The Everlasting Whisper

  _Chapter XXIII_

  All night King kept his fire blazing. With several long sticks and apiece of the canvas, drawing deeply upon his ingenuity and almost to thedregs of his patience, he contrived a rude barrier to the cold acrossthe mouth of the cave. Countless times he rolled out of his own bunk,heavy-eyed and stiff, to readjust the screen when it had blown down, toput more wood on his fire, to make sure that Gloria was covered andwarm, sleeping heavily, and not dead. His nerves were frayed. In thelong night his fears grew, misshapen and grotesque. Within his soul heprayed mutely that when morning came Gloria would be alive. When withthe first sickly streaks of dawn he went to put fresh fuel upon thedying embers he found that there was but a handful of wood left. He cameto stoop over the girl and listen to her breathing. Then he descendedthe cliffs for more wood.

  During the night winter had set the white seal of his sovereignty uponthe world. The snarling wind had died in its own fierceness, giving overto a still, calm air, through which steadily the big flakes fell. Nowthey clung to bush and tree everywhere; the limbs had grown thick andheavy, drooping like countless plumes. Fat mats of snow lay on the levelspaces, upon flat rocks, curling over and down at the edges. Where hestood King sank ankle-deep in the fluffy stuff. As he moved along thecliffs and down the slope toward a dead tree he stepped now and theninto drifts where the snow was gathering swiftly. As he looked up,seeking to penetrate the skies above him and judge their import, he sawonly myriads of grey particles high up, swirling but slightly in somesoftly stirring air-current, for the most part dropping, floating,falling almost vertically. Nowhere was there a hint or hope ofcessation. The winter, a full four weeks early, had come.

  In the noose of his rope he dragged up the cliff much dead wood, rivenfrom a fallen pine. Throughout the noise of his comings and goings thegirl slept heavily. He got a big fire blazing without waking her and setabout getting breakfast. While he waited for the coffee to boil he tookcareful stock of provisions. For two people there was enough for sometwenty meals, food for about a week. Time to conserve the grease fromthe frying-pan; to hoard the smallest bit of bacon rind. He even countedhis rounds of ammunition; here alone he was affluent. He had in theneighbourhood of a hundred cartridges for the rifle. While he wassetting the gun aside he felt Gloria's eyes upon him.

  During the night and now, during this inventory, he had been grantedboth ample time and cause for his decision. He addressed her with promptfrankness.

  "Inside fifteen minutes we've got to be on our way out. As we go we'lllook for the horse. But, find it or not, we're going."

  She lay looking up at him thoughtfully. She had rested; she resented hiscoolly assumed mastery; she had not forgotten that there were other mennear by. But she merely said, by way of beginning:

  "The storm is over, then?"

  "No. But we are not going to wait. We have food for only six or sevendays, at the most."

  She let her eyes droop to the fire so that the lids hid them from him.It was not yet full day; it was still snowing. Gratton and the men withhim would, of course, have ample supplies. She yearned feverishly to berid of King and his intolerable domineering. She estimated swiftly that,paradoxically, her only power over him was that of powerlessness; whileshe lay here hers was, in a way, the advantage. On her feet, followinghim, he would be again to her the brute he had been coming in.

  "I am tired out," she said faintly, still not looking up. "I am sick. Ihave a pain here." She moved her hand to her side where, in reality, shewas conscious of a troublesome soreness. "I can't go on."

  He stared at her. She was pale. Now that she lifted her eyes for a briefreading of his look, he remarked that they appeared unusually large andluminous. There was a flush on her cheeks. His old fear surged back onhim: Gloria was going to die! So he did what Gloria had counted onhaving him do: put milk and sugar in her coffee and brought the cup toher; he hastened to serve her a piping-hot breakfast of crisp bacon, hotcakes and jam. He urged her to eat, and made his own meal of unsweetenedblack coffee and cakes without jam. Triumphantly and covertly Gloriaobserved all of this. Hers was the victory. Mark King was again waitingon her, hand and foot, sacrificing for her.

  He allowed himself half a pipe of tobacco--tobacco, like food, was goingto run out soon--and smoked sombrely. Here already was the thing to bedreaded more than aught else: Gloria threatened with illness. As BenGaynor's daughter, never as his own beloved wife, she had become hisresponsibility. She was a parcel marked "Fragile--Handle with Care,"which he had undertaken to deliver safely to a friend.

  "I am going to look for the horse," he told her. He got to his feet andtook up his rifle. "But don't count too much on my success. All thechances are that Buck is a long way on the trail back to his stable.Blackie has probably limped back home by now. Another thing: if I don'tget Buck to-day he'll be of no use to us; that is, if the snow keeps on.But I'll do what I can."

