Chapter 15

She existed through a period of suppressed excitement. If King found cool logic eluding him, Gloria's mind was an orgy of nervous imaginings. She was back with her mother, weeping, sobbing out upon a comforting breast all of her hideous adventures; she was reading the tall headlines in the newspapers; she was commenting on them with simulated flippancy to Georgia and Ernestine; she was meeting Mr. Gratton for the first time again, treating him to such haughty disdain as put hot blood into his white face; she was standing erect in the morning, confronting Mark King fearlessly, demanding her rights, commanding that he take her home. And, piteously lonely and frightened, she was longing to have him come to her now, to put his arms about her, to hold her tight, to set his fearless body between hers and the vague and terrible menaces of the night and the jeering night voices. She heard a twig snap; her heart beat wildly; she wondered what she would do when he came--and she saw that he sat motionless by the fire.

The night wore on. She dozed now and then, fitfully, awakened always rudely by unaccustomed noises or by the cold or the discomfort of her bed. She put her hand to her cheek, wondering if she were going to be feverish; her face was cold. She saw that King had lighted his pipe. She wanted to scream at him. How she hated him for that. That he could smoke while she lay here in such wretchedness made her briefly hot with anger. He was a man, and sweepingly she told herself that she loathed all mankind. She accused him of heartlessness, of lack of understanding, of brutal lack of sympathy. He and he alone was responsible for everything--that vague, terrible _everything_. He sat there as still as a rooted tree; he bulked big through the gloom like a rugged boulder; he was a part of this wild land, as indifferent, as cold, as merciless. The thought now that he might come to her made her quake with fear; she was afraid of him.

If she could only sleep! No sleep to-night, little the night before, less the night before that. No wonder her brain swirled. If all this had happened at any other time--She was a bundle of nerves--nerves that vibrated at the slightest suggestion. She was going to be ill. Perhaps the end of it would be that she would die. All of the misshapen, monstrous fancies which are bred of a sleepless and nervous night made for her a period of such stress that as the hours wore on they blanched her cheeks and put dark shadows under her eyes and taunted her with longings for a rest which they denied her.

Thus, in the stern grips of their destinies, Mark King and Gloria lived through the night, two uncertain spirits awaiting the light of day. And thus their brains, those finite organs upon which mankind entrusts the ordering of great events, prepared themselves for the moment when they must grapple with and decide a matter of supreme moment. And all night the wind, like a hateful voice, jeered.

* * * * *

At four o'clock that chill, wind-blown morning King began the day. He saw that Gloria was awake and sitting up, looking straight ahead of her. He gave no sign of having noted her, but busied himself in a swift, silent sort of way with fire-building and breakfast preparation. Gloria, in turn, saw him; she experienced aloof wonder at the look on his face. He was haggard; his mouth was set and hard.

She had thought to be thankful when daylight came. Now she got up and went to the fire, rubbing her cold hands together, looking at an awakened world with dull, lack-lustre eyes. It was not yet full day; what light filtered down here into this sheltered spot was cheerless; as it drew forest details out of the thinning shadows it seemed to be painting them in cold grey monotones upon a cold grey world.

He and she, when he came back with an arm-load of wood, looked straight into each other's eyes, long and soberly, searchingly and hopelessly. After that they did not again look into each other's faces; no good-morning had passed between them since both sensed that any time for empty civilities had gone. There could be no conventional pretence at harmony even in small things; they must be in each other's arms or worlds apart.

Out of a night's grappling with chimeras, King had come to one and only one determination: he would go slowly, he would hold an iron check upon himself, he would throttle down a temper which more than once in his life, at moments of tempest, had blazed out uncontrollably. He would smother within himself that passion which in forthright men is so prone to burst into violence. Were Gloria to show herself to be this or that, were she to say this word or another, he would speak with her coolly, he would listen to her calmly, and in the end, since judge he must, he would judge with his heart ordered to beat steadily and not with a wild rush of blood. He had set a guard in his own breast as he might have set a guard over a camp of treacherous enemies.

