King nodded and began his preparations. Into the squares of canvas he
rolled everything they were to take with them, and he took no single
article which he judged was not absolutely necessary. One small
frying-pan and one light aluminium pot, with single knife, fork, and
spoon, constituted all in the way of cooking utensils. With jealous eye
he judged the weight, bulk, and worth of every other article, whether it
be a tin of fruit or a slab of bacon. Those delicacies, which his love
for Gloria had prompted him to bring with them, he now placed at one
side, to be left behind. Bacon, to the last small scrap and fat-lined
rind, coffee, to the once-boiled dregs in the coffee-pot, he packed
carefully. Then, his roll made and drawn tight, he took up the discarded
articles and hid them under some loose dirt in a remote, black corner of
the cave. Ten minutes later he had gotten first his pack, then Gloria,
safely down the cliffs, and they started. Head down, silent, like two
grotesque automatons, they trudged on. They crossed on the fallen cedar,
they climbed out of the gorge on the far side, they fought their way on.
Several times King turned. But she soon saw it was not to look at her;
his glance passed down the long cañon toward the spot where they had
seen the smudge of smoke. She had come near forgetting that other men
were near; she had no interest in them now. King had brought her here;
King must take her safely back to the world which she had forsaken so
stupidly. The obligation was plainly his; the power seemed his no less.
As Gloria fought her way along she was upborne at every step by the
expectation of coming presently to their horse, of being placed in the
saddle, and of having nothing to do from then on but hold to the pommel
and have King lead her on to an ultimate safety. The progress would be
long and the way little less than an adventure in hell to her; but at
least hers would have become a slightly more passive part and she would
be moving on toward the luxury of four walls and a maid and warm
comforts. So when they came to the spot where King had tethered his
horse, and there was no horse there, Gloria looked her blank, stupefied
bewilderment, and then simply collapsed. She dropped down in the snow,
her face in her hands, too weary and heartbroken to sob aloud. King
stared about him with an almost equal consternation.
Leaving Gloria where she lay inert in the snow, King put down rifle and
pack and hurried down into the hollow where he had tethered his horse.
Five minutes of reading the signs in the snow told him the story. He had
been right; his venture from the beginning had been loaded to the guards
with bad luck. There was the end of the broken tie-rope; there the
tracks showing the way Buck had gone, in full, headlong flight. The rope
was stout and would have broken only were the animal terrified. If
frightened, then there had been something to cause fright. Again, since
the horse fled straight down the slope, that something startling it
would have been at some point directly above. King turned and mounted to
the ridge top again. Here were other tracks, all but obliterated by the
snow which had fallen since they were made. A bear had come up over the
ridge; had frightened the horse into breaking its tether and running.
And the equally startled bear had turned tail and raced off the other
way. Both animals were probably a dozen miles off by now; the bear,
perhaps, twice that distance.
King came back slowly and sat down on his pack. From Gloria's dejected
figure he looked to his watch, from his watch again to the four points
of the compass. His lips tightened. The afternoon was passing and the
dark would come early.
"Are you up to crowding ahead on foot?" he called to Gloria. "If you
have the nerve we can really make better time that way, anyhow, from now
on. Can you do it?"
At first she did not try to answer. But when he shouted to her again,
his voice hard with anger, she moaned miserably:
"I am sick; I am dying, I think. I can't go on."
King grunted disgustedly.
He let Gloria lie where she was until she had rested. Then he went to
her and put his hands under her arms and lifted her to her feet. She was
limp and pale, her eyes shut, her lashes looking unusually black against
the pallor of her pinched cheeks.
"We'll go back to the cave for the night, after all," he told her
quietly. "It's the inevitable, and that's one thing there's no sense
bucking against. Stand up!"
But the slight figure in its boyish garb drooped against him; Gloria's
head moved the slightest bit in sidewise negation; her pale lips stirred
soundlessly.
"What?" asked King.
"I can't," came her whisper.
He judged that here was no time for foolishness, but rather the time for
each one to do his part if the two of them lived to make all of this an
unpleasant memory.
"You've got to," he informed her crisply. "I can't carry you and the
pack and rifle and everything, can I? I am going back; the rest is up to
you. Do you want to lie here and die to-night?"
"I don't care," said Gloria listlessly.
He looked at her curiously. As he drew his hands away she slipped down
and lay as she had lain before. He turned away, took up his pack and
gun, set his back square upon her, and trudged off toward the only
shelter that was theirs. Along the ridge, buffeted by the wind, half
blind with the flurries of stinging hail with which that wind lashed him
as with countless bits of broken glass, he did not turn to look behind
him; not until he had gone fully half of the way to the cave. Then he
did turn. He could not see her following as he had pictured her. He
dropped his burden and went back to her. She lay as he had left her, her
face whiter than he had ever seen it, her eyes shut, certain small blue
veins making a delicate tracery across the lids.
He had meant to storm at her, to stir her into activity by the lashings
of his rage. But instead he stooped and gathered her up into his arms
and carried her through the storm, shielding her body all that he could.
And as he stooped and as he moved off he was growling deep down in his
throat like a disgruntled old bear. When it came to clambering down and
then up the cliffs Gloria obeyed his commands listlessly and as in a
dream, lending the certain small aid that was necessary. Even so, the
climb was hard and slow, and more than ever before filled with danger.
But in the end it was done; again they were in Gus Ingle's cave. King
built a fire, left Gloria lying by it, and went back for his pack. When
he returned she had not moved. He made a bed for her, placed her on it
so that her feet were toward the fire, and covered her with his own
blanket. Then he boiled some coffee and made her drink it. She obeyed
again, neither thanked him nor upbraided him, and drooped back upon her
hard bed and shut her eyes. Here was a new Gloria, a Gloria who did not
care whether she lived or died. With a quickening alarm in his eyes he
stood by the smoky fire, staring at her. Uninured to hardship, her
delicate body was already beaten; with still further hardship to come
might she not--die? And what would Mark King say to Ben Gaynor, even if
he brought back much raw red gold, if it had cost the life of Ben
Gaynor's daughter?
She did not stir when he came to her and knelt and put his hand against
her cheek. He was shocked to learn how cold she was. Lightly he set his
fingers against her softly pulsing throat; it was cold, like ice.
Plainly she was chilled through. As he began unlacing her boots a
curiously bitter thought came to him. She was his; the marriage service
had given her to him with her own willingness; his wife. And now he was
doing for her the first intimate little thing. He drew off her boots and
stockings and found that her feet were terribly cold. He wrapped them in
a hot blanket and hastened to set a pot of water on the coals. While the
water warmed he knelt and chafed her feet between his palms, afraid for
a moment that they were frozen. Finally, while he bathed them in
steaming water, the dead white began to give place to a faint pinkness,
like a blush, and again he put the blanket about them.
She had not moved. When a second time he laid his hand against her
throat the cold of it alarmed him. He hesitated a moment; then, the
urgent need being more than evident, he began swiftly to undo her outer
garments. The boyish shirt he unbuttoned and managed to remove; it was
wet through, and stiff with frost. He noted her under-garments, silken
and foolish little things, with amazement; she had known no better than
to wear such nonsensical affairs on a trip like this! Good God, what
_did_ she know? But he did not pause in his labours until he had slipped
off the wet clothing. Then he wrapped her in another warm blanket and
placed her on her bed, her feet still to the blaze. All of the time she
had seemed, and probably was, hardly conscious. Now only she opened her
eyes.
"I can't have you playing the fool and getting pneumonia," he growled at
her. "We've got our hands full as it is. Don't you know enough to ..."
But she was not listening. She stirred slightly, eased herself into a
new position, cuddled her face against a bare arm, sighed, and went to
sleep.
_Chapter XXIII_
All night King kept his fire blazing. With several long sticks and a
piece of the canvas, drawing deeply upon his ingenuity and almost to the
dregs of his patience, he contrived a rude barrier to the cold across
the mouth of the cave. Countless times he rolled out of his own bunk,
heavy-eyed and stiff, to readjust the screen when it had blown down, to
put more wood on his fire, to make sure that Gloria was covered and
warm, sleeping heavily, and not dead. His nerves were frayed. In the
long night his fears grew, misshapen and grotesque. Within his soul he
prayed mutely that when morning came Gloria would be alive. When with
the first sickly streaks of dawn he went to put fresh fuel upon the
dying embers he found that there was but a handful of wood left. He came
to stoop over the girl and listen to her breathing. Then he descended
the cliffs for more wood.
During the night winter had set the white seal of his sovereignty upon
the world. The snarling wind had died in its own fierceness, giving over
to a still, calm air, through which steadily the big flakes fell. Now
they clung to bush and tree everywhere; the limbs had grown thick and
heavy, drooping like countless plumes. Fat mats of snow lay on the level
spaces, upon flat rocks, curling over and down at the edges. Where he
stood King sank ankle-deep in the fluffy stuff. As he moved along the
cliffs and down the slope toward a dead tree he stepped now and then
into drifts where the snow was gathering swiftly. As he looked up,
seeking to penetrate the skies above him and judge their import, he saw
only myriads of grey particles high up, swirling but slightly in some
softly stirring air-current, for the most part dropping, floating,
falling almost vertically. Nowhere was there a hint or hope of
cessation. The winter, a full four weeks early, had come.
In the noose of his rope he dragged up the cliff much dead wood, riven
from a fallen pine. Throughout the noise of his comings and goings the
girl slept heavily. He got a big fire blazing without waking her and set
about getting breakfast. While he waited for the coffee to boil he took
careful stock of provisions. For two people there was enough for some
twenty meals, food for about a week. Time to conserve the grease from
the frying-pan; to hoard the smallest bit of bacon rind. He even counted
his rounds of ammunition; here alone he was affluent. He had in the
neighbourhood of a hundred cartridges for the rifle. While he was
setting the gun aside he felt Gloria's eyes upon him.
During the night and now, during this inventory, he had been granted
both ample time and cause for his decision. He addressed her with prompt
frankness.
"Inside fifteen minutes we've got to be on our way out. As we go we'll
look for the horse. But, find it or not, we're going."
She lay looking up at him thoughtfully. She had rested; she resented his
coolly assumed mastery; she had not forgotten that there were other men
near by. But she merely said, by way of beginning:
"The storm is over, then?"
"No. But we are not going to wait. We have food for only six or seven
days, at the most."
She let her eyes droop to the fire so that the lids hid them from him.
It was not yet full day; it was still snowing. Gratton and the men with
him would, of course, have ample supplies. She yearned feverishly to be
rid of King and his intolerable domineering. She estimated swiftly that,
paradoxically, her only power over him was that of powerlessness; while
she lay here hers was, in a way, the advantage. On her feet, following
him, he would be again to her the brute he had been coming in.
"I am tired out," she said faintly, still not looking up. "I am sick. I
have a pain here." She moved her hand to her side where, in reality, she
was conscious of a troublesome soreness. "I can't go on."
He stared at her. She was pale. Now that she lifted her eyes for a brief
reading of his look, he remarked that they appeared unusually large and
luminous. There was a flush on her cheeks. His old fear surged back on
him: Gloria was going to die! So he did what Gloria had counted on
having him do: put milk and sugar in her coffee and brought the cup to
her; he hastened to serve her a piping-hot breakfast of crisp bacon, hot
cakes and jam. He urged her to eat, and made his own meal of unsweetened
black coffee and cakes without jam. Triumphantly and covertly Gloria
observed all of this. Hers was the victory. Mark King was again waiting
on her, hand and foot, sacrificing for her.
