_Chapter XIX_
For his brutal treatment of her Gloria fully meant that in the ripenessof time he should pay to the uttermost. After that first panic she felttoward King only such anger as she had never experienced before, neverhaving cause for it. Perhaps the emotion was the beginning of a newsoul-life for her; certainly here was a moment of reversion to acondition of unplumbed progenital influences; the scorching angerarising from such a primitive situation was in itself primal. Hence theemotion no less that the experience itself was novel; clean, searinganger.
Following this emotion which rode her and sapped her nervous strengthcame a period of faintness and nausea. She closed her eyes and droppedher head and clung to the horn of her saddle with hands which went coldand shook. In this mood she called out once to King. But he was farahead and did not turn. She did not know whether he had heard her.Gradually the weakness passed; they topped the ridge and the sun wannedher. Coolly and collectedly she turned her thoughts upon theinsufferable insult and came back through a sort of circle to her firstintention. Now the decision was cold and stubborn: he would pay and infull.
King led the way unfalteringly. Time and again she saw no hint of atrail underfoot or ahead; they broke through brush or made a difficultway through a thicket of alders or willows and invariably came againupon a trail. It was evident that the man thought only of his journey'send 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 ofbrush were above her head, where it seemed that she must smother, shelost all sight of him. Her horse came to a dead halt. She listened andcould not hear the hoofs of his horse. Again panic mastered her, and shecried out wildly. But just ahead was a mad mountain stream filling thegorge with its thunder. She knew that King could not hear her; she feltthe desperate certainty that he would not heed could he hear. Then shestruck her horse frantically with her bare hands, and pounded him withher heels, longing for the sight of King as one athirst in the bad landslongs for water. The horse snorted, and whirling and plunging wentripping through the bushes which whipped at her and tore the skin ofhands and face. But in three minutes he brought her into the open andinto full sight of King, riding up a gentle slope through big red-boledcedars. When her fear died, as it did swiftly after the way of fear, itleft not the old, hot anger, but a new elemental emotion--cold hatred.
Thus upon their second morning the honeymoon entered upon its secondphase. Every moment brought some new discomfort to her; the saddle hurther: her clothes were torn, her tender skin bruised and scratched;pains came stabbingly with early fatigue As for King, he had comeabruptly to look down upon her as utterly despicable; being a man ofhigh honour he convicted her out of hand as one without honour;despising her, he despised himself for having linked his life in ever solittle with hers. But yesterday he had knelt to her humbly in hisinnermost heart of hearts; now he sought to shut his mind against herquite as definitely as he turned his back on her.
What sombre, misshapen edifice they should build upon thesecorner-stones of hate and contempt was a matter into which no conjecturecould enter even slightly had their compelling environment beendifferent. In the city they would have turned their backs and walkedaway from each other. But two storm-driven men upon a raft don'tseparate until land is sighted. Gloria, at least, was in her presentplight comparable to a shipwrecked sailor of little skill and lessresource. Hence, what was to be, remained to be seen.
At ten o'clock the air was sun-warmed and sweet. Half an hour later thegenial day was made over by the high wind trailing vapours into a chillbleak sky. They had climbed to fresh altitudes; the timber through whichthey progressed indicated that a height of at least seven thousand feetabove sea-level had been passed. They passed through groves of thethin-barked tamaracks, came at the base of a rugged slope to scatteringmountain pines, which reared into lusty perfection on bleak, wind-sweptlevels, where many of their companion growths were beginning to run outin dwarfed, twisted misery, and came to a rocky pass through themountains where on all sides the red cedar, the juniper of the Sierra,throve hardily among bare boulders, crowning the lofty crests like asparse, stiff, hirsute display upon the gigantic body of the world. Thedwarf pine lingered here, straggling along the slopes, beaten down bymany 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 theupper forest belt. In an upland meadow, through whose narrow boundariesa thin, cold stream trickled, they nooned. Long had Gloria hungered forthe moment when she would see King swing down from the saddle; duringthe last half-hour she had begun to fear that his brutality knew nobounds and that he would spare neither the horses nor her but crowd onuntil nightfall. When he did dismount by the creek she drew rein fiftyfeet from him.
King slipped Buck's bridle, dropped the tie-rope, and let the animalforage along the fringes of the brook. To Gloria, in a voice whichstruck 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 getanywhere to-day."
Gloria got down stiffly from her saddle. In all the days of her life shehad never been so unutterably weary. Further, she was faint from hungerand her throat pained her; she went to the creek and threw herself downand put her face into the cool water, from which she rose with a longsigh. 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'smouth. Still Blackie accepted his handicapped opportunity and joinedBuck in tearing and ripping at the lush grass. It was more inviting thanthe manzanita-bushes and occasional sunflower-leaves at which he hadsnatched during the day.
