r. But the
suspicion brought its wild flutter; she sprang up and grew rigid in
tense fright; she felt a strange, glad rush of joy as she saw his hat
bobbing up and toward her along the mountain flank. When he rejoined
her she was staring off at nothingness, her back to him.

He lashed the two canvas rolls together, swung them up to his shoulders,
took frying-pan, coffee-pot, and rifle in his free hand, and nodded
toward the small pack of provisions which had been left over from lunch.
"Better bring those," he advised briefly. "There's no telling what may
be in the cards." He went on along the knife-edge of the ridge, down
into a little depression, up beyond. She hesitated, saw that he had not
looked, bit her lip angrily, and snatched up the parcel. Then she
followed him, stooping against the wind.

When she came up with him he had thrown down his pack at the very edge
of the gorge. She came to his side, leaned forward, and looked down. Far
below plunged the wildest torrent she had ever seen; it hurled itself in
mad haste between boulders; it shot down over dizzy falls; it made for
itself a white mantle of frothing waters; it looked as black as ebony in
sections of smoother channel and as cold as death; it spun in
whirlpools, it filled the air with its din. And King meant to go down to
it; to cross it; to climb the dizzy cliff upon the further side! She
knew from his look, without asking. For just across the chasm from them
in the highest of the cliffs was the yawning black-mouthed place of
horrors. If one slipped on those bare rocks, clambering down or climbing
on the further side! She sat down suddenly; now when her lip was caught
between her teeth it was to fight back the tears. The world was so cold
and stern and brutal; this man was so much like the environment; she was
so woefully, desperately heart-sick. On this lofty crest of a
devil-tossed land she felt the insignificance of a fly clinging to the
brow of an abyss.

King went about his task methodically. Gloria watched him rather than
look across the rocky gorges. Slowly and with difficulty he made his way
down the steep wall of rocks, dragging and pulling the roll of bedding
and provisions after him. It required perhaps twenty minutes for him to
get to the bottom. She wondered where he would attempt a crossing; the
water looked so black in the pools, so violent over the rapids. He went
up-stream; there lay an old cedar log so that it spanned the current,
its