Part 30 (1/2)

But Mills presently rose and led the way to a ”chimney,” which is the name given to an open cleft in a rock wall. This chimney was so narrow that a man could brace his back on one side, and his feet on the other, and climb it just as you climb a well. Of course, it was rough, with plenty of projections to cling to. Mills had the hardest job here, for he had no rope to help him.

The doctor spoke in here, breaking his rule.

”Do the goats use this chimney?” he shouted up.

”Sure,” Mills replied. ”Can't you see the marks of their hoofs? They jump from side to side right up it.”

”All I can say is, I'd like to see 'em,” was the somewhat sceptical answer.

The chimney work was great sport, but it was also hard work. Tom's back was sore, his hands bruised, his arms weary, before they reached the top. But finally he saw Mills disappear over the rim, and then the doctor; and finally he himself crawled out of the cleft, and stood on the very summit of the precipice. And then Tom gasped, and forgot he was hot, forgot he was tired, forgot his hands were bruised by the rough rocks, forgot the moments when his heart had been either in his boots or his throat, forgot everything but the bigness of that prospect! He almost forgot to look at his watch; but the doctor didn't.

”Four hours and a half to go two thousand feet!” the doctor said.

”That's the hardest rock climb I ever made. You don't need to go to Switzerland for real mountain climbing, Mills. You've got it here, right in your back yard.”

CHAPTER XVII--Tom Sees Both Mountain Sheep and Goats Do Their Wild Leaps Down Dizzy Ledges

Below the great wall up which they had climbed lay the little green lake, and now they could see a horseback party which had come up to the sh.o.r.e, see them with the utmost distinctness, like tiny toys. Out beyond the lake stretched the green canon, back to camp, and all to the south the piled up peaks and white snow-fields. But it was to the north that the view was best. The spot where they stood was not on the Divide, but a spur, or spine of rock running east from the Divide. This spine was only thirty or forty feet wide in places, and plunged down to the north, not quite so steeply, but quite steeply enough, to another little lake, and beyond that lake shot up the ragged gray and brown and red battlements of Mount Merritt. Merritt also stands just east of the Divide, so that they were looking into a second horseshoe amphitheatre, and on the high, steep sides of this amphitheatre, extending almost to the top of Mount Merritt, were no less than five glaciers. It was a wild, desolate picture, far wilder than the Iceberg Lake cirque, because there was less verdure, and not a trail or human being in it--only glaciers and precipices and wild, tumbled, jagged mountains.

The doctor gazed in silence for several minutes, and then he said,

”Tom, how do you like it?”

”Oh, it's wonderful! I never knew anything in the world could be so--so big and lonely and sort of endless.”

The doctor smiled. ”My family and a lot of my friends think I'm crazy to risk my neck climbing,” he went on, ”but they don't know. They don't know the fun of pitting your human cunning and will power against a precipice, and then, when you've conquered it, reaching a wild spot like this and seeing the whole world spread out at your feet. There's nothing like it. I give my patients pills, but this is the medicine I take myself.”

They now ate their sandwiches, which were pretty well mashed up in their pockets, and quenched their thirst as best they could by eating snow.

Then they explored along the ragged ridge a bit, finding in the centre of the spine, winding in and out amid the rough battlements, a distinct game trail, like a foot-path. In spots it was so plain that you would have thought men walked over it every day.

Mills presently went on ahead, softly, and after a while they saw him beckoning to them, and cautioning silence. He was at the edge of the cliff, peering over. Tom and the doctor tiptoed up and looked over, also.

There, not a hundred feet below them, on a wide ledge, were five goats!

There was an old billy, standing on the edge, looking off and down, evidently inspecting with some suspicion the party which was now lighting a camp-fire for luncheon down on the lake sh.o.r.e. There were two nannies, one eating moss and one scratching herself with her hind leg.

And, finally, there were two kids, as playful as kittens, jumping around. Now and then one of the kids would give a leap and go up the cliff to a rock projection higher than his head, jump from that to another, and so climb ten or a dozen feet. Then he would jump off, head foremost, and land beside the old goats.

The three unsuspected human beings watched them for several minutes. It certainly was a pretty sight, and the most wonderful part of it to Tom was that these kids were born up here, thousands of feet above the level earth, and perhaps would never get lower in their lives than the shale slide above Iceberg Lake!

”You always have to get at 'em from above,” Mills whispered. ”They don't seem to expect danger from that quarter. It's below that they watch out.

Want to see 'em dive?”

The doctor nodded, and the Ranger suddenly gave a loud shout.

The old billy did not even look up. He simply went head foremost over the edge of the shelf, where he had been standing, and disappeared. One by one, in exactly the same place, the others followed him, a kid going last. From where the men lay, a hundred feet above, the goats appeared to be dropping off into s.p.a.ce, and to certain death.

”Good gracious!” Dr. Kent exclaimed. ”Where'd they go to?”

Mills didn't answer. His eyes were scanning the cliff wall below.

Suddenly he pointed to the left, at least two hundred yards away and lower down the slope. There were the five goats, trotting along like three big s...o...b..a.l.l.s and two little ones, on a shelf not a foot wide.