
hell. Ambition fulfilled and love consumed and hate born. We have old
Ben made whole and full of power again. And here we have all that is
left of Gus Ingle and his friends--except for a pile of bones back
yonder!"
She saw that in each hand he carried what looked like a big rough stone;
she saw from the way he carried them that they were heavy. The fires
leaped higher, brighter in her eyes. Now she saw the way to make Mark
King pay for all of his brutality to her; to pay to the uttermost!
"I have nothing to say to you," she said as stiffly as she knew the way.
"I care to hear nothing you have to say. I have tolerated all that I
mean to tolerate from you."
Her bearing, no less than her words, astonished him. For the first time
he saw what it was that she held in her hands. She had been gathering up
her own little personal effects; a tiny parcel of silken things, comb
and brush, trifling feminine odds and ends. He stared at her
wonderingly.
"I don't understand----"
Gloria treated him to cool laughter.
"You will in a minute. I am going."
"Going? You? In God's name, _where_?"
Deep silence answered him. He frowned at her in puzzled fashion a
moment; then, suspecting the truth, since his racing mind could hit on
no other possible explanation of her manner, he dropped to the fireside
the things in his hands and went swiftly to the cave's mouth. He looked
out into the storm, his eyes questing in all directions. Nothing. Only
the thickening storm, the ridges dim beyond the swirl of snow----
Then he saw. For a long time he stood, studying it, seeking to make
sure. What he saw was beaten down by the falling snow, dissipated by the
wind, gone entirely over and again only to rise like a shapeless ghost
of disaster. It was a column of smoke. Some one had encamped no great
distance away; on the same stream, hidden only by the windings of the
gorge. Some one? Why, then, Gratton and Brodie and their crowd, after
all! He glowered angrily toward the faint smudge of smoke. Then he swung
about and came back to Gloria's side.
"You saw that smoke?" he demanded. "You plan on going to them?"
"Yes," cried Gloria. She sprang up and confronted him angrily. "Yes to
both questions."
"You know who they are, then?"
"No; but that doesn't matter."
"Which means as plain as print," he said thoughtfully, "that you would
go to any man to be rid of me." He laughed unpleasantly and Gloria's
anger flared the higher.
"Do you know," he said presently, "that they are probably Gratton and
Swen Brodie and their outfit?"
"What of it?" asked Gloria, erect and defiant.
"You know that Gratton has set out to ruin your father? That he's a
double-dealing scoundrel? That Brodie is worse? That neither is hardly
the sort for a girl to trust herself to in a place like this?"
"I am not given much choice," Gloria informed him with high insolence.
"That's a fact," he conceded with a grunt.
He'd give a thousand dollars right now to be well rid of her; yes, and
have Gratton and Brodie and the rest of them come on looking for any
sort of a row that suited their ilk. He told himself that with savage
emphasis, but he asked: could he let her go?
"Before I go," said Gloria when she thought that he had nothing further
to add, "I want to say just one thing: father has always considered you
his best friend. I shall lose no time in telling him what you really
are."
Gloria's remark, coming just when it did in King's perplexity, settled
his decision firmly on him. The girl was a vicious little fool; so he
was determined to think of her unequivocally. But she was, after all,
Ben Gaynor's daughter and, furthermore, the apple of Ben's eye. She was
in King's keeping; he had been eminently to blame for bringing her here,
his was the responsibility. Gratton's eye was the sort that soils a
woman.
"You are _not_ going," he said suddenly, turning upon her. "I won't
allow you to put yourself in Gratton's or Brodie's dirty hands."
A quick light was in her eyes, a quick spurt of satisfaction in her
heart. In King's decision she read the assurance that he was still madly
in love with her, that now his jealousy stirred him. She lifted her chin
and with her little bundle under her arm came forward, walking
confidently.
"Stand aside, please," she commanded. "I am going, I tell you."
Again sensing the familiarity of the battlefield she felt an almost
serene confidence, believing herself easily mistress of the situation.
So much must have been plain to King from that "Stand aside, please,"
which Miss Gloria Gaynor of last week might have addressed to a porter,
were it not that just now King's thought was not bended to trifles. When
she came to his side and he did not stir, she sought to brush by him.
