Precisely at one o'clock they were on their way. Gloria caught her own horse, coiled the rope, and mounted. As King rode across the meadow and to the wooded slope beyond she followed. It seemed to her that this was all a dream; she was almost light-headed; the sternest of realities began to seem impalpable and distant and of scant moment. She knew that she was going forward because she must; that otherwise she would lie here in the lonely wilderness and die. In her exhaustion she noted, as one does note his own soul-play when overwrought, that the prospect of death seemed less terrible than that of utter desertion.
The mountains were so big they stifled her. With every tortuous step forward this formidable land all about her had grown more severe, more lonely, more to her like the kingdom of desolation than she had ever dreamed existed. There were slope fields strewn with black lava rock where never a solitary blade of grass upthrust a thin spear; there were broken expanses across which the eye might travel wearily for what appeared endless miles. One could call out here with never a faint hope of being heard; one left alone here could die miserably, taunted only by the echoes of her own choking voice. This devil's land took on a vindictive personality; it was a hideous colossus, stooping over her, inspired with but one cruel desire, to crush her soft white body, to stamp out her life, to annihilate her and gloat over her shrieking despair. She felt like some hapless little princess in a fairy-tale who had wandered into a monstrous land of black sorcery.
By four o'clock, when it seemed to Gloria that she had reached and was passing the limits of her endurance, came two momentous occurrences. King, riding ahead as usual, was not quite so far in advance, and did not have his back turned square upon her. For the first time he had briefly mistaken the trail; they were on the steep flank of the mountain; he turned and rode back in her general direction but some hundred yards lower on the slope.
"The trail's down here," he announced shortly. He did not lift his eyes to her face, did not note the droop of the weary body. His look was all for her horse, and a new and unreasonable spurt of anger was in his heart Through her unbounded ignorance she had needlessly fatigued her mount, having no knowledge of the ways one employs to save his horse.
Gloria understood dully that she was too far up and must ride down to his level. She was beyond complaining or asking questions; with a sudden jerk upon the reins she brought Blackie about. King cursed under his breath.