followed his, and without hesitation; for there was nothing left now to choice.  She looked down and saw the water raging below; it was like a monster leaping at her, snatching at her.  She wanted to look away and could not.  Like one moving through the fearsome steps of a nightmare she went on, clinging to King’s hand, his hand tight upon hers, cold hands which met because they must.  At last the torrent was behind her; she came down into King’s arms from the log; she was faint and would have sat down.  But he urged her on.

It was another nightmare climbing up the cliffs to the cave.  He went ahead; he stopped and braced himself; he tautened the rope about her waist and said:  “Come on.  Slow and careful does it.”  She clutched with her cold, sore fingers at the rocks, felt the rope tighten, and went up and up.  The wind, as though in a fury at losing its quarry, shrieked in her ears, and in mighty gusts strove to drag her hands from the rocks and to set her swinging as it had swung the roll of bedding.  She climbed on.  King ordered and she obeyed; she waited for him to go up, further ahead; for him to call to her and draw in on the rope.  Stage by stage, weary stages fraught with terror, she toiled up and up and up.  And so at last, when it seemed to her that no strength remained in her, she came to King’s side at the gloomy entrance of Gus Ingle’s cave.  The formless black void before her which under other circumstances would have repelled, now invited.  It offered shelter and rest and protection.  She crept by King with never a backward glance, and threw herself face down on the uneven floor.

Chapter XXI

A long time King stood at the mouth of the cave, looking forth upon the newly whitened world.  The look of the thickening sky, the wintry sting of the rushing air, the businesslike way in which the snow swirled and fell created a condition upon which he had not counted and for which he had no relish.  This was more like a mid-winter blizzard than any storm had any business being so early in the season.  For many hours already the snow had been falling, piling up in the mountain passes; if it kept on at this rate through another day and night—­well, he and Gloria had best be getting out without any loitering.

He looked at his watch; not yet eleven o’clock.  Need for haste; the day would be short.  Before darkness shut down he had half a dozen hours, hours for methodical search.  Here was one of Gus Ingle’s caves; another, he knew, was directly below and at the base of the cliffs; the third should be near.  It was the third that he was chiefly interested in.  He recalled the words in the old Bible:  “We come to the First Caive and then we come to Caive number three and two!” There lay significance in the order of Ingle’s numerals; first, three, and two.  Two of the caves were for any one to see; before now King had been in both of them.  Hence it must be that Gus Ingle’s treasure lay in the third.  That one King must locate.  And without too much delay.  He looked down at Gloria.  She lay motionless just as she had thrown herself down.