_Chapter XXI_
A long time King stood at the mouth of the cave, looking forth upon thenewly whitened world. The look of the thickening sky, the wintry stingof the rushing air, the businesslike way in which the snow swirled andfell created a condition upon which he had not counted and for which hehad no relish. This was more like a mid-winter blizzard than any stormhad any business being so early in the season. For many hours alreadythe snow had been falling, piling up in the mountain passes; if it kepton at this rate through another day and night--well, he and Gloria hadbest be getting out without any loitering.
He looked at his watch; not yet eleven o'clock. Need for haste; the daywould be short. Before darkness shut down he had half a dozen hours,hours for methodical search. Here was one of Gus Ingle's caves; another,he knew, was directly below and at the base of the cliffs; the thirdshould be near. It was the third that he was chiefly interested in. Herecalled the words in the old Bible: "We come to the First Caive andthen we come to Caive number three and two!" There lay significance inthe order of Ingle's numerals; first, three, and two. Two of the caveswere for any one to see; before now King had been in both of them. Henceit must be that Gus Ingle's treasure lay in the third. That one Kingmust locate. And without too much delay. He looked down at Gloria. Shelay motionless just as she had thrown herself down.
Taking his rope with him King made what haste he could going down thecliffs. The sides of the ravine were littered with dead wood, drift andlimbs that had broken off the few battered trees above. He gathered asheavy a load of dry branches as he could handle, bound them about withhis rope, and, fighting his way all the way up, clambered again to theupper cave. Gloria had not stirred. He moved about her, went a dozenpaces deeper into the great cavern, and threw down his wood. Breakingbranches into short lengths he quickly got a fire going. The flamesspurted up eagerly, bright and cheery, and threw dancing light among thewavering shadows. He brought the bedding-roll closer and opened it intoa rough-and-ready bed. Then he called to Gloria.
"You'd better lie here by the fire," he told her. "You're apt to catchcold there."
She was sitting up, watching him. Now she rose listlessly and cameforward, dropping down into a sitting position upon the blankets, herchilled hands out toward the blaze.
"I don't like the look of this storm," he told her. "It is up to us tohurry. I am going to look around now. I think you had better rest allyou can so as to be ready to make a start back as soon as I find outwhether we are on a wild-goose chase or not."
"You mean--we may start back to-day?"
"I don't know what I am going to find, of course; whether I am going tofind anything. But if we can get only a couple of hours on our wayto-day, it's just that much gained."
"You are going to leave me here?"
"I won't be far." With that he set fire to a dry pine faggot, the besttorch available, and left her, going deeper into the cave. She watchedhim, marvelling at the size of the cavern. He went on a score of paces;he seemed to be ascending a steepening slant floor and then to have goneover a sort of ridge and to be descending again. But still going furtherfrom her. Presently she knew that the tunnel had turned sharply to theright; she could hear the thud of his boots and for a little while couldsee the flare of his torch against a wall of rock; he himself had passedout of her sight.
But she knew that he had not gone a great deal further. For he was notso far away that she could not hear him; he was going back and forth; atirregular intervals she saw a dim, ghostly light playing upon the darkcavern walls. And, despite the weary ache of a hardship-tortured body,she began to be interested in his search. If there were, in truth, suchgold here somewhere as he and her father with him had dreamed of--goldfor which seven men had died sixty years ago, for which old LoonyHoneycutt had hungered all these years, for which Brodie and hisfollowing and even a city man like Gratton were like so many raveningwolves on the trail--gold in quantity to make even toughened oldgold-seekers delirious with the dreams of it--why, then, that gold washalf Mark King's and half Ben Gaynor's! And it might be that now, atthis very instant, Mark King was finding it; was standing over it,staring down at it by the ghostly flare of a smoking torch. She sat,tense and still, listening, trying to probe with tired but suddenlybright eyes through the dark.
She started, realizing that no longer could she hear King searching backand forth. It was very silent about her, only the crackle of the flamesmaking a sound to be heard against the rush of air outside. It seemed toher that King had been gone a long time. She rose to her feet, temptedto follow him. She was curious to know what he was doing; why he was sosilent; where he had gone. But in the end pride restrained her and shesat down again to wait in an attitude of indifference.
