The Killer

  CHAPTER III

  THE SECOND AND THIRD CLIMBS

  Once more, lured by the promise of the tracks we had seen, we climbedthis same mountain, but again without results. By now, you may be sure,we had found an easier way home! This was a very hard day's work, butuneventful.

  Now, four days later, I crossed the river and set off above to explorein the direction of the Continental Divide. Of course I had no intentionof climbing for goats, or, indeed, of hunting very hard for anything. Myobject was an idle go-look-see. Equally, of course, after I had rammedaround most happily for a while up the wooded stream-bed of that canon,I turned sharp to the right and began to climb the slope of the spur,running out at right angles to the main ranges that constituted one wallof my canon. It was fifteen hundred nearly perpendicular feet of hardscrambling through windfalls. Then when I had gained the ridge, Ithought I might as well keep along it a little distance. And then,naturally, I saw the main peaks not so _very_ far away; and was in forit!

  On either side of me the mountain dropped away abruptly. I walked on aknife edge, steeply rising. Great canons yawned close at either hand,and over across were leagues of snow mountains.

  In the canon from which I had emerged a fine rain had been falling.Here it had turned to wet sleet. As I mounted, the slush underfoot grewfirmer, froze, then changed to dry, powdery snow. This change wasinteresting and beautiful, but rather uncomfortable, for my boots,soaked through by the slush, now froze solid and scraped various patchesof skin from my feet. It was interesting, too, to trace the change inbird life as the altitude increased. At snow line the species hadnarrowed down to a few ravens, a Canada jay, a blue grouse or so,nuthatches, and brown creepers. I saw one fresh elk track, innumerablemarten, and the pad of a very large grizzly.

  The ridge mounted steadily. After I had gained to 2,300 feet above thecanon I found that the ridge dipped to a saddle 600 feet lower. Itreally grieved me to give up that hard-earned six hundred, and then tobuy it back again by another hard, slow, toilsome climb. Again I foundmy way barred by some unsuspected cliffs about sixty feet in height.Fortunately, they were well broken; and I worked my way to the top bymeans of ledges.

  Atop this the snow suddenly grew deeper and the ascent more precipitous.I fairly wallowed along. The timber line fell below me. All animal lifedisappeared. My only companions were now at spaced-out and mightyintervals the big bare peaks that had lifted themselves mysteriouslyfrom among their lesser neighbours, with which heretofore they had beenconfused. In spite of very heavy exertions, I began to feel the cold; soI unslung my rucksack and put on my buckskin shirt. The snow had becomevery light and feathery. The high, still buttes and crags of the maindivide were right before me. Light fog wreaths drifted and eddiedslowly, now concealing, now revealing the solemn crags and buttresses.Over everything--the rocks, the few stunted and twisted small trees, thevery surface of the snow itself--lay a heavy rime of frost. This rimestood out in long, slender needles an inch to an inch and a half inlength, sparkling and fragile and beautiful. It seemed that a breath ofwind or even a loud sound would precipitate the glittering panoply toruin; but in all the really awesome silence and hushed breathlessness ofthat strange upper world there was nothing to disturb them. The onlymotion was that of the idly-drifting fog wreaths; the only sound wasthat made by the singing of the blood in my ears! I felt as though Iwere in a world holding its breath.

  It was piercing cold. I ate a biscuit and a few prunes, trampingenergetically back and forth to keep warm. I could see in all directionsnow: an infinity of bare peaks, with hardly a glimpse of forests orstreams or places where things might live. Goats are certainly eitherfools or great poets.

  After a half hour of fruitless examination of the cliffs I perforce hadto descend. The trip back was long. It had the added interest in that itwas bringing me nearer water. No thirst is quite so torturing as thatwhich afflicts one who climbs hard in cold, high altitudes. The throatand mouth seem to shrivel and parch. Psychologically, it is even worsethan the desert thirst because in cold air it is unreasonable. Finallyit became so unendurable that I turned down from the spur-ridge longbefore I should otherwise have done so, and did a good deal of extrawork merely to reach a little sooner the stream at the bottom of thecanon. When I reached it, I found that here it flowed underground.