I called to him and he came up from
the smoky camp-fire, axe on shoulder.

"Yep," he said, squatting beside me; "the Graham Glacier used to
meander through that there hole, but somethin' went wrong with the
earth's in'ards an' there was a bust-up."

"And you saw it, William?" I said, with a sigh of envy.

"Hey? Seen it? Sure I seen it! I was to Spoutin' Springs, twenty mile
west, with a bale o' blue fox an' otter pelt. Fust I knew them geysers
begun for to groan egregious like, an' I seen the caribou gallopin'
hell-bent south. 'This climate,' sez I, 'is too bracin' for me,' so I
struck a back trail an' landed onto a hill. Then them geysers blowed
up, one arter the next, an' I heard somethin' kinder cave in between
here an' China. I disremember things what happened. Somethin' throwed
me down, but I couldn't stay there, for the blamed ground was runnin'
like a river--all wavy-like, an' the sky hit me on the back o' me
head."

"And then?" I urged, in that new excitement which every repetition of
the story revived. I had heard it all twenty times since we left New
York, but mere repetition could not apparently satisfy me.

"Then," continued William, "the whole world kinder went off like a
fire-cracker, an' I come too, an' ran like--"

"I know," said I, cutting him short, for I had become wearied of the
invariable profanity which lent a lurid ending to his narrative.

"After that," I continued, "you went through the rent in the
mountains?"

"Sure."

"And you saw a dingue and a creature that resembled a mammoth?"

"Sure," he repeated, sulkily.

"And you saw something else?" I always asked this question; it
fascinated me to see the sullen fright flicker in William's eyes, and
the mechanical backward glance, as though what he had seen might still
be behind him.

He had never answered this third question but once, and that time he
fairly snarled in my face as he growled: "I seen what no Christian
oughter see."

So when I repeated: "And you saw something else, William?" he gave me
a wicked, frightened leer, and shuffled off to feed the mules.
Flattery, entreaties, threats left him unmoved; he never told me what
the third thing was that he had seen behind the Hudson Mountains.

William had retired to mix up with his mules; I resumed my binoculars
and my silent inspection of the great, smooth path left by the Graham
Glacier when something or other exploded that vast mass of ice into
vapor.

The arid plain woun