The next day she put on another pretty dress, did her hair in her favourite way, and went about the house as gay as a lark. The day dragged by; King did not come. By nightfall the look in Gloria's eyes had altered, and a stubborn expression played havoc with the tenderer curves of her mouth. She resented at this late date King's way of going; not only had he not told her good-bye, he had left no word with her father for her. She sat smiling over a letter received some days ago from Gratton—after she had retrieved the letter from a heap of crumpled papers in her bedroom waste-paper basket. She read to her mother fragments, bright, gossipy remarks in Gratton's clever way of saying them; she wrote a long, dashingly composed answer.
Two days later she said to her mother, out of a long silence over the coffee cups:
"Let's go back to San Francisco. This stupid place gets on my nerves."
"Why, of course, dear," agreed Mrs. Gaynor. "I can have everything packed this afternoon, and to-morrow——"
"Nonsense," said Gloria. "You know we can get packed in half an hour."
That day they left Jim Spalding in charge and departed for Truckee to catch a train for San Francisco. Mrs. Gaynor dutifully entrusted to Spalding her husband's message for Mark King. That is to say, that portion of the message which she considered important. Gloria herself left no message with old Jim; not in so many words. But she did impress him with her abundant gaiety, with her eagerness for San Francisco, where all of her best and dearest friends were. If any one should ask old Jim concerning Miss Gloria, Jim would be sure to make it clear that she had no minutest regret in going but a very lively anticipation of the fullest happiness elsewhere.
Chapter IX
Three or four weeks passed before Mark King and Gloria met again. Weeks of busy gaiety on her part, of steady, persistent seeking on his. Now again Gloria and her mother and Ben were at the log house in the mountains, this time with a fresh set of guests. Only one of the former flock had been invited: Mr. Gratton. And this despite Ben Gaynor's uneasy "This chap Gratton, Nellie. He's cutting in pretty strong here of late, and I don't know that I like him. He's too confounded smooth somehow."
King came the day after the guests arrived for a talk with Ben. Gloria knew that he was coming and was coolly prepared to meet him. She gave him a bright little nod, friendly enough but casual, and resumed her lively chatter with her friends. King went off with Gaynor. That night there was no moon, but the stars, those great glittering stars of the Sierra, made the hour softly palpitant. King betook himself to smoke upon that particular, remembered corner of the porch; Gloria, slipping out from a dance, felt the little thrill that would not down when she found him there. In their two chairs, necessarily close together since the nook was so cosily narrow, her shoulder now and then brushing his as she moved, the faint fragrances from her gown and hair blown across his face by the night breeze—for them his pipe hastily laid aside—they sat talking softly or in a pleasant silence. The next morning—the matter seemed to arrange itself with very little help from either—they were to have a ride together This time they would take their lunch. When they said good-night Gloria impulsively gave him her two hands; he remembered how she had done that the first time he had seen her. Her face was lifted up to his; in the starlight he saw her eyes shining softly, gloriously; he saw her mouth, the lips barely apart. For an instant his hands shut down hard on hers; he felt the faint pressure of her own in return. When they heard her mother in the doorway calling, "Gloria, where are you?" they started apart. A strange and unanalysed sense of secrecy had fallen upon them; Gloria whispered, "Good-night, Mark," and then calling, "Here I am, mamma; just cooling off," she went skipping down the porch, slipped her arm about her mother, and carried her back into the house.
* * * * *
Before the new day was fairly come they met in the fringe of pines. Again they shook hands; again for an instant they stood as they had stood last night. They were tremblingly close to the first kiss. Suddenly Gloria, with her colour high and her eyes hidden under lashes which King marvelled at, lashes laid tenderly against her cheeks, pulled her hands out of his and began drawing on her gauntlets. Gravely, as though here were a rite to be approached solemnly, he lifted her into the saddle. They turned their horses and rode up the ridge among the trees.
They heard together the first sleepy twitterings of hidden birds; they saw the black shadows thinning; they watched the light come upon the peaks. Ridges shook off the shadow cloaks, seemed to quiver as they awoke to the new day, grew flushed and rosy. The chill of the early morning air was like wine, sparkling, tingling in the blood. The smell of resinous woods was insistent, the fine bouquet to the rare vintage. The day, the world, themselves—all were young together—all awakening to the full, true, and triumphant meaning of life. They rode a mile with never a spoken word but in a never-broken communion; then it was Gloria who spoke first, saying, as she had said once before: "I love it!"
They followed narrow trails through the ceanothus-bushes, riding one behind the other; they climbed steep trails among the pines; then went down steep trails among granite boulders; they rode side by side through little upland valleys and grassy meadows. They broke off sprays of resinous needles as they rode, inhaling the sharp odours; they stooped for handfuls of fragrant sage; they splashed through swampy places where the grass and stalks of lush flowers swept their stirrups, through rock-bound noisy streams where they must pick their way cautiously, and where the horses snorted and shook their heads and Gloria laughed gleefully. To-day was like the completion of that other day when they had ridden to Coloma—to both it seemed that it was only yesterday. The weeks in between did not matter; they were wiped out of life by the green magic. Unfinished topics, left over from the first ride, presented themselves now to be completed. Once Gloria, speaking of their first woodland luncheon, said "Yesterday." Once King, as they crossed a wild mountain brook, said, "There's one's nest now. On that rock down by the waterfall. Looks like a bit of the rock itself, with moss all about it," and Gloria understood that it was her water-ouzel he was talking about.
"It was springtime yesterday and to-day it's summer!" said Gloria.
"It's always springtime somewhere in the world," answered King. "To-day we'll ride from one season up into the other."
"More magic!" laughed Gloria.
It is always springtime somewhere in the world! As youth knows and remembers, as age forgets. Always a place somewhere for laughter and love and light hands caressing, for bird song and bird mating and colourful flowers. And to-day they were seeking this place among the mountains, riding on expectantly through dark passes, climbing winding trails, looking across deep cañons and blue ridges. Gloria thought dreamily that she would like always to be riding thus, leaving summer behind and below, questing the joyous, full-sapped springtime.
