"That"s a might of money to pay the old duffer for one night"s work, Mark," muttered Jim. "Strikes me that way, anyhow."
A might of money! King laughed.
"Now if you folks are ready," said Summerling, grown impatient the moment the cheque was in his pocket, "I"ve got a long ride ahead of me."
This time Gloria did not keep them waiting. She came down the staircase to Mark King standing at the bottom. In her pink dress, like a thistledown, floating down to him. He was thinking--she, too, remembered--how for the first time they had met thus. She smiled at him; she put out her two hands to him as she had done that other time. And right there they were married--on Gus Ingle"s old Bible.
"It"s done!" whispered Mark, bending over her. "You are mine now; mine for all time, Gloria. And, girl of mine," he added reverently, "may G.o.d deal with me as I deal with you."
"It"s done!" In an awed little voice came Gloria"s response, like an echo. Mark King had seen her across the quicksands.
Jim and the "judge" had gone. They two were alone in the still house.
Gloria was nervous; King could see that and thought that he understood.
So he went for wood, made a cheery blaze in the fireplace, and drew two chairs up to it.
"Tell me about papa"s letter," said Gloria hastily Had there not been that obvious topic she would have caught at another, any other. "He didn"t tell me how badly he was hurt or what had happened."
King put out his hand for hers, and while Gloria looked into the fire and he looked into her face, he told her. At the end he brought out Gus Ingle"s Bible and read to her what was written in it. All the time that his eyes were occupied she watched him eagerly, a little anxiously. But by the time he had finished she had been intrigued for the moment out of her own self-centred thoughts, her fancies caught by all that underlay this crude tale of treasure and murder, of l.u.s.t for gold, of treachery and lonely death.
"And you know where it is?"
"I can go to it as straight as a string. Two days to get to it and to stake a claim; two days to come out with a couple of horses loaded to the guards. And that itself means a fortune, if it"s clean, raw gold, as would seem to be the case. We need not fear the poorhouse, you and I, Mrs. King!"
"But Brodie? And Mr. Gratton?"
"They don"t know where it is! They can"t know, since we"ve got the Bible, and Honeycutt was dead before they got to him! If they knew they would have been on their way already. And I"ll be striking out before dawn, leaving no such trail that they can follow it in a hurry, even if they should seek to. No; Brodie and Gratton and the rest of them have lost the game!"
"You are going so soon? Papa wanted that?"
"He wanted me to telephone as soon as I got this." He rose, lingering over her. "We mustn"t forget him, even for our own happiness." He brushed her hair with his lips; he hastened the few steps to the telephone in Ben"s study.
"I--I am going upstairs, Mark," called Gloria after him.
"All right, Queen of the World," he answered her. "I"m just to phone in a message for him. It won"t take me five minutes to get it done; just to say: "Tell Ben that I start at dawn and that he"s got my word for it that nothing"s going to stop me! And--that I"ve just married Gloria!""
But he was at the telephone longer than he thought to be. The operator buzzed into his ear as he took down the receiver; San Francisco was trying to get a message through. For Gloria Gaynor. Would he take the message? Then an operator in San Francisco, droning the words: "For Miss Gloria Gaynor. Your father is hurt in Coloma. Just sent me word. Says not dangerously, but I must go to him immediately. Meet me there.
Mamma."
"Got it," said King, and San Francisco rang off. Thereafter he got his own message through; he wondered how Mrs. Gaynor would take the news of her new son-in-law. Ben would be glad; he was sure of Ben.
Gloria was still upstairs. King sat in front of the fire, staring into the flames, listening to the wind in the chimney, waiting for Gloria.
When time pa.s.sed and she did not come, he went softly upstairs and to her door. It was closed and he knocked lightly, then dropped his hand to the k.n.o.b, awaiting her voice.
His knuckles had hardly brushed the door, this door which he approached in reverence; Gloria had not even heard him. He called softly, his voice little above a whisper:
"Gloria!" He heard her move; for a moment she did not answer. He could not know how she stood, scarcely breathing, her hands at her breast; nor how, now that the great step was taken, she was again half-frightened, half-regretful, altogether bewildered and uncertain. Of herself, of him, of everything----
"Is it you, Mark?"
"Yes. May I come in, Gloria?"
"Please, Mark. It"s all so new, so strange ... I intended to come right back downstairs, but I"m so tired, Mark. And I want to be alone a little; to think. I haven"t had time to think of anything! You don"t mind, do you, Mark?"
He answered promptly and heartily, refusing to allow himself to harbour a shadow of disappointment.
"No. No, of course not. You will go right to bed? I know you must be half-dead for sleep."
"Yes." There was a note of eagerness in the voice coming to him from beyond the shut door.
"There was a message from your mother; she has gone to your father and wanted you to meet her there. But we will talk of that later."
"Yes.... Good-night, Mark."
"Aren"t you going to kiss me good-night?" he asked, hesitating a little between the words. His new privilege, a lover"s, a husband"s, was not an hour old; he felt strangely shy as he spoke softly to her.
"Please, Mark! I am terribly tired out, and--and I"m afraid I"ve mislaid the key, and----"
That hurt him; his eyes darkened with the quick pain that came to him from her words. He had hoped that Gloria had known him better than that.
"You need never lock your door against me, my dear," he told her gently.
"I don"t want you to be afraid of me. Why, G.o.d bless you, I wouldn"t touch the hem of your dress if you didn"t want me to."
"Yes," said Gloria. "I know. You are so good, Mark. But now----"
"I am going," he returned tenderly, "to sit by the fire and think. Just to soak myself in the realization," he added with a happy laugh, "that you are mine."
"Before you go in the morning you will come to my door?"
"If you want me to...."
"Of course, Mark."
"Then--good-night, dear."
"Good-night, Mark."
_Chapter XVI_
King was astir long before dawn. He got the fire going in the kitchen and started breakfast, seeking to be very silent and succeeding in making the usual clatter of a male among pots and pans. Whilst water heated and bacon sizzled, he rummaged through the store-room at the rear of the house, gathering what he meant to put into his pack for the four or five days" trip. As he returned from the last journey to the store-room, his arms full of camp accessories, including canvas and camp blankets, he confronted Gloria, fully dressed. He dropped his arm-load and filled his eyes with her. Any shadow left overnight in his heart was sent scurrying before his new joyousness. Gloria had come down to him while he deemed her fast asleep!
"Gloria!" he cried.
A more radiantly lovely Gloria he had never looked upon. She had slept and rested; she had bathed and groomed and set herself in order. She was dressed after a fashion to bewilder a mere man in the only utterly ravishing outing costume Mark King had ever seen. He felt insanely inclined to pick up her little boots, one after the other, and go down on his knees and kiss them; her hat was a flopsy turban, from under the brim of which the most adorable of golden-brown curls half escaped to throw kiss-shadows on her rosy cheeks. And Gloria"s eyes!
This time there was no door between them, nor even the memory of a door. He gathered her up into his arms so that her boot-heels swung clear of the floor.