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 lungs with a deep and grateful breath of satisfaction.  In a day or two he would be able to carry on again, to do his part.

He turned his head, lifting it a trifle; already he had thought of Gloria, and now he sought her.  The fire had burned down to a handful of glowing coals; Gloria, then, must be asleep.  For that, too, he was grateful.  He had but faint remembrance and dim knowledge of what tasks must have fallen to her lot, but his mind, active from the moment his eyes flew open, was quick to understand that the burdens had fallen upon her shoulders and that she must have been in dire need of rest and sleep.

He could not see her anywhere; no doubt she lay in the shadowy dark beyond the dying fire.  He lay back, staring up into the gloom above him.  It was thinning; day was coming or had come already.  A day with sunshine!  They could go out on the crust by the time that he was able to be about——­