He allowed himself half a pipe of tobacco--tobacco, like food, was going
to run out soon--and smoked sombrely. Here already was the thing to be
dreaded more than aught else: Gloria threatened with illness. As Ben
Gaynor's daughter, never as his own beloved wife, she had become his
responsibility. She was a parcel marked "Fragile--Handle with Care,"
which he had undertaken to deliver safely to a friend.
"I am going to look for the horse," he told her. He got to his feet and
took up his rifle. "But don't count too much on my success. All the
chances are that Buck is a long way on the trail back to his stable.
Blackie has probably limped back home by now. Another thing: if I don't
get Buck to-day he'll be of no use to us; that is, if the snow keeps on.
But I'll do what I can."
But, before leaving, he did what he could to make for her comfort during
his absence. He brought up fir-boughs, making them into a bed for her.
He readjusted his canvas screen, securing it more carefully, thereby
making the cave somewhat more snug. And at the last he dropped a little,
much-worn book at her side; she did not know he had it with him. She did
not appear to note it until he had gone. Then she took it up curiously.
A volume of Kipling's poems, compact and companionable, on India paper
between worn covers. With a little sniff she put the book down; just the
sort of thing for Mark King to read, she thought with fine scorn, and
utterly stupid to Gloria. What had she to do with _The Explorer_ and
_Snarleyow_ and _Boots_ and _The Feet of the Young Men_? Less than
nothing, in sheer, regrettable fact. She knew he had one other book with
him, Gus Ingle's Bible! The profaned volume of a murderous, long-dead
scoundrel. What a library for a dainty lady! Gloria suddenly found that
she could have screamed.
She scrambled up and went to peer out around the canvas screen. No sound
out there, for the wind was dead and the snow dropped noiselessly; the
creek in the gorge, because what little draught there was in the air
bore down the canon, sent no sound to her ears. The wilderness of crag
and peak and distant forest was hostile, pitiless. She sought eagerly
for some sign of Gratton. There was none; no smoke this morning denoted
his camp, no longed-for figure toiled upward toward her. But he would
come soon; he must. King had found the gold here; Gratton would know and
come. She would wait, hoping for Gratton's coming before King's return.
Meanwhile King, making his way down the mountain slope, found that his
estimate of the storm was cheerlessly correct; the fluffy stuff
underfoot was in places already knee-deep and mounting steadily higher.
He shook himself and growled in his throat and ploughed through it
vigorously.
"A pair of webs would look like wings before long," he muttered. "Well,
we'll make 'em, since we can't buy 'em."
Making his way back to the point where Buck had broken his tether, King
overlooked no precaution; since he did not care to have his and Gloria's
hiding-place known unnecessarily to Gratton and his following, he
forsook the natural pathway and made slower, hard progress along the
gorge where others would be less likely to chance upon his tracks and
where the tracks themselves would soonest fill with drifting snow.
Passing about many a stunted grove he came at last to the place whence
Buck had fled. He knew that in the general direction indicated by the
line of flight, beyond two ridges, was the valley of the giant sequoias.
There a horse would find water, shelter, and grass. If he failed to find
the animal there--well, then, Buck was well on the trail or lost to King
in any one of a hundred places.
And always as he went, panting up and ploughing down, the steep slopes,
his eyes were keen for meat, be it Douglas squirrel or bear. But the
woods seemed deserted and empty; only those cheerful, impudent little
bundles of feathers, the snowbirds, and an occasional, darting
water-ouzel along the creeks. These he let alone, but with the mental
reservation that the time might well be at hand when even such as they
must be called on to keep life in him and Gloria.
He had taken on a man's-sized contract for his morning's work and drove
his big body at it relentlessly. And he took his own sort of joy from
it, the joy of a fight against odds, the joy of action in the open. His
body was wet with sweat, but neither his ardour nor optimism were
dampened; his foot came perilously near frost-bite after he slipped into
the hidden water of a small stream, but he considered the accident but a
part of the day's work. So, prepared by common sense for
disappointment, he looked hopefully to finding the horse. And as he
pushed on he pondered other likely spots to seek this afternoon or
to-morrow if he did not find the animal in the sequoias.
When at last he came to the grove of big trees he was among old friends.
But he knew almost as soon as he reached them that they had no word for
him to-day. On his wedding morning he had planned how he would bring
Gloria here, taking it for granted, in his blind infatuation, that they
would mean to her what they had meant to him. Now he passed swiftly like
a noiseless shadow between the gigantic boles; he did not lift his head
to look at old Vulcan's lightning-blasted crest, two hundred feet in
air, all but lost up there in the falling snow; he gave no thought to
the thousands of years which were Majesty's and Thor's. He went with his
eyes on the ground, seeking tracks of a horse. And as he had more than
half expected, he found nothing. The magnificent vistas, carpeted in
snow, gave him no view of anything but snow.
Later he must cudgel his brains and seek elsewhere. Now, with other work
to be done, he should go back the shortest, quickest way. So he set his
feet into the trail which they had made, and turned his back upon the
grove. Where he crossed streams he took stock of pools; there were trout
there if a man could take them. This was another matter to see about.
Oh, he would be busy enough. And yet he did not loiter, and stopped only
briefly and infrequently to rest.
Before returning to Gloria, King meant to look in on Brodie's camp, if
only from a distance. As matters stood now there was no telling what
bearing Gratton's and Brodie's actions might have later upon his own
affairs. It would be well to note if the men were preparing to fight the
storm out or to pack up and leave rather than take prolonged chances
with the season. So, a mile below his own camp, he slipped into a grove
of firs and made his unseen way toward the fringe whence he counted upon
seeing what they were about. He was still moving on slowly and had had
no glimpse of the men when he heard them. He stopped abruptly and
listened.
They were down there, against the cañon wall. Words came to him
indistinctly, muffled by the thick air. The tones of the voices were
unmistakable. Three voices there were, each with its own peculiarity,
none of them Gratton's. First a big, booming voice; then a sharp,
staccato-quick voice; thereafter a high-pitched, querulous utterance,
nervous and irritable. Disagreement, if not out-and-out quarrel, had
already come to camp. King moved a few paces nearer, pushed aside a low
branch from which the snow dropped with little thuds, and saw the men.
There were four of them in an excited group, and slightly drawn apart,
one hand at his mouth, was Gratton. The four paid no attention to him,
but formed a group exclusively self-centred. Of these four one now held
his own counsel, his attitude alert, his hands in his pockets, his head
turning swiftly, so that his eyes were now on one speaker, now on
another. Across the brief distance King could see the puffs of smoke
from the pipe in his teeth. The man wore a red handkerchief knotted
about his throat; its colour was as bright as fresh-spilled blood. Swen
Brodie.
Now and then as a voice was lifted King caught a word; repeated several
times he heard the word "bacon." Here, doubtless, was the matter under
discussion. One man, he of the thin, querulous voice swung his nervous
arm widely and fairly shrieked his message; it came in little puffs and
was lost between. King heard him shout "bacon" and "snow" and "hell."
The three expressions, so oddly connected and yet disjointed, were
significant.
Gratton stood apart and gnawed at his hand; though he could not see the
prominent eyes, King could imagine the look in them. Swen Brodie puffed
regularly at his pipe and watched and listened intently.
Abruptly the wrangling knot of men resolved itself into two definite
factions. His fellows had turned upon the shrill-voiced man, plainly in
some sort of denunciation or accusation. He was the smallest of the
lot, and drew back hastily, step after step, offering the knife-edge of
his curses as the others clubbed their fists.
"... a lie!" he shrieked. "Fools...."
Gratton gnawed at his knuckles, Brodie puffed steadily, and the two
aggressors accepted windy denial as sign of guilt. One of them sprang
forward and struck; the little man whipped out a revolver and fired. The
shot sounded dull and muffled; a puff of smoke hung for a moment like
the smoke from the pipe, appearing methodically between the passive
onlooker's teeth; the man who had struck stopped dead in his tracks.
There came a second shot; then in sharp staccato succession four others,
followed by the ugly little metallic click announcing that the gun had
emptied itself. Before the last explosion the balancing body sagged
limply and sprawled in the snow.
King's first natural impulse was to break through the brush and run
forward. But his caution of the day commanded by circumstance, though
never a part of the man's headlong nature, remained with him,
counselling cool thought instead of hot haste. The man down was dead or
as good as dead; him King could not help. So he held back and watched.
There fell a brief silence while the man who had done the shooting and
the men about him, no less than the figure lying in the snow, were as
motionless as so many carven statues. At last Brodie spoke heavily.
"Benny's right. Bates had it coming to him. Times like this stealing a
side of bacon is worse'n murder. Bates stole it; he was going to try to
double-cross us and beat it out of here. Now he's dead, and good
riddance." He spat into the snow when he had done.
Benny, chattering wildly to himself now, began a hasty reloading of his
revolver. The man whom he had shot, whom Brodie named Bates, lay not
five steps from Benny's feet, his blood already congealing where it
flushed the snow. Oddly enough, King knew personally or by repute each
of the men before him with the single exception of the man who had paid
in full for his own--or some one else's--crime of stealing food at a
time when food meant a chance for life. To begin with, there was Swen
Brodie and there was Gratton. There was Benny, who had done the killing,
a degenerate, a morphine addict, and a thorough-going scoundrel. Beyond
him stood the burly ruffian of the big, awkward, bony frame, who had
brought the "judge" to the log house the other night at Gratton's
bidding, Steve Jarrold. Through the trees, coming up now, were two more
of the ill-featured party, a swart, squat Italian, and just at his heels
a ragged scarecrow of a man named Brail. It was Brail who came close
enough to stoop over the fallen man.
"Dead, ain't he?" queried Benny, half-coughing over his words.
His fellows had drawn closer so that they stood in a ring about the
body. One man alone held apart. Gratton's eyes were wild, void of
purpose; the dead, chalky-white of his face turned a sickly greenish
tinge. After a little, while no one paid any attention to him, he began
a slow withdrawal, moving jerkily step by step, his dragging heels
making long furrows in the snow. Then King, too, began to draw back,
slipping quietly and swiftly through the screen of tree and bush,
stepping in the tracks he had made coming hither, praying suddenly for
further fast-falling snow to hide or obliterate the trail he had made.
And for the moment he was not thinking of the gold which they, too,
sought, and which he had meant to snatch away from under their noses. He
thought only of Gloria. If that crowd, in its present temper, found the
way to his camp--if, in one way or another, Gloria fell into their
hands--then could she thank God for a clean bullet and a swift end of
things.
_Chapter XXIV_
The mere fact of being absolutely alone from midday to dark would have
been for Gloria an experience at any time and in any environment. Of
her friends in the city there were many who had never in a lifetime
known what it was to spend half a dozen consecutive daytime, waking
hours in perfect solitude, catching not so much as a fleeting glimpse of
a servant, a policeman, a nurse, or a street-car conductor in the
echoing street. Solitude rendered rippleless by an absence of any
familiar sound; neither the whisk of a maid's broom, the clang of a
telephone bell, the buzz of motors, or the slamming of doors. At those
intervals when King thought of her, it was to realize that she might
quite naturally find discomfort in her bleak surroundings, being denied
coal-grate and upholstered chair; it did not suggest itself to him that
the chief discomfort would be a spirit-crushing, terrifying loneliness.
