the
ever-deepening wilderness, she just keeping his form in sight, he never
turning nor speaking.

_Chapter XIX_

For his brutal treatment of her Gloria fully meant that in the ripeness
of time he should pay to the uttermost. After that first panic she felt
toward King only such anger as she had never experienced before, never
having cause for it. Perhaps the emotion was the beginning of a new
soul-life for her; certainly here was a moment of reversion to a
condition of unplumbed progenital influences; the scorching anger
arising from such a primitive situation was in itself primal. Hence the
emotion no less that the experience itself was novel; clean, searing
anger.

Following this emotion which rode her and sapped her nervous strength
came a period of faintness and nausea. She closed her eyes and dropped
her head and clung to the horn of her saddle with hands which went cold
and shook. In this mood she called out once to King. But he was far
ahead and did not turn. She did not know whether he had heard her.
Gradually the weakness passed; they topped the ridge and the sun wanned
her. Coolly and collectedly she turned her thoughts upon the
insufferable insult and came back through a sort of circle to her first
intention. Now the decision was cold and stubborn: he would pay and in
full.

King led the way unfalteringly. Time and again she saw no hint of a
trail underfoot or ahead; they broke through brush or made a difficult
way through a thicket of alders or willows and invariably came again
upon a trail. It was evident that the man thought only of his journey's
end 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 of
brush were above her head, where it seemed that she must smother, she
lost all sight of him. Her horse came to a dead halt. She listened and
could not hear the hoofs of his horse. Again panic mastered her, and she
cried out wildly. But just ahead was a mad mountain stream filling the
gorge with its thunder. She knew that King could not hear her; she felt
the desperate certainty that he would not heed could he hear. Then she
struck her horse frantically with her bare hands, and pounded him with
her heels, longing for the sight of King as one athirst in the bad lands
longs for water. The horse snorted, and whirling and plunging went
ripping through the bushes which whipped at her and tore the skin of
hands and fa