Page:Weird Tales Volume 9 Number 1 (1927-01).djvu/16

 us. Were soon (having crossed the stream) ascending this. It was a steep climb, but we were not long in getting up it. At this place we passed the last shrub. We figured that we must be near an altitude of 7,000 feet now. Dark clouds forming. At times, in a cloud shadow, the place would have a gloomy and wild aspect. No trail, though at intervals we would find a disturbed stone or faint marks in the earth. Our route lay along a broken ridge of rock. On our left the land fell away toward Kautz's Glacier [the Nisqually] while on the right, coming up close, was another glacier [the Paradise] white and beautiful.

"Ere long we reached a point where the ridge had a width of but a few yards, a small glacier on the left, the great beautiful one on the other side. And here we found it—the trail of the thing and Sklokoyum's angel. They had come up along the edge of the ice on our left (to avoid the climb up over the rocks) crossed over the ridge (very low at this point) and held steadily along the glacier, keeping close to the edge. And in that dense fog! And just to the right the ice went sweeping down, like a smooth frozen waterfall. A single false step there, and one would go sliding down, down into yawning crevasses. How had they done it? And where had they been going, in this region of barren rock and eternal snow and ice, through that awful fog and with night drawing on?

"There was but one way to get the answer to that, and that was to follow. And so we followed.

"And how can I set down the weird mystery, the horror that succeeded? I can not. Not that it matters, for it can never, in even the slightest feature, fade from my mind.

"Clouds grew larger, thicker, blacker. The change was a sudden, sinister one; there was something uncanny about it even. Our surroundings became gloomy, indescribably dreary and savage. We halted, there in the tracks of the thing and the angel, and looked about us, and we looked with a growing uneasiness and with an awe that sent a chill to the heart—at any rate, I know that it did to mine.

"White and Long wanted to turn back. Clouds had fallen upon the summit of Rainier and were settling lower and lower. Viewed from a distance, they are clouds, but, when you find yourself in them, they are fog; and to find our way back in fog would be no easy matter. However, so I objected, it would be by no means impossible. There would be no danger if we were careful.

"'There's that pile of rocks,' said I, pointing ahead. 'Let's go on to that at any rate. The trail seems to lead straight toward it. I hate even to think of turning back now, when we are so near.'

"Still the others hesitated, their minds, I suppose, a prey to feelings for which they could not have found a rational explanation. That, however, was not strange, for it was truly a wild and weird place and hour. At length, in an evil moment, we moved forward.

"Yes, soon there could be no doubt about it: the trail led straight toward those rocks. What would we find there? If we had only known that—well, we would never have gone on to find it. But we did not know, and so we moved forward.

"So engrossed were we that we did not see it coming. There was a sudden exclamation, we halted, and there was the fog—the dreaded fog that we had forgotten—drifting about us. The next moment it was gone, but more was drifting after. We resumed our advance. It was not far now. Why couldn't the fog have waited a little longer? But what did it matter? It could affect but little our immediate purpose; and, though