Again she understood. And now she looked away hastily and her cheeks reddened. He was about to tell her that he loved her; his eyes had told her; his lips were shaping to the words "I love you!" And she was suddenly conscious of a wild nutter in her heart; she was trembling as though terrified. Other men had told her "I love you." Many times and in many ways--smiling, with a laugh, with a sigh--whispering the words or saying them half sternly. And she had always been gay and ready; a little thrilled, perhaps, as by a chance strain of music. But now--she could hardly breathe. Now she was frightened. She did not know why; she could not understand the sense of it; she only knew that she was afraid.

Of what? Nor did she know that. She only knew that here were Gloria Gaynor and Mark King, man and girl--man and woman--set apart from the world, lifted above it, clear-cut figures upon a pinnacle piercing the infinite blue of the heavens, and that a mystery was unfolding before them. She had a wild wish to stop the flight of time, to thrust it back upon itself, to have the present not the present but to avoid the Now by racing back into the serenity of Just A Little While Ago. Ten minutes ago--anything but this electric, terrifying moment when Mark King, a surge of emotion upon him, was about to say: "I love you."

"Look!" Gloria started and, forgetful of the strange conflict of emotions within her, clutched at his sleeve. "A man--here;----"

"Swen Brodie!" muttered King angrily.

Brodie had just clambered up the ridge and came into view only when his head and bulky shoulders were upthrust beyond a boulder. He came on until he topped the boulder, standing fully revealed upon its flattish top, the b.u.t.t of his rifle resting on his boot. Gloria was suddenly afraid with a new sort of fear. Though this man was not near enough for her to see the dancing evil of his little eyes, she saw the brutish face in full relief against the sky, and marked the jeer on the ugly mouth.

Her one wild thought was that Brodie would murder them both, shoot them both down in cold blood. She shuddered. King was unarmed; Brodie hated King as only a man of Brodie's kind, b.e.s.t.i.a.l and cruel, could hate. She remembered what her father had told her; of the death of Andy Parker.

She began tugging at King.

"Take me away!" she gasped. And then, with a terrified look over her shoulder: "Oh, he is terrible!"

Perhaps Brodie heard. The stiff wind blew her words away from her lips, tossing them toward him.

"Steady, Gloria," said King in a low voice. "I'll take you away. But we needn't hurry. He won't hurt you." And, to further soothe her, he added: "He'd be afraid to shoot, were he minded to. The noise of the gun, you know. And he doesn't know how many there are with us, or how close they are. Come, we'll go this way."

He turned his back square on Brodie and with his hand firm on Gloria's arm led her along the ridge. They pa.s.sed about a wind-worn rock, and Gloria looked back, hoping that it had hidden them already from Brodie; she saw his head over the top of it, felt upon her the eyes which she could not see, lost as they were under his hat-brim and hurried on. She ran ahead now with King hastening his step to overtake her.

_Chapter X_

That night when King and Gloria said "good-night" an odd constraint lay over them. To Gloria, King seemed stiff and preoccupied; she herself had red spots in her cheeks and was nervously tense. The abrupt approach of Brodie with his repulsive face--at a moment when the world swirled away from her underfoot and a divine madness was in her blood--the reaction and revulsion--all this and the resultant conflict of emotions had worn her out. She was sure of nothing in all the world--for once was not in the least certain of herself--when she drew her hand out of King's and hastened to her guests in the house. It was with a sense of relief that she heard the door close, shutting her in with familiar, homey objects and faces, opposing its barrier against the wilderness and a man who was a part of the wilderness. She knew that King was going back to the mountains; she knew when he left, going swiftly and silently, like a shadow among shadows; she knew that this time he went armed, carrying her father's rifle.

For Mark King knew that it was inevitable that his path and Swen Brodie's should run closer and closer; that trails made by two men like King and Brodie could never converge harmoniously; that there was too much at stake; that it was well to be ready for Brodie in an ugly mood in an encounter so far removed from the habitations of men that a deed done would pa.s.s without human commentary.

