the river, were
black, and looked far colder than the white world which extended in all
directions.

If, in truth, there existed heaps of raw red gold somewhere in a cave in
these mountains, and there had been any exactness in the description in
Gus Ingle's Bible, then the spot was not more than three or four miles
away. That was one consideration. It was still snowing. Here was a
second consideration. King turned moody eyes to Gloria's canvas-and-fir
shelter in the lee of a little bit of cliff. There lay the third. He
prepared breakfast without delay but without enthusiasm. He felt a tired
man with shackled limbs dragging a dead weight.

When he went to wake Gloria he first stood over her, looking queerly
down upon her sleep. She showed less trace of the hard day and wild
night than he had expected to see; his preparations for her comfort,
instinctive and thorough, had been made with the cunning skill of a man
familiar with situations like the present. She had rested; she lay
curled up, snug and warm, under the covers, upon which a thin layer of
fluffy snow had gathered. Her face was against a curved arm, and the
sweetness of it in its tranquil repose was a bitter sweet to him. Her
lashes against her cheek stirred and flew apart under his steady gaze.
He looked into Gloria's eyes, sweet and soft, heavy with sleep.

"Time to be up," he said. He turned on his heel and went back in haste
to his fire.

Gloria, awake, was ravenously hungry. She came sooner than he had
expected, setting the wild disarray of her hair in some hurried order.
Her eyes were quick and curious as she looked up at him. She shrugged
her shoulders behind his back and extended her hands to the small,
wind-blown blaze.

"Are we going back?" she asked colourlessly.

"No," he returned as indifferently. "It's about four miles to the caves.
We'll be there in a couple of hours. Then we'll see what we see."

Gloria sent a long, searching, and awe-struck look across the broken
country. Yonder, then, she realized dismally, lay their destination;
bleak, black, rocky heights, at so great an altitude and in a region so
barren that but few wind-broken trees grew, and the brutal face of the
world was unmasked. She saw bare peaks, steep slopes, a tremendous gorge
like an ugly gash; on the far side of the gorge sheer cliffs. Toward
them King looked. Was it there that Gus Ingle's caves awaited them? Was
that journey's end? She shivered and drew closer to the fi