"Stand aside, please," she commanded. "I am going, I tell you."
Again sensing the familiarity of the battlefield she felt an almost serene confidence, believing herself easily mistress of the situation.
So much must have been plain to King from that "Stand aside, please,"
which Miss Gloria Gaynor of last week might have addressed to a porter, were it not that just now King"s thought was not bended to trifles. When she came to his side and he did not stir, she sought to brush by him.
There was no hesitation in the way in which he put out his hand and held her back.
"There can be only one captain to an expedition in adventure," he told her seriously. "I have been elected to the job. You"ll pardon me if I put matters into one-syllable words? Until we are well out of this, if we are ever out at all, you will have to do what I tell you. You are not going to desert ship."
She stared at him speechlessly. Then:
"By what right do _you_ issue orders to _me_?" she cried.
"Let us say," he returned in the coin of her own harshness, "by the old right of a husband. If that isn"t sufficient you can add to it: by the time-honoured right of the lord and master! For that is just precisely what I intend being until I can turn you over to your dawdling set in the city again. Wait a minute," he added sternly, as he saw her lips opening to a rush of words. "I would be glad to have you go were conditions less exacting. Now I have thought matters over and it appears essential that certain of our marriage vows be remembered. You don"t have to love or honour, but by thunder you are going to obey! Reversion to an ancient order of things, eh? Well, the world was better then, largely in that women were worth a man"s while. Further, for my part, I fully intend to keep my obligation of protecting you against your own foolishness, the storm, Gratton, Brodie, and the devil himself. And, finally, I mean to keep my promise to your father. He sent me to get Gus Ingle"s gold; it"s here. So is Gratton with his cut-throat crowd. I will in all probability have my hands full. But, once and for all, you stick with me. Where," he concluded with the last jeer, "the wife"s place should be!"
Gloria tried to stare him down, to wither him with the fire of her scorn, to brave by him. But the man, all emotion having receded from his eyes, was once more like so much rock, but rock endowed with dormant power of aggression. She felt as though she had to do with a great poised boulder which offered no menace so long as she let it alone, but which needed but an unwary step of hers to destroy its equilibrium and thus bring it crashing down upon her, crushing her. She began by wondering if she had mistaken his look just now when she had leaped to the triumphant decision that he loved her; she ended by feeling hopeless and tired and uncertain of all things. To keep him from noting how she was trembling she went hastily back to the roll of bedding and dropped down to it. On the instant it became clear to her that physically King was the master. To her, before whom difficulties had heretofore invariably melted, it seemed equally clear that there must be a way out of an unbearable situation. So now, for the first time, she began a certain logical line of thought, seeking to shape her own plans.
"Please listen to me seriously," King said quietly to her. "I won"t talk long to you. Your father is on the edge of bankruptcy. He is temporarily out of the running--at the hands of the very men you want to go to. He counts on me for what is in Gus Ingle"s caves. I have found at least a part of it and I honestly believe that it is in your hands and mine to pull Ben through and leave him a rich man on top of it. Gratton and Brodie are down there; they"ll clean us out if they can. The stake is big enough for them to stop at nothing short of murder, and I am not oversure they"d stop there. Gus Ingle"s crowd didn"t, and I don"t know that men have changed much in half a hundred years."
"I am listening," said Gloria coolly when he paused.
"Here"s the point: this is treasure-trove; we got here first. It is up to us to hold it. Can I count on you? You don"t happen to have any love for me; well, you shouldn"t have any for Gratton or Brodie, either. And you know that you can trust yourself to me. Can I count on you sticking on the job, your father"s and your own job as much as mine, until we make a go of it?"
Gloria"s logical thinking had barely begun, and as yet had not had time to progress. Her spite was lively and bitter. In her distorted vision, blurred by pa.s.sionate anger, she cried out quickly:
"So, now that the odds are against you, you come cringing to me, do you?" Again she was misled into fancying that she held a whip-hand over him. "Answering your question, I would trust Mr. Gratton any day rather than you. He, at least, is not quite the brute and bully that you are."
King was hardly disappointed.
"At least you have given a straight answer," he muttered. "That is something."
Now he shaped his plans swiftly and carefully, knowing where she stood.
