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Updated: May 6, 2025
Those fingers had touched his and he had thrilled to the soft, warm contact; he loved them better than he loved life. And soon they would find their way into Gratton's. Not once did he move his eyes from her. She did not turn toward him, but as the "judge" began talking she lifted her head and King saw her throat, her cheek. How pale she was Though her head was up, her slim body drooped.
Gloria's heart sank in despair; she felt as though she were going to faint. But all the time her hands, like Gratton's, had been groping. At the moment when she felt that her knees were giving way under her, she found where an arm of the cave continued, narrow, slanting upward steeply, cluttered with blocks of stone.
She could see the faces of both men, Gratton's twitching and vindictive, King's immobile, looking at once calm and terribly stern. If there were two Glorias within her, one of them fled now; the other watched with quick bright eyes and gloried in the man who had come at her hour of direst need; one vanished, afraid, the other felt a little thrill go singing through her blood.
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.
The first sound broke from Gratton's lips now, a little gurgling moan. The men came on; one had heard and laughed. Then Gloria, with more shuddersome thought of rough hands upon her than of a rifle-ball, broke away from her cowering companion and came hastily to meet them. "I'm coming out," she cried out to them.
"It sounds like like an advertisement, Mark," she laughed somewhat wildly. "Poor little kid," he muttered, seeing how she trembled. "But, Gloria, why not? Some time you are going to give yourself to me, aren't you, dear? While this man is still here, won't you let him marry us? It will give me the right to shut that fool Gratton's mouth for him and Oh, Gloria, my dear, my dear "
"Dead, ain't he?" queried Benny, half-coughing over his words. His fellows had drawn closer so that they stood in a ring about the body. One man alone held apart. Gratton's eyes were wild, void of purpose; the dead, chalky-white of his face turned a sickly greenish tinge.
The girl was a vicious little fool; so he was determined to think of her unequivocally. But she was, after all, Ben Gaynor's daughter and, furthermore, the apple of Ben's eye. She was in King's keeping; he had been eminently to blame for bringing her here, his was the responsibility. Gratton's eye was the sort that soils a woman. "You are not going," he said suddenly, turning upon her.
That's a nice little she-trick, ain't it? Well, while the showing's good, lead us to the rest of it." "That's the eye, Steve," said Brodie. He stepped forward, shoved his rifle-muzzle against Gratton's body, and commanded: "You, too. Go ahead, you and her, and show us the way. And no monkey business, either of you, or I'll blow a hole square through you."
"Because," he grunted contemptuously, "you are too much of a coward to go back there to look for it." And in her heart she knew that here was but the mere truth. For, why was she not already in Gratton's camp? Her opportunity had come and gone because she had been afraid. King awoke filled with resolve and definite purpose. It was pitch dark, but he sensed the coming of wintry dawn.
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