nd of climbers I had
to lead through the Hellers.

Along a cliff face the trail narrowed horizontally, leading across a
foot-wide ledge overhanging a sheer drop of fifty feet and covered with
loose shale and scrub plants. Nothing, of course, to an experienced
climber--a foot-wide ledge might as well be a four-lane superhighway.
Kendricks made a nervous joke about a tightrope walker, but when his
turn came he picked his way securely, without losing balance. The
amateurs--Lerrys Ridenow, Regis, Rafe--came across without hesitation,
but I wondered how well they would have done at a less secure altitude;
to a real mountaineer, a footpath is a footpath, whether in a meadow,
above a two-foot drop, a thirty-foot ledge, or a sheer mountain face
three miles above the first level spot.

After crossing the ledge the going was harder. A steeper trail, in
places nearly imperceptible, led between thick scrub and overhanging
trees, thickly forested. In spots their twisted roots obscured the
trail; in others the persistent growth had thrust aside rocks and dirt.
We had to make our way through tangles of underbrush which would have
been nothing to a trailman, but which made our ground-accustomed bodies
ache with the effort of getting over or through them; and once the track
was totally blocked by a barricade of tangled dead brushwood, borne down
on floodwater after a sudden thaw or cloud-burst. We had to work
painfully around it over a three-hundred-foot rockslide, which we could
cross only one at a time, crab-fashion, leaning double to balance
ourselves; and no one complained now about the rope.

Toward noon I had the first intimation that we were not alone on the
slope.

At first it was no more than a glimpse of motion out of the corner of my
eyes, the shadow of a shadow. The fourth time I saw it, I called softly
to Kyla: "See anything?"

"I was beginning to think it was my eyes, or the altitude. I saw,
Jason."

"Look for a spot where we can take a break," I directed. We climbed
along a shallow ledge, the faint imperceptible flutters in the brushwood
climbing with us on either side. I muttered to the girl, "I'll be glad
when we get clear of this. At least we'll be able to see what's coming
after us!"

"If it comes to a fight," she said surprisingly, "I'd rather fight on
gravel than ice."

* * * * *

Over a rise, there was a roaring sound; Kyla swung up and balanced on a
rock-wedged tree root