f Kipling's poems, compact and companionable, on India paper
between worn covers. With a little sniff she put the book down; just the
sort of thing for Mark King to read, she thought with fine scorn, and
utterly stupid to Gloria. What had she to do with _The Explorer_ and
_Snarleyow_ and _Boots_ and _The Feet of the Young Men_? Less than
nothing, in sheer, regrettable fact. She knew he had one other book with
him, Gus Ingle's Bible! The profaned volume of a murderous, long-dead
scoundrel. What a library for a dainty lady! Gloria suddenly found that
she could have screamed.

She scrambled up and went to peer out around the canvas screen. No sound
out there, for the wind was dead and the snow dropped noiselessly; the
creek in the gorge, because what little draught there was in the air
bore down the canon, sent no sound to her ears. The wilderness of crag
and peak and distant forest was hostile, pitiless. She sought eagerly
for some sign of Gratton. There was none; no smoke this morning denoted
his camp, no longed-for figure toiled upward toward her. But he would
come soon; he must. King had found the gold here; Gratton would know and
come. She would wait, hoping for Gratton's coming before King's return.

Meanwhile King, making his way down the mountain slope, found that his
estimate of the storm was cheerlessly correct; the fluffy stuff
underfoot was in places already knee-deep and mounting steadily higher.
He shook himself and growled in his throat and ploughed through it
vigorously.

"A pair of webs would look like wings before long," he muttered. "Well,
we'll make 'em, since we can't buy 'em."

Making his way back to the point where Buck had broken his tether, King
overlooked no precaution; since he did not care to have his and Gloria's
hiding-place known unnecessarily to Gratton and his following, he
forsook the natural pathway and made slower, hard progress along the
gorge where others would be less likely to chance upon his tracks and
where the tracks themselves would soonest fill with drifting snow.
Passing about many a stunted grove he came at last to the place whence
Buck had fled. He knew that in the general direction indicated by the
line of flight, beyond two ridges, was the valley of the giant sequoias.
There a horse would find water, shelter, and grass. If he failed to find
the animal there--well, then, Buck was well on the trail or lost to King
in any one of a hundred places.

And always as he went, p