Yet, from the outset, nothing was more unlikely than that these two should advance by smooth paths to a clear and utter understanding. His one glimpse of her face dethroned his cold logic and moved him very deeply; she was so white, so pitifully sad-looking. She, too, had suffered; God knew that she had battled through hours of anguish. He wanted her in his arms; he wanted to batter at the world with his fists to save her from its flings of grief and pain. He bit savagely at his lip and turned away. And she, seeing his haggard eyes, his drawn face, knew that she had been unjust last night when she had hated him for seeming a soulless man, who could smoke his pipe in all serenity and feel nothing of the unhappiness of the night. He did not look like the Mark King of yesterday; the glad gleam of joy had died in his eyes; the quick resiliency had gone out of his step. He, too, had lived through slow hours of torture. He did love her--she could never doubt that----

Had he suddenly caught her to him then, had he crushed her close in his arms, had he cried out in headlong passion that she _must_ love him, that he would make her love him, that she was his, that he would not give her up--would she have wrenched away from him, hot with anger--or would she have crept close and known at last whether or not she loved him? But here was something else she could not know; he turned and went off for his wood; she crouched shivering by the fire.

They breakfasted in silence, the fire between them. Neither did much more than drink the strong coffee. Gloria sat tossing bits of bread into the fire. It was on his lips to tell her not to do that; waste in the wilderness is a crime. But he held his words back. He went methodically about camp work; cleaned the plates and cups and pans; remade the two packs. All this time she did not stir. At last he came back to her and stood by the dying fire, ominously silent. She grew nervously restive, wishing that he would say something.

"There's a day's work to be done," he said at last. His voice, meant to be impersonal, was only stern. "That means an early start. And--"

"Is it very much further to the caves?" she asked.

He had paused; she had to say something.

"It will take a long day getting there. You see, we didn't come very far yesterday."

This, she supposed, was a fling at her, and she stiffened under it. But when she spoke it was to ignore the innuendo, intended or not. For, wherever they might be led, she hoped it would not be into sordid quarrelling.

"It begins to be rather obvious that I should not have come. Doesn't it?" she asked.

"Well?"

"Now, if I turn back----"

"To the house?"

"And then to mamma and papa, in Coloma. And then to San Francisco."

"And I?"

"If you would go with me as far as the house----"

She saw how his body straightened, how his broad shoulders squared. There was something eloquent in the gesture; Mark King, with no toleration of a clutter of side issues, came straight to the main barrier, which must be swept aside for good and all, or which must be skirted and so passed and relegated to the limbo of dead hopes.

"Do you love me, Gloria?" he demanded. "As lovers love? As I have loved you? As a wife should love her husband?"

"Didn't I explain all of that last night?" she said petulantly. "Must we go over it all again? If I have ... have pained you, I am sorry. I can't say any more than that, can I? I thought I made you see how I was placed, how there was but the one thing for me to do...."

"Marry Gratton or me? And you chose me?"

She hesitated. She knew that he was angry, though he gave so little outward sign. Nor did she fail to recognize that he had grounds for anger. But none the less she resented his insistent questionings. She stood looking blankly at him. If she had only obeyed her straightforward impulse at the house to go to him and explain her predicament!

"I intended," she began in a low, strange voice, "to go to you, to tell you----"

"Answer me," he said sternly. "Yes or no. Did you marry me without love and just to save yourself from possible gossip of being alone all night with a man? Is that why you married me? Yes or no?"

To Gloria, as to King, the issue was clear and not to be clouded; to her credit be it said that she wasted no time in fruitless evasion. This matter would demand settlement, as well now as later. There was wisdom in ending all unpleasantness once and for ever.

"Yes," she answered defiantly.

