_Chapter XXV_
King awoke filled with resolve and definite purpose. It was pitch dark,but he sensed the coming of wintry dawn. He drew on his boots and wentto look out. It was still snowing, heavily, steadily, implacably. Hekicked the loose fluffy stuff underfoot.
"The biggest storm in twenty years," he told himself. "And if any one ofus in these mountains come out of them alive he'll have something totalk about. It's the real thing."
He went grimly about his fire-making, fixed purpose crystallizing to thesmallest detail. Again he must seek immediately to locate his horse; onecould eat horseflesh if driven to it. He must try to get game of somesort. And every lost hour meant lessened chances of his killing forestmeat; deer and bear and the smaller folk, if they had been caughtnapping, would be scurrying out of the mountains long before now; soonthe solitudes would be utterly barren and empty. He went to Gloria'sbed.
"You'd better get up," he said briefly. "Time to start the day. While weeat I want to talk with you."
She awoke slowly, blinked at him, and only drew her blanket higher abouther chin.
"I am tired," she answered petulantly. "Don't you realize that agirl..."
"I realize," he cut into her sleepy expostulation, "that you are weakand frightened and useless. And that those are three of the many thingsyou've got to get over the shortest way if you don't want to die here."
"I don't know that I care to live," she began, turning with her oldinstinct toward an attitude which before now had robbed him of hisharshness. But his plan was set in cold determination, and he cut hershort again.
"If you don't care, I do. And I am going to pull you through with me, iffor no other reason simply because I have set out to do it, and am notgoing to lie down on the job. What's more, you've got to do your share.I have built the fire; will you get up?"
"No," she flashed out at him, thoroughly awake now. "I won't!"
He stooped, caught the corner of her blankets, and whipped them off.Instinctively, she sought to draw the under-bedding over her, forgettingthat she had not undressed.
"You brute!" she screamed at him.
"Get up," he told her sternly, "or, by heaven, I'll make you!"
She saw his face plainly now as his crackling fire burned higher. It washard, his eyes were ominous. She hesitated and saw in his eyes and in astir of his body that he was going to jerk her to her feet. She flungout of bed at that and upon the far side from him.
"Get your boots on," he ordered. "I don't want you catching cold fromidiotic carelessness, and I won't have you going sick on my hands. Forthe first and last time I'll admit that I don't enjoy driving you like acursed galley-slave. But I'll do it, and do a thorough job of it, if youforce me to it."
She drew on her boots hastily and came to the fire and laced them. Hewas a new man this morning and relentless. She was afraid of him after anew, bewildered fashion.
"I never saw a storm worse than this," he told her. He had cooked thebreakfast because he was in a hurry, and did not care to trust herwasteful fingers with their already precious food. "There must be two orthree feet on the level places by now; ploughing through snow like thatis killing work for a man, and you wouldn't last at it ten minutes." Hehad no intention of speaking contemptuously; she knew that his thoughtwas not trifling with such matters as her feelings. He was merelyindulging in plain talk. "We have enough food for a few days. Afterthat, if we stuck on here and did not find more somehow, we'd die likedogs. Therefore we are going to get ready to beat it out the firstchance we get."
"But if I wouldn't last ten minutes, as you so elegantly put it?"
"Not as you are; not as the snow is. But I'm hoping that before it's toolate we'll get clear weather, a sun, a thaw, and freezing nights. Thenwe could tackle it on the crust. And your job now is to get yourselfready for that one chance."
Her anger at the indignity already done her whipped out the sarcasm:
"By getting ready, I suppose you mean for me to pack my trunk and orderthe expressman at the door?"
He looked at her with a long, impersonal stare which bewildered her; shewas at utter loss to read its meaning until he spoke:
"You are to pack what endurance you've got into your muscles. You are tomake up your mind to call up all of the grit that's in you. You'll needboth. And you are to quit lying around and getting weaker every day;you've got little enough time to harden yourself, so you are going totake on the job right now."
She gasped, incredulous. He nodded sternly.
"Gloria," he said tersely, "I am going to do all that I can for both ofus. You are going to do all that you can. That is final."
She bit her lips and gave him her scornful silence. The blood was redand hot in her cheeks.
She ignored him when he called crisply that breakfast was ready. Therewere limits to her obedience, she thought rebelliously. To be told dothis, do that, to arise when this man's body was rested, to eat when hisstomach was empty, was intolerable. King looked at her and had theunderstanding to grasp something of her thought. So he explained:
"I want you to come outside with me. You'll find it hard work. It wouldbe a first-rate idea if you'd fortify your strength by the little bitof nourishment which we can afford to take. No? Well, I'm sorry.--Here."He offered her the pieces of a sack he had cut in two for her. "Tiethose about your feet to keep them from freezing."
"When I want your advice, I'll ask for it," she retorted icily.
"Very well," he answered. "And I can't make you eat if you don't wantto. After all, perhaps you are not hungry." He set aside her portion."You'll have the appetite for that when we get back."