She told herself, when he had gone, that she was glad to be alone. Five
minutes later she began to stir restlessly; another five minutes and
already she was listening for his return. Never once during the day was
there a sudden or unexpected sound, whether the snapping of a burning
faggot or the scratching against the rock of a log rolling apart, or the
flap of her canvas, that she did not look expectantly toward the rude
door through which she thought to see him returning.
Once that her restlessness came upon her she could not remain quiet. She
drew on her boots and walked up and down, casting fearsome glances
toward the darkest portion of the cavern, shunning it, keeping the fire
between it and herself. When she peered out across the desolate world
she drew back from its bleak menace, shuddering, returning to crouch
miserably by her fire, shut in between two frightful things, the black
unknown of the bowels of the cave, the white horror of the brutal,
insensate wilderness. And, in her almost hysterical emotional frenzy she
saw back of each of them the man, Mark King, as though they were but the
expressions of his own brutality.
After an hour she felt that she would go mad unless she found something
to hold her mind back from those hideous channels into which it slipped
so readily. She snatched up the book which King had left with her, and
forced herself to read. Pages eluded her, but here and there single
lines or words caught her attention as a thorny copse catches and plucks
the garments of one going blindly through it. So she was arrested by the
line: "_In simpleness and gentleness and honour and clean mirth_." And
this was one of the times when she threw the book down and got up and
walked back and forth impatiently. It was almost as though King had left
the wretched volume behind to be his spokesman in his absence; she told
herself angrily that he was _not_ like that, had never been like that.
He was a mere brute of a man, not "_such as fought and sailed and ruled
and loved and made our world_." He was, rather, unthinkably crude and
boorish and detestable.
But, rebelling at utter loneliness, she was forced again and again to
the only companion at hand. She read _The Explorer_, fascinated in a
shivery, uncanny way by the first line, as though a ghostly voice were
whispering to her from the black corners of the cave: "_There's no sense
in going further--it's the edge of cultivation._" And later: "_I faced
the sheer main-ranges, whipping up and leading down._" Others than she
had gone into the last solitudes. Others who had joyed in it and sung of
it! It was as though the dead shades of those others squatted at the
edges of her fire and mocked at her. Then she could fancy that it was
King himself jeering, and that he cried: "_Then He chose me for His
Whisper, and I've found it, and it's yours!_"
She snapped the book shut. Later she opened it to the tale of Tomlinson.
She did not entirely grasp it, but she could not entirely miss what it
said. She hurried on; she wondered vaguely at the call of the Red Gods;
here again, seeking distraction, she was whipped back to reality. There
were the lines, staring at her, as though King had rewritten Kipling:
"_Who hath smelt wood-smoke at twilight?
Who hath heard the birch log burning?
Who is quick to read the noises of the night?_"
And the answer was: "Mark King." Even now it was a torturous twilight
in the cave, even now she smelled wood-smoke; even now she was like one
starting at the noises of the night....
"Man-stuff," she thought contemptuously. She had heard such an
expression used in connection with the verses of this uncouth scribe. It
did not strike her that man-stuff might well enough be woman-stuff also,
being one or the other, or both, for the sheer reason that it was human.
She chose to consider it merely the sort of coarse food for male mental
digestion. A man's nature was not fine and intricate; rather his
emotional qualities must be like stubby, blunt, callous fingers,
unskilled and not highly sentient. A man lacked the psychical and
spiritual and intellectual development which was that of a maid like
Gloria; his joys were chiefly physical. So he cared to blaze trails like
the explorer; the impact of a storm's buffeting and the low appreciation
of a full stomach drew limits marking his possibilities of expansion. He
was a beast, and she hated the whole sex sweepingly and superbly. In
great surges of genuine sympathy her heart went out to herself.
But, after all, the moments in which her thoughts were snared away from
her fears and the oppression of loneliness were few and short. From
wondering what kept King she passed to bitter anger that he should
desert her so; she concluded that he was doing it with malicious intent.
Repeatedly she was tempted to go forth and seek Gratton: to hunt up and
down until at last she came to him. Again and again she went to the
mouth of the cave and looked forth. But each time she drew back,
terrified at the thought of making her way unaided down the sheer cliff
wall. She sought to tell herself that she was not afraid of the snow, of
being lost, of being unable to find Gratton. But she could not climb
down the cliff; she knew that she would fall. Dizzy and sick, shivering
with dread and cold, she turned back always.
She let her fire die down, not noticing it. Then the cold reminded her,
and she worked long building another. She knew where a block of matches
was; she had seen King set it carefully away. In her excitement she
struck dozens of matches, dropping the burnt ends about her.
At last her fire blazed up and she warmed herself. Then she was
conscious of a strange faintness and realized that she was hungry. She
went to their food cache and ransacked it hastily. She opened a tin of
sardines and came back to the fire with it in her hands. She had no
clear conception of the deed when, half of the fish consumed, the smelly
stuff revolted her and she hurled the remaining part into the bed of
coals.
* * * * *
King stamped the loose snow from his boots and came in. Gloria stood
confronting him, tense, rigid, white-faced, her hands stiff at her
sides. She wanted to cry out, to upbraid him, all of her fear of the day
turned into molten anger, but at the moment her strength failed
strangely, her heart seemed to be stopping, she choked up. The surge of
her relief, like a suddenly released current, impacting with that other
current of her unleashed anger, made of her consciousness a sort of
wild, fuming whirlpool. Nothing was clear to her just then save that
Mark King had come back and that, no doubt, his heart was filled with
jeers; she could not read the expression of his shadowed face, but
fancied it one of mockery.
King was tired throughout every muscle of his body. He set down his
rifle, tossed his hat aside, and slumped down by the fire. Coming in
from the storm-cleansed open he sniffed at the closeness of the cave. It
was not alone the smell of smoke; his first thought was that Gloria had
been cooking something. Then he noted the sardine-can. With a stick he
raked it out of the coals. And now Gloria could read his expression well
enough as he jerked his head up.
"In God's name," he demanded, "what do you mean by a thing like that?
Are you stark, raving mad?"
For a moment she was at a loss to understand what had enraged him. The
act of tossing the distasteful food into the fire had been purely
involuntary; her conscious mind had hardly taken cognizance of the fact.
When it dawned upon her what he meant, her own anger was still greater
than her sense of her act's folly. But she found no ready answer to his
accusation. She was not without reason; in their present predicament she
was a fool to have done a thing like that; she could hardly believe that
she had done it. And so she stared impudently at him and held her
silence, and finally, with an elaborate shrug of disdainful shoulders,
she turned her back on him.
But King flung to his feet and set his hands on her two shoulders and
swung her about. Her eyes opened widely.
"Listen to me," he said angrily. "I am going to talk plain to you. You
are a fool, a downright, empty-headed silly fool. What you have
destroyed in wanton carelessness would have kept the life in a man a
whole day. Haven't you sense enough to see it's going to be nip and tuck
if we ever get out of this? You've shown yourself, from start to finish,
a miserable cheat; there's no trust to be put in either your judgment or
your intentions. Be still," he commanded, as she sought to wriggle out
of his grasp, to avoid the direct blaze of his eyes. "I am going to do
what I can for you; to see you safe through this, if I can. Not because
you are anything to me, but just because you are Ben Gaynor's, and he is
my friend. Understand?"
"You are hurting me," she said in defiance. "Take your dirty hands off."
"When I am done," he returned curtly. "I am going to stick to you and
see you through, I tell you. But I am not going to have you throw all of
our chances away by dumping grub into the fire. If you do one other
brainless thing like that, and I catch you at it, I am going to tie you
up, hand and foot, and keep you out of mischief."
"You wouldn't dare----"
But she knew better; he would dare anything. He _was_ of the type that
fought and sailed and ruled. Now, when having spoken his mind he turned
away from her, she stared after him and watched him as he dropped back
by the fire. Then she went slowly to her bed to hide her trembling, and
lay down.
Presently she heard him stirring. She did not turn her head to look at
him. But she knew that he was busied with supper. She smelt coffee,
heard the clash of tin cup and plate, and realized that he was eating.
She wondered if he had forgotten her. After a while she moved just a
trifle and furtively; he had put away his dishes and was filling his
pipe. And he knew that she was watching him.
"No," he said to her unspoken question. "I am not going to cook for you
any more. I have had a hard day of it, doing the man's work. Had you
done the woman's you would have had supper ready for me."
He lighted his pipe with a splinter of burning pine. Then for the first
time he saw the waste of scattered matches on the floor. From them he
looked to her in an amazement so sheer that it left him no word of
expostulation. The suspicion actually came to him that the girl was mad.
It was scarcely conceivable that a perfectly sane individual could do
the things which she had done.
She saw him get up and begin gathering up all of the foodstuff. He
carried it to the back of the cave, where he passed out of her sight in
the dark. He was gone ten minutes and came back empty-handed. He made
the second trip, after which there was left on a shelf of rock only half
a dozen matches and enough food for one scanty meal. This Gloria
ignored.
"Do you think," she said contemptuously, "that what you have hidden back
there I couldn't find?"
"You could find it but you won't," he returned with quiet assurance that
jerked the question from her:
"Why?"
"Because," he grunted contemptuously, "you are too much of a coward to
go back there to look for it."
And in her heart she knew that here was but the mere truth. For, why
was she not already in Gratton's camp? Her opportunity had come and
gone--because she had been afraid.
_Chapter XXV_
King awoke filled with resolve and definite purpose. It was pitch dark,
but he sensed the coming of wintry dawn. He drew on his boots and went
to look out. It was still snowing, heavily, steadily, implacably. He
kicked the loose fluffy stuff underfoot.
"The biggest storm in twenty years," he told himself. "And if any one of
us in these mountains come out of them alive he'll have something to
talk about. It's the real thing."
He went grimly about his fire-making, fixed purpose crystallizing to the
smallest detail. Again he must seek immediately to locate his horse; one
could eat horseflesh if driven to it. He must try to get game of some
sort. And every lost hour meant lessened chances of his killing forest
meat; deer and bear and the smaller folk, if they had been caught
napping, would be scurrying out of the mountains long before now; soon
the solitudes would be utterly barren and empty. He went to Gloria's
bed.
"You'd better get up," he said briefly. "Time to start the day. While we
eat I want to talk with you."
She awoke slowly, blinked at him, and only drew her blanket higher about
her chin.
"I am tired," she answered petulantly. "Don't you realize that a
girl..."
"I realize," he cut into her sleepy expostulation, "that you are weak
and frightened and useless. And that those are three of the many things
you've got to get over the shortest way if you don't want to die here."
"I don't know that I care to live," she began, turning with her old
instinct toward an attitude which before now had robbed him of his
harshness. But his plan was set in cold determination, and he cut her
short again.
"If you don't care, I do. And I am going to pull you through with me, if
for no other reason simply because I have set out to do it, and am not
going to lie down on the job. What's more, you've got to do your share.
I have built the fire; will you get up?"
"No," she flashed out at him, thoroughly awake now. "I won't!"
He stooped, caught the corner of her blankets, and whipped them off.
Instinctively, she sought to draw the under-bedding over her, forgetting
that she had not undressed.
"You brute!" she screamed at him.
"Get up," he told her sternly, "or, by heaven, I'll make you!"
She saw his face plainly now as his crackling fire burned higher. It was
hard, his eyes were ominous. She hesitated and saw in his eyes and in a
stir of his body that he was going to jerk her to her feet. She flung
out of bed at that and upon the far side from him.
"Get your boots on," he ordered. "I don't want you catching cold from
idiotic carelessness, and I won't have you going sick on my hands. For
the first and last time I'll admit that I don't enjoy driving you like a
cursed galley-slave. But I'll do it, and do a thorough job of it, if you
force me to it."