King made coffee and fried bacon; the horses had earned an hour of restand fodder, and a man has the right to bacon and coffee even though hardmiles lie before him. While he pottered with his fire he looked morethan once at the sky in the south-west. With all of his heart he wishedthat he had turned back with Gloria this morning. By now he could haveset her feet in a trail which even a fool could travel back to the loghouse, and he could be again hastening upon his errand. Gloria layinert; she chewed slowly at a bit broken from a slab of hard chocolateand kept her eyes closed. Her face was very white; two big tears ofdistress slipped out from the shut lids. But King did not come closeenough 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 notto notice whether she ate or not. But, when he had drunk his own coffeeand she still lay quiet on the grass, he sweetened a cup for her, putsome milk in it, and set it at her elbow. "Better drink it," he saidcoldly. And Gloria gathered her strength and sat up and drank.Thereafter she ate some bread and potted ham. Fragments of bread, thecrust, and half of the ham she threw away. King opened his mouth toprotest; then shrugged and remained silent. His back to a tree, he satand smoked until the hour had passed.
Precisely at one o'clock they were on their way. Gloria caught her ownhorse, coiled the rope, and mounted. As King rode across the meadow andto the wooded slope beyond she followed. It seemed to her that this wasall a dream; she was almost light-headed; the sternest of realitiesbegan to seem impalpable and distant and of scant moment. She knew thatshe was going forward because she must; that otherwise she would liehere in the lonely wilderness and die. In her exhaustion she noted, asone does note his own soul-play when overwrought, that the prospect ofdeath seemed less terrible than that of utter desertion. The mountainswere so big they stifled her. With every tortuous step forward thisformidable land all about her had grown more severe, more lonely, moreto her like the kingdom of desolation than she had ever dreamed existed.There were slope fields strewn with black lava rock where never asolitary blade of grass upthrust a thin spear; there were brokenexpanses across which the eye might travel wearily for what appearedendless miles. One could call out here with never a faint hope of beingheard; one left alone here could die miserably, taunted only by theechoes of her own choking voice. This devil's land
took on a vindictivepersonality; it was a hideous colossus, stooping over her, inspired withbut one cruel desire, to crush her soft white body, to stamp out herlife, to annihilate her and gloat over her shrieking despair. She feltlike some hapless little princess in a fairy-tale who had wandered intoa monstrous land of black sorcery.
By four o'clock, when it seemed to Gloria that she had reached and waspassing the limits of her endurance, came two momentous occurrences.King, riding ahead as usual, was not quite so far in advance, and didnot have his back turned square upon her. For the first time he hadbriefly mistaken the trail; they were on the steep flank of themountain; he turned and rode back in her general direction but somehundred yards lower on the slope.
"The trail's down here," he announced shortly. He did not lift his eyesto her face, did not note the droop of the weary body. His look was allfor her horse, and a new and unreasonable spurt of anger was in hisheart Through her unbounded ignorance she had needlessly fatigued hermount, having no knowledge of the ways one employs to save his horse.
Gloria understood dully that she was too far up and must ride down tohis level. She was beyond complaining or asking questions; with a suddenjerk upon the reins she brought Blackie about. King cursed under hisbreath.
"That's too steep!" he called to her. "Want to kill your horse?"
Blackie tried to swerve and sidle down. Gloria lifted her whip andstruck him. Blackie snorted and obeyed her command. Some loose dirt gaveway underfoot, the tired beast stumbled, a dead limb caught at his legs,tripping him, and Blackie lurched downward and fell. Through the graceof fortune Gloria rolled clear and unhurt. Blackie got up, tottering,with one quivering fore-leg lifted. King's face went black with rage.
But this time it was wordless rage. He dismounted and made his way up tothe lamed horse; Gloria, from where she lay, thought at first that ofcourse he was coming to her. But he kept his back to her as he liftedthe horse's fore-leg and felt tenderly at the wrenched muscle. Gloria,without stirring, and without experiencing any poignant emotion, watchedhim listlessly, then shut her eyes. Her most clear sensation was one ofrelief; they would no doubt make camp here.
A cold drop of rain splashed on her cheek. She opened her eyes. King wasremoving Blackie's saddle. Gloria closed her eyes again and sighed. Asort of dreary thankfulness blossomed feebly in her heart that thetorturous day was over. King would make some sort of a shelter; shewould drink a cup of coffee and crawl into her blankets and go tosleep....
"Come on," called a voice as though from some great distance. "We've gotto hurry as fast as God will let us."
Blackie was standing where King had led him, his saddle and bridle swungup into a tree, his foot still lifted, his nostrils close to the longgrass but untempted. Gloria's canvas-rolled pack and the rifle wereacross King's back. As she sat up and stared at him she read hisintentions. He was going on on foot, expecting her to take his horse.
"I can't," she said miserably.
He looked up into the sky and not at her.
"You can do what you please," he retorted curtly. "I am going on."
She rose and went stumbling down the slope. She swayed as she tried tomount, but he did not offer his hand. When she was in the saddle hestrode on ahead. Blackie looked after them wistfully.
"The leg's not broken," King told her gruffly. "Just a bad sprain. Notyour fault it isn't worse, though. He'll take care of himself; God knowshe's got as good a chance as we have."
"What do you mean?" she asked quickly.
He merely swung up his arm toward the sky by way of answer and went on.The second big rain-drop hit Gloria's cheek. It was chill; its dullnessseemed to drive straight to her heart.