Page:Weird Tales Volume 9 Number 1 (1927-01).djvu/15

 that burned with a greenish, hellish fire. Where they had crushed through the flower-meadows, this was not difficult. At other places, however, no more sign than if they had moved on through the air itself. One thing: they had held steadily upward, never swinging far from the edge of that profound canyon in which flows that mighty river of ice.

"The ground became rocky—no sign. Then at last, in a sandy spot, we suddenly came to the plain-prints left by the feet of the angel as she passed there, and, mingled with those prints, there were marks over which we bent in perplexity and then utter amazement.

"These marks were about eight inches in length, and, as I looked at them, I felt a shiver run through me and I thought of a monstrous bird and even of a reptilian horror. But that squatting form we had seen for those few fleeting moments—well, that had not been either a bird or a reptile.

"'One tiling,' said Long, 'is plain: it was leading and the angel was following.'

"White and I looked closely, and saw that this had certainly been so.

"'It appealr,' Long remarked, 'that the fog didn't interfere any with their journey. They seem to have gone along as steadily and surely as if they had been in bright sun-shine.'

"I wonder,' White said, 'if the thing was smelling the way back like a dog.'

"'Back where?' I asked. 'And I see no sign of a down trail.'

"'Lord,' exclaimed Long, looking about uneasily, 'the Siwashes say that queer things go on up here, that the mountain is haunted; and blame me if I ain't beginning to think that they are right! Maybe, before we are done, we'll wish we had turned back with old Sklokoyum.'

"I didn't like to hear him talk like that. He spoke as though he were jesting, but I knew that superstitious dread had laid a hand upon him.

"'Nonsense!' I laughed. "Haunted? That woman and that thing—well, we know that they were real enough, even when we didn't have these footprints to tell us.'

"'Oh, they are real,' said Long. 'But real what?'

"Not long after that, we came to a snowfield, an acre or two in extent, and there we made a strange discovery. The trail led right across it. And it was plain that it had still been leading and the angel had been following. Of a sudden White, who was in advance, exclaimed and pointed.

"'Look at that,' he said. 'Its tracks end here.'

"And that is just what they did! But the tracks of the angel went right on across the snow.

"'Where did it go?' I wondered. "'Perhaps,' suggested Long, 'she picked it up and carried it.'

"But I shook my head.

"'A woman—or a man either, for the matter of that—carrying that thing!' White exclaimed. 'And you can see for yourself: die never even paused here. Had she stopped to pick the thing up—what a queer thought!—we would have the story written here in the snow.'

"'Then,' said Long, 'it must have gone on through the air. '

"'Humph!' White ejaculated.

'Well, Sklokoyum said that the thing has wings—the bat wings of the devil. '

"'But,' I objected, 'Sklokoyum was so badly scared that he didn't know what he saw.'

"'I wonder,' said White.

" the snowfield, the place was strewn in all directions with rock-fragments. It was comparatively level, however, and the going was not difficult. A tiny stream off to the right, a steep rocky mass before