86 ME STORY OF THE THAPPE& 



valley, gathering the furs cached during the winter 

 hunt. 



Then the cavalcade set out for the rendezvous : griz 

 zled men in tattered buckskins, with long hair and un 

 kempt beards and bronzed skin, men who rode as if 

 they were part of the saddle, easy and careless but 

 always with eyes alert and one hand near the thing in 

 their holsters; long lines of pack-horses laden with 

 furs climbing the mountains in a zigzag trail like a 

 spiral stair, crawling along the face of cliffs barely wide 

 enough to give a horse footing, skirting the sky-line 

 between lofty peaks in order to avoid the detour round 

 the broadened bases, frequently swimming raging tor 

 rents whose force carried them half a mile off their 

 trail; always following the long slopes, for the long 

 slopes were most easily climbed; seldom following a 

 water-course, for mountain torrents take short cuts 

 over precipices ; packers scattering to right and left at 

 the fording-places, to be rounded back by the collie-dog 

 and the shouting drivers, and the old bell-mare darting 

 after the bolters with her ears laid flat. 



Not a sign by the way escaped the mountaineers 

 eye. Here the tumbling torrent is clear and sparkling 

 and cold as champagne. He knows that stream comes 

 from snow. A glacial stream would be milky blue or 

 milky green from glacial silts; and while game seeks 

 the cool heights in summer, the animals prefer the 

 snow-line and avoid the chill of the iced masses in a 

 glacier. There will be game coming down from the 

 source of that stream when he passes back this way in 

 the fall. Ah! what is that little indurated line run 

 ning up the side of the cliff just a displacement of the 

 rock chips here, a hardening of the earth that winds 



