Brodie made a last remark and laughed; the others laughed after him, and the four looked toward Jarrold and Gloria.  Brodie, leaning back, caught up a bottle and drank, and thereafter passed the bottle to the man nearest him.  Gloria was quick to see that he had set his rifle away somewhere against the rock wall in the shadows.  Only Brail still clung to his gun; if he should set it aside—­if there should come a moment when she could slip to the cave’s mouth—­in the outside dark, despite the deep snow, she would at least have a chance to escape from them.  Even though she had nowhere to go, she longed wildly to be away from them.  When their eyes roved toward her she thought that she would rather be dead, out in the clean, white snow, than here.

She wondered if these men were as utterly callous as they seemed.  Gratton, so newly dead, appeared forgotten.  They laughed and drank, they smoked and spat, they soiled her with their eyes and their talk, quite as though they had neither knowledge nor memory of manslaughter done.  Benny alone, for a brief period, appeared nervous.  She wondered what he was doing; he had rolled back his coat-sleeve; he was jabbing at his bare forearm with something which now and then caught and reflected the firelight.  After a long time she heard a long sigh from Benny; he pulled down his coat-sleeve.  The others laughed again.

“It’s time we had a little talk,” said Brodie out of a short silence.  “Without anybody’s skirt listening in.  Leave her back there, further from the front door, Jarrold.  Where she can’t get an earful, and where she can’t make a getaway; you come on over here a minute.”

Gloria made no resistance but sank down limply where Jarrold left her and watched him as he slouched over to the fire.  She sought to hear their words, to read the looks on their faces.  But she caught only a monotonous mutter, unintelligible but evil, and saw only the bottle passing from one to the other.  Brodie finished it and hurled it from him so that it broke noisily.  A few times she heard them laugh; she could distinguish Brodie’s throaty, bull tone and Benny’s nervous cackle.  Jarrold did not appear made for mirth, and him she feared most of all; yes, even more than Brodie, whom she had seen do murder, and Benny who, she knew, had done murder.  Brail and the Italian said little; they were men to follow where other men led.  She fancied that several times Steve Jarrold’s little eyes left the bottle, the faces of his companions, and even the pile of gold to quest for her face in the dark.

“Come here,” commanded Brodie.

She started.  He was calling to her!  She got up and moved forward slowly.  It was obey or be dragged to him.  In the pale light by the fire, standing so that the blaze was between the five men and herself, she stopped.  Until now she had been very white; suddenly she knew that her face must be flooded with bright red; she could feel the burn of it.  The eyes of the men seemed veritably to disregard her clothes, to make her feel another Lady Godiva.