He had promised to show her his latest temporary camp. They came to it before noon at an altitude of well above seven thousand feet. In a grassy open space they left their horses; King carried their lunch bundle and they went on on foot. Along the frothing creek, along the mountain-side through a wild country of dwarfed vegetation. She began to understand a thing he had told her; that the Sierra is the land of dwarf and giant. Pine and cedar and, in one spot he knew, mighty sequoia piercing at the sky; and here pine, dwarfed, pygmied until it was but a mat of twisted, broken twigs carpeting the heights. "And I have walked among the pine tops!" cried Gloria. For up here there was scant soil; here the winds raged and the snow heaped itself high in the late fall and remained, icy-crusted, into late summer; and here, now, the springtime had just come. Never had Gloria seen more beautiful flowers, flowers half so delicate-looking. And yet how hardy they must be, to live here at all!
"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 cañon 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 of the world and of the world's primitive savagery. And yet it did not repel; it fascinated and its message had the seeming of an old, oft-told, and half-forgotten tale. It threatened with its spires as cruel as bared fangs, and yet it beckoned and invited with its blue distances. Always, since the first man fashioned the first club and made him a knife of a jagged flint, has mankind battled with the great mother, the earth who bore him. He has striven with her for his food, warred with her for his raiment, entrenched himself against the merciless attack of the seasons, winter to stab him with icy spear, summer to consume him. And always has he loved her and honoured her, since she is his great mother. Gloria, her thoughts confused by conflicting instincts, inspired and awed, drew closer to King.
"—But to be out here alone!" The utter, utter loneliness of it. She looked at him with new, curious eyes. "Doesn't it bear down on you; don't you feel at times that the loneliness——"
He understood.
"I am used to it, you know. I have never known what it was out here to feel lonely until——"
She waited for him to finish, her eyes on his. Until——?
"Until after our first ride together," he said.
Again she understood. And now she looked away hastily and her cheeks reddened. He was about to tell her that he loved her; his eyes had told her; his lips were shaping to the words "I love you!" And she was suddenly conscious of a wild nutter in her heart; she was trembling as though terrified. Other men had told her "I love you." Many times and in many ways—smiling, with a laugh, with a sigh—whispering the words or saying them half sternly. And she had always been gay and ready; a little thrilled, perhaps, as by a chance strain of music. But now—she could hardly breathe. Now she was frightened. She did not know why; she could not understand the sense of it; she only knew that she was afraid. Of what? Nor did she know that. She only knew that here were Gloria Gaynor and Mark King, man and girl—man and woman—set apart from the world, lifted above it, clear-cut figures upon a pinnacle piercing the infinite blue of the heavens, and that a mystery was unfolding before them. She had a wild wish to stop the flight of time, to thrust it back upon itself, to have the present not the present but to avoid the Now by racing back into the serenity of Just A Little While Ago. Ten minutes ago—anything but this electric, terrifying moment when Mark King, a surge of emotion upon him, was about to say: "I love you."
"Look!" Gloria started and, forgetful of the strange conflict of emotions within her, clutched at his sleeve. "A man—here;——"
"Swen Brodie!" muttered King angrily.
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.
A week passed and Gloria went back to San Francisco. These had been seven days and nights of uncertainty for her, and had brought hours of confusion that mounted into bewilderment. She had sung and danced and flirted as even Gloria Gaynor had never done before; she had made Gratton sure of her and his eyes had smouldered and his chalky pale face had flushed; she had sent him off, gnawing at his nails; she had made other young laughter rise like echoes of her own; she had sighed and sat long hours at her window, wondering, wondering, wondering. In the end she had gone, leaving her little note for Mark King.
King did not return to the log house. He knew that long ago Gloria would have gone; there was nothing to draw him in her absence. He kept in touch, none too close, with Ben Gaynor; telephoned him once from Coloma, and once sent a note to him by a hunter he encountered on Five Lakes Creek, above Hell Hole, the note to be mailed in Truckee some time later, and to reach Gaynor the following day at his lumber-camp. These were strenuous days during which King penetrated the most out-of-the-way corners of the mountains. He constructed his theories and strove doggedly to set them to the proof. He held that when Baldy Winch had made him a cabin in so inaccessible and distant a spot as the crest of Lookout Ridge, it had been because Winch, the sole survivor of those hardy spirits who had been of Gus Ingle's party, was of a mind to make sure, day after day, that no other men went where he had been. Perhaps he knew that he alone remained alive; that the secret was his; that he had but to wait the winter out, to sit through the spring thaw, and then go back to claim his own. A man like Baldy Winch, as King envisioned him, would do that. Hence, from Lookout Ridge one should be able to see the very point, or a peak standing over the very point, where Gus Ingle's men had gone. But always the one difficulty: that point might be a mile away, or ten, twenty, thirty miles away. There was nothing to do but seek—and he knew that always Swen Brodie, too, was seeking, Brodie and the men of his own kind whom likeness drew to likeness. So King spent day after day in the cañons and on the ridges, and yet, through Ben Gaynor, thought to keep an eye on old Loony Honeycutt.
But there were many hours, alone in the forests resting, sitting over a bubbling coffee-pot, lying in his blankets under the stars, that King thought very little of Brodie, Gus Ingle, or Honeycutt. There were times when the solitudes were empty; when a new, strange feeling of loneliness swept overpoweringly over him. At such moments he fancied that a girl came stealing through the trees to him; that she slipped her hand into his own; that she lifted to his her soft eyes; that something within the soul of him spoke to her and that she answered. His pulses quickened; a great yearning as of infinite hunger possessed him. He remembered how they had stood together upon the ridge the last time; how his arms had been opening for her; the look in her eyes. That had been a moment when the world had lain at their feet; when they had been lifted up and up, close to the gates of paradise.
He saw virtually nothing of Brodie. Now and then smoke from a camp-fire; once or twice the charred coals where Brodie's men had been before him. Upon these camp sites he looked contemptuously; carelessness and wastefulness were two things he hated in a woodsman, and always he found them in Brodie's wake. Also he found bottles. Further, he was of the opinion that he could go in the dark to the particular cañon in which the illicit still made its output of bad moonshine whiskey. But, though that canon lay in the heart of the country he was combing over, it was one which he had explored from top to bottom two years ago, and now was content to leave aside.