There was no hesitation in the way in which he put out his hand and held
her back.
"There can be only one captain to an expedition in adventure," he told
her seriously. "I have been elected to the job. You'll pardon me if I
put matters into one-syllable words? Until we are well out of this, if
we are ever out at all, you will have to do what I tell you. You are not
going to desert ship."
She stared at him speechlessly. Then:
"By what right do _you_ issue orders to _me_?" she cried.
"Let us say," he returned in the coin of her own harshness, "by the old
right of a husband. If that isn't sufficient you can add to it: by the
time-honoured right of the lord and master! For that is just precisely
what I intend being until I can turn you over to your dawdling set in
the city again. Wait a minute," he added sternly, as he saw her lips
opening to a rush of words. "I would be glad to have you go were
conditions less exacting. Now I have thought matters over and it appears
essential that certain of our marriage vows be remembered. You don't
have to love or honour, but by thunder you are going to obey! Reversion
to an ancient order of things, eh? Well, the world was better then,
largely in that women were worth a man's while. Further, for my part, I
fully intend to keep my obligation of protecting you against your own
foolishness, the storm, Gratton, Brodie, and the devil himself. And,
finally, I mean to keep my promise to your father. He sent me to get Gus
Ingle's gold; it's here. So is Gratton with his cut-throat crowd. I will
in all probability have my hands full. But, once and for all, you stick
with me. Where," he concluded with the last jeer, "the wife's place
should be!"
Gloria tried to stare him down, to wither him with the fire of her
scorn, to brave by him. But the man, all emotion having receded from his
eyes, was once more like so much rock, but rock endowed with dormant
power of aggression. She felt as though she had to do with a great
poised boulder which offered no menace so long as she let it alone, but
which needed but an unwary step of hers to destroy its equilibrium and
thus bring it crashing down upon her, crushing her. She began by
wondering if she had mistaken his look just now when she had leaped to
the triumphant decision that he loved her; she ended by feeling hopeless
and tired and uncertain of all things. To keep him from noting how she
was trembling she went hastily back to the roll of bedding and dropped
down to it. On the instant it became clear to her that physically King
was the master. To her, before whom difficulties had heretofore
invariably melted, it seemed equally clear that there must be a way out
of an unbearable situation. So now, for the first time, she began a
certain logical line of thought, seeking to shape her own plans.
"Please listen to me seriously," King said quietly to her. "I won't talk
long to you. Your father is on the edge of bankruptcy. He is temporarily
out of the running--at the hands of the very men you want to go to. He
counts on me for what is in Gus Ingle's caves. I have found at least a
part of it and I honestly believe that it is in your hands and mine to
pull Ben through and leave him a rich man on top of it. Gratton and
Brodie are down there; they'll clean us out if they can. The stake is
big enough for them to stop at nothing short of murder, and I am not
oversure they'd stop there. Gus Ingle's crowd didn't, and I don't know
that men have changed much in half a hundred years."
"I am listening," said Gloria coolly when he paused.
"Here's the point: this is treasure-trove; we got here first. It is up
to us to hold it. Can I count on you? You don't happen to have any love
for me; well, you shouldn't have any for Gratton or Brodie, either. And
you know that you can trust yourself to me. Can I count on you sticking
on the job, your father's and your own job as much as mine, until we
make a go of it?"
Gloria's logical thinking had barely begun, and as yet had not had time
to progress. Her spite was lively and bitter. In her distorted vision,
blurred by passionate anger, she cried out quickly:
"So, now that the odds are against you, you come cringing to me, do
you?" Again she was misled into fancying that she held a whip-hand over
him. "Answering your question, I would trust Mr. Gratton any day rather
than you. He, at least, is not quite the brute and bully that you are."
King was hardly disappointed.
"At least you have given a straight answer," he muttered. "That is
something."
Now he shaped his plans swiftly and carefully, knowing where she stood.