Then suddenly it was given her to see a Mark King she had never dreamed of, a Mark King of blazing wrath thrusting aside the man whom she knew and who had held himself in check and throttled down his emotion until she spoke that quiet "Yes." The word was like a spark to a train of gunpowder. His determination to beat down his temper, no matter what came, was gone; his memory of her ordeals was wiped out; from his whole tense being there flashed out upon her a hot, heady anger, like stabbing lightning from an ominous cloud. His few words seared and scorched a place in her memory to endure always.

He clenched his hands and raised them; for an instant she thought he was going to strike her down.

"You are utterly contemptible!" he shouted at her. "And I am done with you!"

He turned and left her. Gloria stared after him in amazement. She saw how he walked swiftly, his big boots crunching through the gravel down by the creek bed, splashing through the water, carrying him up the timbered slope toward the horses. She could not know that he was almost running because he was telling himself in his fierce white passion that unless he left her thus he would lose the last power of restraint, and set his hands to her pink-and-white throat and choke her. Until the last second he had sought not to condemn too soon. Now, after his fashion, he condemned sweepingly. For the moment he held that she was less to him than the grime upon his boots.

When he came to the horses he was white with anger; he lifted his hand and looked at his fingers queerly; they were trembling. He cursed himself for a fool, shut the hand into a hard fist as steady as rock, and for an instant glared at it blackly. Then he opened the fingers slowly; a hard smile made his mouth ugly and left it cruel; the fingers had hearkened to a superb will, and gave no greater hint of trembling than did the nigged hole of the giant cedar under which he stood.

He coiled his horse's tie-rope and led him back to camp. As he drew near, Gloria promptly turned her back and studied her nails; she had had encounters with men before now and had not yet gauged the profundity of this man's emotion. She counted fully on bringing him to a full and contrite sense of his crime before she condescended so much as to look at him. But when she flashed him a quick, furtive glance she saw that he had his back upon her, and that he gave neither hint of softening nor yet of knowledge of her presence. He bridled the buckskin, saddled, tied his rope at the saddle-horn, and began making his pack. She watched, uneasy and concerned but not yet fully understanding. But when she noted how he took from their breakfast-table one cup, one plate, one knife and fork, only; how he did not appear interested in the marmalade-jar which she knew had been brought for her; how he left half of the coffee and bacon and sugar; a strange alarm came over her. She glanced wildly around. The forest glowered darkly; the silence was overpowering; the loneliness bewildering. He was going to leave her--she had not the faintest idea in the world where the trail lay.

King went swiftly about his preparations. He did not even see her; he studiously kept his eyes aloof. Within his soul he swore that he would never look at her again....He took up his rifle.

Gloria stirred uneasily. She did not like to yield to him even to the extent of saying a stiff word. But she felt that the man was not playing a part, and that in another moment she would be alone.

"You are not going to leave me here alone, are you?" she demanded coldly.

"I am going on," was his curt rejoinder.

"And I?" she persisted.

"What you please."

He went on with his preparations. Terror sprang up into the girl's heart.

"I would never find my way out," she cried, jumping to her feet and coming toward him. "I am not used to the mountains ...I don't know which way ...I would die...."

"To be rid of you the easiest way," he returned bluntly, "I would turn back with you until we got within striking distance of the open. But you have made me waste time as it is, and I promised Ben that I'd be in Gus Ingle's caves with no time lost. So I am going on."

"But," and all of her surging terror trembled in her rushing words, "I would die, I tell you...."

"And I tell you," he snapped back at her, "that I don't care a damn if you do. Must I tell you twice that I am through with you?"

He set his foot to the stirrup. Gloria, pride lost in panic, ran to him and grasped his arm, crying to him:

"You mustn't leave me this way! It's brutal ... it's murder."

"I gave my promise to Ben," he said. "You are not worth breaking a promise."

"If you won't take me back, then let me go with you."

