heavy. Gloria drew back
hastily, glancing about her, found the only hiding-place offered, and
slipped behind the big rock.

Presently Benny came on. She heard him from a distance; he was talking
to himself excitedly, jabbering broken fragments of sentences, twice
breaking into his hideous dry cackle of laughter. She shivered; his
utterances sounded mad.

And mad they were. Perhaps his drug had run out; certainly for a nervous
man there had been ample cause for jangling nerves. He jabbered
constantly, his mutterings at last coming to her in jumbled words as
Benny drew on.

He was talking about "gold," and he chuckled. He mentioned names,
Brodie's and Jarrold's and Gratton's and another name, and he chuckled
again. Gloria peered cautiously from the shelter of her rock. He was
very near now, struggling with the smaller pack and his rifle and the
heavy bundle in his sack. She thought that he was going to pass without
seeing her. But just as he passed abreast of her hiding-place something
prompted Benny to jerk up his head. He saw her and stopped suddenly; she
saw his eyes. And she knew on the instant that if the man were not stark
mad, at least he was not entirely sane. She lifted her rifle, cold all
over; if he came another step nearer she would shoot....

"It's mine!" Benny shrieked at her. "Mine, I tell you!"

He broke into a run, passing her, leaving the trail, floundering down
the ridge the shortest way. His rifle encumbered him; she saw it fall
into the snow, while Benny, clutching his gunny-sack in both arms,
stumbled on. He fell; he rose, shrieking curses. She watched,
fascinated. The pack on his back slipped around in front of him; Benny
tore at it and cursed it and hurled it from him. Still hugging his gold
he was gone, far down the steep slope. Gloria shuddered and stepped back
into her own trail. She could hear Benny cursing faintly. Like an echo
came another cry across the ridges; the cry of a starving cat.

_Chapter XXXIII_

Mark King awakened to a sensation of piercing cold. In his weakened
condition the chill struck deep, the pain of it sore in his wound. He
moved a little to draw his blankets closer about him and, as an awaking
impression, found that his strength, even though slowly, was surely
returning to him. He was still terribly weak, but, thank God--and
Gloria!--that hideous faintness in which he had been unable to stir hand
or foot or to speak above a whisper had passed. He filled his