Jackson Gregory

“ Love—God is love—smoothed the way before her; the stars ran with her, the great blazing stars to which again and again she lifted her eyes. They spoke to her; they came close to her; when she stopped, resting, they were all about her, bending down, and she was lifted up among them. Fervour and the ecstasy of the hour in which was doing to the uttermost, forgetful of pettiness and selfishness and cowardice—she prayed mutely that she was done with them for ever, that never again would she be such a woman as Gratton had been a man—made her over into a radiant, glorious Gloria. ”

“ He cursed himself for a fool, shut the hand into a hard fist as steady as rock, and for an instant glared at it blackly. Then he opened the fingers slowly; a hard smile made his mouth ugly and left it cruel; the fingers had hearkened to a superb will, and gave no greater hint of trembling than did the nigged hole of the giant cedar under which he stood.
He coiled his horse's tie-rope and led him back to camp. As he drew near, Gloria promptly turned her back and studied her nails; she had had encounters with men before now and had not yet gauged the profundity of this man's emotion. ”

“ A world dead-white and dead-still. That unbroken silence which exists nowhere else as it does in the wastes of snow and which lies upon the soul like a positive inhibition against the slightest human-made sound. No wind to stir a dry twig; no dry twig but was manacled and muffled; no dead leaves to rustle, since all dead leaves lay deeper than death under the snow. Gloria's sensation as she stood as still as the wilderness all about her and stared out across the ridges was that of one who had suddenly and without warning gone stone-deaf. ”

“ If there were, in truth, such gold here somewhere as he and her father with him had dreamed of—gold for which seven men had died sixty years ago, for which old Loony Honeycutt had hungered all these years, for which Brodie and his following and even a city man like Gratton were like so many ravening wolves on the trail—gold in quantity to make even toughened old gold-seekers delirious with the dreams of it—why, then, that gold was half Mark King's and half Ben Gaynor's! ”

“ Never had Mark King known pleasanter companionship than Gloria Gaynor afforded this bright morning. They passed up the trail, over the first ridge, dropped down into a tiny wild little valley, and had the world all alone to themselves. Only now was the sun up, and there in the mountains, blazing forth cheerily, it seemed to shine for them alone. When they rode side by side Gloria chatted brightly, athrill with animation, vivid with her rioting youth. ”

“ Just yonder, on the bed of fir-boughs he had made for her, lay Gloria. He did not look that way. The wind was rising; he heard it go rushing through the tree-tops; it struck with sudden, relentless impact; it set the shivering needles to shrill whistling; it made the staunch old trunks shudder. He heard the canvas flap-flapping by Gloria's bed; above him tossing boughs scraped and creaked.
One thing only seemed clear to him: the time had come when a man must seek to hold himself in check, when he must not leap, when he must strive with all the stubborn will in him to reserve judgment. ”

“ Through one of these vistas she saw a white waterfall, its wide-flung drops of spray all the colours of the rainbow as the sun caught them. The water fell into a green pool, spilled over, flowed through a rock channel of its own ancient carving, and curved away through the meadow. On the edge of this granite basin, with showers of spray breaking over it, a little bird bobbed and dipped and, lifting its head with its own inimitably bright gesture, broke into a sweet singing as liquidly musical as the falling water.
"The Water-Ouzel!" cried Gloria. ”

“ He wanted her with a want that is greater than hunger or thirst, or love of man for man or of man for life itself. Much of this lay shining in his eyes for Gratton to read—or for Gloria.
"I am no boy to be thrown aside like an old glove," cried Gratton, beside himself, shaken with jealous fury. "You have promised; you have loved me; in your heart you love me now. Shall I stand back for a girl's nervous whim? I tell you, you shall marry me."
Gloria's laughter, cool and insolent, maddened him. ”

“ Her mother had not even told her of her grandparents, being ashamed of them, making Gloria ashamed. Grandparents of whom any one might be justly proud; folk of integrity, of stamina, of fearless hardihood, men and women of that glorious type that builds empires. And Gloria, King sensed, was like them. Deep within her, under the layers of artificiality which her mother had striven so indefatigably and lovingly to lay on, she was like them. He remembered his two days with her alone in the mountains and sought to forget the fragment of one evening in the city. ”

