For a little while she sat motionless, her brain reeling.  But almost immediately her brain cleared and there stood forth as in a white light the one thought:  Mark King was about to die, and he must not die!  For he was Mark King, valiant and full of vigour and vitality, a man strong and hardy and lusty, a man who would not be beaten!  He was the victor, not the vanquished.  And, further, she, Gloria King, Mark King’s wife, would not let him die!  He was hers, her own; she would hold him back to her.  Had he not come to her when she needed him, and done his uttermost for her?  If now she was filled with life and the pulsating love of life, it was his doing.  And now it was her task—­her glorious, God-given privilege!—­to do for him, to fight for him, ignoring the odds against her, to save him.  She sprang up filled with stubborn, confident determination.  He was hers and she would not let him die.  She had learned to fight; she had fought against Gratton, against Brodie; she would fight as she had never done until now against death itself.

He was big and she little, yet she dragged his bed close to his side and got her arms about him and lifted him enough to get him upon the blankets.  She ran to her fire and piled and piled wood on it until the flames roared noisily and brightened everything about her.  She ran back to him and knelt again and slipped her hand inside his shirt, seeking his heart.  The deep chest was barely warmer than death; the heart stirred only faintly.  But it did beat.  She sought the wound Brail’s bullet had made and found it in his side.  There was blood on her hands but she did not notice it now.  She found where the bullet had entered and where it had torn its way out through his flesh.  She did not know if any vital organ lay in that narrow span or if any major artery had been severed or if the rifle-ball had merely glanced along the ribs and been deflected by them; she only knew that he had lost much blood, that it must have gushed freely while he strove with Swen Brodie, and that now it must be stopped utterly.  There seemed to be so little blood left in the pale, battered body!  She did see how in the intense cold it had coagulated over the wounds, checking its own flow.  But she did not mean for him to lose another precious drop.  And then it was that Gloria’s hands achieved the first really important work they had ever done in her life.  She tore bits away from her own under-garments and made soft pads over each wound; with their butcher-knife she cut a long strip from a blanket.  This she wound about his limp body, making a long, tight bandage.  All this time he had not moved; she had to bend close to be sure that he still breathed.  She got snow and wiped his face clean of blood, touching the closed eyelids gently.

When still the eyes remained shut and he looked like one already dead, she longed wildly for some stimulant.  There was coffee; she would make hot coffee do.  She got the coffee-pot among the coals, filled it with snow to melt, recklessly poured coffee into it.  Then, while she awaited the slow heating, she returned to him and for the first time saw how wet his boots were.