over trails which a few weeks previous
would have seemed to me impossible to traverse, and after a hasty and
daring descent we reached the ledge, where I discovered the black mouth
of a cavern; into this hole Pete thrust me and led me back some twenty
yards into the darkness, ordered me to disrobe to the waist, then he
began a most vigorous and irritating slapping and rubbing of my chest;
so insistent and persevering was he that I really thought my skin would
be peeled from shoulders to waist. At last he desisted and ordered me to
put on all my clothes.

"Are you mad, Pete? Has the rarefied air of the mountains upset your
brain? If not, will you kindly tell me what on earth all this means and
why we are hiding in this gloomy hole?" I asked as soon as I got the
breath back in my body.

"Le-loo, you be a baby, and need a keeper to prevent you from committing
susancide several times a day. Tenderfoot? Well, I should say so. No one
but a short-horn from the East would keep his mouth open gulping in the
frozen fog, filling his warm lungs with quarts of fine ice. I reckon it
would be healthier to breathe pounded glass, fur it hain't sharper nor
half as cold. Why, Le-loo, tha' be a dose of fever and lung inflammation
in every mouthful of this frozen fog."

He held my face between his two strong hands so that the faint light
that filtered through the murky darkness from the cavern's mouth dimly
illuminated my countenance, and as he watched the streams of
perspiration falling in drops from the end of my nose his frown relaxed
and a broad grin spread over his handsome features.

"You're all right this time," he added "I calculate that I've melted all
the ice in your bellows, so just creep up tha' and sweat a bit more to
make it slick and sartin that we've beat the White Death this trip." I
did as he said, not because I wanted to sweat but because habit made me
obey the commands of my guide.

Evidently this cavern had been in constant use by some sort of animals
as a sort of stable for many, many years, and I have had sweeter
couches, but by this time my rough life had transformed me into
something of a wild animal myself, and it was not long before I was
comfortably dozing. During the time that I slept I was dimly conscious
of being surrounded by a crowd of people; as the absurdity of this
forced itself through my sleep-befuddled brain and I opened wide my
eyes, what I saw made me open my eyes still wider.

I was about to