A week pa.s.sed and Gloria went back to San Francisco. These had been seven days and nights of uncertainty for her, and had brought hours of confusion that mounted into bewilderment. She had sung and danced and flirted as even Gloria Gaynor had never done before; she had made Gratton sure of her and his eyes had smouldered and his chalky pale face had flushed; she had sent him off, gnawing at his nails; she had made other young laughter rise like echoes of her own; she had sighed and sat long hours at her window, wondering, wondering, wondering. In the end she had gone, leaving her little note for Mark King.

King did not return to the log house. He knew that long ago Gloria would have gone; there was nothing to draw him in her absence. He kept in touch, none too close, with Ben Gaynor; telephoned him once from Coloma, and once sent a note to him by a hunter he encountered on Five Lakes Creek, above h.e.l.l Hole, the note to be mailed in Truckee some time later, and to reach Gaynor the following day at his lumber-camp. These were strenuous days during which King penetrated the most out-of-the-way corners of the mountains. He constructed his theories and strove doggedly to set them to the proof. He held that when Baldy Winch had made him a cabin in so inaccessible and distant a spot as the crest of Lookout Ridge, it had been because Winch, the sole survivor of those hardy spirits who had been of Gus Ingle's party, was of a mind to make sure, day after day, that no other men went where he had been. Perhaps he knew that he alone remained alive; that the secret was his; that he had but to wait the winter out, to sit through the spring thaw, and then go back to claim his own. A man like Baldy Winch, as King envisioned him, would do that. Hence, from Lookout Ridge one should be able to see the very point, or a peak standing over the very point, where Gus Ingle's men had gone. But always the one difficulty: that point might be a mile away, or ten, twenty, thirty miles away. There was nothing to do but seek--and he knew that always Swen Brodie, too, was seeking, Brodie and the men of his own kind whom likeness drew to likeness. So King spent day after day in the canons and on the ridges, and yet, through Ben Gaynor, thought to keep an eye on old Loony Honeycutt.

But there were many hours, alone in the forests resting, sitting over a bubbling coffee-pot, lying in his blankets under the stars, that King thought very little of Brodie, Gus Ingle, or Honeycutt. There were times when the solitudes were empty; when a new, strange feeling of loneliness swept overpoweringly over him. At such moments he fancied that a girl came stealing through the trees to him; that she slipped her hand into his own; that she lifted to his her soft eyes; that something within the soul of him spoke to her and that she answered. His pulses quickened; a great yearning as of infinite hunger possessed him. He remembered how they had stood together upon the ridge the last time; how his arms had been opening for her; the look in her eyes. That had been a moment when the world had lain at their feet; when they had been lifted up and up, close to the gates of paradise.

He saw virtually nothing of Brodie. Now and then smoke from a camp-fire; once or twice the charred coals where Brodie's men had been before him.

Upon these camp sites he looked contemptuously; carelessness and wastefulness were two things he hated in a woodsman, and always he found them in Brodie's wake. Also he found bottles. Further, he was of the opinion that he could go in the dark to the particular canon in which the illicit still made its output of bad moonshine whiskey. But, though that canon lay in the heart of the country he was combing over, it was one which he had explored from top to bottom two years ago, and now was content to leave aside.

One day he came upon signs of a killing made the day before; by one of Brodie's outfit, he a.s.sumed. Some one had baited for a bear and had killed. The mother bear, he discovered the following morning. For he came upon a little brown cub whimpering dismally. King made the rebellious little fellow an unwilling captive--and smiled as he thought of Gloria. Gloria had talked of bear cubs. If she but had one for a pet!

Well, here was Gloria's pet. King that day turned toward the log house.

And thus he received at last Gloria's note at Jim Spalding's hands:

"DEAR MARK,

"Mamma and I have to go back to town to-morrow. I am so sorry that I can't stay up here always and always. Do you realize that I have never seen you in the city? It's lots of fun, too, in its own way, don't you think? Another kind of a wilderness.