One day he came upon signs of a killing made the day before; by one of Brodie's outfit, he assumed. Some one had baited for a bear and had killed. The mother bear, he discovered the following morning. For he came upon a little brown cub whimpering dismally. King made the rebellious little fellow an unwilling captive—and smiled as he thought of Gloria. Gloria had talked of bear cubs. If she but had one for a pet! Well, here was Gloria's pet. King that day turned toward the log house. And thus he received at last Gloria's note at Jim Spalding's hands:
"Mamma and I have to go back to town to-morrow. I am so sorry that I can't stay up here always and always. Do you realize that I have never seen you in the city? It's lots of fun, too, in its own way, don't you think? Another kind of a wilderness. I wonder if you would come down—if I asked you to? I'll say it very nicely and properly, like this: 'Miss Gloria Gaynor requests the pleasure of Mr. Mark King's presence at her little birthday-party, on the evening of August twelfth, at eight o'clock.' Just the four of us, Mark; mamma and papa, you and
"August twelfth," said King. "I'll go."
He didn't write, as the necessity of an answer did not suggest itself to him. He took it for granted that she would know that he would come. He chuckled as he thought of the birthday gift he would bring her. There was still a week; he remained with Spalding at the Gaynor mountain home and devoted hour after hour to taming the cub. On the eleventh he was in San Francisco. Before he had taken a taxi at the Ferry Building it had dawned on him that his best suit of clothes was somewhat outworn. It would never do to go to the Gaynors' in that. Nor was there time for a tailor. Therefore he went direct to a clothing-store in Market Street and in something less than half an hour had bought suit, hat, shoes, socks, shirt, collar, and tie.
"I can have the alterations made by to-morrow afternoon," said the salesman.
"What alterations?" demanded King, turning before the long glass and staring at his new finery.
"The coat is a trifle tight just here—the trousers——"
King laughed.
"As long as I'm satisfied, you are, aren't you?" he said.
The clerk watched him with admiring eyes as he went out. For the clerk, an odd thing in a man who sold clothing and therefore was prone to judge by clothes, caught a glimpse of the real man.
"Big mining man, most likely," muttered the clerk. "Don't care for clothes and is rich enough to get by with whatever he wears." He looked vaguely envious.
King was busied for an hour or so, finding quarters for his cub, registering at the St. Francis, getting a shave and hair-cut. A manicurist saw his hands and, smothering a giggle, pointed them out to the young fellow she was working on.
"Go after them," he grinned. "There's a fortune for you in them."
"Nothing doing," she returned from her higher wisdom. "He ain't the kind that knows he's got any hands unless he's got a job for them to do."
Later King telephoned to the Gaynor home. A maid answered and informed him that Mr. Gaynor had not arrived yet, though he was expected this afternoon or in the morning; that both Mrs. and Miss Gaynor were out. King hung up without leaving his name.
King sat in the lobby, musing on San Francisco. As Gloria had said, it was a wilderness of its own sort. Time was when it had appealed to him; that was in the younger collegiate days. He wondered what had happened to his one-time proud evening regalia; how he had strutted in it, dances and dinners and theatre-parties! But briefly and long, long ago. It was like a half-forgotten former incarnation; or, rather, like the unfamiliar existence of some other man. He grew restless over his paper and strolled into the bar. There he was fortunate enough to stumble on a man he knew, an old mining engineer. The two got off into a corner and talked. Later they dined and went to the theatre together.
The next evening King got a taxi, called for his bear cub, stopped at a florist's for an armful of early violets, and growing more eager and impatient at every block was off to the Gaynor home.
"Here you are, sir," said the chauffeur, opening the door.
King fancied the man had made a mistake in the number. The house was blazing with lights, upstairs and down; there was an unmistakable air of revelry about it; faintly the music of a new dance tune, violin and piccolo and piano, crept out into the night. Above the music he could hear gay voices, muffled by door and window and wall.
King was of a mind to go back to the hotel. He had counted on the Gaynors alone, not on this sort of thing. But also, most of all, he had counted on Gloria, and his hesitation was brief. He jumped down and, leading his bear cub by its new chain, went up the steps.
A housemaid came to the door, opened it wide for him, saw the cub against his leg, and screamed.
"Why, what on earth is the matter, Frieda?" said some one.
It was Gloria passing through the front hallway with a worshipful youth. Gloria came to the door, the youth at her heels, looking over her shoulder.
"Oh!" cried Gloria. King knew then in a flash that she had not expected him, that probably because he had never answered her letter she had forgotten all about it. Unconsciously he stiffened—his old gesture before a woman.
But now Gloria came running out to him, her two hands offered, her eyes alight with pleasure.
"You did come," she said gladly.
Gloria's escort, obviously holding himself to be privileged through virtue of his briefly temporary office, thrust himself along in her wake. Him King did not notice; King saw only Gloria. As of old she set his pulse stirring restlessly with her sparkling, vivid loveliness. To-night was Gloria's night; she was eighteen and queen of the world.
"And——Oh, look!" She let her hands remain in his but her eyes were all for the little brown bundle of fur at King's feet, that began now to whine and pull back at its chain. "My birthday present!"
Just now Mark King would have given anything he could think of to have that bear cub back in the woods where it belonged. He hadn't had time to analyse impulses; he didn't know why all of a sudden his gift seemed out of place. As he let Gloria's fingers slip through his he looked at the young fellow, a boy of Gloria's own age, in the doorway. Perhaps the full evening dress had something to do with King's new attitude toward his pet. But now as Gloria, a little timid and holding her skirts back and yet clearly delighted, flashed him her look of understanding and gratitude, he was content.
Gloria remembered to make Mr. King known to Mr. Trimble. Then King suggested that they take the cub around back and lodge him for the night in the garage. But Gloria, discovering that she could pat and fondle the little creature, and that he was of friendly disposition, insisted on having him brought into the house for all to see.
"It's the most delightful present of all!" she whispered to King.
In the hallway they were surrounded by a crowd of the curious. Girls in pretty dresses, young fellows in black suits, all very exact as to the proper evening appointments. At first they were disposed to look on King as "the man who brought the cub," and it was only when Gloria began a string of introductions that they understood. One and all, they regarded Mark King curiously.
The cub was made much of, and finally led off to the kitchen for sugar and a bed in a box under the table. Mrs. Gaynor appeared and was "very glad indeed to see Mr. King again." Gratton, whom King remembered with small liking, came up and shook hands, and looked at King in a way which did nothing to increase the liking. Ben, it appeared, had been unable to come this year. King was sorry for that as he looked about him. Only now did he remember the violets he had brought for Gloria.