  But, before leaving, he did what he could to make for her comfort duringhis absence. He brought up fir-boughs, making them into a bed for her.He readjusted his canvas screen, securing it more carefully, therebymaking the cave somewhat more snug. And at the last he dropped a little,much-worn book at her side; she did not know he had it with him. She didnot appear to note it until he had gone. Then she took it up curiously.A volume of Kipling's poems, compact and companionable, on India paperbetween worn covers. With a little sniff she put the book down; just thesort of thing for Mark King to read, she thought with fine scorn, andutterly stupid to Gloria. What had she to do with _The Explorer_ and_Snarleyow_ and _Boots_ and _The Feet of the Young Men_? Less thannothing, in sheer, regrettable fact. She knew he had one other book withhim, Gus Ingle's Bible! The profaned volume of a murderous, long-deadscoundrel. What a library for a dainty lady! Gloria suddenly found thatshe could have screamed.

  She scrambled up and went to peer out around the canvas screen. No soundout there, for the wind was dead and the snow dropped noiselessly; thecreek in the gorge, because what little draught there was in the airbore down the canon, sent no sound to her ears. The wilderness of cragand peak and distant forest was hostile, pitiless. She sought eagerlyfor some sign of Gratton. There was none; no smoke this morning denotedhis camp, no longed-for figure toiled upward toward her. But he wouldcome soon; he must. King had found the gold here; Gratton would know andcome. She would wait, hoping for Gratton's coming before King's return.

  Meanwhile King, making his way down the mountain slope, found that hisestimate of the storm was cheerlessly correct; the fluffy stuffunderfoot was in places already knee-deep and mounting steadily higher.He shook himself and growled in his throat and ploughed through itvigorously.

  "A pair of webs would look like wings before long," he muttered. "Well,we'll make 'em, since we can't buy 'em."

  Making his way back to the point where Buck had broken his tether, Kingoverlooked no precaution; since he did not care to have his and Gloria'shiding-place known unnecessarily to Gratton and his following, heforsook the natural pathway and made slower, hard progress along thegorge where others would be less likely to chance upon his tracks andwhere the tracks themselves would soonest fill with drifting snow.Passing about many a stunted grove he came at last to the place whenceBuck had fled. He knew that in the general direction indicated by theline of flight, beyond two ridges, was the valley of the giant sequoias.There a horse would find water, shelter, and grass. If he failed to findthe animal there--well, then, Buck was well on the trail or lost to Kingin any one of a hundred places.

  And always as he went, panting up and ploughing down, the steep slopes,his eyes were keen for meat, be it Douglas squirrel or bear. But thewoods seemed deserted and empty; only those cheerful, impudent littlebundles of feathers, the snowbirds, and an occasional, dartingwater-ouzel along the creeks. These he let alone, but with the mentalreservation that the time might well be at hand when even such as theymust be called on to keep life in him and Gloria.

  He had taken on a man's-sized contract for his morning's work and drovehis big bo
dy at it relentlessly. And he took his own sort of joy fromit, the joy of a fight against odds, the joy of action in the open. Hisbody was wet with sweat, but neither his ardour nor optimism weredampened; his foot came perilously near frost-bite after he slipped intothe hidden water of a small stream, but he considered the accident but apart of the day's work. So, prepared by common sense fordisappointment, he looked hopefully to finding the horse. And as hepushed on he pondered other likely spots to seek this afternoon orto-morrow if he did not find the animal in the sequoias.

  When at last he came to the grove of big trees he was among old friends.But he knew almost as soon as he reached them that they had no word forhim to-day. On his wedding morning he had planned how he would bringGloria here, taking it for granted, in his blind infatuation, that theywould mean to her what they had meant to him. Now he passed swiftly likea noiseless shadow between the gigantic boles; he did not lift his headto look at old Vulcan's lightning-blasted crest, two hundred feet inair, all but lost up there in the falling snow; he gave no thought tothe thousands of years which were Majesty's and Thor's. He went with hiseyes on the ground, seeking tracks of a horse. And as he had more thanhalf expected, he found nothing. The magnificent vistas, carpeted insnow, gave him no view of anything but snow.

  Later he must cudgel his brains and seek elsewhere. Now, with other workto be done, he should go back the shortest, quickest way. So he set hisfeet into the trail which they had made, and turned his back upon thegrove. Where he crossed streams he took stock of pools; there were troutthere if a man could take them. This was another matter to see about.Oh, he would be busy enough. And yet he did not loiter, and stopped onlybriefly and infrequently to rest.

  Before returning to Gloria, King meant to look in on Brodie's camp, ifonly from a distance. As matters stood now there was no telling whatbearing Gratton's and Brodie's actions might have later upon his ownaffairs. It would be well to note if the men were preparing to fight thestorm out or to pack up and leave rather than take prolonged chanceswith the season. So, a mile below his own camp, he slipped into a groveof firs and made his unseen way toward the fringe whence he counted uponseeing what they were about. He was still moving on slowly and had hadno glimpse of the men when he heard them. He stopped abruptly andlistened.

