“You are like these flowers,” King said quite gravely and with sincerity.  Gloria told him, also gravely and sincerely, that that was the finest compliment she had ever received—­she hoped that he meant it.  At least she understood and she would like to be like them.

His camp was in a little nearly level spot, sheltered by crags and so hidden by them that one must come fairly upon it before guessing its proximity.  Back of it rose cliffs so sheer that Gloria craned her neck to look up at them.  Below were the headwaters of the creek; across it the steep slope of the other canon wall.  On all hands bleak, naked rock with tiny blossoms here and there between in the shallow soil and the carpeting of pygmy pine and flattened cedar.  Only infrequently did a tree, with roots gripping like claws, lift its ragged top above the big boulders.  A wild place, savagely silent save for the hissing of the wind around the cliffs above.

King brought water from the creek.  He showed her where he had hidden his few camp utensils; the one small pot, one frying-pan, one cup, one spoon.  To these he added his big-bladed pocket-knife.  He made a fire where already there was a little heap of charred coals against a blackened rock, and they made coffee and cooked bacon.  Gloria used a stick which he had pointed for her to turn the bacon.  They took turns with the one cup.

“What was it like up on the cliff tops?” King did not know; he had not yet been up there.  And would it take long to climb them?  Not over an hour, he estimated; if she wasn’t tired?  It was decided that King would have his postprandial smoke up there; where they could sit and look out “across the top of the world.”

As they climbed they came into a current of rushing air.  Higher up the wind strengthened.  They stood poised on boulders, their shoulders thrown back, heads up, lungs filling.  Gloria’s hair was whipped out from under her turban; it blew across her face; a strand of it fluttered across King’s eyes, brushed his lips.  He gave her his hand up a steep place down which they sent a cascade of disintegrating stone.  They stood side by side, shoulders brushing, resting, breathing deeply.  Perceptibly the air thinned; one’s lungs were taxed to capacity here; the blood clamoured for deeper drafts, for more oxygen.  When they came to the top Gloria dropped down, panting, though they had stopped many times on the way.  She closed her eyes and her senses swam through a vast blur.  King gave her a drink from his canteen; she merely thanked him with her eyes.

But in ten minutes she had rested and was on her feet, her slim body leaning against the wind.  He stood by her and they looked out across the mountains.  For what seemed to Gloria a thousand miles there was the broken wilderness of mountains gashed with gorges, crowned with peaks, painted with sunlight and distance, glinting white here, veiled in purple there.  She gasped at the bigness of it; it spoke of the vastness