But the minutes dragged on and never a sound came back from the far,dark depths of the cavern; fifteen minutes, half an hour. She grewrestless and walked up and down; she went to the mouth of the cave andstood looking out into the swirling snow-storm; she returned to thefire, throwing on more wood. She felt sure that an hour had passed--twohours--she began to grow alarmed. Always that dread thought was ready tospring out upon her: "If something had happened to him!" She went alittle way in the direction he had taken; stood peering into the dark,listening breathless and rigid. Never a sound. She went back to thefront of the cave, looking down, staring out into the grey sky, acrossthe ridge....
Gloria, trembling with a new excitement, was down on her knees beforethe pack when King returned. She sprang up to face him. And each, withthe other's emotions and experiences of the past two or three hoursunknown to him, marvelled at what was to be read in the other's face.Gloria was excited; King's excitement was no less. Where she had atleast the clue to his altered expression, he had none to hers.
"It's here!" he burst out. "And I've found it. Tons and tons of it, suchknobs and nuggets of pure gold as never man laid eyes on! We have herethe Magic Lamp to rub: a castle in Spain and an ocean-going yacht andthe newest thing in motor-cars and a trip around the world and apresentation to royalty--a fragment of heaven and a very large slice ofhell. Ambition fulfilled and love consumed and hate born. We have oldBen made whole and full of power again. And here we have all that isleft of Gus Ingle and his friends--except for a pile of bones backyonder!"
She saw that in each hand he carried what looked like a big rough stone;she saw from the way he carried them that they were heavy. The firesleaped higher, brighter in her eyes. Now she saw the way to make MarkKing pay for all of his brutality to her; to pay to the uttermost!
"I have nothing to say to you," she said as stiffly as she knew the way."I care to hear nothing you have to say. I have tolerated all that Imean to tolerate from you."
Her bearing, no less than her words, astonished him. For the first timehe saw what it was that she held in her hands. She had been gathering upher own little personal effects; a tiny parcel of silken things, comband brush, trifling feminine odds and ends. He stared at herwonderingly.
"I don't understand----"
Gloria treated him to cool laughter.
"You will in a minute. I am going."
"Going? You? In God's name, _where_?"
Deep silence answered him. He frowned at her in puzzled fashion amoment; then, suspecting the truth, since his racing mind could hit onno other possible explanation of her manner, he dropped to the firesidethe things in his hands and went swiftly to the cave's mouth. He lookedout into the storm, his eyes questing in all directions. Nothing. Onlythe thickening storm, the ridges dim beyond the swirl of snow----
Then he saw. For a long time he stood, studying it, seeking to makesure. What he saw was beaten down by the falling snow, dissipated by thewind, gone entirely over and again only to rise like a shapeless ghostof disaster. It was a column of smoke. Some one had encamped no greatdistance away; on the same stream, hidden only by the windings of thegorge. Some one? Why, then, Gratton and Brodie and their crowd, afterall! He glowered angrily toward the faint smudge of smoke. Then he swungabout and came back to Gloria's si
de.
"You saw that smoke?" he demanded. "You plan on going to them?"
"Yes," cried Gloria. She sprang up and confronted him angrily. "Yes toboth questions."
"You know who they are, then?"
"No; but that doesn't matter."
"Which means as plain as print," he said thoughtfully, "that you wouldgo to any man to be rid of me." He laughed unpleasantly and Gloria'sanger flared the higher.
"Do you know," he said presently, "that they are probably Gratton andSwen Brodie and their outfit?"
"What of it?" asked Gloria, erect and defiant.
"You know that Gratton has set out to ruin your father? That he's adouble-dealing scoundrel? That Brodie is worse? That neither is hardlythe sort for a girl to trust herself to in a place like this?"
"I am not given much choice," Gloria informed him with high insolence.
"That's a fact," he conceded with a grunt.
He'd give a thousand dollars right now to be well rid of her; yes, andhave Gratton and Brodie and the rest of them come on looking for anysort of a row that suited their ilk. He told himself that with savageemphasis, but he asked: could he let her go?
"Before I go," said Gloria when she thought that he had nothing furtherto add, "I want to say just one thing: father has always considered youhis best friend. I shall lose no time in telling him what you reallyare."
Gloria's remark, coming just when it did in King's perplexity, settledhis decision firmly on him. The girl was a vicious little fool; so hewas determined to think of her unequivocally. But she was, after all,Ben Gaynor's daughter and, furthermore, the apple of Ben's eye. She wasin King's keeping; he had been eminently to blame for bringing her here,his was the responsibility. Gratton's eye was the sort that soils awoman.
