88 THE STORY OF THE TRAPPEK 



ger and away. And some taciturn oracle comes out 

 with the dictum that &quot; men hadn t ought to try to shoot 

 goat except from above or in front.&quot; 



Every pack-horse of the mountains knows the trick 

 of planting legs like stanchions and blowing his sides 

 out in a balloon when the men are tightening cinches. 

 No matter how tight girths may be, before every climb 

 and at the foot of every slope there must be re-tighten 

 ing. And at every stop the horses come shouldering 

 up for the packs to be righted, or try to scrape the 

 things off under some low-branched tree. 



Night falls swiftly in the mountains, the long, 

 peaked shadows etching themselves across the valleys. 

 Shafts of sunlight slant through the mountain gaps 

 gold against the endless reaches of matted forest, red 

 as wine across the snowy heights. With the purpling 

 shadows comes a sudden chill, silencing the roar of 

 mountain torrents to an all-pervading ceaseless pro 

 longed h u s h ! 



Mountaineers take no chances on the ledges after 

 dark. It is dangerous enough work to skirt narrow 

 precipices in daylight; and sunset is often followed by 

 a thick mist rolling across the heights in billows of fog. 

 These are the clouds that one sees across the peaks at 

 nightfall like banners. How does it feel benighted 

 among those clouds ? 



A few years ago I was saving a long detour round 

 the base of a mountain by riding along the saddle of 

 rock between two peaks. The sky-line rounded the 

 convex edge of a sheer precipice for three miles. Mid 

 way the inner wall rose straight, the outer edge above 

 blackness seven thousand feet the mountaineer guid 

 ing us said it was, though I think it was nearer 



