“If you can whip up enough endurance for the work ahead of us,” he announced impersonally, “we stand a good chance of getting out of this.  Otherwise, we stand a whole lot better show of being caught here and freezing and starving to death.”

Gloria shook visibly.  Nervousness and fear and the cold were combined and merciless.  Her look sped from King’s face to what she could see of the snow-storm.

“But we’ll wait,” she asked in utter, weary meekness, “until this horrible storm is over?”

“One never knows about a storm like this,” he told her.  “It may blow itself out soon and it may keep on for a long time.  Now, it’s beginning to pile up in the drifts, to hide the trails, to make going harder every minute.  As it is we’ll have our work cut out for us; if this keeps up all afternoon and all night ...”  He shrugged.

“You mean that then we couldn’t get out at all?” she asked sharply.

He looked down on her thoughtfully.  “I don’t know,” he replied slowly, “whether you could make it then or not.  I am more or less used to this sort of thing and you are not.  I figure that we ought to take no more long shots than we have to.  If we start right now and have any luck we can make several miles before night and camp in some of the thick timber.  We’d be as well off there as we are here and just that much nearer the outside.  If the weather allowed us to travel at all we could be back at your father’s place in four or five days at the longest.  And,” he added significantly, “we have food to last us just about that long.”

Gloria sprang up hastily.  “Quick,” she cried.  “Let’s hurry.”

King nodded and began his preparations.  Into the squares of canvas he rolled everything they were to take with them, and he took no single article which he judged was not absolutely necessary.  One small frying-pan and one light aluminium pot, with single knife, fork, and spoon, constituted all in the way of cooking utensils.  With jealous eye he judged the weight, bulk, and worth of every other article, whether it be a tin of fruit or a slab of bacon.  Those delicacies, which his love for Gloria had prompted him to bring with them, he now placed at one side, to be left behind.  Bacon, to the last small scrap and fat-lined rind, coffee, to the once-boiled dregs in the coffee-pot, he packed carefully.  Then, his roll made and drawn tight, he took up the discarded articles and hid them under some loose dirt in a remote, black corner of the cave.  Ten minutes later he had gotten first his pack, then Gloria, safely down the cliffs, and they started.  Head down, silent, like two grotesque automatons, they trudged on.  They crossed on the fallen cedar, they climbed out of the gorge on the far side, they fought their way on.

Several times King turned.  But she soon saw it was not to look at her; his glance passed down the long canon toward the spot where they had seen the smudge of smoke.  She had come near forgetting that other men were near; she had no interest in them now.  King had brought her here; King must take her safely back to the world which she had forsaken so stupidly.  The obligation was plainly his; the power seemed his no less.