* * * * *

King left him gloating and placing his treasures back in his box.  In his heart he knew that Brodie would come again.  Soon.  It began to look as though Brodie had the bulge on the situation.  For that which Mark King could not come at by fair means Brodie meant to have by foul.  For he had little faith in the new “hidin’-place.”

But on a near-by knoll, where she sat with her back to a tree, was Gloria.  He turned toward her; she waved.  He saw that Brodie and two men with him were looking out of a window of the old Honeycutt barn; he heard one of them laughing.  They were looking at Gloria——­

King quickened his step to come to her, his blood ruffled by a new anger which he did not stop to reason over.  He could imagine the look in Swen Brodie’s evil little eyes.

Chapter VII

Gloria was genuinely glad to see King returning to her.  She came to meet him, smiling her glad welcome.

“It seemed that you were gone hours,” she explained.  “I never saw such a dreary, lonesome place as this sleepy little town.  It gives me the fidgets,” she concluded laughingly.

“These old mining camps have atmospheres all their own,” he admitted understandingly.  “Once they were the busiest, most frantic spots of the whole West; thousands of men hurrying up and down, all full of great, big, golden hopes.  They’re gone, but I sometimes half believe their ghosts hang on; the air is full of that sort of thing.  A dead town turned into a ghost town.  It gets on your nerves.”

She nodded soberly.

“That’s what I felt, though I didn’t reason it all out.”  Her quick smile came back as she looked up into his face and confessed:  “My, it’s good to have you back.”

“Come,” he said.  “We’ll go and have lunch.  You’ve no idea how much gayer things will look then.”

“We’re not going to eat here,” she announced, already gay.  “I stopped in at a little funny store and ordered some things.  Let’s start back, take them with us, and picnic in the first pretty spot out of sight of old houses.”

As side by side they went along through the sunshine King noted how Brodie and a couple of men came out to look after them.  He heard the low, sullen bass of the unforgettable voice; saw that Brodie had left his companions and was going straight to old Honeycutt’s shanty.  King frowned and for an instant hung on his heel, drawing Gloria’s curious look.

“You don’t like that big man with the big voice,” said Gloria.

“No,” he said tersely.

“It is Swen Brodie?”

“Yes.  But how do you know?”

“Oh, I know lots of things people don’t think I know!  All girls do.  Girls are rather knowing creatures; I wonder if you realize that?”

“I don’t know much about girls,” he smiled at her.