She drew on her boots hastily and came to the fire and laced them. He
was a new man this morning and relentless. She was afraid of him after a
new, bewildered fashion.
"I never saw a storm worse than this," he told her. He had cooked the
breakfast because he was in a hurry, and did not care to trust her
wasteful fingers with their already precious food. "There must be two or
three feet on the level places by now; ploughing through snow like that
is killing work for a man, and you wouldn't last at it ten minutes." He
had no intention of speaking contemptuously; she knew that his thought
was not trifling with such matters as her feelings. He was merely
indulging in plain talk. "We have enough food for a few days. After
that, if we stuck on here and did not find more somehow, we'd die like
dogs. Therefore we are going to get ready to beat it out the first
chance we get."
"But if I wouldn't last ten minutes, as you so elegantly put it?"
"Not as you are; not as the snow is. But I'm hoping that before it's too
late we'll get clear weather, a sun, a thaw, and freezing nights. Then
we could tackle it on the crust. And your job now is to get yourself
ready for that one chance."
Her anger at the indignity already done her whipped out the sarcasm:
"By getting ready, I suppose you mean for me to pack my trunk and order
the expressman at the door?"
He looked at her with a long, impersonal stare which bewildered her; she
was at utter loss to read its meaning until he spoke:
"You are to pack what endurance you've got into your muscles. You are to
make up your mind to call up all of the grit that's in you. You'll need
both. And you are to quit lying around and getting weaker every day;
you've got little enough time to harden yourself, so you are going to
take on the job right now."
She gasped, incredulous. He nodded sternly.
"Gloria," he said tersely, "I am going to do all that I can for both of
us. You are going to do all that you can. That is final."
She bit her lips and gave him her scornful silence. The blood was red
and hot in her cheeks.
She ignored him when he called crisply that breakfast was ready. There
were limits to her obedience, she thought rebelliously. To be told do
this, do that, to arise when this man's body was rested, to eat when his
stomach was empty, was intolerable. King looked at her and had the
understanding to grasp something of her thought. So he explained:
"I want you to come outside with me. You'll find it hard work. It would
be a first-rate idea if you'd fortify your strength by the little bit
of nourishment which we can afford to take. No? Well, I'm sorry.--Here."
He offered her the pieces of a sack he had cut in two for her. "Tie
those about your feet to keep them from freezing."
"When I want your advice, I'll ask for it," she retorted icily.
"Very well," he answered. "And I can't make you eat if you don't want
to. After all, perhaps you are not hungry." He set aside her portion.
"You'll have the appetite for that when we get back."
She had the appetite now. But she would prefer to starve, she honestly
thought at the moment, than eat when he told her to eat. Now he finished
in silence. She saw him glance at his watch. Her heart seemed scarcely
to stir in her breast; then slowly it began to beat, swifter and
swifter, hammering wildly. He had said that she was going out with him;
what he promised to do, she realized again, he would do, if it were
humanly possible. She wanted to run, run anywhere, just to be lost to
him. And yet she stood stock-still and rigid, while her heart hastened
and leaped and her mind sought to grasp the thing to do. She must go
with him, do what he told her like a slave, as he had said, or he would
make her. Her reason said directly: "You will go without a word." And
yet, when he arose to his feet and knocked his pipe out and looked at
her, her reason fled before the flood of the passionate wilfulness of
the old Gloria, and she cried shrilly:
"I won't! I won't! I am not your slave and I am not going to jump at
your bidding! You can't make me; you shan't make me. _I won't!_"
He had hoped for better than this. He came closer and looked intently
into her eyes, seeking to measure what endurance and steadfastness and
stubbornness were hers. But her eyes showed him only glimpses of a
storm-tossed soul.
"I will make you," he said harshly. "So help me God, Gloria, I will make
you. And I am through talking; I am sick of talk. Come with me."
She drew back and back in white-lipped fury.
"You don't _dare_...."
"Listen to me! We are down to bare elementals now; can't you see it? It
is no question of what we'd like to do or dislike. It is a question of
life and death. If to let you have your way were anything other than
suicide, I'd let you have it. If I thought that you would listen to
reason, I'd stop to reason with you. But as things are, I've got nothing
left me but tell you what to do; and you've got to do as I say."
"My life is my own, to do with it as I please. I do not please to obey
your commands."
Her tortured heart surged up in wild triumph as he turned; it sank
sickly as he came back. He had a piece of rope in his hand, the heavy
half-inch rope which had served to tie a horse.
"You would tie me!" she gasped. "Me!"
"No," he said tersely. "As though you were any other fractious animal
refusing discipline when refusal means death, I am going to whip you!"
"God!" screamed Gloria. "Oh, my God!"
For again he but said simply the thing which he meant to do. And she
knew. Yet the consummation was monstrous, unthinkable. She would not
believe it; at the last minute his lifted arm would fail him; God
Himself would wither it; undreamed rescuers would come; the earth would
open ... _something_ would save her from this humiliation which would
kill her.
"While I count three," said King. And steadily, though there was a
pallor on his own face, which should have told her the terrible
relentlessness of his intention, he counted: "One, two, three."
She put her face into her hands and shivered, and felt the fear of one
under the flashing guillotine. She willed to move, to obey, at this
tardy second, but something within her, stronger than herself, held her
back. "_I won't!_" she screamed. The blow fell swiftly. The rope cut
through the air with vicious sibilance and fell across the stooped
shoulders. The pain was immediate, hot and searing, and Gloria
shrieked--once only--and grew still. She dropped her hands and looked at
him, her face as white as a dead girl's, her eyes as unfathomable as a
maniac's. She who had never been whipped in all of her life, she whose
soft white body had been held inviolate by idolizing parents, she who
had come to hold her own person as sacred as that of a high princess--to
be beaten by a man! To be lashed across her shoulders with a horse's
tie-rope. She, Gloria Gaynor, to have her bedding ripped off her, to be
commanded to do a man's bidding--and to be whipped!
She had known fear, blind, paralysing terror. She had suffered indignity
and experienced an insulted resentment that seared through her like a
hot iron. She had known pain, merciless bodily pain. Now she was plunged
into stupor. But that stupor was of only the fraction of a second in
duration. A flash as of white fire flared through her brain. In a soul
in torment something had happened. Something had been killed within
her--or something had been born. A blow at a man's hand had seemed to
cut through her being; it had separated body and spirit. She was
conscious of the body as though she stood apart and looked down at it.
He could beat that; he was stronger. The spirit rose above it--a spirit
bathed in floods of fire. She was in the sudden fierce grip of such
anger as kills, of such defiance as suffers death and does not yield.
"I won't go with you," she cried. "You may beat me; you may kill me if
you like, unthinkable brute that you are. I will not follow you now; I
will never follow one step ever. I have listened to you; now listen to
me! I would rather die than be brought to safety by you. If I cannot
find the way home without your help, I do not want ever to get home. I
am not afraid of you or your rope. I had rather feel a clean rope across
my shoulders until they were bloody than your vile hand on mine."
"You will do what I tell you to do," he said thickly. "It is the only
way. I will make you."
Blazing eyes burning in a death-white face gave him his only answer.
His own face now was no less white; iron-bodied as he was, he was
trembling. Yet he lifted the rope. To strike the second blow. Not just
to frighten her, but to strike. She read his purpose clearly, and she
could not restrain a shudder of her flesh. But she did not draw back
from him, and she did not cry out. She meant what she had said, or what
some re-born Gloria had said for her; he might kill her, but she would
not follow him.
And then Mark King, as he was about to strike, stayed his hand at the
last moment and hurled the rope far from him, and whirled about and left
her.
_Chapter XXVI_
Someway he came to the base of the cliffs. He was outside; he was in the
open. And yet he struggled blindly through a pit of gloom. He was
conscious of but one fact in all the world; about it everything else
turned and spun as sweep the bodies of the sky about the sun. He had
lifted his hand against a woman. He, Mark King, had struck a woman. He
had struck Gloria. His friend's daughter--Ben's daughter. He had struck
her.... What had come over him? Had he gone mad? Stark, staring, raving
mad? He knew all along that his nerves were on edge, raw and quivering.
But no jangling nerves explained a thing like that. He, who had held
himself a man, had struck a woman--a girl! A little, defenceless girl.
"My God!" he groaned.
He stumbled on. He did not know where he was going or why. He ran his
hand across his eyes again and again. He didn't know why he did that;
one couldn't thus wipe out a vision which persisted in his brain. He'd
see her as she stood there every day and night until he died. In a
sweeping revulsion of feeling he saw himself all that she had named him,
a great, hulking brute. All along he had been brutal with her; he
should have made due allowances; he should have been patient. He had
plunged her into an existence of which she had no foreknowledge. He had
looked to her for the sober sanity of maturity when he should have
remembered how young she was, how little of real life she knew, how she
had been driven to desperation by circumstances which crushed her; how
she had gone sleepless, living on her nerves. He had held her weak and
worthless and without spirit or character. And now he could only see her
standing up before him, white but valiant, defying him, unafraid,
welcoming death rather than yield to him. He would have given ten years
off the span of his life to have the deed of one mad moment wiped clean.
It was a long time before consecutive thought returned to him. And it
brought him only increased bitterness. Gloria had said that she would
die here rather than have him lead her to safety. Well, he did not blame
her for that. Rather, he told himself grimly, he honoured her for it.
And yet, now more than ever, his and his alone was the responsibility of
seeing that she went clear of this wretched existence into which he had
stubbornly led her. He could not take her away against her will; he
could not pick her up in his arms and carry her over a two or three
days' journey! Nor could he entrust her to the only other human beings
who were near enough for her to go to. What could he do? She would
perish without help; hence he must help her. But how?
There was but one possible answer, and in due course of time he came to
see it clearly. He must leave her, get back the shortest, quickest way
to civilization, and send other men, trustworthy men, in for her. It
could be done even though the storm continued. He could get a dog-team,
Alaskan huskies, to be had in Truckee; he could load sledges with
provisions; he could put the right man in charge and then lead the way.
That would mean several days alone for Gloria; but what else was there?
And even that solution depended upon the consideration which by now was
the elemental, all-essential thing; first he must find some sort of
provisions with which to eke out their small supply. There was not
enough in camp to sustain him while he battled with the storm for a way
out and to sustain strength in her while she waited. He must first
replenish the larder; otherwise they died. He must get fish in plenty or
a bear or a deer. He looked at the grey, ominous sky, at the piling
snow, and the chill of the wilderness struck to his heart. But at last
his eyes grew hard again with determination.
In a distressed mental condition in which the only solid ground beneath
him was his determination to do to the uttermost that lay within him for
Gloria, he broke into mutterings, voicing aloud fragments of speech,
forcing himself toward steadiness of forward-driving purpose.
"I've got to leave her.... She won't go with me. That means I've got to
leave with her every scrap of food we have between us. I can go two days
without eating.... I can! A man, if he's half a man, can finish his work
before he buckles under.... Her one danger is Brodie. Otherwise she
would be safe enough for four or five days. She's got to stick close to
the cave; she must not dare to set foot outside....
"But that's not enough; they might come to the cave.... The way in is
not overwide; would they see it from below? They don't know where it is
or they would have done as I did; they would have come to it for
shelter.... No, they don't know of it. Can I close up the entrance,
somehow, so that they won't find it? There are loose rocks in there....