It was characteristic of him that, once having seen clearly his own responsibility toward a foolish girl, he did not seek to simplify his own difficulty by ridding himself of her. Henceforth he would merely consider her his chief handicap, with him but against him. He consoled himself with the whimsical thought that there was never a proper treasure-hunt that did not carry traitorous mutineers on the questing ship.
_Chapter XXII_
And so, after all, he and Gloria were not alone in the mountains; that other crowd was still to be reckoned with. King stood at the cave"s mouth, frowning into the ever-thickening smother of the storm. Their smoke was gone again, beaten down, hidden behind the snow-curtain. But they were there, at no very great distance. Thus, then, they knew something. Just what? Here was the matter of his perplexity; did they know all that he did? Or had they merely such a hint as would lead them as close as this? Or had they followed his trail?
He grew impatient with seeking to speculate. It struck him clearly and forcefully that he had but one thing to do: to trust that they did not have such full information as had fallen into his hands and to see to it that he gave them no help. Though they should come close, very close, still that which he had found might remain hidden from them. There lay his work; to do all that he could to hide Gus Ingle"s gold. First he would bring with him more than the two nuggets; all that he felt he could manage to carry with the rest of his necessary load. Enough to help Ben Gaynor over a crisis; enough raw gold to slam down before some San Francisco capitalist, together with a tale which would make any man eager to stake the owner to what loan he asked. With that he"d seek to get back to the open. He would get provisions, snow-shoes, a dog-team, if necessary, a couple of trusted men to come with him; he would be back here within the week. But first, before he went, he would strive to make as sure as a man could that Brodie"s crowd did not find the golden h.o.a.rd.
He went a second time far back into the darkness of the further cave, carrying a smoking torch as before, vanishing from Gloria"s eyes. She was alone; nothing stood between her and the cave"s mouth; she was free to go! He must have thought of that. He was giving her her chance. She had but to s.n.a.t.c.h up the few things she meant to take with her, to go out, to find her way down the cliffs----She shuddered. She was afraid!
Did he know that, too? Had he thought of that? She moved back and forth restlessly; at one instant she was sure that she would go, only to be certain of nothing before another second pa.s.sed. How soon would he return? Would he hurry after her, would he bring her back forcibly?...
She went where she could look out; the column of smoke had disappeared; the wind tore at her in mighty gusts. She hesitated and time pa.s.sed.
How long he was gone she did not know. She only knew that she had done nothing when at length he returned. There was a look of grim satisfaction on his face; whatever he had gone to do he had done in a manner to please him. She noted that his coat was off; that in it, as in a bag, he carried something heavy.
"This goes with us wherever we go," he announced triumphantly. "It"s a big breathing spell for Ben Gaynor." He dumped it out; there were other lumps like the two he had brought back the first time. She wondered dully if that grimy stuff were gold! She watched him while he emptied a provision-bag and thereafter dropped into it the stuff he had brought in his coat. On top of it went the articles of food.
"If you can whip up enough endurance for the work ahead of us," he announced impersonally, "we stand a good chance of getting out of this.
Otherwise, we stand a whole lot better show of being caught here and freezing and starving to death."
Gloria shook visibly. Nervousness and fear and the cold were combined and merciless. Her look sped from King"s face to what she could see of the snow-storm.
"But we"ll wait," she asked in utter, weary meekness, "until this horrible storm is over?"
"One never knows about a storm like this," he told her. "It may blow itself out soon and it may keep on for a long time. Now, it"s beginning to pile up in the drifts, to hide the trails, to make going harder every minute. As it is we"ll have our work cut out for us; if this keeps up all afternoon and all night ..." He shrugged.
"You mean that then we couldn"t get out at all?" she asked sharply.
He looked down on her thoughtfully. "I don"t know," he replied slowly, "whether you could make it then or not. I am more or less used to this sort of thing and you are not. I figure that we ought to take no more long shots than we have to. If we start right now and have any luck we can make several miles before night and camp in some of the thick timber. We"d be as well off there as we are here and just that much nearer the outside. If the weather allowed us to travel at all we could be back at your father"s place in four or five days at the longest.
And," he added significantly, "we have food to last us just about that long."
Gloria sprang up hastily. "Quick," she cried. "Let"s hurry."
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, const.i.tuted 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 sc.r.a.p 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 pa.s.sed down the long canon 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 h.e.l.l to her; but at least hers would have become a slightly more pa.s.sive 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 compa.s.s. His lips tightened. The afternoon was pa.s.sing 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.