Brodie had just clambered up the ridge and came into view only when his head and bulky shoulders were upthrust beyond a boulder.  He came on until he topped the boulder, standing fully revealed upon its flattish top, the butt of his rifle resting on his boot.  Gloria was suddenly afraid with a new sort of fear.  Though this man was not near enough for her to see the dancing evil of his little eyes, she saw the brutish face in full relief against the sky, and marked the jeer on the ugly mouth.  Her one wild thought was that Brodie would murder them both, shoot them both down in cold blood.  She shuddered.  King was unarmed; Brodie hated King as only a man of Brodie’s kind, bestial and cruel, could hate.  She remembered what her father had told her; of the death of Andy Parker.  She began tugging at King.

“Take me away!” she gasped.  And then, with a terrified look over her shoulder:  “Oh, he is terrible!”

Perhaps Brodie heard.  The stiff wind blew her words away from her lips, tossing them toward him.

“Steady, Gloria,” said King in a low voice.  “I’ll take you away.  But we needn’t hurry.  He won’t hurt you.”  And, to further soothe her, he added:  “He’d be afraid to shoot, were he minded to.  The noise of the gun, you know.  And he doesn’t know how many there are with us, or how close they are.  Come, we’ll go this way.”

He turned his back square on Brodie and with his hand firm on Gloria’s arm led her along the ridge.  They passed about a wind-worn rock, and Gloria looked back, hoping that it had hidden them already from Brodie; she saw his head over the top of it, felt upon her the eyes which she could not see, lost as they were under his hat-brim and hurried on.  She ran ahead now with King hastening his step to overtake her.

Chapter X

That night when King and Gloria said “good-night” an odd constraint lay over them.  To Gloria, King seemed stiff and preoccupied; she herself had red spots in her cheeks and was nervously tense.  The abrupt approach of Brodie with his repulsive face—­at a moment when the world swirled away from her underfoot and a divine madness was in her blood—­the reaction and revulsion—­all this and the resultant conflict of emotions had worn her out.  She was sure of nothing in all the world—­for once was not in the least certain of herself—­when she drew her hand out of King’s and hastened to her guests in the house.  It was with a sense of relief that she heard the door close, shutting her in with familiar, homey objects and faces, opposing its barrier against the wilderness and a man who was a part of the wilderness.  She knew that King was going back to the mountains; she knew when he left, going swiftly and silently, like a shadow among shadows; she knew that this time he went armed, carrying her father’s rifle.

For Mark King knew that it was inevitable that his path and Swen Brodie’s should run closer and closer; that trails made by two men like King and Brodie could never converge harmoniously; that there was too much at stake; that it was well to be ready for Brodie in an ugly mood in an encounter so far removed from the habitations of men that a deed done would pass without human commentary.