It was characteristic of him that, once having seen clearly his own
responsibility toward a foolish girl, he did not seek to simplify his
own difficulty by ridding himself of her. Henceforth he would merely
consider her his chief handicap, with him but against him. He consoled
himself with the whimsical thought that there was never a proper
treasure-hunt that did not carry traitorous mutineers on the questing
ship.
_Chapter XXII_
And so, after all, he and Gloria were not alone in the mountains; that
other crowd was still to be reckoned with. King stood at the cave's
mouth, frowning into the ever-thickening smother of the storm. Their
smoke was gone again, beaten down, hidden behind the snow-curtain. But
they were there, at no very great distance. Thus, then, they knew
something. Just what? Here was the matter of his perplexity; did they
know all that he did? Or had they merely such a hint as would lead them
as close as this? Or had they followed his trail?
He grew impatient with seeking to speculate. It struck him clearly and
forcefully that he had but one thing to do: to trust that they did not
have such full information as had fallen into his hands and to see to it
that he gave them no help. Though they should come close, very close,
still that which he had found might remain hidden from them. There lay
his work; to do all that he could to hide Gus Ingle's gold. First he
would bring with him more than the two nuggets; all that he felt he
could manage to carry with the rest of his necessary load. Enough to
help Ben Gaynor over a crisis; enough raw gold to slam down before some
San Francisco capitalist, together with a tale which would make any man
eager to stake the owner to what loan he asked. With that he'd seek to
get back to the open. He would get provisions, snow-shoes, a dog-team,
if necessary, a couple of trusted men to come with him; he would be back
here within the week. But first, before he went, he would strive to make
as sure as a man could that Brodie's crowd did not find the golden
hoard.
He went a second time far back into the darkness of the further cave,
carrying a smoking torch as before, vanishing from Gloria's eyes. She
was alone; nothing stood between her and the cave's mouth; she was free
to go! He must have thought of that. He was giving her her chance. She
had but to snatch up the few things she meant to take with her, to go
out, to find her way down the cliffs----She shuddered. She was afraid!
Did he know that, too? Had he thought of that? She moved back and forth
restlessly; at one instant she was sure that she would go, only to be
certain of nothing before another second passed. How soon would he
return? Would he hurry after her, would he bring her back forcibly?...
She went where she could look out; the column of smoke had disappeared;
the wind tore at her in mighty gusts. She hesitated and time passed.
How long he was gone she did not know. She only knew that she had done
nothing when at length he returned. There was a look of grim
satisfaction on his face; whatever he had gone to do he had done in a
manner to please him. She noted that his coat was off; that in it, as in
a bag, he carried something heavy.
"This goes with us wherever we go," he announced triumphantly. "It's a
big breathing spell for Ben Gaynor." He dumped it out; there were other
lumps like the two he had brought back the first time. She wondered
dully if that grimy stuff were gold! She watched him while he emptied a
provision-bag and thereafter dropped into it the stuff he had brought in
his coat. On top of it went the articles of food.
"If you can whip up enough endurance for the work ahead of us," he
announced impersonally, "we stand a good chance of getting out of this.
Otherwise, we stand a whole lot better show of being caught here and
freezing and starving to death."
Gloria shook visibly. Nervousness and fear and the cold were combined
and merciless. Her look sped from King's face to what she could see of
the snow-storm.
"But we'll wait," she asked in utter, weary meekness, "until this
horrible storm is over?"
"One never knows about a storm like this," he told her. "It may blow
itself out soon and it may keep on for a long time. Now, it's beginning
to pile up in the drifts, to hide the trails, to make going harder every
minute. As it is we'll have our work cut out for us; if this keeps up
all afternoon and all night ..." He shrugged.
"You mean that then we couldn't get out at all?" she asked sharply.
He looked down on her thoughtfully. "I don't know," he replied slowly,
"whether you could make it then or not. I am more or less used to this
sort of thing and you are not. I figure that we ought to take no more
long shots than we have to. If we start right now and have any luck we
can make several miles before night and camp in some of the thick
timber. We'd be as well off there as we are here and just that much
nearer the outside. If the weather allowed us to travel at all we could
be back at your father's place in four or five days at the longest.
And," he added significantly, "we have food to last us just about that
long."