Presently she heard him stirring. She did not turn her head to look at him. But she knew that he was busied with supper. She smelt coffee, heard the clash of tin cup and plate, and realized that he was eating. She wondered if he had forgotten her. After a while she moved just a trifle and furtively; he had put away his dishes and was filling his pipe. And he knew that she was watching him.
"No," he said to her unspoken question. "I am not going to cook for you any more. I have had a hard day of it, doing the man's work. Had you done the woman's you would have had supper ready for me."
He lighted his pipe with a splinter of burning pine. Then for the first time he saw the waste of scattered matches on the floor. From them he looked to her in an amazement so sheer that it left him no word of expostulation. The suspicion actually came to him that the girl was mad. It was scarcely conceivable that a perfectly sane individual could do the things which she had done.
She saw him get up and begin gathering up all of the foodstuff. He carried it to the back of the cave, where he passed out of her sight in the dark. He was gone ten minutes and came back empty-handed. He made the second trip, after which there was left on a shelf of rock only half a dozen matches and enough food for one scanty meal. This Gloria ignored.
"Do you think," she said contemptuously, "that what you have hidden back there I couldn't find?"
"You could find it but you won't," he returned with quiet assurance that jerked the question from her: "Why?"
"Because," he grunted contemptuously, "you are too much of a coward to go back there to look for it."
And in her heart she knew that here was but the mere truth. For, why was she not already in Gratton's camp? Her opportunity had come and gone--because she had been afraid.