To-night she had thrilled to an ecstasy descending from the stars, welling up in her own heart, and she had shivered with fear and had dropped with weariness akin to despair. Now suddenly all emotions were upgathered into searing anger. Her thought was: "He will take the meat from me! The meat I have brought for Mark." She grew rigid in her tracks. She jerked up her rifle in front of her; her tired eyes hardened. She had gone to the limits of endurance in a labour of love; she had succeeded; and now she would fight for what she had brought back. Then she noted that Benny had not seen her. Though he was in full view on the ridge, he had had no eyes for her. He was stooping. She saw that he had a small pack on his back; food, no doubt. On the ground by him was a second pack, something in a crash sack; Benny was struggling to lift it to his shoulders. It must be very heavy. Gloria drew back hastily, glancing about her, found the only hiding-place offered, and slipped behind the big rock. Presently Benny came on. She heard him from a distance; he was talking to himself excitedly, jabbering broken fragments of sentences, twice breaking into his hideous dry cackle of laughter. She shivered; his utterances sounded mad. And mad they were. Perhaps his drug had run out; certainly for a nervous man there had been ample cause for jangling nerves. He jabbered constantly, his mutterings at last coming to her in jumbled words as Benny drew on. He was talking about "gold," and he chuckled. He mentioned names, Brodie's and Jarrold's and Gratton's and another name, and he chuckled again. Gloria peered cautiously from the shelter of her rock. He was very near now, struggling with the smaller pack and his rifle and the heavy bundle in his sack. She thought that he was going to pass without seeing her. But just as he passed abreast of her hiding-place something prompted Benny to jerk up his head. He saw her and stopped suddenly; she saw his eyes. And she knew on the instant that if the man were not stark mad, at least he was not entirely sane. She lifted her rifle, cold all over; if he came another step nearer she would shoot.... "It's mine!" Benny shrieked at her. "Mine, I tell you!" He broke into a run, passing her, leaving the trail, floundering down the ridge the shortest way. His rifle encumbered him; she saw it fall into the snow, while Benny, clutching his gunny-sack in both arms, stumbled on. He fell; he rose, shrieking curses. She watched, fascinated. The pack on his back slipped around in front of him; Benny tore at it and cursed it and hurled it from him. Still hugging his gold he was gone, far down the steep slope. Gloria shuddered and stepped back into her own trail. She could hear Benny cursing faintly. Like an echo came another cry across the ridges; the cry of a starving cat. _Chapter XXXIII_