* * *

King left him gloating and placing his treasures back in his box. In his
heart he knew that Brodie would come again. Soon. It began to look as
though Brodie had the bulge on the situation. For that which Mark King
could not come at by fair means Brodie meant to have by foul. For he had
little faith in the new "hidin'-place."

But on a near-by knoll, where she sat with her back to a tree, was
Gloria. He turned toward her; she waved. He saw that Brodie and two men
with him were looking out of a window of the old Honeycutt barn; he
heard one of them laughing. They were looking at Gloria----

King quickened his step to come to her, his blood ruffled by a new anger
which he did not stop to reason over. He could imagine the look in Swen
Brodie's evil little eyes.

_Chapter VII_

Gloria was genuinely glad to see King returning to her. She came to meet
him, smiling her glad welcome.

"It seemed that you were gone _hours_," she explained. "I never saw such
a dreary, lonesome place as this sleepy little town. It gives me the
fidgets," she concluded laughingly.

"These old mining camps have atmospheres all their own," he admitted
understandingly. "Once they were the busiest, most frantic spots of the
whole West; thousands of men hurrying up and down, all full of great,
big, golden hopes. They're gone, but I sometimes half believe their
ghosts hang on; the air is full of that sort of thing. A dead town
turned into a ghost town. It gets on your nerves."

She nodded soberly.

"That's what I felt, though I didn't reason it all out." Her quick smile
came back as she looked up into his face and confessed: "My, it's good
to have you back."

"Come," he said. "We'll go and have lunch. You've no idea how much gayer
things will look then."

"We're not going to eat _here_," she announced, already gay. "I stopped
in at a little funny store and ordered some things. Let's start back,
take them with us, and picnic in the first pretty spot out of sight of
old houses."

As side by side they went along through the sunshine King noted how
Brodie and a couple of men came out to look after them. He heard the
low, sullen bass of the unforgettable voice; saw that Brodie had left
his companions and was going straight to old Honeycutt's shanty. King
frowned and for an instant hung on his heel, drawing Gloria's curious
look.

"You don't like that big man with the big voice," said Gloria.

"No," he said te