The evening was anything but that to which he had looked forward. From the beginning he regretted coming; before the end it was slow torture for him. He was out of place and felt more out of place than he was. Glances at his carelessly purchased clothes were veiled, and never utterly impolite, but he was conscious of them. He was conspicuous because he was different; outwardly in garb, inwardly in much else. There was no one here whom he knew; he had never felt that he knew Gloria's mother, and to-night Gloria's self, puzzling him, baffling him, was an Unknown. Not that she was not delightful to him; she was just as delightful to every other man there, and in the same way. His days with her in the forest blurred and faded.
Gloria gave him the first dance after his arrival, highhandedly commanding a fair-haired and despondent youth to surrender to King one of his numbers. King caught her into his arms hungrily—only to feel that she was very far away from him. He knew that he was dancing awkwardly; he had not danced for a dozen years. Gloria suggested sitting out the rest of the dance; she said it prettily but he understood. He understood, too, by that sixth sense of man which is so keen at certain moments of mental distress that all of Gloria's friends were wondering about him, where he came from, "what his business was." He was tanned, rugged. He was not of them. He fancied, sensitively, that among themselves they laughed at him. As he sat with Gloria and found little to say, he was conscious of her eyes probing at him when she thought that he did not see. He looked away, a shadow in his eyes, and chanced to see Gratton. Gratton, who had struck him as contemptible in the woods, a misfit and a poor sort of man at best, was here on his own heath. He carried himself well, he talked well; he bore himself with a certain distinction. Clearly he was much in favour among the girls and women, much envied by the younger men. Yes; Gloria was right: this was another sort of wilderness where Mark King was the misfit, where Gratton was as much in tone with his environment as was King among the forest and crags of the ridges.
Another dance. Gloria excused herself lightly and escaped into the arms of Gratton himself. Escaped! King understood; that was the word for it. He watched them; saw Gratton whisper something into her ear, saw Gloria toss her head, saw her cheeks flush. Then Gratton laughed and she laughed with him. They danced wonderfully together, swaying together like two reeds in the same gentle wind. Others than King noticed; there were knowing smiles. At the end of the dance King saw the look which Gloria, flushed and happy, flashed up at Gratton, and his heart contracted in a sudden spasm of pain.
When again couples were seeking each other to the jazzy invitation of the musicians, King slipped away and went outside. He stood in the shadows of the porch seeking to get a grip on himself. In a moment he would go in and say good-night to Mrs. Gaynor; he'd say good-night to Gloria; he would go and put an end to a hideous nightmare. He held himself very much of a fool, and he knew that he was fanciful. But he was of no mind to stay.
Two or three couples came out; he remained unnoticed in the darkness. He heard a girl's voice:
"Butwhois he? I think he's terribly handsome. And distinguished-looking. Superior to our kind of nonsense."
"Who are you talking about, Betty?" Her dancing partner pretended to be in doubt. "Me?"
A whirlwind of girls' laughter. Then one of them saying:
"Youdistinguished-looking! Or handsome! She means the sixty-nine-dollar serge suit."
Good God! Was there a price tag on him?
"Oh, the animal trainer!" They laughed again. Then Gloria came and they called to her, demanding:
"Whois he?"
"Oh," said Gloria carelessly, "he is an old friend of papa's and his name is King."
They went in, two of the girls lingering a little behind the others.Gloria and another. The other, bantering and yet curious, said:
"Georgia told me all about a Mr. King up in the mountains this spring. And that it looked like love at first sight to her. 'Fess up, Glory, my dear."
Gloria's laughter, unfettered, spontaneous, was of high amusement.
"Georgia said, just the same, that she'd bet on an elopement—"
King reddened and stirred uneasily. Gloria gasped.
"Georgia's crazy!" she said emphatically. "Why, the man is impossible!"
* * * * *
Five minutes later King went in, found his hat, and told Mrs. Gaynor good-night. She was glad that he was going, and he knew it though she made the obvious perfunctory remark. Gloria saw and came tripping across the room.
"Not going so soon?"
"Yes," he said briefly. "Good-bye, Gloria."
"Good-night, you mean, don't you?"
"I mean good-bye," he said quietly.
Gratton thrust forward. King left abruptly, leaving them together, conscious of the quick look of pleasure on the face of Gloria's mother.
Chapter XI
Always Gloria, yielding to the heady impulses of youth, was ready for High Adventure. Therein lay the explanation of many things which Gloria did.
Time went scurrying on. Mark King had returned to the Sierra; no word came from him, and Gloria told herself with an exaggerated air of indifference that she had just about forgotten him. Autumn came, that finest of all seasons about San Francisco Bay, the ocean fogs were thrust back, unveiling the clear sunny skies by day, the crystalline glitter of stars by night. The city grew gayer as the season advanced; dinners and dances and theatre-parties made life a gloriously joyful affair for Gloria. She had hardly the time to ask herself: "Just where am I going?" It was so much easier to laugh and cry lightly, in the phrase of the day, "I am on my way!" She had drifted, drifted like one in a canoe trailing her fingers idly in the clear water and never noting when the little craft was caught by a steady, purposeful current. It was speeding now; but she only laughed breathlessly and drank her fill of the hour, and left to others the thoughts which carve fine lines about brow and eyes. She knew that her father was beset by some sort of financial troubles; for the first time in her life he had not come to her birthday-party, and her mother had explained, rather soberly, that it was because of a business crisis. Gloria did not know that crises lasted so long. Weeks and weeks had gone and still she knew from a look which her mother could not hide that the money troubles were still stalking her father, and coming so close that for the first time in history they cast a shadow from the top of the Sierra down into her mother's heart in San Francisco.
Now Gratton became the man of the hour. He had studied Gloria with infinite patience and he never displeased her. "He understood her," as she comfortingly assured herself. That meant, of course, that he gave in to her always; that tirelessly he exerted himself to please her. At a time when there was much financial depression, Gratton's obvious affluence was very agreeable to the pleasure-seeker. He dressed well; he entertained with due respect for the most charming accessories; he took her to dance or theatre, or for a drive in the park or down the peninsula in a new, elegantly appointed limousine. And about the same time fate had it that by two entirely unassociated trends of circumstance he should draw to the dregs of Gloria's lively and romantic interest. In the first place, he began to become a prominent figure in San Francisco. His name was in the papers with names of "men who counted." And, of far greater import to Gloria, he became what she liked to consider a "Man of Mystery!"