If they _do_ come this way, up the gorge, it will be hard for them to
see it from below.... Even if they should find it, I can show her where
to hide. Way in the back. There's a place there.... I can get out in two
days; back in two days. Somehow. Allow five days to cover accidents.
Five days; she can stick it out five days. If I don't take a scrap of
her food away from her.... Oh, I can make it; it is up to me to make
it. I'll get a fish sooner or later--or a rabbit.... A man can eat his
boots."
* * * * *
After a long time he went back to the cave. He knew now just what he
would do, since it had become clear to him that there was but one thing
to be done. Gloria faced him as he came in; she marked how he walked,
like a very tired man. Her head was up, there were spots of colour in
her cheeks; in her eyes was a new look. She had found herself. Or she
was finding herself? Her spirit had risen undaunted in a crisis; in a
clash of wills hers had not gone down before his. Rather it had been
hers that had triumphed. She might know fear again, but the time was
past and dead when she would bow meekly before a man's bidding. So she
told herself, while with head erect she awaited his speech.
He began, saying very simply what he had decided must be said. He did
not swerve for the useless words "I am sorry." He knew that she did not
expect them, would not answer them. What he had done was monstrous and
unpardonable; hence a man would not ask pardon. By his own act they were
set as far apart as two beings inhabiting two widely separate worlds. It
remained for him merely to instruct her concerning what she must do;
then to find the way to bring her back safely to her father. Thereafter?
There the haze crept in again; he would go away, far from the Sierra,
far from California, to some corner of the world where no man who had
ever known Mark King would see him again. At that moment he could have
died very gladly, just to know that she was once more among her own
people, and that so far as he was concerned life was a game played out
and ended.
Now that he spoke again, his voice was no longer harsh and stern, but
gentle rather. Gentle after a steady and matter-of-fact fashion that was
infinitely aloof. He could not know how impersonal his utterance sounded
in her ears, since he did not fully realize how at the moment he held
himself less an individual addressing another than as the mouthpiece of
fate.
"The first thing in the morning," he told her, "I am going over the
ridge and to the headwaters of the other fork. I have been thinking of
that country a good deal; it's a little far and hard going and I'll burn
up a lot of fuel making the trip, but I've got a hunch a bear's in
there. The one that stampeded Buck may have circled around that way. And
I'm going to play every hunch I get, good and strong. It will probably
be dark before I get back."
She thought that he had finished. But presently, in the same strangely
quiet voice, he continued: "I may even be gone all night. If I am it
will be because I am playing the last card.... You have said that you
would rather be dead than go with me. I believe you meant that." Again
he paused. Gloria did not again lift her eyes from the fire; did not
speak. King sighed and did not know that he had done so. "If I don't get
back to-morrow night it will be because I am trying to break through to
civilization. I'll outfit a party and send them in for you. I'll get
through some way in two days; I'll get help back to you in another two
or three at latest. You have food here to keep you alive a week, if you
spin it out."
Long before he had gotten to the end of his slow speech her heart was
beating wildly. The old fears surged back on her, crushing her. To be
left here alone four or five days--and nights! It was unendurable! She
would be dead.
"You have your choice," he went on, his voice grown still more gentle.
"If you will let me help you--"
But, even while in the silence that followed she heard the rapid beating
of her own heart, something stronger, more stubborn, than the Gloria of
another day kept her silent.
And still he had not finished.
"Before I go I am going to do all that I can to wall up the mouth of the
cave. It will make it warmer in here and--and there will be less danger
of any one finding the place. You threatened once to go to those other
men; _no matter what happens, you must not do that_. You don't quite
understand what some men are. These happen to be the worst of a bad
crowd that ever got into these mountains. They respect neither God nor
man--nor woman. They are in an ugly mood; they probably have more
bootleg whiskey with them than food; I did not tell you, but I looked in
on their camp and saw one of them, a dope fiend named Benny Rudge, shoot
one of his own friends dead, suspecting him of having stolen a side of
bacon. You would be better dead, too, than in their hands. Never forget
that. They don't know if they'll ever get out of this alive; they are
desperate devils.
"But with the cave walled up, they won't find you. If the worst should
happen and they came here, still you could hide. I'll show you the
place, far back in the cave. You could run there with your blankets and
food; you could stay there, never moving. No man could find you there.
They would see where we had been here, but they would have to decide in
the end that we had gone, both of us.
"I'll bring you plenty of wood; I am going to make a pair of snow-shoes
of a sort for me; I'll make a pair for you. I hope you won't need them."
He ran his hand across his brow but continued in a moment, his voice
unchanged: "I'll go out before daylight in the morning; it will take me
all that is left of to-day to do what must be done first."
He turned then and went about his work. She went back to the place by
the fire, terribly moved, agitated to the depths of her soul, torn this
way and that. But one steady fire burned in her bosom--the newly kindled
white flame of her resentment. Just yonder, where he had hurled it, a
grim reminder, lay the rope.
He brought fragments of rock to the cave's mouth, the biggest he could
find, boulders which he rolled from the further dark, and with which he
struggled mightily as he piled them one on the other. Higher and higher
he built his rude wall, placing the smaller stones at the top. And in
time, after hours of labour, he had hidden the great hole as best he
could, leaving only at the side a way to pass in and out which could
hardly be seen from below. Across this he fixed the canvas; were that
glimpsed, its grimy-white would appear but a lighter-hued streak of
granite.
"If you will come with me, I will show you your hiding-place."
She lifted her head and looked at him. No word had passed between them
during the back-breaking hours of his labouring. Again, she thought
swiftly, he was seeking to command, to dictate. Doubtless, in the end
she would have arisen and gone with him, since to refuse were madness.
But he had not waited. He had gone alone into the depths of the cavern;
she heard his slow, measured steps receding; she heard them again, slow
and measured, as he came back.
"It's only about thirty paces, straight back," he was saying. "My steps,
remember, but shortened so that it would be about the same for you. Say
thirty-five. There I have made a little pile of rocks; you can't miss
it. That marks the place, just at the side of the rock pile. That's
where I found the gold. There is a blind cave back there, just under
this one; there's only a small entrance to it, straight down, a ragged
hole in the floor, hardly more than big enough for a man to drop down
through. I had it hidden by dragging a boulder over it. Now I have
shoved the boulder just far enough to one side to let you go through.
Also, I have set bits of stone under its outside edge so that it is
fairly balanced; if you go through, a quick tug at it will topple it
over to cover the hole again. There's air down there, that comes up from
below. And it's a better place to be than here--if any one should come."
She shuddered. But he had not seen. There remained much to do and the
hours fled so swiftly. He set to work making the clumsy snow-shoes. He
imitated a crude native shoe he had once seen in Alaska; he bent willow
wands he had brought from along the edge of the stream, whipping them
about with narrow strips of canvas, binding other wands crosswise,
making, also of canvas strips, a sort of stirrup for each foot. The last
of the weak daylight passed and died gloomily and he was still at his
task, bending now by his fire, working on with infinite care. The
sticks, brittle with the cold weather, broke under his strong fingers;
patiently he inserted others or strengthened the cracking pieces with
string. His face, ruddy in the firelight, was impassive; Gloria, looking
at him, saw no mere man but a senseless thing of machine levers and
steel coils; something tireless and hard and as determined as fate
itself.
They had made their scanty suppers; after it both were hungry. They had
been hungry thus for four days. There remained coffee and sugar enough
for another half-dozen meagre meals; here the affluence ended. The bacon
was down to a piece of fat two inches thick and seven inches long; there
was bacon grease a couple of inches deep in a tomato-can; there was a
teacup of flour; there was one small tin of sardines and a smaller one
of devilled meat. To-day they were hungry, to-morrow they would be a
great deal hungrier, the next day they would begin to starve.... King
got up and went out, down the cliffs in the dark, for a last load of
wood. When he came back she was lying on her bed, her face from the
light. He stood a moment looking at her. Then for the last time he spoke
to her:
"If I am long gone, you understand why. It would be best to save food
all you can; not to stir about much, since exercise means burning up
more strength, which must be renewed and by still more food.... There is
not a chance in a thousand now that those men will find this place; if
they do, there is not a chance in another thousand that they will find
the middle cave. You will be safe enough.... And, if I do not get back
to-morrow, you will know that within three days more, or four at most,
there will be a party in here to bring you out."
_Chapter XXVII_
Gloria awoke with a start. She had not heard King go, yet she knew that
she was alone in the cave. Alone! She sat up, clutching her blankets
about her. Objects all around her were plunged into darkness, but where
the canvas let in the morning she saw a patch of drear, chill light.
Full morning. Then by now Mark King was far away.
Oh, the pitiless loneliness of the world as she sat there in the gloom
of the cavern, her heart as cheerless as the drear light creeping in, as
cold as the dead charred sticks where last night's fire had burnt itself
out. And, oh, the terrible, merciless silence about her. She sat plunged
into a despondency beyond the bourne of tears, a slim, white-bodied,
gaunt-eyed girl crushed, beaten by a relentless destiny, lost to the
world, shut in between two terrors--the black unknown of the deeper
cavern, the white menace of a waste wilderness. And far more than pinch
of cold or bite of hunger was her utter solitude unbearable.
She sprang up and built a fire. Less for the warmth, though she was cold
to the bone, than for the sense of companionship. The homely flames were
like flames in remembered fireplaces; their voices were as the voices of
those other fires; their light, though showing only cold rock walls and
rude camp equipment, was the closest thing she had to companionship. She
came close to the fire and for a long time would not move from it.
She went to the wall King had built, moving the canvas aside just enough
to look out, and stood there a long time. A dead hush lay over the
world. There was no wind; the snow in great unbroken, feathery crystals
fell softly, thick in the sky, dropping ceaselessly and soundlessly. It
clung to the limbs of trees, making of each branch a thick white arm,
stilling the pine-needles, binding them together in the sheath which
forbade them to shiver and rustle. It lay in sludgy messes in the pools
of the stream and curled over the edges of the steep banks and coated
the boulders; it lay its white command for silence upon the racing
water. A world dead-white and dead-still. That unbroken silence which
exists nowhere else as it does in the wastes of snow and which lies upon
the soul like a positive inhibition against the slightest human-made
sound. No wind to stir a dry twig; no dry twig but was manacled and
muffled; no dead leaves to rustle, since all dead leaves lay deeper than
death under the snow. Gloria's sensation as she stood as still as the
wilderness all about her and stared out across the ridges was that of
one who had suddenly and without warning gone stone-deaf. The stillness
was so absolute that it seemed to crush the soul within her. She went
back hastily to her fire, glad to hear the crackle of the flames,
grateful to have the emptiness made somewhat less the yawning void by
the small sound of a bit of wood rolling apart on the rock floor.
She was hungry, but she had no heart for cooking. She ate little scraps
of cold food left over from last night; she nibbled at a last bit of the
slab chocolate; she filled a pot with snow gathered at the cave mouth
and set it on the coals to get water to drink. And again, having nothing
else to do and urged restlessly to some form of activity, she hurried
back to the canvas flap and watched the falling snow, hearkening to the
stillness. For in the spell of the snow country one is forced to the
attitude of one who listens and who hears the great hush, and who, like
the enchanted world about it, heeds and obeys, and when he moves goes
with quiet footfalls.
Endlessly long were the minutes. Hours were eternities. She stood by the
rock wall until she was chilled; as noiselessly as a creeping shadow she
went back to her fire and shivered before it and warmed herself, turning
her head quickly to peer into the dark of the hidden tunnel, turning
again as quickly to glance toward her rude door, her heart leaping at
every crackle of her fire; she thawed some of the cold out of her and
went to look out again. A hundred times she made the brief journey.