“ The air grew rarer and colder. The snowflakes became smaller, at last a fine sifting like sand particles that cut at hands and face viciously. No longer were there groves to shelter them; on all sides bare, hostile rocks, and only occasionally a sparse growth of sprawling, earth-hugging dwarf pine and cedar, over which King strode as over so much low, tangled brush. Then came a long ridge, a spine from which the world dropped almost sheer on both sides, with the wind raging so that it seemed Buck must be blown off his feet, or the girl torn from the saddle and borne far out like a thistledown. ”

“ For one cannot be alone with the stars and be unmoved by them; they are serene with eternity, refulgent with the perfect beauty of a perfect creation, eloquent to the heart of man and woman of true values. Under the fields of their vastitude, confronted by their infinity, Gloria, like thousands before, understood that man in fevered times is prone to turn to false gods. Gus Ingle's gold—her own gold, one day—was a thing to smile at. ”

“ To Gloria it seemed inevitable that in this quest which overlooked nothing, and which as time wore on grew less frenzied and more systematic, they would find what King had found before them. She tried to think consecutively; she recalled all that King had told her of these men, all that Gratton had hinted at. She recalled with a shudder the look in the moist eyes of Steve Jarrold. It seemed to her that her only slim chance for safety lay in their finding the gold. For only gold, gold unlimited, could cause them to forget her. ”

“ She drew on her boots and walked up and down, casting fearsome glances toward the darkest portion of the cavern, shunning it, keeping the fire between it and herself. When she peered out across the desolate world she drew back from its bleak menace, shuddering, returning to crouch miserably by her fire, shut in between two frightful things, the black unknown of the bowels of the cave, the white horror of the brutal, insensate wilderness. And, in her almost hysterical emotional frenzy she saw back of each of them the man, Mark King, as though they were but the expressions of his own brutality. ”

“ Trees were stiff with frost; the wind whistled and jeered through them and about sharp crags, filling the crisp air with eerie, shuddersome music. He set his coffee to boil while meditating that down in the Sacramento Valley, which one could glimpse from here by day, it was stifling hot, like midsummer. He rested by his fire with his canvas drawn up about his shoulders, smoked his pipe, remade his pack, and went on. He counted on the moon presently and a bed at a slightly lower altitude among the trees; to-night Andy Parker was sleeping in his army blanket. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gold! He stopped at his own words, his eyes flying wide open. During these later hours, fleeing from Brodie's men, stumbling upon Gloria, swirled away by mad longings, he had not thought of gold. But here was King's camp; straight here had King come after Gloria had brought him her father's message and old Honeycutt's secret. Then the gold was here! The cupidity which in the man never slept long was awake on the instant. He began looking about him eagerly. King was gone? Then not for men to bring help to Gloria but to aid him in carrying off the gold. ”

“ By his fire of little cheer Mark King sat, with his canvas drawn over his slumping shoulders, his head down, his heart as black as the night, his soul possessed by ravaging blue demons. At the end of a fool's day came a fool's night. He should have paid heed to the first threat of a thin film across the sky; he should have turned back with Gloria the first thing this morning; he should have done anything in the world save exactly what he had done. He should not have married her ”

“ Gratton had his one last chance to show if there was the spark of manhood in him; they did not yet know of Gloria's presence, and had he stepped out now, he might have given her a chance to remain unseen. But no such heroism suggested itself to Gratton.
"Come on, Gratton," shouted Brodie. "Or do you want me to begin shooting from here?"
The light of the fire flared higher, brighter. The eyes of the men who had just entered from the outside were growing accustomed to this place of shadows. Suddenly the man Jarrold called sharply:
"There's some one with him. There's two of 'em, Brodie. Go easy!" ”

“ Gloria was marrying. Gratton. Now. He looked up into the sky bright with stars; its great message to him was "Emptiness." The world was empty, life was empty. There was nothing. Simply because Gloria had come, had laughed into his eyes, and had gone on. She was like the springtime which came dancing into the mountains which softened them and brightened them—and laughed and passed on and away. She would be laughing now—into Gratton's eyes. ”

