Part 44 (1/2)
King's hands, with tendons bursting, sank deeper and deeper. Then she understood that each man had the grip that he wanted; that it was a mere matter now of strength and endurance and will--and that glorious thing, sheer, clean manhood.
They were breathing terribly; they lay stiller, stiller. They did not thrash about so much. Their eyes were starting out of their sockets; their faces were turning purple--or was it the firelight? Men's faces could not look like that--not while the men lived. They gasped now; they did not breathe.
One of Brodie's hands came away hastily. He began battering at King's face, battering like a steam-piston. The blows sounded loudly; blood broke out under the terrific pounding. King's grip did not alter, did not s.h.i.+ft. His eyes were shut but he clung on, grim, looking a dead man, but a man whose will lasted on after death. Brodie wrenched; they rolled over. Still King's hands did not leave their grip.
They were on their feet, staggering up and down, two men moulded together like one man. Brodie struck blow after blow, and with every thud Gloria winced and felt a pain through her own body. And still King held his grip, both hands sunk deep into the thick throat.
They were apart, two blind, staggering men. What parted them they did not know and Gloria could not see. Thus they stood for a second only.
Brodie lifted his hands--weak hands rising slowly, slowly--uncertainly.
King saw him through a gathering mist; Brodie opened his mouth to draw in great sobbing breaths of air. King, the primal rage upon him, saw the great double teeth bared, and thought that his enemy was laughing at him. It was King who gathered himself first and struck first. All of the will he had, all of the endurance left in his battered body, all of the strength G.o.d gave him, he put into that blow. He struck Brodie full in the face, between the little battered blue eyes. And Brodie fell. He rose; he got to his knees and sagged up and forward. King's shout then was to ring through Gloria's memory for days to come; he bore down on Swen Brodie, caught him about the great body, lifted him clear of the floor and hurled him downward. Brodie struck heavily, his head against the rocks. And where he fell he lay--stunned or dead.
”Come,” said King to Gloria. ”Come quick.”
He turned toward the cave's mouth and with one hand began to drag away the stones so that they could go out. His other hand was pressed to his side. His work done, he picked up the rifle at his feet and went out.
Gloria, swaying and stumbling, came after him. Neither spoke a word as they made a slow way through the snow. King went unsteadily with dragging feet. They climbed the cliff laboriously. They were in their cave--it was like home. She dropped down on the fir-boughs, stumbling to them in the dark.
_Chapter x.x.xI_
Gloria did not know if she had slept or fainted. When she regained consciousness, though it was pitch dark and dead still, there was no first puzzled moment of uncertainty. That last wonderfully glad thought which had filled brain and heart when she sank down on her fir-boughs had persisted throughout her moments or hours of unconsciousness, pervading her subconscious self gloriously, flowering spontaneously in an awakening mind: Mark King had come back to her in her moment of peril; he had battled for her like the great-hearted hero that he was, he had saved her and had brought her home. Back home! She had prayed to G.o.d when utter undoing seemed inevitable, when death had seemed more desirable than life, and He had answered. He had sent Mark King to her!
She was saved, and though it was cold and dark and still, she felt her heart singing within her. Having lived through all that she had endured, having been brought safely through it, she was as confident of the future as though never had evil menaced her. She felt new strength coursing through her blood, new hope rising within her, new certainty that all was right with her and Mark King, that all would be right eternally. Terror and anguish and despair that had surged over her in so many great flooding waves now receded and were gone; in their place shone the great flame of life triumphant; she thrilled through with the largeness of life.
Never, thank G.o.d, would she forget how Mark King, forgetful of self, contemptuous of the frightful odds against him, had hurled himself into the midst of those drunken brutes; never would she forget how G.o.dlike he had stood forth in her eyes as those others leaped upon him and he beat them back. Forgetful of self--he had always been forgetful of self! She could not think of him as she had ever thought of any other man she had ever known--for what other man would have come to her as he had done, courting death gladly if only he could stand between her and the hideous thing that attacked her? The rush of great events had swept her mind clear of pettiness and prejudice; they bore her on from familiar view-points and to new levels; like roaring winds out of a tempestuous north they cleared away the wretched fogs that had enwrapped a self-centred girl; they made her see a man in the naked glory of his sheer, clean manhood.
To her now he stood forth clothed in magnificence. She could think upon him only in superlatives. He was fearless and he was unselfish; he was kind and generous and as honest-hearted as G.o.d's own clear suns.h.i.+ne.
She knew now, suddenly and for the first time, because he had shown her, what the simple word _man_ meant. How far apart he stood from such as Brodie, the beast! How high above such as Gratton!--And once, in the city, she had been ashamed of him and had turned to Gratton! Because he had appeared to her without just so much black cloth upon his back cut in just such a style! And now how bitterly she was ashamed of her shame.
But for only an instant. Thereafter she forgot shame of any sort and exulted in her pride of him and in her pride that she was proud.