From being lightning-swift, thought became a laborious, drugged process;
her excited mind had harboured throngs of vivid visions; she had known a
period of over-active mental stimulation; she had seen, as in the actual
flesh, Mark King ploughing through the snow, going over ridges, pushing
on and on and on. Always further away, driving on through limitless
distances. She had seen him fall, his body crashing down a sheer
precipice; she had seen him lying, his face turned up, the snowflakes
falling, falling, falling, covering it.... She had seen him going on
again; she had seen him breaking his way to the open, getting back among
other men, falling exhausted, but calling upon them to go back to her.
She had seen men hurrying; dog-sleds harnessed; packs of provisions; men
on snow-shoes. She had seen them coming toward her across the miles.
Some one else was coming, too. It was big Swen Brodie, his face
horrible. There was a rabble at his back. It was a race between these
men and those other men. She had felt that Brodie was putting out a
terrible hand toward her; she had seen other men leap upon him, dragging
him back.... King had returned; King and Brodie were struggling.... Then
again she saw King, fighting his way through the snow, going for help.
She had tried to reason; he could be only a few miles away....
But at last a tired brain refused to create more of these swift
pictures. She stared out and did not think. She merely felt the weight
of the silence, the weight of utter loneliness. With dragging feet she
returned to her fire and looked into the coals, and from them to the
further dark, and from it back to the pale light about her canvas. She
sank into a condition of lethargy. The silence had worked a sort of
hypnosis in her. Briefly, in her wide-opened eyes there was no light of
interest. Vaguely, as though she had no great personal concern in the
matter, she wondered how long it would be before one left alone here
would go mad. And would the mad one shout shrieking defiance at the
silence?--or go about on tip-toe, finger laid across his lips?
The morning wore on. At one moment she was plunged into a deep, chaotic
abyss that was neither unconsciousness nor reverie, and yet which
strangely partook of both. A moment later she was vaguely aware of a
difference; it was as though a presence, though what sort she could not
tell, had approached, were near her, all about her. That instant of
uncertainty was brief, gone in a flash. She turned and a little glad cry
broke from her lips. A streak of sunshine lay across the rocks at the
cave's mouth.
It was like the visit of an angel. More than that, like the face of a
beloved friend. She ran to her canvas and looked out. There was a rift
in the sombre roofing of clouds; she saw a strip of clean blue sky
through which a splendid sun shone. And yet the snow was falling on all
hands, snow bright with a new shining whiteness. She watched that little
strip of heaven's blue eagerly and anxiously; was it widening? Or were
the clouds crowding over it again?
But though this seemed the one consideration of importance in all the
world for her just now, in another instant it was swept from her mind,
forgotten. Far below her, down in the gorge, she saw something moving!
And that something, ploughing laboriously through depths and drifts of
loose fluffy snow, was a man. Now her thoughts raced again. It was King.
He was coming back to her.... No; it was not King; it was Swen Brodie!
She began to tremble violently. She had barely strength to draw back, to
pull the canvas closer to the rocks, to strive to hide. If Brodie came
now, if Brodie found her here, alone----That fear which is in all
female hearts, that boundless terror of the one creature who is her
greatest protector, her vilest enemy, more dreaded than a wild beast,
gripped her and shook her and swiftly beat the strength out of her. But,
fascinated, she clung to the rocks and watched.
The man struggling weakly against the pitiless wilderness, wallowing in
the snow, seemed to make his way along the gorge inch by inch. He
carried something on his back, something white under the falling snow
which whitened his hat and labouring shoulders. A sack with something in
it, something to which he clung tenaciously. How he floundered and
battled against the high-heaped white stuff about him which held him
back, which mounted about his legs, up to his waist; at times, when he
floundered he was all but lost in it. He lay still like a dead man; he
struggled, and began crawling on again. He stopped and looked about him
--how her heart pounded then! He was looking for something, seeking
something! Her!
She was so certain it must be Brodie. Yet she remained motionless,
powerless to move though she remembered King's word of the hiding-place
where she would be safe; she peered out, fascinated.
In time the man came closer and the first suspicion entered her mind
that, after all, it might not be Brodie. He stopped; he was exhausted;
he pulled off his hat and ran his hand across his face. Then, still
bareheaded, he looked up. It was Gratton!
Gratton alone; Gratton looking back over his shoulder more often than he
quested far ahead; Gratton in a mad attempt to make haste where haste
was impossible. Now his every gesture bespoke a frantic haste. He was
escaping from something. Then, what? He had left the other men; he was
running away from them. She knew it as well as if he had screamed it
into her ears. A sudden spurt of pity for him entered her heart; he
seemed so beaten and bewildered and frantic and terrified; who, better
than she, could sympathize with one in Gratton's predicament? She looked
far down the gorge; she could see, like a bluish crooked shadow, the
trail which he had made after him. No one else in sight! Then she forgot
everything saving that she and Gratton were alone, that they had been
friends, that they were bound in a common fate. She leaned as far out as
she could; he was just below now; she called to him.
He stopped dead in his tracks; he jerked his head up and stared wildly;
his mouth dropped open, and in the shock of the moment speech was denied
him. She called again.
"You!" Had not the silence been so complete his gasping voice would have
failed to reach her; as it was she barely heard it. "You, Gloria? Here?
My God--have I gone mad?"
The man's villainy of so few days ago appeared now, in the biassed light
of circumstance, a pardonable, a forgettable offence. He had loved her;
he had wanted to marry her; he had, with that in mind, tricked her. He
had taken advantage of the universal admission that in love as in war
all things were fair. The ugliness of what he had done was chiefly ugly
because it had lain against a background of commonplace and convention;
here, at the time when no considerations existed save the eternal and
vital ones, all of Gratton's futile trickery was as though it had never
been. She was calling to him again, urging him to clamber up the cliff,
bidding him hurry before he was seen.
"How came you here?" was all that he could find words for. "You! And
_here_!"
She would tell him everything! But he must not tarry down there. He must
make haste----
Her words cleared his bewilderment away; he glanced again over his
shoulder. The gorge was empty of other human presence. He looked back up
at her. And then, before her eager eyes, he slumped down where he stood,
lying in the snow.
"I can't." She heard his voice as across a distance ten times that which
separated them. In it was bleak despair. "I've gone through hell
already. I am--nearly dead. I couldn't climb up there. I----Oh, my God,
why did I ever come into this inferno!"
She begged, she urged. But he only turned a white face up to her and lay
where he had fallen, his body shaking visibly, what with the strain he
had put upon it and the emotions which only his own soul knew.
"But it is so easy," she cried to him, forgetful of her now terror at
mounting up here. "I have done it. Twice. I will show you just which
way, where to set your feet."
"I can't," he said miserably. "It was all I could do to get this far.
I--I think I am dying----"
Again and again she pleaded with him. But he had either reached the
limit of his physical endurance or, shaken and unnerved, he had not the
courage to attempt the steep climb. He lay still; his eyes were shut,
and to Gloria, too, came the swift fear that the man might be dying.
"I am coming to you!" she called.
She began making the hazardous descent. She did not take time to ask
herself if she could make it; she knew only that she must. She set foot
on the narrow, sloping ledge outside, brushing off the snow with her
boot, clinging with her hands to a splinter of granite, feeling her way
cautiously, careful to move inch by inch along the way down which she
had gone twice with Mark King. Her fingers, already cold when she
started, went numb; they were at all times either in pits and pockets of
snow or gripping the rough stone that was ice-cold. Painfully but
steadily she climbed down and down. She strove not to look down; she had
no eyes for Gratton, who now sat upright, his jaw still sagging, and
marvelled at her. A dozen times he was prepared to see her slip and
fall.
After a weary time she came to the base of the cliffs. Gratton was not a
dozen paces from her. He looked to her like a sick man, gaunt,
hollow-eyed; unkempt, unshaven, as she had never seen him before, he was
like some caricature of the immaculate Gratton of San Francisco. He did
not move but looked at her in a strange, bewildered fashion. Plainly he
had had no knowledge of her being here; he could not explain her
presence; he was every whit as dumbfounded as he would have been had she
dropped down upon him out of the sky. Seeing that he made no attempt to
move, she started to come to him. She was standing upon a rock; she
stepped off into the snow, and in a flash had sunk to her breast. A cry
broke from her as thus, for the first time in her life, she learned
what it was to seek to force a way through deep, loose-drifted snow.
Feather-light in its individual flakes, in mass it made haste
impossible; to push on six inches through it was labour; to come a dozen
paces to Gratton was hard work. She floundered as she had seen him
flounder; she threw herself forward as he had done, and, sinking with
every effort, at last reached his side.
"It's you--Gloria Gaynor!" he muttered. "But I don't understand."
"I came with Mark King. The storm caught us. Just as it caught you. But
you must come with me; if you lie here you will be chilled; you will
freeze. Later we can tell each other everything."
He shook his head. "I can't," he groaned. "I am more dead than alive, I
tell you. I have been living through days and nights of hell; hell
populated by raging demons. I have been since before dawn getting here."
He cast a bleak look up along the cliffs and shuddered. "I'd rather lie
here and die than attempt it."
Once more Gloria was urging and pleading. But in the end she gave over
hopelessly, seeing that Gratton would not budge. And it was so clear to
her that he would perish if he lay here.
"There's a hole in the cliffs just yonder," Gratton said drearily. "God
knows what wild beasts may be in it. But I was going to crawl in there
when you called."
Then Gloria saw for the first time the opening to that cave which in Gus
Ingle's Bible had been set down as Caive number one. It was almost
directly under King's cave, at the base of the cliffs. The snow came
close to concealing it entirely; as it was, just a ragged black hole
showed a couple of feet above the snow-line.
"Come, then," she said. "Let's see if it's big enough for a shelter. It
may do as well as the other."
Gratton heaved himself up with a groan. Gloria did not wait for him, but
began the tedious breaking of a path the few feet to the hole, too
earnest in the endeavour even to note how Gratton came along behind
without suggesting that it was the man's place to break trail. Thus
Gloria came first to the lower cave. She hesitated and listened, her
fancies stimulated by his suggestion of storm-driven animals, and sought
to peer into the dark. She could see nothing; she heard nothing. Nothing
save Gratton's hard breathing close behind her. She got a grip upon
herself and made a step forward, paused, extended her arms to grope for
a wall, and made another step. There was still no sound; she breathed
more freely, assuring herself that save for herself the cavern was
empty. She stumbled over a rock, stopped again and called to Gratton.
Only now was he entering.
"Light a match," she commanded.
"My hands are dead with cold," he muttered. "I don't know if I have a
match. Wait a minute."
He began a slow search. Finally she knew that he had found a match; she
heard it scratch against a rock. Then she heard Gratton curse nervously;
the match had broken and his knuckles had scraped along the rock.
The second match he gave to her. She struck it carefully, cupped the
tiny flame with her hands, and strove to see what lay about her. The
little light gave but poor assistance to her straining eyes; but she did
see that there was a litter of dead limbs about her feet. She began
gathering up some of the smaller branches, groping for others as her
match burned out. Again Gratton searched his pockets; he found more
matches and some scraps of paper. It was Gloria's hands which started
the fire and placed the bits of dry wood upon it. The flames crackled;
the wood caught like tinder; the flickering light retrieved much of the
cavern about them from the utter dark.
"Here I stay," said Gratton. He dropped down and began warming his
shaking hands. A more abjectly miserable specimen of humanity Gloria had
never looked upon. He was jaded, spiritless, cowed.