"You are _not_ going," he said suddenly, turning upon her. "I won'tallow you to put yourself in Gratton's or Brodie's dirty hands."
A quick light was in her eyes, a quick spurt of satisfaction in herheart. In King's decision she read the assurance that he was still madlyin love with her, that now his jealousy stirred him. She lifted her chinand with her little bundle under her arm came forward, walkingconfidently.
"Stand aside, please," she commanded. "I am going, I tell you."
Again sensing the familiarity of the battlefield she felt an almostserene 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. Whenshe 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 heldher back.
"There can be only one captain to an expedition in adventure," he toldher seriously. "I have been elected to the job. You'll pardon me if Iput matters into one-syllable words? Until we are well out of this, ifwe are ever out at all, you will have to do what I tell you. You are notgoing 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 oldright of a husband. If that isn't sufficient you can add to it: by thetime-honoured right of the lord and master! For that is just preciselywhat I intend being until I can turn you over to your dawdling set inthe city again. Wait a minute," he added sternly, as he saw her lipsopening to a rush of words. "I would be glad to have you go wereconditions less exacting. Now I have thought matters over and it appearsessential that certain of our marriage vows be remembered. You don'thave to love or honour, but by thunder you are going to obey! Reversionto 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, Ifully intend to keep my obligation of protecting you against your ownfoolishness, the storm, Gratton, Brodie, and the devil himself. And,finally, I mean to keep my promise to your father. He sent me to get GusIngle's gold; it's here. So is Gratton with his cut-throat crowd. I willin all probability have my hands full. But, once and for all, you stickwith me. Where," he concluded with the last jeer, "the wife's placeshould be!"
Gloria tried to stare him down, to wither him with the fire of herscorn, to brave by him. But the man, all emotion having receded from hiseyes, was once more like so much rock, but rock endowed with dormantpower of aggression. She felt as though she had to do with a greatpoised boulder which offered no menace so long as she let it alone, butwhich needed but an unwary step of hers to destroy its equilibrium andthus bring it crashing down upon her, crushing her. She began bywondering if she had mistaken his look just now when she had leaped tothe triumphant decision that he loved her; she ended by feeling hopelessand tired and uncertain of all things. To keep him from noting how shewas trembling she went hastily back to the roll of bedding and droppeddown to it. On the instant it became clear to her that physically Kingwas the master. To her, before whom difficulties had heretoforeinvariably melted, it seemed equally clear that there must be a way outof an unbearable situation. So now, for the first time, she began acertain logical line of thought, seeking to shape her own plans.
"Please listen to me seriously," King said quietly to her. "I won't talklong to you. Your father is on the edge of bankruptcy. He is temporarilyout of the running--at the hands of the very men you want to go to. Hecounts on me for what is in Gus Ingle's caves. I have found at least apart of it and I honestly believe that it is in your hands and mine topull Ben through and leave him a rich man on top of it. Gratton andBrodie are down there; they'll clean us out if they can. The stake isbig enough for them to stop at nothing short of murder, and I am notoversure they'd stop there. Gus Ingle's crowd didn't, and I don't knowthat 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 upto us to hold it. Can I count on you? You don't happen to have any lovefor me; well, you shouldn't have any for Gratton or Brodie, either. Andyou know that you can trust yourself to me. Can I count on you stickingon the job, your father's and your own job as much as mine, until wemake a go of it?"
Gloria's logical thinking had barely begun, and as yet had not had timeto progress. Her spite was lively and bitter. In her distorted vision,blurred by passionate anger, she cried out quickly:
"So, now that the odds are against you, you come cringing to me, doyou?" Again she was misled into fancying that she held a whip-hand overhim. "Answering your question, I would trust Mr. Gratton any day ratherthan 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 issomething."
Now he shaped his plans swiftly and carefully, knowing where she stood.It was characteristic of him that, once having seen clearly his ownresponsibility toward a foolish girl, he did not seek to simplify hisown difficulty by ridding himself of her. Henceforth he would merelyconsider her his chief handicap, with him but against him. He consoledhimself with the whimsical thought that there was never a propertreasure-hunt that did not carry traitorous mutineers on the questingship.