Page:Weird Tales Volume 9 Number 1 (1927-01).djvu/27

 moving; and there, on the other side and coming up within a few yards of the spot where we stood, was the Paradise Glacier, white and beautiful in the sunlight.

Milton Rhodes gave me an inquiring look.

"Recognize this spot?" he queried. "I never saw it before, but, yes, I believe that I do: this is the place where the angel and the demon crossed over, the spot where Scranton, White and Long found the tracks again."

"This is the place."

"And where," I asked, "are the Tamahnowis Rocks?"

"Can't see them from here, Bill. They're right over there, half a mile distant or so, probably three-quarters."

He moved down to the edge of the snow and ice; I followed.

"Now for the creepers," said Milton, seating himself on a rock fragment. "Then we are off."

A few moments, and we had fastened on the toothed soles of steel and were under way again.

Suddenly Rhodes, who was leading, stopped, raised his alpenstock and pointed with it.

"There they are, Bill!"

And there they were! The Rocks of Tamahnowis—the Demon Rocks—in sight at last!

a space we stood there in silence looking at that dark mass which reared itself up, like a temple in ruins I thought, in the midst of the crevassed ice.

Then I said: "Who, looking at that pile, would ever dream that there was anything mysterious and weird about it—anything scientific?"

"The place," Mil ton returned, "certainly has an innocent look; but looks, you know, are often deceiving. And how deceiving in this instance, that we know full well. Besides Scranton, yourself and me, not a living soul knows how weird and fearful was the death of that poor girl."

I made no response. Many were the grim, weird thoughts that came and went as I stood there and looked.

For a few moments there was silence, and then I said: "Well, let's klatawah."

"Yes," said he, turning and starting; "let's klatawah. And," he added, "that reminds me of Sluiskin's appeal to Stevens and Van Trump, down there at the falls that now bear his name: Wake klatawah! Wake klatawah!"

"But," said I, "they went, and they came back. That's an augury."

"But," he answered, "if it hadn't been for those steam-caves up there in the crater, they might not have come back, might have perished on the summit that night in the bitter cold. And then the Siwash would have been a true prophet."

"Well, there may be something equivalent to those steam-caves somewhere in the place where we are going—I don't mean, of course, in that pile of rock over there."

"Of course not. But that isn't what's troubling me; its the possibility that we may be too late."

"Too late?" I exclaimed.

"Just so. It is only at long intervals—so far as we know, that is—that these strange beings appear on the mountain."

"Well?" I queried.

"Well, Bill, glaciers, you know, move!"

"I know that. But what on earth has the movement of the ice to do with the appearance of this angel on the mountain?"

But Milton wouldn't tell me that. Instead, he told me to think. Think? I did. I thought hard; but I couldn't see it. However, we were drawing close to the rocks now, and soon I