"Worthless and selfish and cowardly! Useless and vain and brainless! Good God! am I, a man full grown, to loiter on the trail with the like of you? Let go!" He shook her hand off roughly and swung up into the saddle, sending his horse with a boot-heel in the flank down to the ford. But Gloria screamed after him, and ran after him, down to the creek and through it, calling out:

"Mark! Mark! For God's sake don't leave me. I am afraid; I will die of fear. Take me with you...."

He did not look back at her, but he did pause. After all, she was the daughter of his old friend.

"The woods are free and open," he said slowly. "To even such as you. For the third time and for the last I tell you this: I am done with you. But if you like you may follow behind me. I will wait for you ten minutes. Not here, but on the ridge up there. And if you have not come, I will go on at the end of that time. That is my solemn word, Gloria Gaynor."

He rode from her, straight and massive in the saddle, up the slope among the big-boled trees, and in a trice out of sight. She stood like one in a sudden trance. Then, with an inarticulate moan, she ran into the grove and grasped Blackie's rope, and dragged at him trying to make him run with her to her saddle and few belongings. The saddle nearly overmastered her; it was heavy, and she knew as little of it as did any city girl. But her need was sore and her young body not without supple strength. In half of the allotted time Gloria came riding up the ridge. Now King glanced toward her briefly. But less at her than at her pack.

"You had better go back for the rest of the grub," he said to her. "And for your blanket-roll. That would be my advice to the devil himself.... You can do it in the five minutes left to you."

Gloria flung up her head, opened her lips for a stinging reply, and then held for a moment in silence and hesitation.

"You hideous brute!" she flung at him. But none the less she hastened back for her outfit. Five minutes later they rode on into the ever-deepening wilderness, she just keeping his form in sight, he never turning nor speaking.

_Chapter XIX_

For his brutal treatment of her Gloria fully meant that in the ripeness of time he should pay to the uttermost. After that first panic she felt toward King only such anger as she had never experienced before, never having cause for it. Perhaps the emotion was the beginning of a new soul-life for her; certainly here was a moment of reversion to a condition of unplumbed progenital influences; the scorching anger arising from such a primitive situation was in itself primal. Hence the emotion no less that the experience itself was novel; clean, searing anger.

Following this emotion which rode her and sapped her nervous strength came a period of faintness and nausea. She closed her eyes and dropped her head and clung to the horn of her saddle with hands which went cold and shook. In this mood she called out once to King. But he was far ahead and did not turn. She did not know whether he had heard her. Gradually the weakness passed; they topped the ridge and the sun wanned her. Coolly and collectedly she turned her thoughts upon the insufferable insult and came back through a sort of circle to her first intention. Now the decision was cold and stubborn: he would pay and in full.

King led the way unfalteringly. Time and again she saw no hint of a trail underfoot or ahead; they broke through brush or made a difficult way through a thicket of alders or willows and invariably came again upon a trail. It was evident that the man thought only of his journey's end and was hastening; hence he took all the short cuts which he knew. In one of these pathless places, where the scrub-trees and tangle of brush were above her head, where it seemed that she must smother, she lost all sight of him. Her horse came to a dead halt. She listened and could not hear the hoofs of his horse. Again panic mastered her, and she cried out wildly. But just ahead was a mad mountain stream filling the gorge with its thunder. She knew that King could not hear her; she felt the desperate certainty that he would not heed could he hear. Then she struck her horse frantically with her bare hands, and pounded him with her heels, longing for the sight of King as one athirst in the bad lands longs for water. The horse snorted, and whirling and plunging went ripping through the bushes which whipped at her and tore the skin of hands and face. But in three minutes he brought her into the open and into full sight of King, riding up a gentle slope through big red-boled cedars. When her fear died, as it did swiftly after the way of fear, it left not the old, hot anger, but a new elemental emotion--cold hatred.

