...  What King said in answer to his friend’s approval was by way of a bantering: 

“Miracles do happen!  Here’s Ben Gaynor playing he’s a bird of paradise.  Or emulating Beau Brummel.  Which is it, Ben?  And whence the fine idea?”

Gaynor, with a strange sort of smile, King thought, half sheepish and the other half tender, cast a downward glance along the encasement of the outer man.  Silk shirt, a very pure white; bright tie, very new; white flannels, very spick and span; silken hose and low white ties.  This garb for Ben Gaynor the lumberman, who felt not entirely at his ease, hence the sheepish grin; a fond father decked out by his daughter as King well guessed; hence that gleam of tenderness.

“Gloria’s doings,” he chuckled.  “Sent ahead from San Francisco with explicit commands.  I guess I’d wear a monkey-jacket if she said so, Mark.”  But none the less his eyes, as they appraised the rough garb of his guest, were envious.  “I can breathe better, just the same, in boots like yours,” he concluded.  He stretched his long arms high above his head.  “I wish I could get out into the woods for a spell with you, Mark.”

And he did not know, did not in the least suspect, that he was failing the minutest iota in his loyalty to Gloria and her mother.  He was thinking only of their guests, whom he could not quite consider his own.

“The very thing,” said King eagerly.  “That’s just what I want.”

But Gaynor shook his head and his thin, aristocratic face was briefly overcast, and for an instant shadows crept into his eyes.

“No can do, Mark,” he said quietly.  “Not this time.  I’ve got both hands full and then some.”

King leaned forward in his chair, his hand gripping Gaynor’s knee.

“Ben, it’s there.  I’ve always known it, always been willing to bet my last dollar.  Now I’d gamble my life on it.”

Gaynor’s mouth tightened and his eyes flashed.

“Between you and me, Mark,” he said in a voice which dropped confidentially, “I’d like mighty well to have my share right now.  I’ve gone in pretty deep here of late, a little over my head, it begins to look.  I’ve branched out where I would have better played my own game and been content with things as they were going.  I——­” But he broke off suddenly; he was close to the edge of disloyalty now.  “What makes you so sure?” he asked.

“I came up this time from Georgetown.  You remember the old trail, up by Gerle’s, Red Cliff and Hell Hole, leaving French Meadows and Heaven’s Gate and Mount Mildred ’way off to the left.  I had it all pretty much my own way until I came to Lookout Ridge.  And who do you suppose I found poking around there?”

“Not old Loony Honeycutt!” cried Gaynor.  Then he laughed at himself for allowing an association of ideas to lead to so absurd a thought.  “Of course not Honeycutt; I saw him last week, as you wanted me to, and he is cabin-bound down in Coloma as usual.  Can’t drag his wicked old feet out of his yard.  Who, then, Mark?”