For, weeks ago, Gloria had noted that regularly once a week Mr. Gratton dropped out of sight, to be gone for one or two days. He was never to be seen Saturday; seldom Sunday; always any day from Monday to Friday night. During week-ends he was "out of town." And, though there were countless opportunities for an off-hand explanation, Gratton never gave it. Others than Gloria remarked the fact; a girl friend insinuatingly remarked: "Better watch out for him, Glory, dear.Cherchez la femme, you know."
Gloria never suspected any such condition of affairs; she was too sure of Gratton's attentions. But, being Gloria, she wondered.
One night she and Gratton were having a late supper together at the Palace. They had been to the theatre and now, yielding to the demands of her young appetite, they sat before sandwiches and coffee. Gloria saw the page as he came to the doorway; he stood, an envelope in his hand, looking up and down the room. When at last his eyes rested on her and her companion, the boy came to the table.
"Telegram, Mr. Gratton."
Gratton, more interested in what she was saying than in the yellow envelope, opened it carelessly. But in a flash his attention was whipped away from her; she stopped in the middle of a sentence and knew that he had not noticed. A quick spurt of blood flushed his dead-white skin; his eyes grew bright with excitement. He read in a sweeping glance, and before his eyes came back to her they went hurriedly to his watch.
"I've got to go, Gloria," he said nervously. "Immediately. This is important."
"Why, of course," she agreed. "I can get a bite when I get home."
He thrust the telegram into his pocket and came around to the back of her chair. He was all impatience; it seemed he could not wait until hat and coats were gotten. On the way to the street he looked again at his watch.
"I've got to go out of town," he explained. "I'll be gone a couple of days."
"But this is only Wednesday!"
"And usually I don't go before Saturday?" He was tapping at his cigarette-case as they came to their taxi. "Yes. But something has happened."
He helped her in and lifted his foot to follow.
"Gloria," he muttered, "I can't make it. If I see you home I will miss the last boat across the bay."
She was more and more interested. She had never known Gratton to show emotion as he showed it to-night; she was more and more curious about that "business" which carried him out of town. Why hadn't he tossed the telegram across the table for her to read? Here was a shut door, and from being barred a door always invites the more temptingly. Especially to a girl like Gloria.
"Why, I can go home alone—"
"I don't like it. I—" He ended abruptly and thrust his head into the car, his eyes questing hers in the half-light; the chauffeur with his engine going looked over his shoulder.
"Come with me, Gloria!"
Gloria wondered what he meant: whether the man was suggesting an elopement or just a wild bit of downright unconventionality.
"I mean it," said Gratton. "Listen. The new day has already started. By the time the ferry lands us in Oakland it will be nearly three o'clock. I've got to drive up into the country; we'll phone your mother and will start right away. We'll get there long before noon; we'll be back before night. It would mean only a day's outing and no harm done. Won't you come, Gloria? Please come!" He pulled out his watch again. "We've just got time to catch the boat comfortably." He called to the taxi-driver, "To the ferry," and jumped in.
"But——"
"You can come as far as the ferry, anyway. Even if you won't give me a day of motoring. It's wonderful out in the country this time of year. And——"
When they came to the ferry there was no time for debating the matter; the crowd was pouring toward the last boat, and Gloria, her eyes bright with the joy of her escapade, went with him through the little gate where the tickets were presented for the last boat across the bay. It was unconventional, as she saw quite clearly. But to Gloria unconventionality was a condition fairly divided into two widely separated browsing-grounds; there was the thing which was just "daring"; there was that other which was ugly because it was "compromising." This adventure promised to fall into the safer category; to be off motoring with Mr. Gratton from three o'clock in the morning until late afternoon was what she considered a "lark."
They laughed together in anticipation as they crossed the bay. They sat where they could watch the red and green lights, reflected like topazes and rubies in the shimmering water, fall away and dwindle as the silhouette of the embarcadero receded. On the electric train they were whizzed among many sleepy folk into a sleeping town, Oakland, drowsing and silent. Gratton summoned a somnolent taxi-driver and they were whisked through the cool air to a garage. He left her a moment, sitting in the taxi, while he ran in and arranged for a roadster.
Gloria, left to her own thoughts, began to regret having come. The thing, reviewed in solitude, was "crazy." She grew vaguely distressed. She wanted to go back to San Francisco—but there would be no boat now until full morning, three or four hours; she could not get home before seven or half-past seven o'clock. She tried to recall a friend on this side of the bay to whom she could go at this time of night—day, rather! Her lips shaped to a half smile.
"I've got the car." Gratton was back offering to help her down. "And I phoned your mother."
"Was she——?"
"She trusts you with me, Gloria," he said quickly.
She let him help her into the car he had hired. Gratton took the wheel and turned into San Pablo Avenue. The street was deserted and he gently pressed down the throttle; he had hired a dependable, high-priced car, and the motor sang softly. The wind blew in Gloria's face and her zest came back to her.
Gratton would not tell her where they were going; he made a great lark of their escapade, assuring her gaily that their destination was reserved as the final surprise for her. He evaded laughingly when she asked. "Maybe we'll keep right on going, always and always," he jested with her. She thought that under the jest there was a queer note; when his eyes flashed briefly toward her she tried to read their message. But the hour, mystery-filled, filled them with mystery.
Gloria began laughing.
"What will we look like to-morrow—I mean when it's full day! Me dressed like this—you in evening suit!"
"By Jove!" said Gratton. Then he laughed with her. "It's the lark of my life."
The ocean breeze smarted in their eyes, the motor thrummed merrily, trees and houses flew by, the racing car leaped to fresh speed. On the cement highway the spinning tyres whined musically.
They were far up-country when the sun rose. Gloria, very sleepy now, watched it climb above the hills. She had watched the sunrise last June—with Mark King. Later, again with Mark King, she had seen it thrust its great burning disk above the pine ridges.