I wonder if you would come down--if I asked you to? I'll say it very nicely and properly, like this: 'Miss Gloria Gaynor requests the pleasure of Mr. Mark King's presence at her little birthday-party, on the evening of August twelfth, at eight o'clock.' Just the four of us, Mark; mamma and papa, you and

"GLORIA."

"August twelfth," said King. "I'll go."

He didn't write, as the necessity of an answer did not suggest itself to him. He took it for granted that she would know that he would come. He chuckled as he thought of the birthday gift he would bring her. There was still a week; he remained with Spalding at the Gaynor mountain home and devoted hour after hour to taming the cub. On the eleventh he was in San Francisco. Before he had taken a taxi at the Ferry Building it had dawned on him that his best suit of clothes was somewhat outworn. It would never do to go to the Gaynors' in that. Nor was there time for a tailor. Therefore he went direct to a clothing-store in Market Street and in something less than half an hour had bought suit, hat, shoes, socks, shirt, collar, and tie.

"I can have the alterations made by to-morrow afternoon," said the salesman.

"What alterations?" demanded King, turning before the long gla.s.s and staring at his new finery.

"The coat is a trifle tight just here--the trousers----"

King laughed.

"As long as I'm satisfied, you are, aren't you?" he said.

The clerk watched him with admiring eyes as he went out. For the clerk, an odd thing in a man who sold clothing and therefore was p.r.o.ne to judge by clothes, caught a glimpse of the real man.

"Big mining man, most likely," muttered the clerk. "Don't care for clothes and is rich enough to get by with whatever he wears." He looked vaguely envious.

King was busied for an hour or so, finding quarters for his cub, registering at the St. Francis, getting a shave and hair-cut. A manicurist saw his hands and, smothering a giggle, pointed them out to the young fellow she was working on.

"Go after them," he grinned. "There's a fortune for you in them."

"Nothing doing," she returned from her higher wisdom. "He ain't the kind that knows he's got any hands unless he's got a job for them to do."

Later King telephoned to the Gaynor home. A maid answered and informed him that Mr. Gaynor had not arrived yet, though he was expected this afternoon or in the morning; that both Mrs. and Miss Gaynor were out.

King hung up without leaving his name.

King sat in the lobby, musing on San Francisco. As Gloria had said, it was a wilderness of its own sort. Time was when it had appealed to him; that was in the younger collegiate days. He wondered what had happened to his one-time proud evening regalia; how he had strutted in it, dances and dinners and theatre-parties! But briefly and long, long ago. It was like a half-forgotten former incarnation; or, rather, like the unfamiliar existence of some other man. He grew restless over his paper and strolled into the bar. There he was fortunate enough to stumble on a man he knew, an old mining engineer. The two got off into a corner and talked. Later they dined and went to the theatre together.

The next evening King got a taxi, called for his bear cub, stopped at a florist's for an armful of early violets, and growing more eager and impatient at every block was off to the Gaynor home.

"Here you are, sir," said the chauffeur, opening the door.

King fancied the man had made a mistake in the number. The house was blazing with lights, upstairs and down; there was an unmistakable air of revelry about it; faintly the music of a new dance tune, violin and piccolo and piano, crept out into the night. Above the music he could hear gay voices, m.u.f.fled by door and window and wall.

King was of a mind to go back to the hotel. He had counted on the Gaynors alone, not on this sort of thing. But also, most of all, he had counted on Gloria, and his hesitation was brief. He jumped down and, leading his bear cub by its new chain, went up the steps.

A housemaid came to the door, opened it wide for him, saw the cub against his leg, and screamed.

"Why, what on earth is the matter, Frieda?" said some one.

It was Gloria pa.s.sing through the front hallway with a worshipful youth.

Gloria came to the door, the youth at her heels, looking over her shoulder.

"Oh!" cried Gloria. King knew then in a flash that she had not expected him, that probably because he had never answered her letter she had forgotten all about it. Unconsciously he stiffened--his old gesture before a woman.

But now Gloria came running out to him, her two hands offered, her eyes alight with pleasure.

"You did come," she said gladly.