* * * * *
King was counting it fortunate that they were granted so likely a camp site for the night. He looked up at the tall black cliffs shutting in the little meadow; they would hold back the night winds from Gloria. He chose the spot, well back from the creek, where she would sleep. High overhead, like brooding giants, stood the upright pines. Where a little clump of mere youngsters, lusty fellows not a score of years old, had the air of pressing close together as though thus with their combined strength they sought to match the strength of their aloof parents, a compact grove to make a further shelter against the mountain air, Gloria would sleep. He stretched a strip of canvas from tree to tree, making a five-foot wall of it. Close by he started his fire, knowing from experience oft repeated how a cheery blaze in the forest may dispel shadows within even as it makes the sombrest of shadows dance gaily under the trees; to one side he laid many resinous faggots, planning on their crackling light later on when the dark came. He ringed his fire with rocks, lugging them as heavy as he could carry up from the creek side, making the rudest of fireplaces. But it had the merit that it threw the heat back toward his extended canvas, and there between it would be snug and warm. All about him, as he laboured, was the singing of water and, high in air, the singing of pine tops. They made merry music and King, gone down to the stream to fill his coffee-pot, sang with it from a full, brimming heart. Gloria was tired, but she was resting now. And in a little while, when dark came, he and she would sit by his fire and look into it and talk in hushed voices, hand locked in hand; they would watch for the first of the big blazing stars to come out—he and Gloria, alone in the wilderness.
He saw a trout swinging lazily in a quiet pool. Trout for Gloria! He glanced toward where she lay; he was glad that she was not looking. It would be a surprise for her. He hurried to his kit in his pack, got out hook and line, baited with a tiny bit of red flannel, and went back to the creek. For he knew that it was not likely that the trout here could have had any remembered encounters with man; they were plentiful and might, like many other sorts of beings, be lured to their undoing by curiosity and greed. He cut a willow pole, stood back and cast out his gay bit of bait, letting it drift with the riffles. There came a quick tug, another, sharp and vigorous, and he swung his prize out of the water, breaking the surface into scattering jewels, flashing in the sunlight as it struck against the grass along the creek's edge.
Dusk gathered while he worked over his fire. The aroma of boiling coffee rose, crept through the air, blended with the aromas of the woods. He had made toast, holding the bread to the coals upon a sharpened stick. There were strips of crisp bacon garnishing a trout browned to the last painstaking turn. There were fried potatoes, cut by King's pocket-knife into thin strips and turned into gold by the alchemy of cooking. He set out his dishes upon a flat-topped rock, replenished his fire, threw on some fresh-cut green cedar boughs for their delightful fragrance, and went to call Gloria.
* * * * *
Gloria, too tired bodily and mentally to wage a winning battle against those black vapours which flock so frequently about luckless youth, had suffered and yielded and gone down in misery. She had been crying, just why she knew not; crying because she could not help it. Hers was a state of overwrought nerves which forbade clear thinking, which distorted and warped and magnified. The babble of the water which had been music to King was to her a chorus of jeering voices; the wind in the pines an eerie moaning as of lost spirits wailing; the trees themselves, merging with the dusk, were brooding, shadowy giant things which she suddenly both feared and hated; the cliffs rising against the sky loomed so near and so gigantically tall that she felt as though they were pressing in upon her to suffocate her, to crush her, to annihilate her. The world was turning black with the night; the night rushed, treading out the last gleam of sunlight; even the one star which she had glimpsed through her tears impressed her only with its remoteness. She was frightened; not because of any physical violence, for Mark King stood between her and that. But of vague horrors. She thought of San Francisco; of her own bright room there; of the lights in the streets, of pedestrians and motors and street-cars filling that other steel-cañoned wilderness with familiar noises. And somehow, San Francisco seemed further away, immeasurably further away, than that one remote star blazing through the vastness of space.
"A cup of coffee and a bit of supper," King said gently. "You'll feel a lot better."
She rose wearily and followed him. Without a word she dropped down beside his banquet, putting out a listless hand to her tin cup. The firelight upon her face showed him her thoughtful eyes; but they were turned not toward him but toward the bed of coals. He had anticipated her lively surprise at the trout; she pushed the brown morsel aside, saying absently:
"I am not hungry. It was good of you to go to all of this trouble. I am afraid I am not much of a camper." She forced the shadow of a smile with the admission.
"Tuckered out," he thought as he looked into her face across which light and shadow flickered as flame and smoke in the camp-fire came and went fitfully, twisted by the evening breeze. "Clean tuckered out."