But he was a human being, and she was no longer alone! Across the empty
desolation he had come to her, one who had lived as she had lived, who
knew another world than this, who could understand what she suffered
because he, too, suffered. There came a space of time, all too brief,
during which her heart sang within her. She was lifted from despair to a
realm bright with hope. King had gone for succour; she had a companion
to share with her the dread hours of waiting. She began a swift
planning; she caught up a burning brand as she had seen Mark King do,
and holding it high made a quick survey, going timidly step by step
further from the entrance, deeper into the cavern. It was much like the
one so high above, of what shape she could hardly guess, so many were
the hollows in floor, roof, and walls, so many were the tunnel-like arms
reaching further than she dared go. Gratton could not, or would not,
climb to the higher cave; then why should they not make this their
shelter? She would have to climb the cliffs again; but she would have to
do that in any case. Once up there it would be so simple a matter to
toss down blankets and food and cooking utensils; a half-hour would see
her camp moved from one cave to the other. Eager and excited, she began
to tell Gratton what she meant to do.
"Wait a while," he urged her. "I am terribly shaken, Gloria. I have
lived through experiences which a week ago I would have thought
unbearable." He shuddered; she saw that when he said he was "terribly
shaken" he had not exaggerated. And in the glare of his eyes she read
that, utterly unnerved, he dreaded to be left alone even while she went
up the cliffs. "I would say that a man would have died--or gone
mad--with the strain that I have lived through."
"I know," she said gently. "I can guess. But when you get good and
warm--and rest--I will make you a hot cup of coffee----"
"I have this. It's better than coffee for me now." He untied the mouth
of the bag with shaking fingers, groped through its contents, and at
last brought out a flask nearly full of an amber liquid. "It's the
stuff Brodie's crowd makes," he explained, unstoppering the flask.
"They've got more of it than food with them, curse their bestial hearts.
Stuff which, way back in ancient history, ... which means a week ago!...
I'd no more have thought of drinking than I'd drink poison. But it has
saved the life in me."
He put the bottle to his lips and swallowed three or four times. He sat
afterward making a wry face, his full eyes blinking. But gradually a
faint bit of colour made his pasty cheeks something less dead-white, and
the powerful raw corn whiskey injected into his blood a little
reassurance.
"Let me rest a bit and get warm?" he asked of her. "I--I'd rather you
didn't leave me just yet, Gloria."
Knowing so well what it was to have raw, quivering nerves, she tried to
smile at him, and saying as lightly as she could, "Why, of course;
there's no hurry," began to gather what bits of wood lay about, piling
them on the fire. Thus she noted where, evidently long ago, there had
been another fire kindled against the wall of rock; some one else had
camped here, perhaps during summer-time, and this explained the fuel
wood so conveniently placed.
Meanwhile Gratton took a second pull at his flask, set it carefully
aside and stood up, swinging his arms to get the blood running, beating
his hands against his thighs, stamping gingerly. He began looking at her
curiously. Presently he said: "Do you think we are ever going to get out
of this alive?"
"Yes." Her voice rang with assurance. "Mark King has gone for help. All
we have to do is wait for a few days."
His pale brows flew up.
"King? He has gone? He has left you alone here?"
Again she said: "Yes." Gratton began plucking at his lip, striding up
and down now. It became obvious to her that there had been nothing wrong
within him beyond what his frantic terror had done to him. Perhaps, left
alone, he would have died out there in the snow; now, having already
leaned on her, having her company and the hope she held out, he began to
look his old self.
"Now I'll go for the things in the other cave," she suggested. And as an
afterthought: "Now that you are feeling better, perhaps you will go up
with me and help?"
"Why," he said, "why--of course. Yes, we'll both go."
For in his new mood, warmed by the fire and the raw whiskey, and,
further, having seen that she had done the thing with no mishap, he was
willing to do what before he could not do.
"Come," he said. "Let's hurry."
Along the paths they had already made it was a much easier matter to
make the return trip. At the cliffs Gratton allowed Gloria to go ahead,
since she knew the way up and he did not. He followed her closely, and
at first with little difficulty or hesitation. The higher they climbed,
however, the slower he went; once he hesitated so long that she began to
believe that dizziness had overcome him and that he was coming no
further. But at length she came to the ledge and the wall King had made,
and Gratton, looking up and seeing her above him, began climbing again.
Gloria held aside the canvas flap; he followed her into the cave. Her
fire, though low, still burned. For the sake of more light she put on
more dry wood from the great heap King had left for her. She began to
look about, planning swiftly just how easiest to move the few belongings
which must go with her. She could pile odds and ends into a blanket; she
could remake the canvas roll as King had done so often; she and Gratton
could drag the bundles to the front of the cave and push them over, down
the cliffs.
"First, we'll get things together, all in a heap," she said aloud.
He came forward and stood warming his nervous hands at her fire, his
eyes everywhere at once. He marked the shipshape air of the cavern, the
parcels which were to-night's supper and to-morrow's three poor little
meals, each set carefully apart from the others on the rock shelf. He
saw how the firewood was piled in its place, not scattered; how Gloria's
bed and King's looked almost comfortable because of the fir-boughs; how
the clean pots and pans were in their places. Then he turned his full
eyes like searchlights upon the girl.
"And you," he said, marvelling, "_you_ actually came with a man like
King into a place like this!"
"I was a fool," cried Gloria. "A pitiful little fool. Oh!"
Had she been thinking less of Gloria and more of this other man with
whom she was now to cope she must have marked a certain swift change in
his attitude. It became less furtive, more assured. His eyes left her to
rove again, lingered with the two couches, and returned to her.
"You found King wasn't your kind," he announced. "You have quarrelled!"
"From the very beginning," she replied quickly. "He is unthinkable. I
would have left him long ago, only ..."
"Only there was no place to go," Gratton finished it for her. "And now,"
he continued slowly, studying her, "you are willing to come with me."
"Yes," she told him unhesitatingly.
"But," he offered musingly, "you refused me once and turned to him."
"Haven't I told you I was a fool? I didn't know then quite what men
were ... some men."
She was not measuring every word now. She meant simply that she was
determined to have done with Mark King, holding bitterly that she hated
him; that she would go to any one to be definitely through with King.
Yet he had time to weigh her words and draw from each one his own
significance.
His eyes followed her as she gathered up her few personal and intimate
possessions, comb, brush, little silken things of pale pink and blue. A
faint colour seeped into the usually colourless lips at which his
dead-white teeth were suddenly gnawing. When she saw the look in his
eyes, she stared at him wonderingly.
"What is it?" she asked, her voice puzzled.
"What is what?" Gratton laughed, but the look was still there. His eyes
did not laugh.
"What makes you look like that? What are you thinking?"
Now it was he who was vaguely puzzled. Then he shrugged.
"I was just thinking how superb you are," he replied, not entirely
untruthfully. For his ulterior thought had been reared upon the vital
fact of her triumphant beauty.
The compliment was too much like hundreds she had received in her life
to alarm her. Rather, it pleased; what word of praise had she heard
during these latter days?
His voice sounded queerly, as though his breath came with difficulty.
Maybe it did, since he was no outdoors man, and to him the climb up the
rocks and the brief journey along the mountain flank was a painful
labour. Certain it was that the faint flush was still in the sallow
cheeks. Suddenly he lifted his hands, putting them out toward her. She
saw again the strange look in his eyes.
"Gloria!" he said hoarsely, "you are wonderful! And you have come to
me!"
Gloria met his rather too ardent admiration with that cool little laugh
which had been her weapon in other days. She was not afraid of Gratton.
To-day she had led and he had followed. She had commanded and he had
obeyed. Here was a pleasant change from King's masterfulness, and she
fully intended to hold Gratton well in hand.
"I came to you," she said frankly, "because I was a woman in distress
and had no alternative. That there has ever been any unpleasantness
between us does not alter that fact. You understand me, don't you?"
He hardly heard her. To his mind the situation was clearness itself.
Gloria had come alone into the forest with Mark King. She had been with
him all these days and nights. But she and King had quarrelled; tired of
each other already, perhaps. Gratton did not care what the reason was;
he was gloatingly satisfied with the outcome. He had always coveted her;
it took much to stir his pale blood, and only the superb beauty of
Gloria Gaynor had ever fully done so. King had stolen her away, but she
had left him and had come straight to Gratton!
He came a step closer and the firelight showed how the muscles of his
throat were working. Gloria's eyes widened. But not yet did she fully
understand and not yet did she fear.
"Mr. Gratton," she began.
"Gloria!" he cried out. "Gloria!"
His hands, suddenly flung out, were upon her. She tore them away,
wrenched herself free from him, and started back. As she did so her
little silken bundle dropped at her feet. Gratton caught it up and
buried his face in it. Now as he looked up at her his eyes and all that
she could see of his face were stamped with that which lay in his heart.
"Oh!" she cried, shrinking not so much from him as from the thing she
read so plainly at last. "Surely, you do not think ... you do not
misinterpret ... my being here at all, my being with Mr. King...."
"No," cried Gratton wildly. "I misinterpret nothing. You came alone with
him into the mountains. What chance is there for two interpretations
there? You gave yourself to him; you saw your mistake; you hated him.
You have come to me. I have always loved you; I want you."
Her cheeks flamed red with hot anger. There was a flutter in her heart,
a wild tremor in her blood. She drew back from him. He followed, his
arms out. She was amazed, for the moment shocked into consternation. And
yet she knew no such terror as had been hers when King had advanced on
her, rope in hand. Her new contempt of Gratton was too high for that.
Now she marked the small stature, little taller, little stronger, than
her own; the pale face, the narrow chest, the slender body.
"You know what I mean, what I want," he was muttering. "That sweet
young-thing innocence is all right in its place but that place is not
here alone in the mountains with a man."
"Man!" she burst out scathingly. "You, _a man_! Why, you wretched little
beast!"
But Gratton, his brain reeling with hot fancy, came on.
"You were afraid of King. You said that he made you do what he wanted.
What about me? You are going to do what I tell you. I ...By God, I will
make you! Beast, you call me? No more beast than any other man. I have
wanted you all these years. You have wanted me, or you would not have
been so glad to see me. Only a few days ago you were ready to marry me!
And now ..."
His arms groped for her. Gloria swept up a dead pine limb that lay by
the fire and swung it in both hands and struck him full across the face.
He reeled back and stood, half in the shadow, his shoulders to the rock
wall, his hands to his face.
"You beast!" she panted. "You cowardly, contemptible beast."
From the way in which he brought his hand down and looked at it and laid
it back upon his lips she knew that his mouth was bleeding. And she read
in the gesture and in the man's whole cringing attitude that the danger
of any physical violence from him was past and done with. In the grip of
his passion, ugly as it was, he had risen somewhat from his essential
weakness; in the moment he had at least thought of himself as a
conqueror. Now he was again what he always really was at heart, a
contemptible coward.
An absolutely new sense of elation sang through Gloria's blood. She was
fully mistress of the situation, and had found within her an unguessed
strength. Physically superb at all times because nature had richly
gifted her, now she was magnificent.
"Mr. Gratton," she said swiftly, "you have made a mistake. Mr. King has
never offered me violence of that sort. Remember that, though we are
alone, and in the mountains, I am the same Gloria Gaynor that you have
known. And be sure that you treat me as such."
He nursed his battered lips and stared at her. The blow had dazed him.
