“... one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated—­so: 
  Something hidden.  Go and find it.  Go and look behind the Ranges—­
  Something lost behind the Ranges.  Lost and waiting for you.  Go!”

Gloria understood.  In her heart, lifting her eyes from the white glory of the earth to the bright glory of the sky, she thanked God that she understood.

Benny and the Italian were still alive and might be near?  That did not in any way affect the fact that there must be wood brought for King’s fire.  She turned back for the rifle and the rope.  She saw that King had not stirred; that he seemed plunged in a deep, quiet sleep.  She stood over him, looking down at him with her love for him softening her eyes.  He was going to get well—­if she did her part.  And her part was so clearly indicated; to give him broth and to keep his fire going.  She did not hesitate and she was not afraid as she went down the cliffs.  She meant to be Mark King’s mate; she meant to be worthy of being his mate.  He had not hesitated, he had not been afraid, when one man against five he dropped down into the lowest cave.  She, like him, was of pioneer stock.  She remembered that impressive monument to pioneer fortitude which stands in the mountains where the highway runs by Donner Lake; as in a vision she saw the little group that crowns the rugged pile.  The woman, the pioneer mother, holding her baby to her breast, pressing on with her own mate, looking fearlessly ahead, daring what might come, not lagging behind the man, rather ready to lead the way should he falter.  It was a glorious thing to have blood like that in her veins; it was the finest thing in the world to be a woman like that woman.

She stepped down into the packed snow at the base of the cliffs.  Here she stood looking up and down the gorge for any sign of Benny or of the Italian or of any other of Brodie’s crowd who might be alive and astir.  But she saw no one; even Gratton’s body, where it had been tumbled out into the snow, was hidden.  She heard the deep, quiet breathing of the pines; the canon stream rushed and gurgled and babbled, shouting as it leaped over fails, flinging spray which the moonlight and starlight made over into jewels.

Gloria worked at her fuel-gathering, working in the snow until her hands and feet were nearly frozen.  But her heart was warm.  Though she made haste and was ever watchful and on the alert, her mind filled with such thoughts as had never come trooping into it before.  Fragmentary, they were like bright bits spinning about a common centre.  She looked up at the wide sky and it was borne in upon her that the universe was mighty and wonderful and infinite; she looked into her own heart and saw where she had been small and silly and finite.  She saw that the snow-covered ridges stretching endlessly were like a concrete symbol of that infinity which extended above and about her; that they were clothed in beauty.