Gloria tried to stare him down, to wither him with the fire of her scorn, to brave by him.  But the man, all emotion having receded from his eyes, was once more like so much rock, but rock endowed with dormant power of aggression.  She felt as though she had to do with a great poised boulder which offered no menace so long as she let it alone, but which needed but an unwary step of hers to destroy its equilibrium and thus bring it crashing down upon her, crushing her.  She began by wondering if she had mistaken his look just now when she had leaped to the triumphant decision that he loved her; she ended by feeling hopeless and tired and uncertain of all things.  To keep him from noting how she was trembling she went hastily back to the roll of bedding and dropped down to it.  On the instant it became clear to her that physically King was the master.  To her, before whom difficulties had heretofore invariably melted, it seemed equally clear that there must be a way out of an unbearable situation.  So now, for the first time, she began a certain logical line of thought, seeking to shape her own plans.

“Please listen to me seriously,” King said quietly to her.  “I won’t talk long to you.  Your father is on the edge of bankruptcy.  He is temporarily out of the running—­at the hands of the very men you want to go to.  He counts on me for what is in Gus Ingle’s caves.  I have found at least a part of it and I honestly believe that it is in your hands and mine to pull Ben through and leave him a rich man on top of it.  Gratton and Brodie are down there; they’ll clean us out if they can.  The stake is big enough for them to stop at nothing short of murder, and I am not oversure they’d stop there.  Gus Ingle’s crowd didn’t, and I don’t know that men have changed much in half a hundred years.”

“I am listening,” said Gloria coolly when he paused.

“Here’s the point:  this is treasure-trove; we got here first.  It is up to us to hold it.  Can I count on you?  You don’t happen to have any love for me; well, you shouldn’t have any for Gratton or Brodie, either.  And you know that you can trust yourself to me.  Can I count on you sticking on the job, your father’s and your own job as much as mine, until we make a go of it?”

Gloria’s logical thinking had barely begun, and as yet had not had time to progress.  Her spite was lively and bitter.  In her distorted vision, blurred by passionate anger, she cried out quickly: 

“So, now that the odds are against you, you come cringing to me, do you?” Again she was misled into fancying that she held a whip-hand over him.  “Answering your question, I would trust Mr. Gratton any day rather than you.  He, at least, is not quite the brute and bully that you are.”

King was hardly disappointed.

“At least you have given a straight answer,” he muttered.  “That is something.”

Now he shaped his plans swiftly and carefully, knowing where she stood.  It was characteristic of him that, once having seen clearly his own responsibility toward a foolish girl, he did not seek to simplify his own difficulty by ridding himself of her.  Henceforth he would merely consider her his chief handicap, with him but against him.  He consoled himself with the whimsical thought that there was never a proper treasure-hunt that did not carry traitorous mutineers on the questing ship.