“ Never did bullets fly wider of the mark, but never did the roar of exploding shells do better service. The lion, though ravenous, was not yet starved to the degree to whip it to the supreme desperation of attacking a human being and defying a rifle; it whirled and went flashing across the snow, seeking the shadows, gone in the drifts, vanishing.
Gloria gasped, stared after its wild flight a paralysed moment and then ran to the tree where the bear hung. ”

“ Gloria saw figures leaping forward; she knew that Brodie's hands had relinquished her; she saw Brodie bearing down on King, roaring inarticulately as he went; she saw Benny and Jarrold and the Italian bearing down upon him; King was in the midst of all that. They were upon him before Brail's head had struck the ground. They gave him no time, no space for another shot. He swept his clubbed rifle high over his head; she heard the blow when he struck, the hideous sound of a crushing skull. A man went down, she did not know which one. Only it was not Mark—thank God it was not Mark King! ”

“ Gratton with the poison extracted from his fangs had the fangs still; gold ahead somewhere, in caves where men long ago had laboured and fought and snarled at one another like starving wolves and died; Brodie somewhere, Brodie with the horrible face. She shivered and stirred restlessly, and King, who saw everything, thought that she had dreamed a bad dream. But lunch was ready; he came to her with plate and cup. And again Gloria did her best to smile gratefully. ”

“ She who had never been whipped in all of her life, she whose soft white body had been held inviolate by idolizing parents, she who had come to hold her own person as sacred as that of a high princess—to be beaten by a man! To be lashed across her shoulders with a horse's tie-rope. She, Gloria Gaynor, to have her bedding ripped off her, to be commanded to do a man's bidding—and to be whipped! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gloria could picture a dozen of them sitting at their telephones, calling up this, that, and the other Mabel and Ernestine, saying: "Oh, did you hear about Gloria Gaynor? Isn't it terrible! What could she have been thinking of? I knew she was——" and so forth and so on, "ringing interminable changes." Youth, though declared by the thoughtless to be a period of heedlessness, takes to heart far more seriously than does Age all happenings which touch its own interests. Pure tragedy is Youth's own realm. It feels acutely, its imaginings are fearful, it magnifies and distorts beyond all reason. ”

“ 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 Francisco Chronicle and Examiner, 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. ”

“ He would smother within himself that passion which in forthright men is so prone to burst into violence. Were Gloria to show herself to be this or that, were she to say this word or another, he would speak with her coolly, he would listen to her calmly, and in the end, since judge he must, he would judge with his heart ordered to beat steadily and not with a wild rush of blood. He had set a guard in his own breast as he might have set a guard over a camp of treacherous enemies. ”

“ King's grip did not alter, did not shift. His eyes were shut but he clung on, grim, looking a dead man, but a man whose will lasted on after death. Brodie wrenched; they rolled over. Still King's hands did not leave their grip.
They were on their feet, staggering up and down, two men moulded together like one man. Brodie struck blow after blow, and with every thud Gloria winced and felt a pain through her own body. And still King held his grip, both hands sunk deep into the thick throat. ”

“ He must see clearly into two human hearts! Task for the gods! As though the wilderness about him were a colossal malevolent entity endowed with the power to look into human breasts, it jeered at him with its voice of the wind.
He had but half a mind to give to physical senses. Though the wind howled all night long, he scarce was conscious of it; though the cold increased, he did not know that he was cold before he had grown numb. He had given to Gloria all of their bedding, save alone the one blanket he had wrapped about him ”

“ He saw her upon a plane where no woman ever lived, in an atmosphere too rare for flesh-and-blood humanity. A man does not love through human reason; rather through a reason, hidden even to him, deeper than humanity. Then Gloria had put her hand into his; Gloria had married him; Gloria had elected to come with him. After that he had seen nothing in its true light; Gloria had remade the world into paradise ineffable. ”

“ Never, it seemed to her, had she seen a lonelier-looking place than old Coloma drowsing on the fringe of the wilderness. The street into which they had ridden was deserted save for a couple of dogs making each other's acquaintance suspiciously. Why was it more lonesome here than it had been back there in the mountains? she wondered.
"Less than an hour," he assured her. "What business I have can be done in fifteen minutes if it can be done at all. But, in the meantime, what will you do?"
"Oh," said Gloria, "I'll just poke around. It will be fun to see what kind of people live here." ”