tracks showing the way Buck had gone, in full, headlong flight. The rope
was stout and would have broken only were the animal terrified. If
frightened, then there had been something to cause fright. Again, since
the horse fled straight down the slope, that something startling it
would have been at some point directly above. King turned and mounted to
the ridge top again. Here were other tracks, all but obliterated by the
snow which had fallen since they were made. A bear had come up over the
ridge; had frightened the horse into breaking its tether and running.
And the equally startled bear had turned tail and raced off the other
way. Both animals were probably a dozen miles off by now; the bear,
perhaps, twice that distance.

King came back slowly and sat down on his pack. From Gloria's dejected
figure he looked to his watch, from his watch again to the four points
of the compass. His lips tightened. The afternoon was passing and the
dark would come early.

"Are you up to crowding ahead on foot?" he called to Gloria. "If you
have the nerve we can really make better time that way, anyhow, from now
on. Can you do it?"

At first she did not try to answer. But when he shouted to her again,
his voice hard with anger, she moaned miserably:

"I am sick; I am dying, I think. I can't go on."

King grunted disgustedly.

He let Gloria lie where she was until she had rested. Then he went to
her and put his hands under her arms and lifted her to her feet. She was
limp and pale, her eyes shut, her lashes looking unusually black against
the pallor of her pinched cheeks.

"We'll go back to the cave for the night, after all," he told her
quietly. "It's the inevitable, and that's one thing there's no sense
bucking against. Stand up!"

But the slight figure in its boyish garb drooped against him; Gloria's
head moved the slightest bit in sidewise negation; her pale lips stirred
soundlessly.

"What?" asked King.

"I can't," came her whisper.

He judged that here was no time for foolishness, but rather the time for
each one to do his part if the two of them lived to make all of this an
unpleasant memory.

"You've got to," he informed her crisply. "I can't carry you and the
pack and rifle and everything, can I? I am going back; the rest is up to
you. Do you want to lie here and die to-night?"

"I don't care," said Gloria listlessly.

He looked at her curiously. As he drew his hands away she slipped down
and lay as she had