"Stand aside, please," she commanded. "I am going, I tell you."
Again sensing the familiarity of the battlefield she felt an almost serene confidence, believing herself easily mistress of the situation. So much must have been plain to King from that "Stand aside, please," which Miss Gloria Gaynor of last week might have addressed to a porter, were it not that just now King's thought was not bended to trifles. When she came to his side and he did not stir, she sought to brush by him. There was no hesitation in the way in which he put out his hand and held her back.
"There can be only one captain to an expedition in adventure," he told her seriously. "I have been elected to the job. You'll pardon me if I put matters into one-syllable words? Until we are well out of this, if we are ever out at all, you will have to do what I tell you. You are not going to desert ship."
She stared at him speechlessly. Then:
"By what right do you issue orders to me?" she cried.
"Let us say," he returned in the coin of her own harshness, "by the old right of a husband. If that isn't sufficient you can add to it: by the time-honoured right of the lord and master! For that is just precisely what I intend being until I can turn you over to your dawdling set in the city again. Wait a minute," he added sternly, as he saw her lips opening to a rush of words. "I would be glad to have you go were conditions less exacting. Now I have thought matters over and it appears essential that certain of our marriage vows be remembered. You don't have to love or honour, but by thunder you are going to obey! Reversion to an ancient order of things, eh? Well, the world was better then, largely in that women were worth a man's while. Further, for my part, I fully intend to keep my obligation of protecting you against your own foolishness, the storm, Gratton, Brodie, and the devil himself. And, finally, I mean to keep my promise to your father. He sent me to get Gus Ingle's gold; it's here. So is Gratton with his cut-throat crowd. I will in all probability have my hands full. But, once and for all, you stick with me. Where," he concluded with the last jeer, "the wife's place should be!"
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?"