Jim and the “judge” had gone.  They two were alone in the still house.  Gloria was nervous; King could see that and thought that he understood.  So he went for wood, made a cheery blaze in the fireplace, and drew two chairs up to it.

“Tell me about papa’s letter,” said Gloria hastily Had there not been that obvious topic she would have caught at another, any other.  “He didn’t tell me how badly he was hurt or what had happened.”

King put out his hand for hers, and while Gloria looked into the fire and he looked into her face, he told her.  At the end he brought out Gus Ingle’s Bible and read to her what was written in it.  All the time that his eyes were occupied she watched him eagerly, a little anxiously.  But by the time he had finished she had been intrigued for the moment out of her own self-centred thoughts, her fancies caught by all that underlay this crude tale of treasure and murder, of lust for gold, of treachery and lonely death.

“And you know where it is?”

“I can go to it as straight as a string.  Two days to get to it and to stake a claim; two days to come out with a couple of horses loaded to the guards.  And that itself means a fortune, if it’s clean, raw gold, as would seem to be the case.  We need not fear the poorhouse, you and I, Mrs. King!”

“But Brodie?  And Mr. Gratton?”

“They don’t know where it is!  They can’t know, since we’ve got the Bible, and Honeycutt was dead before they got to him!  If they knew they would have been on their way already.  And I’ll be striking out before dawn, leaving no such trail that they can follow it in a hurry, even if they should seek to.  No; Brodie and Gratton and the rest of them have lost the game!”

“You are going so soon?  Papa wanted that?”

“He wanted me to telephone as soon as I got this.”  He rose, lingering over her.  “We mustn’t forget him, even for our own happiness.”  He brushed her hair with his lips; he hastened the few steps to the telephone in Ben’s study.

“I—­I am going upstairs, Mark,” called Gloria after him.

“All right, Queen of the World,” he answered her.  “I’m just to phone in a message for him.  It won’t take me five minutes to get it done; just to say:  ’Tell Ben that I start at dawn and that he’s got my word for it that nothing’s going to stop me!  And—­that I’ve just married Gloria!’”

But he was at the telephone longer than he thought to be.  The operator buzzed into his ear as he took down the receiver; San Francisco was trying to get a message through.  For Gloria Gaynor.  Would he take the message?  Then an operator in San Francisco, droning the words:  “For Miss Gloria Gaynor.  Your father is hurt in Coloma.  Just sent me word.  Says not dangerously, but I must go to him immediately.  Meet me there.  Mamma.”

“Got it,” said King, and San Francisco rang off.  Thereafter he got his own message through; he wondered how Mrs. Gaynor would take the news of her new son-in-law.  Ben would be glad; he was sure of Ben.