Slowly, as his mind cleared, there dawned in it the realization that he
_had_ made a mistake. The stick was still in her hands; a shiver ran
through him. His desire went out of him.
"I wish to God I had never seen you," he groaned.
She had meant from the first to take the upper hand. Now she was almost
glad that this had happened. For now she was very sure of herself;
Gratton had merely been bold like other young men who had sought to
presume; he had been cruder simply because the situation seemed to his
mind to offer the opportunity; now a blow from her had accomplished the
work of a haughty look in drawing-room encounters with those other young
men. She dropped the stick and wiped her hands.
"We have other things to think of," she said. She might have been a
young queen who had punished a subject and now from her exalted place
condescended to consider that the indignity offered her royal person had
never occurred. She began dragging the blankets from her bed, tumbling
them to the floor. "Take these," she commanded.
"I was a fool for ever leaving San Francisco," he muttered bitterly.
"You let me think that you cared for me, and now you treat me like a
dog. I spent time and money trying to be the one to find gold in these
infernal mountains, and I find nothing but storm and starvation. I don't
believe there ever was gold here."
_Gold!_ He stopped at his own words, his eyes flying wide open. During
these later hours, fleeing from Brodie's men, stumbling upon Gloria,
swirled away by mad longings, he had not thought of gold. But here was
King's camp; straight here had King come after Gloria had brought him
her father's message and old Honeycutt's secret. Then the gold was here!
The cupidity which in the man never slept long was awake on the instant.
He began looking about him eagerly. King was gone? Then not for men to
bring help to Gloria but to aid him in carrying off the gold. Having
brought Gloria here so that she could not tell others what she knew, he
left her here with the same purpose; so Gratton would have done! King
would have hidden it here; at least some of it. He began questing
feverishly, shuffling about in the shadows while Gloria, busy with her
plans for moving, wondered at him. He was striking matches, running back
and forth; she could hear his mutterings. And presently, when Gloria had
called and he had not heard, he came upon the bag which King had meant
to take out with him that day the horse was lost. He hovered over it; he
struck other matches, he came hastening back dragging it after him.
He went down on his knees by the sack, got a heavy lump in his hands,
rubbed at it, held it closer to the firelight, rubbed again more
excitedly, and finally sat back, staring up at her with new flames of
another sort leaping in his eyes.
"It's next thing to solid gold!" he gasped. "There are
thousands--thousands----Millions!"
She looked at him and marvelled. In his shallow soul no emotion lived
long; greed of gold now obliterated the little ripples that another
greed had fleetingly made. How had she thought well of him down in the
city? How had she so much as tolerated him? On the instant it struck her
that there was small justice in Gratton reaping any reward, having done
nothing to earn it. "We have the things to move. Come; hurry."
"Why should we move, after all?" he demanded sharply. "Now that I have
got up here, why not stay? There's wood here; everything is fixed up
after a fashion. King would know where to send for us, and--and those
cursed dogs of Brodie's would never think of looking up here, even if
chance did lead them along the gorge."
Gloria, recalling King's warning, remembering Brodie's brute face, said
hastily:
"Do you think there is any real danger that they will come this way?"
"I hope not," he groaned. "They couldn't follow my trail if they tried
to. You see, I left them last night, as early as I dared; I struck out
in a straight line down the slope; then I made a turn off to the side
and along the ridge where there was but little snow. By now all those
tracks are wiped out, what with wind and new snow. There's nothing to
lead them this way."
"Then, if we go down quickly, if we get your bag of food and put out the
fire down there, and come right back up, it won't be very long before
our tracks will be gone. And we'll not budge from here until help comes.
Come; let's hurry."
"Coming," said Gratton. "Yes; we must hurry."
She went ahead and began to clamber down the cliffs. Half-way down she
wondered why he was not following. She found a place where she could
cling and look up. Thus she was just in time to see him, standing at the
mouth of the cave, clutching a heavy bag; he had been tying the mouth of
it. Now he cast it outward so that it fell, striking against the
cliff-side, and then rolling and dropping to disappear at last in the
snow-bank below. And then he began, though hesitantly, to follow her.
"That's one thing Mark King won't get," he announced with emphasis. At
last he stood beside her in the snow. "No matter how the game breaks,
whether he comes back or not, and no matter who gets away with the rest,
that bagful is mine! There's a fortune in it, and it's mine." He began
tossing double handfuls of loose snow into the hole which the bag of
gold had made. "When I get a chance," he muttered, "I'll move it
somewhere else."
His avarice disgusted her. Just now the thought of gold sickened.
"We are wasting time," she reminded him.
He followed her again, casting a last look behind him, then looking up
at the sky, grey everywhere except for a long patch of blue.
"What we want is another three or four hours of steady snowing," he was
saying when they slipped into the mouth of the lower cave. "Enough to
hide that and to cover up our paths."
Gloria was already trying to put out the fire; if ill fortune should
lead Brodie's crowd here, it would be just as well if they found no
smouldering sticks to tell them that the fugitives had been here so
short a time ago and could not be far off. She called to Gratton to help
her. He stamped out burning brands while she hastened back and forth,
bringing handfuls of snow with which to extinguish the last glowing
coals. She worked vigorously and swiftly; he only half-heartedly, since
his thoughts were elsewhere.
"Maybe," he said thoughtfully, "I'd better bring that bag in here and
hide it somewhere--far back in the dark."
"No," she said. "Leave it where it is. We must hurry back to the other
cave."
But he grew stubborn over it. The storm might end at any time; the sun
might melt all this fluffy snow; the bag then would be for any one to
see. Heedless of her expostulations, he left her extinguishing the fire
and went back for the gold. He was gone several minutes, digging after
it. She had finished her task when he reappeared, dragging the heavy
sack after him. He disappeared swiftly, going into the deeper dark of
the further end of the cave; she heard him moving with shuffling feet.
What a treacherous, thieving, petty animal he was----
She started and whirled about. There was a new sound in the air, a low
mumble, a vague murmur. Men's voices. Outside, coming nearer swiftly,
were men. Her first thought was of King; then she knew that it was too
soon for him to have gotten out of the mountains, found assistance, and
returned. A deep, heavy bass voice drowned out the others; it was like a
low-throated growl, ominous, sinister.
Gloria whirled again, this time toward the dark into which Gratton had
gone. Blindly she hurried after him; she stumbled but kept on. She could
hear him at work, hiding his gold. At last she was at his side; she
clutched at his sleeve.
"Listen!" she whispered. "They are outside. They have followed you!"
She felt his arm stiffen as from head to foot he grew rigid. She heard
his breath whistling through his nostrils. She could hear the beating of
his heart--or was it her own? The voices came nearer, rose higher.
Gratton began to shake as with a terrible chill.
"If they find me--oh, my God, if they find me--Benny killed a man he
thought had the bacon--I had it all the time! My God, Gloria, if they
find me----"
"Sh!" she commanded. "Be still! Maybe they will go by----"
The voices came nearer--passed on. Two or three men out there were
speaking at once; then all were silent. The silence lasted so long that
Gloria began to breathe again. Surely, surely Brodie and his men had
gone----
Then again came Brodie's deep, sinister voice:
"Back this way, boys," he shouted. "He's gone in here. We've trapped the
dirty white rat."
Gloria and Gratton clung to each other, too terrified to move.
_Chapter XXVIII_
Gratton, had he been left to his own devices, would have stood
stock-still where he was, frozen to the ground in terror. Gloria tugged
at him, whispering over and over: "They are coming! Don't you hear them?
Quick! We must try to hide."
At last he seemed to awaken from a trance; he started and began hurrying
with her, crowding by her, stumbling on ahead in the darkness, seeking
the cave's unfathomed depths of darkness. She heard him stumble and
fall; she ran blindly and caught him by the arm again, whispering
fiercely:
"You must be silent! If they once hear us we have no chance. If we are
still, maybe they won't find us."
After that he moved more guardedly. But still he crowded ahead; once in
his excitement, when she brushed against him and he thought that she was
going to get in his way, he shoved her violently aside. It was then
that Gloria, looking back, saw Brodie's great bulk outlined against the
snow outside. He came in; she saw his rifle; his figure was absorbed in
the shadows. She saw other men following him; how many she did not know.
One by one they bulked black against the daylight; one by one, as they
entered, they were lost among the shadows. She had bumped into a wall of
rock. Gratton was there, groping in all directions with his hands; she
could hear his quick, dry breathing.
They could go no further. This was the end. Brodie called out loudly,
his speech dripping with his habitual vileness; he shouted: "Gratton!
Better step out lively like a man now. We got you anyway." Then he began
to gather the scattered firewood; a match flared in his hand; his face
leaped out of the dark like a devil's. Or a madman's, a man's mad with a
rage which lusted for the killing of another man. Gloria's heart sank in
despair; she felt as though she were going to faint.
But all the time her hands, like Gratton's, had been groping. At the
moment when she felt that her knees were giving way under her, she found
where an arm of the cave continued, narrow, slanting upward steeply,
cluttered with blocks of stone. She tugged at Gratton's sleeve; she
crept into this place and felt him close behind her, crowding, trying to
press by her. She gave way briefly, felt him scrape past, and began
crawling, following. Again only a few feet further on she came up with
him again; once more he had come to the end of the tunnel. He was
crouching, flattened against the rock wall. They were in a pocket with
no outlet save the way they had come. She stood, turned toward the front
of the cave, and waited.
"Get a fire going, boys," Brodie's rumbling bass was calling. Assured
now of having run his quarry to earth, he took a wolfish joy from the
moment. There was a horrible note in his laughter, booming out suddenly.
"The little skunk's run to a hole; we'll smoke him out."
He spoke of Gratton as though he were a frightened animal, and like a
frightened animal Gloria felt. She stooped and looked toward the
pursuers; thus only could she see them, since when she stood erect the
irregularities of the rocks above hid them from her.
Brodie lighted his fire. The other men--dully she counted them now;
there were five of them all told--were gathering wood, heaping it on.
The flames leaped, crackled, lifted their voices into a roar; volumes of
white smoke shot out, thinned, were gone. The light flared higher,
brighter. Dark corners and crevices were made palely fight. She could
see the faces of the men now, their eyes reflecting the fire, looking
like the eyes of wolves. Brodie carried his rifle as though he fully
intended using it. At his side Benny Rudge fidgeted and blinked. By
Benny stood that scarecrow of a man, Brail. Close by, interested
spectators, were the squat Italian and the man who had brought the
"judge" to marry her to Gratton, the leering Steve Jarrold.
"More fire, boys," called Brodie. Again his ugly laughter boomed out. "I
think I see where he is."
Whether or not Brodie already saw them, it appeared clear that immediate
discovery was inevitable. For there was no further hiding-place here to
creep into; no such refuge as King had urged Gloria to hasten to if
Brodie came. She remembered the caution all too late; she thought of
King with wild longing, while Gratton cringed and pulled back and tried
to screen his body with hers.
"Here's the grub he stole!" It was Benny's cracked, nervous voice, full
of wrath.
She could feel Gratton shiver as he crouched against her. Sudden disgust
filled her. They knew that he was here; they would take him in a minute;
his seeking further to hide was so futile. And yet he was not man enough
to stand forth at the end; he was the type who must be dragged
whimpering and pulling back, pleading for mercy even when he knew so
well that he deserved no mercy, and would have none meted out to him.
Gratton had his one last chance to show if there was the spark of
manhood in him; they did not yet know of Gloria's presence, and had he
stepped out now, he might have given her a chance to remain unseen. But
no such heroism suggested itself to Gratton.