Thus upon their second morning the honeymoon entered upon its second phase. Every moment brought some new discomfort to her; the saddle hurt her: her clothes were torn, her tender skin bruised and scratched; pains came stabbingly with early fatigue As for King, he had come abruptly to look down upon her as utterly despicable; being a man of high honour he convicted her out of hand as one without honour; despising her, he despised himself for having linked his life in ever so little with hers. But yesterday he had knelt to her humbly in his innermost heart of hearts; now he sought to shut his mind against her quite as definitely as he turned his back on her.

What sombre, misshapen edifice they should build upon these corner-stones of hate and contempt was a matter into which no conjecture could enter even slightly had their compelling environment been different. In the city they would have turned their backs and walked away from each other. But two storm-driven men upon a raft don't separate until land is sighted. Gloria, at least, was in her present plight comparable to a shipwrecked sailor of little skill and less resource. Hence, what was to be, remained to be seen.

At ten o'clock the air was sun-warmed and sweet. Half an hour later the genial day was made over by the high wind trailing vapours into a chill bleak sky. They had climbed to fresh altitudes; the timber through which they progressed indicated that a height of at least seven thousand feet above sea-level had been passed. They passed through groves of the thin-barked tamaracks, came at the base of a rugged slope to scattering mountain pines, which reared into lusty perfection on bleak, wind-swept levels, where many of their companion growths were beginning to run out in dwarfed, twisted misery, and came to a rocky pass through the mountains where on all sides the red cedar, the juniper of the Sierra, throve hardily among bare boulders, crowning the lofty crests like a sparse, stiff, hirsute display upon the gigantic body of the world. The dwarf pine lingered here, straggling along the slopes, beaten down by many a winter of wind and heavy snow. But by noon they had made a slow, tedious way down a rocky ridge and were once more in the heart of the upper forest belt. In an upland meadow, through whose narrow boundaries a thin, cold stream trickled, they nooned. Long had Gloria hungered for the moment when she would see King swing down from the saddle; during the last half-hour she had begun to fear that his brutality knew no bounds and that he would spare neither the horses nor her but crowd on until nightfall. When he did dismount by the creek she drew rein fifty feet from him.

King slipped Buck's bridle, dropped the tie-rope, and let the animal forage along the fringes of the brook. To Gloria, in a voice which struck her as being as chill as the grey, overcast sky, he said:

"Better let your horse eat. We've got to go pretty steady to get anywhere to-day."

Gloria got down stiffly from her saddle. In all the days of her life she had never been so unutterably weary. Further, she was faint from hunger and her throat pained her; she went to the creek and threw herself down and put her face into the cool water, from which she rose with a long sigh. She had seen how King did with his tie-rope; she did similarly, but was too tired to trouble with removing the bit from her horse's mouth. Still Blackie accepted his handicapped opportunity and joined Buck in tearing and ripping at the lush grass. It was more inviting than the manzanita-bushes and occasional sunflower-leaves at which he had snatched during the day.

King made coffee and fried bacon; the horses had earned an hour of rest and fodder, and a man has the right to bacon and coffee even though hard miles lie before him. While he pottered with his fire he looked more than once at the sky in the south-west. With all of his heart he wished that he had turned back with Gloria this morning. By now he could have set her feet in a trail which even a fool could travel back to the log house, and he could be again hastening upon his errand. Gloria lay inert; she chewed slowly at a bit broken from a slab of hard chocolate and kept her eyes closed. Her face was very white; two big tears of distress slipped out from the shut lids. But King did not come close enough to see them.

When his coffee was ready he called to her, saying indifferently: "Better have a cup. It helps." But Gloria did not reply. King seemed not to notice whether she ate or not. But, when he had drunk his own coffee and she still lay quiet on the grass, he sweetened a cup for her, put some milk in it, and set it at her elbow. "Better drink it," he said coldly. And Gloria gathered her strength and sat up and drank. Thereafter she ate some bread and potted ham. Fragments of bread, the crust, and half of the ham she threw away. King opened his mouth to protest; then shrugged and remained silent. His back to a tree, he sat and smoked until the hour had passed.