re, closer to
her companion, shrinking from the menace of the mountains.

"Is it going to keep on snowing?" she asked.

This time he shrugged. That was his only answer. She stared at him, a
slow flush came into her cheeks, her eyes hardened.

"Oh, very well," she said coldly.

That was the whole of their conversation save for one curt remark and an
impudent laugh in answer at the end of the scanty meal. Gloria tossed a
piece of bacon into the fire. King looked at her sternly and said:

"Young lady, we may be up against the real thing right now. Nobody but a
fool will do a trick like that."

The laugh was Gloria's.

* * * * *

Once on their way they climbed almost steadily. The air grew rarer and
colder. The snowflakes became smaller, at last a fine sifting like sand
particles that cut at hands and face viciously. No longer were there
groves to shelter them; on all sides bare, hostile rocks, and only
occasionally a sparse growth of sprawling, earth-hugging dwarf pine and
cedar, over which King strode as over so much low, tangled brush. Then
came a long ridge, a spine from which the world dropped almost sheer on
both sides, with the wind raging so that it seemed Buck must be blown
off his feet, or the girl torn from the saddle and borne far out like a
thistledown. With frightened eyes, which she strove vainly to keep
closed, she saw long, broken slopes; occasionally when the air cleared,
a frothing torrent; and once, at the end of a couple of hours, far down
in a distant level land, a growth of giant timber. She thought that King
was making his way down there. But his purpose soon became plain even to
her; he was keeping high on the ridges, going about the head of the
ravine which lower down cut like a knife across the timbered tract,
headed for what he took to be Gus Ingle's cave. A mile away she saw it;
a great, ragged, black hole in a high mass of rock, close to the crest
of the next ridge.

She was wrapped warmly and yet here the icy breath of the wind pierced
the fabric of her wrappings and hurt her to the bone. She watched King
wonderingly as he hastened on; did the man have no sense of bodily
discomfort? Certainly he gave no sign. He was like an animal; she found
room for a flash of scorn in the thought. For so she was pleased to
consider him lower in the scale than herself.

At another time she might have seen the world about her clothed in
grandeur; now its sublimity was