When he came up over the rock again, gone but a few moments, true to his word, she ran to meet him.  She had not been afraid, but engulfed by an emotion which had seemed not born within her but a mighty emanation of the woods themselves, and which in its effect was not unlike fear.  An emotion which, now that King was here, was lifted out of her and blown away like a whiff of smoke before the mountain winds.  She looked at him with new curiosity, wondering at herself, wondering at him that his presence or absence could make all this world of difference.  She saw him in a new, bright light, as one may see for the first time a stranger on whom much depends.  He was strong, she thought; strong of body, of mind, of heart.  He was like the mountains, which were not complete without him.  His eyes were frank and clear and honest; and yet they were, for her, filled with mystery.  For he was man, and his physical manhood was splendidly, vigorously vital.  She had danced with men and boys, flirted with them, made friends of a sort with them.  Yet none of them had set her wondering as King did.  The repressed curl of his short, crisp hair, the warm tan of his face and hands and exposed throat, the very gleam of his perfect teeth, and the flow of the muscles under his shirt—­these things by the sheer trick of opposites sent her fancies scurrying.  To Gratton.  How unlike the two men were.  And how glad she was that now it was King coming up over the rock to her....  It had been to Gratton that she had said:  “He is every inch a man!” She stopped abruptly and waited for him to come to her side.

“We must be going,” he said.  “You have rested?”

She nodded, and he began gathering up coffee-pot, cups, scraps of paper; bits of food he left for bird and chipmunk, but the tin cans were dropped behind an old log and covered over with leaves.  She would not have thought of that; she understood the reason and was glad that their own arrival here had not been spoiled for them by finding a litter of other campers’ leavings.  He stamped out the few embers of their fire, and, not entirely satisfied, though there was but little danger of forest fires here in green young June, nevertheless went to the creek for water and doused the one or two black charred sticks which still emitted thin wisps of smoke.

“Those men?” queried Gloria when it was clear that he would require prompting.  “Who were they?”

“Some chaps from Coloma, packing off into the woods.”

“Swen Brodie?” she demanded.

“Yes.  Swen Brodie and half a dozen of his ilk.”

“We will overtake them?  Is that why you are in a hurry now?”

“No.  We won’t see anything of them.  That’s what I went to find out.  We are within a few hundred yards of the fork in the trail; they turned off to the right, as I thought they would.”

“You would like to follow after them?” She gathered that from a vague something in his voice and from a look, not so vague, in his eyes.  “If I were not along you would go the way they have gone?”