She had the appetite now. But she would prefer to starve, she honestlythought at the moment, than eat when he told her to eat. Now he finishedin silence. She saw him glance at his watch. Her heart seemed scarcelyto stir in her breast; then slowly it began to beat, swifter andswifter, hammering wildly. He had said that she was going out with him;what he promised to do, she realized again, he would do, if it werehumanly possible. She wanted to run, run anywhere, just to be lost tohim. And yet she stood stock-still and rigid, while her heart hastenedand leaped and her mind sought to grasp the thing to do. She must gowith him, do what he told her like a slave, as he had said, or he wouldmake her. Her reason said directly: "You will go without a word." Andyet, when he arose to his feet and knocked his pipe out and looked ather, her reason fled before the flood of the passionate wilfulness ofthe old Gloria, and she cried shrilly:
"I won't! I won't! I am not your slave and I am not going to jump atyour bidding! You can't make me; you shan't make me. _I won't!_"
He had hoped for better than this. He came closer and looked intentlyinto her eyes, seeking to measure what endurance and steadfastness andstubbornness were hers. But her eyes showed him only glimpses of astorm-tossed soul.
"I will make you," he said harshly. "So help me God, Gloria, I will makeyou. And I am through talking; I am sick of talk. Come with me."
She drew back and back in white-lipped fury.
"You don't _dare_...."
"Listen to me! We are down to bare elementals now; can't you see it? Itis no question of what we'd like to do or dislike. It is a question oflife and death. If to let you have your way were anything other thansuicide, I'd let you have it. If I thought that you would listen toreason, I'd stop to reason with you. But as things are, I've got nothingleft me but tell you what to do; and you've got to do as I say."
"My life is my own, to do with it as I please. I do not please to obeyyour commands."
Her tortured heart surged up in wild triumph as he turned; it sanksickly as he came back. He had a piece of rope in his hand, the heavyhalf-inch rope which had served to tie a horse.
"You would tie me!" she gasped. "Me!"
"No," he said tersely. "As though you were any other fractious animalrefusing discipline when refusal means death, I am going to whip you!"
"God!" screamed Gloria. "Oh, my God!"
For again he but said simply the thin
g which he meant to do. And sheknew. Yet the consummation was monstrous, unthinkable. She would notbelieve it; at the last minute his lifted arm would fail him; GodHimself would wither it; undreamed rescuers would come; the earth wouldopen ... _something_ would save her from this humiliation which wouldkill her.
"While I count three," said King. And steadily, though there was apallor on his own face, which should have told her the terriblerelentlessness of his intention, he counted: "One, two, three."
She put her face into her hands and shivered, and felt the fear of oneunder the flashing guillotine. She willed to move, to obey, at thistardy second, but something within her, stronger than herself, held herback. "_I won't!_" she screamed. The blow fell swiftly. The rope cutthrough the air with vicious sibilance and fell across the stoopedshoulders. The pain was immediate, hot and searing, and Gloriashrieked--once only--and grew still. She dropped her hands and looked athim, her face as white as a dead girl's, her eyes as unfathomable as amaniac's. She who had never been whipped in all of her life, she whosesoft white body had been held inviolate by idolizing parents, she whohad come to hold her own person as sacred as that of a high princess--tobe beaten by a man! To be lashed across her shoulders with a horse'stie-rope. She, Gloria Gaynor, to have her bedding ripped off her, to becommanded to do a man's bidding--and to be whipped!
She had known fear, blind, paralysing terror. She had suffered indignityand experienced an insulted resentment that seared through her like ahot iron. She had known pain, merciless bodily pain. Now she was plungedinto stupor. But that stupor was of only the fraction of a second induration. A flash as of white fire flared through her brain. In a soulin torment something had happened. Something had been killed withinher--or something had been born. A blow at a man's hand had seemed tocut through her being; it had separated body and spirit. She wasconscious of the body as though she stood apart and looked down at it.He could beat that; he was stronger. The spirit rose above it--a spiritbathed in floods of fire. She was in the sudden fierce grip of suchanger as kills, of such defiance as suffers death and does not yield.
"I won't go with you," she cried. "You may beat me; you may kill me ifyou like, unthinkable brute that you are. I will not follow you now; Iwill never follow one step ever. I have listened to you; now listen tome! I would rather die than be brought to safety by you. If I cannotfind the way home without your help, I do not want ever to get home. Iam not afraid of you or your rope. I had rather feel a clean rope acrossmy shoulders until they were bloody than your vile hand on mine."
"You will do what I tell you to do," he said thickly. "It is the onlyway. I will make you."
Blazing eyes burning in a death-white face gave him his only answer.His own face now was no less white; iron-bodied as he was, he wastrembling. Yet he lifted the rope. To strike the second blow. Not justto frighten her, but to strike. She read his purpose clearly, and shecould not restrain a shudder of her flesh. But she did not draw backfrom him, and she did not cry out. She meant what she had said, or whatsome re-born Gloria had said for her; he might kill her, but she wouldnot follow him.
And then Mark King, as he was about to strike, stayed his hand at thelast moment and hurled the rope far from him, and whirled about and lefther.