he rocks
and to set her swinging as it had swung the roll of bedding. She climbed
on. King ordered and she obeyed; she waited for him to go up, further
ahead; for him to call to her and draw in on the rope. Stage by stage,
weary stages fraught with terror, she toiled up and up and up. And so at
last, when it seemed to her that no strength remained in her, she came
to King's side at the gloomy entrance of Gus Ingle's cave. The formless
black void before her which under other circumstances would have
repelled, now invited. It offered shelter and rest and protection. She
crept by King with never a backward glance, and threw herself face down
on the uneven floor.

_Chapter XXI_

A long time King stood at the mouth of the cave, looking forth upon the
newly whitened world. The look of the thickening sky, the wintry sting
of the rushing air, the businesslike way in which the snow swirled and
fell created a condition upon which he had not counted and for which he
had no relish. This was more like a mid-winter blizzard than any storm
had any business being so early in the season. For many hours already
the snow had been falling, piling up in the mountain passes; if it kept
on at this rate through another day and night--well, he and Gloria had
best be getting out without any loitering.

He looked at his watch; not yet eleven o'clock. Need for haste; the day
would be short. Before darkness shut down he had half a dozen hours,
hours for methodical search. Here was one of Gus Ingle's caves; another,
he knew, was directly below and at the base of the cliffs; the third
should be near. It was the third that he was chiefly interested in. He
recalled the words in the old Bible: "We come to the First Caive and
then we come to Caive number three and two!" There lay significance in
the order of Ingle's numerals; first, three, and two. Two of the caves
were for any one to see; before now King had been in both of them. Hence
it must be that Gus Ingle's treasure lay in the third. That one King
must locate. And without too much delay. He looked down at Gloria. She
lay motionless just as she had thrown herself down.

Taking his rope with him King made what haste he could going down the
cliffs. The sides of the ravine were littered with dead wood, drift and
limbs that had broken off the few battered trees above. He gathered as
heavy a load of dry branches as he could handle, bound them about with
his rope, and, fighting his way all th