She was asleep and started wide awake when the car stopped suddenly.They were in the one street of a little town; it must be eight o'clock.She was cold.
"What do you say to a cup of coffee? And toast and eggs?"
"I am hungry," she confessed.
Over their breakfast in the little wayside restaurant, with its untidy tables and greasy lunch-counter, it was Gratton who did all of the talking. Gloria by now realized that she was downright sorry she had come. He seemed eager, his eyes very bright, his voice quick and vibrant with an electrical urge dominating. She wondered vaguely what made him seem "different."
"The waiter," she said as they finished, "is staring his head off at our clothes."
"We're going to remedy that matter. Come on; the stores are open."
"Fancy shopping here!" The thought made her laugh.
"Just the place for what we want. Khaki trousers and flannel shirt and boots for me; an outing-suit for you."
He took her arm and they walked the half-dozen doors to the dry-goods store.
"I haven't a cent with me——"
"Let me be your banker," he said lightly.
Gloria hesitated. But very briefly. Hot coffee had done much for her drooping courage; the escapade, even this going at eight o'clock in the morning into a country store with a man, and on money borrowed from the man, was an experience to put the gay note of adventure back into the affair.
Gloria made her purchases in fifteen minutes and the change from theatre gown into an olive outing-suit in another fifteen. Her discarded garments were gathered up, put into a cardboard box by the clerk, and wrapped in heavy paper to be stowed away in the car. She confronted Gratton smilingly in her new garb, her hands in her pockets, her face saucy, her slim body boyish in its swagger and richly feminine in its unhidden curves. Gratton's eyes shone, quick with admiration. She laughed and a flush came into her cheeks as he gravely paid for her clothing and his own. When they went to their car both were strangely silent.
"I owe you a lot of money," she said with assumed carelessness.
"Which I hope you never repay," he returned meaningly.
At nine o'clock they were threading the streets of Sacramento. At a little after ten they were in Auburn. They drove through "Old Town," passed the courthouse and through the newer portion of the village; by the Freeman Hotel and the railroad-yards, through the "subway" under the tracks, and turned off to the right, leaving the highway for the first time and skirting the olive-orchards on the hill. Then, sweeping around a wide curve they caught the first glimpse of the American River deep down in its historic canon. On, over a narrow, red-dirt road, closer down to the gorge, across the long bridge, up and up the steep, writhing grade. They came to the top of the ridge; raced through Cool, through Lotus——
"Coloma!" gasped Gloria. "You are going to Coloma!"
He slowed the car down that he might look at her keenly.
"Well?" he said lightly.
"It is to Coloma that you have been coming every week!"
"Well?" he said a second time.
"Then you—you, too——"
He glanced at the road, cut down the speed still more, and looked back into her thoughtful eyes.
"Would you rather that it was Mark King or I who succeeded?"
She was clearly perplexed.
"Mark King is papa's partner," she said musingly.
"And I? I hope one day to be more than his partner!"
She understood but gave no sign of understanding. He did not press the point.
"Here we are," he said presently as the first of the picturesque old rock-and-mortar houses of Coloma stood forth out of the wilderness. "And you're dead tired and nearly dead for sleep. I am sorry we can't have a city hotel up here; but I'll get you a room where you can lie down. You can sleep and rest for two or three hours; then we'll start back."
Gloria had been tired and sleepy half an hour ago; not now. Gratton was playing his own hand in his own way—against her father and against Mark King. And Gratton had a way of winning. Something had happened; some one had telegraphed for him to come. Gloria was aquiver with excitement. She watched Gratton while he was watching the road; he, too, was tense and eager.
When he stopped the car she got down, not knowing just what to do or say. He led the way to the little "hotel," and she followed. Since she could not insist on following him about his "business," it was, perhaps, just as well if she lay down. And, alone, thought things out. He placed a chair for her and arranged for her room. He paid for it in advance, saying that they would be leaving in a hurry; he registered for her. Then Gloria was shown down a long hall and to her room. Here Gratton left her, impatient to be away. She went to her window and stood looking out. She heard a man call; a deep, rumbling bass voice. She saw Gratton come about the corner of the house and start across the street. A man, a very big man, came to meet him. They stood together talking in the middle of the road, their voices low, their looks earnest. They went away together. She shivered and went to her bed and sat down, her hands tight clasped, a look of trouble in her eyes. Gratton and Swen Brodie together——
"I don't understand." She said it to herself over and over. "I can't understand!"
She sprang up and left the room, going in feverish haste back to the front part of the building. The man who had given Gratton the register followed her with his speculative eyes. She went to the door and looked out, seeing neither the dusty road, the deserted house across the way, nor the mountains beyond. She was groping blindly in a mental fog; she was tired, very tired. And uncertain. Something was happening—had happened, or was about to happen, and she did not know which way to turn. Her father, poor old papa, was fighting hard against some kind of money troubles. Mark King, Gratton, Brodie—figures to race through her brain, to confuse her with their own contentions, to baffle and bewilder. Suddenly she felt utterly alone, hopelessly, helplessly alone. She wanted her mother, and with the impulse wheeled back toward the man watching her.
"I want to use the long-distance telephone," she said. "Where is it?"
"This way, miss," said the man, eager to be of service. Then, with a bashful grin, he amended: "Ibegpardon. Mrs. Gratton, I mean!"
Gloria stared at him. Her mouth was open to correct him; she saw how naturally his mistake was made. But before she could speak a wild flutter in her heart stopped the words; she went swiftly to the register. In Gratton's own hand, set opposite the clerk's number seven indicating her room, were the words: "Gratton & Wife, S.F." She turned crimson; went white.
"I'll telephone later," she said faintly, and went again to the door and this time out into the autumn sunshine. All of the high adventure was dead ashes; the "lark" was lost in a sinister enterprise.
Gratton's wife—Mrs. Gratton——He had done that! She walked on blindly; tears gathered, tears of mortification, of blazing anger. But they did not fall; she dabbed viciously at her eyes. Why had he done that?Why?Never a "why" so insistent in all of the girl's lifetime. Never a moment of such blind wonder.
"Howdy, miss?" a voice was saying.
It brought her back to earth from a region of swirling vapours, back to to-day and Coloma. She stopped and looked at the man, startled. He was a stranger, yet dimly familiar. The little store, his own round face, his shirt-sleeves and boots——
"I wanted to ask," he said solicitously, "how your father was this morning."