Yes, in glad defiance of a Gloria that had been, she was proud of the manhood of a man who had beaten her! He had been right; he had done that as the last argument with an empty-headed, selfish girl who deserved no better at his hands, a girl who had been like the Gratton whom she so abhorred and despised--despised even in death. She had been like Gratton the cowardly, contemptible, petty, selfish--dishonourable! All along Mark King had been right and she had been wrong, at every step. He had been gentle and patient after a fas.h.i.+on which now set her wondering and, in the end, lifted him to new heights in her esteem. When, without loving him, she had lied with her eyes and married him, that had been a Gratton sort of trick--like stealing his partners' food----
_Without loving him_! No, thank G.o.d; not that! She had always loved him; she loved him now with her whole heart and soul, with an adoration she had saved for him. When in the springtime she had ridden with him through the forest-lands, when their hands had touched, when he had held her in his arms--when she had seen him that first time from the stairway and had looked down into his clear eyes and through them into his heart--she had always loved him! She wanted suddenly to go to him, to slip into his arms, to make herself humble in pleading for his forgiveness. She was not afraid that he would not forgive; he was so big of heart that he would understand.
”Mark!” she called softly.
In the utter dark she could see nothing. The absolute stillness was unbroken. She called anxiously: ”Mark, where are you?” There was no answer. She sprang up and called to him over and over. When still there was no reply she began a hurried search for a match; there were still some upon the rock shelf. Then it was that she stumbled over something sprawling on the floor.
”Mark!” she cried again. ”Oh--Mark----”
She found a match; she got some dry twigs blazing. In their light she saw him. He lay on his back like a dead man, his arms outflung, his white face turned up toward hers. There was a great smear of blood across his brow, the track of a b.l.o.o.d.y hand as it had sought to wipe a gathering dimness out of his eyes. The fire burned brighter; she saw it glisten upon a little pool of blood at her side. She knelt and bent over him, scarcely breathing. If he were dead--if, after all this, Mark King were dead----His eyes were closed; his face was deathly white, looking the more ghastly from the dark stain across it. She lifted her own hand that had touched his side and looked at it with wide frightened eyes; it, too, was red. At that moment King's face was no ghastlier than hers.
For a little while she sat motionless, her brain reeling. But almost immediately her brain cleared and there stood forth as in a white light the one thought: _Mark King was about to die, and he must not die_! For he was Mark King, valiant and full of vigour and vitality, a man strong and hardy and l.u.s.ty, a man who would not be beaten! He was the victor, not the vanquished. And, further, she, Gloria King, Mark King's wife, would not let him die! He was hers, her own; she would hold him back to her. Had he not come to her when she needed him, and done his uttermost for her? If now she was filled with life and the pulsating love of life, it was his doing. And now it was her task--her glorious, G.o.d-given privilege!--to do for him, to fight for him, ignoring the odds against her, to save him. She sprang up filled with stubborn, confident determination. He was hers and she would not let him die. She had learned to fight; she had fought against Gratton, against Brodie; she would fight as she had never done until now against death itself.
He was big and she little, yet she dragged his bed close to his side and got her arms about him and lifted him enough to get him upon the blankets. She ran to her fire and piled and piled wood on it until the flames roared noisily and brightened everything about her. She ran back to him and knelt again and slipped her hand inside his s.h.i.+rt, seeking his heart. The deep chest was barely warmer than death; the heart stirred only faintly. But it did beat. She sought the wound Brail's bullet had made and found it in his side. There was blood on her hands but she did not notice it now. She found where the bullet had entered and where it had torn its way out through his flesh. She did not know if any vital organ lay in that narrow span or if any major artery had been severed or if the rifle-ball had merely glanced along the ribs and been deflected by them; she only knew that he had lost much blood, that it must have gushed freely while he strove with Swen Brodie, and that now it must be stopped utterly. There seemed to be so little blood left in the pale, battered body! She did see how in the intense cold it had coagulated over the wounds, checking its own flow. But she did not mean for him to lose another precious drop. And then it was that Gloria's hands achieved the first really important work they had ever done in her life. She tore bits away from her own under-garments and made soft pads over each wound; with their butcher-knife she cut a long strip from a blanket. This she wound about his limp body, making a long, tight bandage. All this time he had not moved; she had to bend close to be sure that he still breathed. She got snow and wiped his face clean of blood, touching the closed eyelids gently.
When still the eyes remained shut and he looked like one already dead, she longed wildly for some stimulant. There was coffee; she would make hot coffee do. She got the coffee-pot among the coals, filled it with snow to melt, recklessly poured coffee into it. Then, while she awaited the slow heating, she returned to him and for the first time saw how wet his boots were.
She got the boots off and felt his feet; she stooped over them until for an instant she laid her cheek against a bare foot. It was like ice.
She recalled how he had ministered to her. She heated a blanket and wrapped it about his feet and ankles. She heated other blankets and put them about him. The canvas at the cave's mouth had been torn down; she got it back into place to make it warmer for him. She put fresh wood on the fire. She hastened the coffee boiling all that she could by placing bits of dry wood close all about the pot.
She knelt at King's side; she got an arm under his shoulders and managed to lift him a little; she rolled up a blanket and put it under his head.