  They were down there, against the canon wall. Words came to himindistinctly, muffled by the thick air. The tones of the voices wereunmistakable. Three voices there were, each with its own peculiarity,none of them Gratton's. First a big, booming voice; then a sharp,staccato-quick voice; thereafter a high-pitched, querulous utterance,nervous and irritable. Disagreement, if not out-and-out quarrel, hadalready come to camp. King moved a few paces nearer, pushed aside a lowbranch from which the snow dropped with little thuds, and saw the men.

  There were four of them in an excited group, and slightly drawn apart,one hand at his mouth, was Gratton. The four paid no attention to him,but formed a group exclusively self-centred. Of these four one now heldhis own counsel, his attitude alert, his hands in his pockets, his headturning swiftly, so that his eyes were now on one speaker, now onanother. Across the brief distance King could see the puffs of smokefrom the pipe in his teeth. The man wore a red handkerchief knottedabout his throat; its colour was as bright as fresh-spilled blood. SwenBrodie.

  Now and then as a voice was lifted King caught a word; repeated severaltimes he heard the word "bacon." Here, doubtless, was the matter underdiscussion. One man, he of the thin, querulous voice swung his nervousarm widely and fairly shrieked his message; it came in little puffs andwas lost between. King heard him shout "bacon" and "snow" and "hell."The three expressions, so oddly connected and yet disjointed, weresignificant.

  Gratton stood apart and gnawed at his hand; though he could not see theprominent eyes, King could imagine the look in them. Swen Brodie puffedregularly at his pipe and watched and listened intently.

  Abruptly the wrangling knot of men resolved itself into two definitefactions. His fellows had turned upon the shrill-voiced man, plainly insome sort of denunciation or accusation. He was the smallest of thelot, and drew back hastily, step after step, offering the knife-edge ofhis curses as the others clubbed their fists.

  "... a lie!" he shrieked. "Fools...."

  Gratton gnawed at his knuckles, Brodie puffed steadily, and the twoaggressors accepted windy denial as sign of guilt. One of them sprangforward and struck; the little man whipped out a revolver and fired. Theshot sounded dull and muffled; a puff of smoke hung for a moment likethe smoke from the pipe, appearing methodically between the passiveonlooker's teeth; the man who had struck stopped dead in his tracks.There came a second shot; then in sharp staccato succession four others,followed by the ugly little metallic click announcing that the gun hademptied itself. Before the last explosion the balancing body saggedlimply and sprawled in the snow.

  King's first natural impulse was to break through the brush and runforward. But his caution of the day commanded by circumstance, thoughnever a part of the man's headlong nature, remained with him,counselling cool thought instead of hot haste. The man down was dead oras good as dead; him King could not help. So he held back and watched.

  There fell a brief silence while the man who had done the shooting andthe men about him, no less than the figure lying in the snow, were asmotionless as so many carven statues. At last Brodie spoke heavily.

  "Benny's right. Bates had it coming to him. Times like this stealing aside of bacon is worse'n murder. Bates stole it; he was going to try todouble-cross us and beat it out of here. Now he's dead, and goodriddance." He spat into the snow when he had done.

  Benny, chattering wildly to himself now, began a hasty reloading of hisrevolver. The man whom he had shot, whom Brodie named Bates, lay notfive steps from Benny's feet, his blood already congealing where itflushed the snow. Oddly enough, King knew personally or by repute eachof the men before him with the single exception of the man who had paidin full for his own--or some one else's--crime of stealing food at atime when food meant a chance for life. To begin with, there was SwenBrodie and there was Gratton. There was Benny, who had done the killing,a degenerate, a morphine addict, and a thorough-going scoundrel. Beyondhim stood the burly ruffian of the big, awkward, bony frame, who hadbrought the "judge" to the log house the other night at Gratton'sbidding, Steve Jarrold. Through the trees, coming up now, were two moreof the ill-featured party, a swart, squat Italian, and just at his heelsa ragged scarecrow of a man named Brail. It was Brail who came closeenough to stoop over the fallen man.

  "Dead, ain't he?" queried Benny, half-coughing over his words.

  His fellows had drawn closer so that they stood in a ring about thebody. One man alone held apart. Gratton's eyes were wild, void ofpurpose; the dead, chalky-white of his face turned a sickly greenishtinge. After a little, while no one paid any attention to him, he begana slow withdrawal, moving jerkily step by step, his dragging heelsmaking long furrows in the snow. Then King, too, began to draw back,slipping quietly and swiftly through the screen of tree and bush,stepping in the tracks he had made coming hither, praying suddenly forfurther fast-falling snow to hide or obliterate the trail he had made.And for the moment he was not thinking of the gold which they, too,sought, and which he had meant to snatch away from under their noses. Hethought only of Gloria. If that crowd, in its present temper, found theway to his camp--if, in one way or another, Gloria fell into theirhands--then could she thank God for a clean bullet and a swift end ofthings.