"My father?" she repeated dully. "Oh, he's quite well, thank you."
Plainly her words puzzled him. He squinted his eyes as though to make sure of her.
"You're the young lady that stopped in here one day last spring withMark King? June it was, wasn't it? You bought some stuff for lunch."
"Yes," she admitted. She would never have remembered him. But he, who had not seen others like her, remembered.
"Then you're Ben Gaynor's girl?"
"Yes," she said again, and was about to go on, resenting his persistent meddlesomeness.
"And you say he'swell?"
"Quite well, I believe," she said coolly.
"But wait a minute," he called after her. "Wasn't he bad hurt last night?"
"Papa hurt?"
"I supposed that was why you was here——"
"How hurt?" she cried sharply. "When? Where? Tell me; why don't you tell me?"
He looked at her in wonder.
"All I know is just what I heard. And you know how news gets itself all twisted up travelling half a mile. Iheardhe got hurt at old Loony Honeycutt's last night. Right bad hurt, they said. But I was just asking you——"
"Where is he?" she cut in excitedly. "Now?"
"Didn't you just come out of the hotel?" He looked more puzzled than ever. "Wasn't he there?"
"How do I know? Was he taken there?"
He nodded. "Leastways I heard he was. Last night——"
Gloria did not wait for more. She turned and ran back to the building she had quitted only a moment ago, bursting into the front room, demanding earnestly and in words that came with a rush:
"Is my father here? Is he hurt?"
"Your father? Hurt——Say, you ain't Ben Gaynor's daughter, are you?"
"Yes, yes. And papa——"
"They had a doctor over from Placerville last night. He's coming back again this morning some time."
"Take me to papa. Quick!" said Gloria imperiously. "You should have told me the minute I came."
"But I didn't know——"
"Quick!" repeated Gloria.
He showed her to the room, only three doors beyond her own. He moved to open the door but Gloria's hand was first to the knob; she opened and went in, closing the door softly. She was trembling, frightened, dreading, oppressed by fear of what might be. Though both windows were open the shades were drawn, the light was dim. She made out a man's form on the bed; there was a white bandage about his head. He stirred and turned half over.
"Papa!" cried Gloria, her voice catching.
She ran to him and went down on her knees at his bedside, her two hands finding his upon the coverlet, clasping them tight. He looked at her in wonderment; Gloria misread the look in his eyes and for a terrible moment thought that he was dying.
"Gloria!" he said in amazement. "Here——"
"Oh, papa!"
To Ben Gaynor this unannounced coming of his daughter partook of the nature of an apparition and of a miracle. At first he would not believe his senses, fearing that he had just gone off his head. Then it was that the look in his eyes frightened her. But the hands gripping his were flesh-and-blood hands, and, besides, Ben Gaynor was a very matter-of-fact man, little given to prolonged fanciful ideas, even after a night of pain and mental distress.
"By the Lord, we'll nail their hides to our barn door yet!" were his first words of greeting. He hitched himself up against his pillows.
"What in the world happened?" Gloria asked after a sigh of relief.
"How you happened to be here gets me," said Gaynor. "It's like magic.You didn't hear down in San Francisco that I was hurt, did you?"
"No. I—I just happened to be here. You see, papa——"
"That'll come later," he broke in. "You're here; that's all that counts.You're going to do something for me."
Anything, thought Gloria. And she was glad that he did not seek just now the explanation of her presence here; of course she would tell him everything—later. But she was still confused—"Mrs. Gratton "! Did she, down in the depths of her frivolous girl-heart, want to be that? Had she glimpsed, when she so gaily left San Francisco last night, that this escapade was something more than a mere "lark"?
"You are not dangerously hurt, papa?"
"Bless you, no! Not now, that you're here. Though I believe it would have near killed me if I'd been put out of the running altogether. I got a crack on the head that sickened me; but the tough old skull held out against it. And I got an arm broken and a rib cracked——"
Gloria, aghast, was once more in fear for him. But he cried impatiently:
"Don't you worry about me. I'll be on my feet in a week. Now, listen: I've got to talk fast before somebody comes in. The doctor is apt to be here any minute, and he's a stiff-necked tyrant. You know the trail through the mountains to our place; you rode it twice with King."
"Yes."
"I want you to ride it again to-day. You can get a horse at the stable.Don't let any one know where you are going. I want you to take a messageto King. And it's got to get to him and into nobody's hands but his.Understand that, Gloria?"
Gloria did not answer promptly; she wanted to demur. She was tired; she was afraid of the mountains; she did not want to see Mark King. But she saw a terrible earnestness in her father's eyes and that while he awaited her answer quick fever spots glowed in his cheeks. She squeezed his hands and replied:
"Of course, papa. I'll do whatever you want."
"God bless you for that," he muttered. "This is sober, serious business, Gloria; you are the only one here I could trust. King will be at the house; at least I hope he will. I sent him word several days ago that—that something was in the wind, and to meet me there. And, Gloria, I want you to promise, by all that's good and holy, that you won't let a word or a sign or a hint slip to anybody else. Not to a soul on earth. Will you, Gloria?"
"Yes." She looked at him curiously; she had never known her father to be so tensely in earnest.
"Then," he said, "go turn the key in the lock. And hurry. Before any one comes."
She locked the door and returned to him.
"Feel under my pillow. Got it?"
She felt the cold barrel of a revolver and started back; never had she known her father to carry arms. Then, gingerly, she sought again. She found a small parcel and drew it out. It was a flattish affair and rectangular, the size and shape of an octavo volume—a flat box, if not a book. It was wrapped in a bit of soiled cloth.
"Quick," he commanded nervously. "Out of sight with it. Stick it into your blouse, if you can; tuck it away under your arm; it won't show so much there."
Catching something of his suppressed excitement, she obeyed.
"I managed a little note to Mark," he said when she had buttoned the loose shirt again and he had sunk back, white and exhausted, among his pillows. "I stuck it inside the cloth. Lord, if I was only on my feet! But you'll do it for me, my girl? With never a hint to any one?"
Gloria stooped and kissed him on the forehead.
"I promise, papa," she said assuringly.
