She found him not half a dozen paces away. In fact, she stumbled over his prostrate body. With an amazon's strength, she gathered him into her arms, then staggered with him back to his couch, and as she strained him to herself she loudly called his name. Amid that demoniac din, amid the shrieking of those million devils, freed from the black chasms of the rock, her voice was as feeble as the wail of a sick child.
When she had laid her inert burden upon the bed, Allie knelt and took Gray's head upon her bosom. Then, for the first time, those forces imprisoned deep within her being ran wild, and under the red glare of that flaming geyser she kissed his hair, his eyes, his lips. Over and over again she kissed them with the hungry passion of a woman starved.
CHAPTER XXVI
A subdued but continuous whispering irritated Calvin Gray. When it persisted, minute after minute, he opened his eyes, asking himself, dully, why it was that people couldn't let a fellow sleep. He lay, for some time, trying to recognize his unfamiliar surroundings; oddly enough, he could not discover the origin of that low-pitched murmur, since there was nobody in his bedroom. Evidently he had slept too hard, for his eyes were heavy, his vision was distorted, and an unaccustomed lassitude bore down his body and stupefied his brain. A thousand indistinct memories were moving about in the penumbral borderland of consciousness, but they refused to take shape. They would emerge into the light presently, of course. Meanwhile, it was restful to remain in this state of semi-stupefaction. He was pretty tired.
That whispering, he realized after a while, was nothing more than the monotonous murmur of rain upon a shingle roof, and the gurgle from dripping eaves. Oh yes! It had been pouring for several days; raining buckets, barrels—Ten thousand barrels a day!
Yonder was something familiar; a patent, spring rocking-chair. Gray knew it well. It creaked miserably when you sat in it, and when you got up to look at diamond rings it snapped its jaws at you like an alligator. Odd that they'd let an alligator into the Ajax Hotel. Nelson's doings, probably. Always up to some deviltry, that Nelson. But, thank God, the fire was out, and that ear-splitting racket that hurt his head had changed into the soothing patter of raindrops. There couldn't be any fire with ten thousand barrels of rain falling.
Gray closed his eyes and dozed briefly. But he had dreams; calamity haunted him; he awoke to the realization of some horror. Slowly his brain began to function, then more swiftly, until, like a flood released, memory returned. He groaned aloud.
Allegheny Briskow appeared out of nowhere and laid a soothing hand upon his brow. When she saw the light of sanity in his eyes, her face brightened and she cried, eagerly:
"You're coming around all right, aren't you?"
"Ten thousand barrels!" he mumbled. "They said it would be a big well and I counted on it."