Drome/Chapter 12
Chapter 12
We Enter Their Shadow
For 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 would have the answer. I felt that pocket again. Yes, the revolver was still there!
"Look here!" said I suddenly. Milton, who was on the point of springing across a fissure, turned and looked.
"How does this come?" I wanted to know. "I thought the Tamahnowis Rocks were on the Cowlitz Glacier."
"This is the Cowlitz, Bill."
"But we haven't left the Paradise yet."
"Oh, yes, we have. There is no cleaver between them, no anything; at this place it is all one continuous sheet of ice."
"Oh, that's it. Well, the ice is pretty badly crevassed before us. Glad it isn't all like this."
We worked our way forward, twisting and turning. Slowly but steadily we advanced, drawing nearer and nearer to that dark, frowning, broken mass, wondering (at any rate, I was) about the secrets we should find there—unless, indeed, we were too late. What had Milton meant by that? How on earth could the apparition of the angel and the demon lie in any manner contingent upon the movement of the ice?
Well, we were very near now—so near, in fact, that, if there was anyone, anything lurking there in the rocks, it could hear us. We would soon know whether' we had come too late!
Ere long we had got over the fissures and were moving over ice unbroken and smooth. I wondered if this was the spot where, so many years ago, White and Long had been killed. But I did not voice that thought. The truth is that this terrible place held me silent. And, when we moved into the shadow' cast by the broken, towering pile, the scene became more weird and terrible than ever.
A few minutes, and we halted, so close to the rocky wall, precipitous and broken, that I could have touched it with outstretched hand.
How cold it seemed here, how strange that sinister quality (or was it only my imagination?) of the enveloping shadows!
"Well," said Milton Rhodes, and I noticed that his voice was low and guarded, "here we are!"
I made no response.
The silence there was as the silence of a tomb.