"Unlock the door again, then. There's somebody coming. Sit down over there, across the room. And leave as soon as you can. We'll let them think you're going to the log house for—for——"
She was quicker at inventions.
"Doctor Rowell, our family physician, is at Lake Tahoe. I am going to find him. We would telephone, but he is camped out——"
"Pretty late for camping. Oh, that'll do——"
Gloria sat in her chair across the room, looking innocently the part of a daughter in a sick-room, when the door opened and the Placerville doctor came in. A moment later she slipped out.
* * * * *
She went out into the sunshine. Down the road she saw Gratton. He came quickly to meet her. She saw that he was eyeing her keenly, and her thought was that he was wondering if by chance she had seen the hotel register.
"I don't know just what to do," said Gratton. "My business is going to hold me here longer than I had thought. I—I promised to go back with you this afternoon. Would it be all right if I got a man to drive you back? I am terribly sorry, Gloria, but——"
"Business is business!" She laughed a trifle nervously. Then her inspiration: "I know! I can go to our mountain home; I'll phone mamma, and she will come up. We'll spend a few days, and——"
For an instant his eyes fairly blazed; they were bright with triumph.
"Just the thing! I'll go for the horses. I'll ride over with you and get right back here."
"But——"
But already, excusing himself hurriedly, Gratton was off for the horses.
Chapter XII
It was mid-afternoon when Gloria and Gratton came to the log house in the woods. Jim Spalding, coming to take their horses away to the stable, though a man of no wild flights of imagination and given to minding his own business, was plainly curious.
"We rode on ahead, Jim," Gloria told him, and Jim detected no false note in her gaiety. "Mamma is coming."
Spalding gave them a key and they went to the house. It was Gloria who unlocked the door; Gratton, his white face looking more than ever bloodless, saw her hand tremble. She hurried in, excused herself, and ran upstairs. She knew that the time had come when she would have to listen to what Gratton was going to say; she knew what the burden of his plea would be—she knew everything, she thought wildly, except what her answer would be.
She heard Gratton stirring restlessly downstairs. He walked up and down, snapping his fingers incessantly, a habit which in the man bespoke nervousness. He sat at the piano and the keys jangled under his touch; he got up and walked again. He was waiting for her to come down; he was shaping in mind the words which would greet her before she had come fairly to the bottom of the stairs.
Gloria turned into her own room, locking the door behind her. She looked at herself in her glass; she was pale, her eyes looked unnaturally big and brilliant. She bit her lips and turned away. From her blouse she brought out the parcel her father had entrusted to her, slipping it under her mattress, smoothing the counterpane when she had done. Then, with but one clear thought in the world, that of getting into immediate touch with her mother, she went to the telephone.
On this floor, in a cosy little room opening upon the upstairs sun-porch, was an extension telephone, installed for the convenience of Gloria and her mother. Gloria went tiptoeing to it rather than go down where Gratton was. She rang the necessary bell for the operator in Truckee and put in her long-distance call in low tones which demanded a repetition before the operator got it right. Then she sat with the instrument in her hand, waiting. Once she heard Gratton's step close to the stairs and jumped to her feet, thinking that he was coming up. But he passed by and the house grew silent again.
She wondered when Mark King would come! This afternoon—to-night—to-morrow? Spalding had said nothing; she had not mentioned King to Spalding, since she had not mentioned him to Gratton during the long ride——
Her telephone bell rang. After the irritating way of telephones, she was put presently into communication with Mrs. Gaynor.
"Gloria! Gloria! Is that you?" Her mother's voice sounded strange inGloria's ears—shaken with emotion.
"Yes, mamma. I——"
"What has happened, child? Tell me, quick! I am nearly dead with worry.Are you all right?"
"Of course, mamma. I——"
"Butwhereare you? Where were you all night? Are you sure everything is all right?"
Never had Gloria known her extremely clear-headed mother to be so wildly disturbed, so nervously incoherent.
"I have told you I am all right. I am up in the mountains, at our log house. Didn't Mr. Gratton tell you——?"
"Mr. Gratton?" Mrs. Gaynor was only more mystified. "He has told me nothing; I haven't seen him. I tried to phone him—oh, I have phoned everybody we know!—and he is out of town, and——"
But Gloria, panic-stricken by something her mother had said, cried:
"You have phonedeverybody!Oh, mamma! What—whatdo you mean?"
"When you didn't come in last night—I have been crazy with worry! I thought you might be spending the night with one of your friends; I thought that maybe something had happened and it was being kept from me. I rang up Georgia Stark and Mildred Carter and the Farrilees—and even the emergency hospitals. I thought——"
The rest was only a meaningless buzzing in Gloria's ears; she sat speechless herself, bereft of all reason for a dull moment, then harbouring quick, clear thoughts, as swift, as vivid as lightning, and in the end as blinding by their very quality of blazing light.The newspapers!
Still, dominated subconsciously by the thought which had brought her to the telephone, Gloria managed before the connection was broken to beg her mother to come immediately to her at the log house; to tell every one that Gloria was with her father. Her mother promised; began asking questions, and Gloria said a bleak "good-bye" and hung up.
The newspapers. She sat there staring into space and seeing the San FranciscoChronicleandExaminer, hawked by newsboys, on stands, thrust under doors, going like spreading snowflakes of a big storm into post-offices, to racing trains, all over the land. Her mother had telephoned the emergency hospitals! Gloria could have wept in rage, screamed, thrown herself down and given over to paroxysms of weeping. But she only sat on, her face whiter and whiter, looking into emptiness and seeing headlines that towered as high as immense black cliffs. Her mother had telephoned Mildred Carter, that hateful, hateful, thrice-hateful Mildred Carter; had confessed that Gloria had gone out with Mr. Gratton; was gone all night, no one knew where; Mildred Carter who was as good as married to Bob Dwight of theChronicle! And the emergency hospitals—Gloria with never a tear coming in her hour of greatest distress sat rocking back and forth on her chair, crying: "Oh, I wish I were dead!"
As one hears noises through a dream, long powerless to connect them logically with familiar happenings, so now did Gloria absently hearken to Gratton calling from the foot of the stairs. She jumped up only when she heard him start to mount them. Then, galvanized, she sprang to her feet, cried to him, "I'll be down in just a second," and ran to her room. She stood again looking at herself in her glass.