Chapter XXVIII
Gratton, had he been left to his own devices, would have stood stock-still where he was, frozen to the ground in terror. Gloria tugged at him, whispering over and over: "They are coming! Don't you hear them? Quick! We must try to hide."
At last he seemed to awaken from a trance; he started and began hurrying with her, crowding by her, stumbling on ahead in the darkness, seeking the cave's unfathomed depths of darkness. She heard him stumble and fall; she ran blindly and caught him by the arm again, whispering fiercely:
"You must be silent! If they once hear us we have no chance. If we are still, maybe they won't find us."
After that he moved more guardedly. But still he crowded ahead; once in his excitement, when she brushed against him and he thought that she was going to get in his way, he shoved her violently aside. It was then that Gloria, looking back, saw Brodie's great bulk outlined against the snow outside. He came in; she saw his rifle; his figure was absorbed in the shadows. She saw other men following him; how many she did not know. One by one they bulked black against the daylight; one by one, as they entered, they were lost among the shadows. She had bumped into a wall of rock. Gratton was there, groping in all directions with his hands; she could hear his quick, dry breathing.
They could go no further. This was the end. Brodie called out loudly, his speech dripping with his habitual vileness; he shouted: "Gratton! Better step out lively like a man now. We got you anyway." Then he began to gather the scattered firewood; a match flared in his hand; his face leaped out of the dark like a devil's. Or a madman's, a man's mad with a rage which lusted for the killing of another man. Gloria's heart sank in despair; she felt as though she were going to faint.
But all the time her hands, like Gratton's, had been groping. At the moment when she felt that her knees were giving way under her, she found where an arm of the cave continued, narrow, slanting upward steeply, cluttered with blocks of stone. She tugged at Gratton's sleeve; she crept into this place and felt him close behind her, crowding, trying to press by her. She gave way briefly, felt him scrape past, and began crawling, following. Again only a few feet further on she came up with him again; once more he had come to the end of the tunnel. He was crouching, flattened against the rock wall. They were in a pocket with no outlet save the way they had come. She stood, turned toward the front of the cave, and waited.
"Get a fire going, boys," Brodie's rumbling bass was calling. Assured now of having run his quarry to earth, he took a wolfish joy from the moment. There was a horrible note in his laughter, booming out suddenly. "The little skunk's run to a hole; we'll smoke him out."
He spoke of Gratton as though he were a frightened animal, and like a frightened animal Gloria felt. She stooped and looked toward the pursuers; thus only could she see them, since when she stood erect the irregularities of the rocks above hid them from her.
Brodie lighted his fire. The other men—dully she counted them now; there were five of them all told—were gathering wood, heaping it on. The flames leaped, crackled, lifted their voices into a roar; volumes of white smoke shot out, thinned, were gone. The light flared higher, brighter. Dark corners and crevices were made palely fight. She could see the faces of the men now, their eyes reflecting the fire, looking like the eyes of wolves. Brodie carried his rifle as though he fully intended using it. At his side Benny Rudge fidgeted and blinked. By Benny stood that scarecrow of a man, Brail. Close by, interested spectators, were the squat Italian and the man who had brought the "judge" to marry her to Gratton, the leering Steve Jarrold.