The Daughter of a Magnate Part 17

"Yes."

"The guides have all your money?"

"Yes."

"Then I stake everything on a single throw----"

"A professional," interjected Doctor Lanning.

"Only desperate gamesters stake all on a single throw," said Gertrude warningly.

"I am a desperate gamester," said Glover, "and now for it. Have you seen the Devil's Gap?"

A chorus of derision answered.

"The very first day--the very first trip!" cried Mrs. Whitney, raising her tone one note above every other protest.

"And you staked all on so wretched a chance?" exclaimed Gertrude.

"Why, Devil's Gap is the stock feature of every guide, good, bad, and indifferent, at the Springs."

"I have staked more at heavier odds," returned Glover, taking the storm calmly, "and won. Have you made but one trip, when you first came, do you say?"

"The very first day."

"Then you haven't seen Devil's Gap. To see it," he continued, "you must see it at night."

"At night?"

"With the moon rising over the Spanish Sinks."

"Ah, how that sounds!" exclaimed Marie.

"To-night we have full moon," added Glover. "Don't say too lightly you have seen Devil's Gap, for that is given to but few tourists."

"Do not call us tourists," objected Gertrude.

"And from where did you see Devil's Gap--The Pilot?"

"No, from across the Tarn."

If the expression of Glover's face, returning somewhat the ridicule heaped on him, was intended to pique the interest of the sightseers it was effective. He was restored, provisionally, to favor; his suggestion that after dinner they take horses for the ride up Pilot Mountain to where the Gap could be seen by moonlight was eagerly adopted, and Mrs. Whitney's objection to dressing again was put down.

Marie, fearing the hards.h.i.+p, demurred, but Glover woke to so lively interest, and promised the trip should be so easy that when she consented to go he made it his affair to attend directly to her comfort and safety.

He summoned one particular liveryman, not a favorite at the fas.h.i.+onable hotel, and to him gave especial injunctions about the horses. The girths Glover himself went over at starting, and in the riding he kept near Marie.

Lighted by the stars, they left the hotel in the early evening. "How are you to find your way, Mr. Glover?" asked Marie, as they threaded the path He led her into after they had reached the mountain. "Is this the road we came on?"

"I could climb Pilot blindfolded, I reckon. When we came in here I ran surveys all around the old fellow, switchbacks and everything. The line is a Chinese puzzle about here for ten miles. The path you're on now is an old Indian trail out of Devil's Gap. The guides don't use it because it is too long. The Gap is a ten-dollar trip, in any case, and naturally they make it the shortest way."

For thirty minutes they rode in darkness, then leaving a sharp defile they emerged on a plateau.

Across the Sinks the moon was rising full and into a clear sky. To the right twinkled the lights of Glen Tarn, and below them yawned the unspeakable wrench in the granite shoulders of the Pilot range called Devil's Gap. Out of its appalling darkness projected miles of silvered spurs tipped like grinning teeth by the light of the moon.

"There are a good many Devil's Gaps in the Rockies," said Glover, after the silence had been broken; "but, I imagine, if the devil condescends to acknowledge any he wouldn't disclaim this."

Gertrude stood beside her sister. "You are quite right," she admitted.

"We have spent our month here and missed the only overpowering spectacle. This is Dante."

"Indeed it is," he a.s.sented, eagerly. "I must tell you. The first time I got into the Gap with a locating party I had a volume of Dante in my pack. It is an unfortunate trait of mine that in reading I am compelled to chart the topography of a story as I go along. In the 'Inferno' I could never get head or tail of the topography. One night we camped on this very ledge. In the night the horses roused me. When I opened the tent fly the moon was up, about where it is now. I stood till I nearly froze, looking--but I thought after that I could chart the 'Inferno.' If it weren't so dry, or if we were going to stay all night, I should have a camp-fire; but it wouldn't do, and before you get cold we must start back.

"See," he pointed, far down on the left. "Can you make out that speck of light? It is the headlight of a freight train crawling up the range from Sleepy Cat. When the weather is right you can see the white head of Sleepy Cat Mountain from this spot. That train will wind around in sight of this k.n.o.b for an hour, climbing to the mining camps."

Doctor Lanning called to Marie. Gertrude stood with Glover.

"Is that the desert of the Spanish Sinks?" she asked, looking into the stream of the moon.

"Yes."

"Is that where you were lost two days?"

"My horse got away. Have you hurt your hand?"

She was holding her right hand in her left. "I tore my glove on a thorn, coming up. It is not much."

"Is it bleeding?"

"I don't know; can you see?"

She drew down the glove gauntlet and held her hand up. If his breath caught he did not betray it, but while he touched her she could very plainly feel his hand tremble; yet for that matter his hand, she knew, trembled frequently. He struck a match. It was no part of her audacity to betray herself, and she stepped directly between the others and the little blaze and looked into his face while he Inspected her wrist. "Can you see?"

"It is scratched badly, but not bleeding," he answered.

"It hurts."

"Very likely; the wounds that hurt most don't always bleed," he said, evenly. "Let us go."

"Oh, no," she said; "not quite yet. This is unutterable. I love this."

"Your aunt, I fear, is not interested. She is complaining of the cold.

I can't light a fire; the mountain is all timber below----"

"Aunt Jane would complain in heaven, but that wouldn't signify she didn't appreciate it. Why are you so quickly put out? It isn't like you to be out of humor." She drew on her glove slowly. "I wish you had this wrist----"

"I wish to G.o.d I had." The sudden words frightened her. She showed her displeasure in half turning away, then she resolutely faced him.

"I am not going to quarrel with you even if you make fun of me----"

"Fun of you?"

"Even if you put an unfair sense on what I say."