unspoken question. "I am not going to cook for you
any more. I have had a hard day of it, doing the man's work. Had you
done the woman's you would have had supper ready for me."

He lighted his pipe with a splinter of burning pine. Then for the first
time he saw the waste of scattered matches on the floor. From them he
looked to her in an amazement so sheer that it left him no word of
expostulation. The suspicion actually came to him that the girl was mad.
It was scarcely conceivable that a perfectly sane individual could do
the things which she had done.

She saw him get up and begin gathering up all of the foodstuff. He
carried it to the back of the cave, where he passed out of her sight in
the dark. He was gone ten minutes and came back empty-handed. He made
the second trip, after which there was left on a shelf of rock only half
a dozen matches and enough food for one scanty meal. This Gloria
ignored.

"Do you think," she said contemptuously, "that what you have hidden back
there I couldn't find?"

"You could find it but you won't," he returned with quiet assurance that
jerked the question from her:

"Why?"

"Because," he grunted contemptuously, "you are too much of a coward to
go back there to look for it."

And in her heart she knew that here was but the mere truth. For, why
was she not already in Gratton's camp? Her opportunity had come and
gone--because she had been afraid.

_Chapter XXV_

King awoke filled with resolve and definite purpose. It was pitch dark,
but he sensed the coming of wintry dawn. He drew on his boots and went
to look out. It was still snowing, heavily, steadily, implacably. He
kicked the loose fluffy stuff underfoot.

"The biggest storm in twenty years," he told himself. "And if any one of
us in these mountains come out of them alive he'll have something to
talk about. It's the real thing."

He went grimly about his fire-making, fixed purpose crystallizing to the
smallest detail. Again he must seek immediately to locate his horse; one
could eat horseflesh if driven to it. He must try to get game of some
sort. And every lost hour meant lessened chances of his killing forest
meat; deer and bear and the smaller folk, if they had been caught
napping, would be scurrying out of the mountains long before now; soon
the solitudes would be utterly barren and empty. He went to Gloria's
bed.

"You'd better get up," he said briefly. "Time to start the day. While we
eat I want to