Chapter X: Part 10

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!"