May, 1920 
233 
FOREST AND STREAM 
below. In the thickening haze of noon I 
could barely distinguish them. They had 
met and were evidently talking to one an- 
other — discussing some unusual occur- 
rence, no doubt. 
Directly beneath the precipitous side 
of the third peak mounts a vast snow- 
delta where reaccumulate every year the 
avalanches of winter. Up this I crawled, 
sticking my ice-pick into the hard crust 
and pulling myself up. My chamois must 
have fallen in that direction but, as I 
could see no signs of him, I surmised that 
he must have stuck upon some ledge of 
rock above. Straight up this wall of 
rock I began to climb hand-over-hand, 
leaving my sack and pick on the snow 
below. The ledges scarcely sufficed to 
hold my toes; the fissures in the rock 
were barely deep enough to insert my 
fingers. How I climbed that wall of rock 
there is not a guide in the Val d’llliez to 
explain. It was certainly a tribute to the 
rubber-soled shoes. Finally I was con- 
fronted by a perfectly smooth seven foot 
wall surmounted by the snow of the top 
of the precipice. In the snow above I 
noticed crimson stains and on the shale 
at my feet there was the mark of impact 
where a heavy body had fallen. Here I 
became possessed by an idea, and I im- 
mediately began to descend. 
The descent was even more perilous for 
I could not see where to place my feet. 
I dared not gaze below me, and perspira- 
tion streamed from every pore. Letting 
myself down tremulously with my hands 
I felt with my feet for a footing which 
often was not there. Once I got in a pain- 
ful position from which I could move 
neither up nor down. After ten minutes 
of agonizing suspense I found a tiny 
cranny for my finger-tips and thus man- 
aged to lower myself gradually to a pro- 
jecting shoulder of rock. At another 
time I lost my footing and slipped back 
and was only saved from destruction by 
the luck of catching my foot in a small 
crack. 
Eventually attaining the gulf between 
the rock and snow-delta without cracking 
my skull, I cut steps into the inner side of 
the ice and slowly descended into the cold 
chasm. Against the sides I noticed the 
red marks of blood and little patches of 
brown, wool-like hair. I continued to 
descend but the cold of that gloomy cav- 
ern was so intense and the aperture so 
narrow that I could go no further. Long 
I stood there, my toes almost frozen in 
the foot-holes I had chopped, my ice-pick 
sticking in the wall above me, peering 
down. Presently my eyes grew accus- 
tomed to the darkness. I soon made out 
an immense crevasse below me and there, 
wedged in between the green walls of ice’ 
as in some weird twilight under the sea, 
was the buck chamois. 
I cursed myself up and down for not 
having brought a rope with me ; but final- 
ly soothed myself with the reflection that 
my game was in excellent cold-storage 
and would keep until I informed Victor 
of my luck. Then I would go with him, 
under cover of darkness, to bring it down 
as I had promised to do. 
With this happy resolve in mind I 
hauled myself out of the crevasse with 
my ice-pick and started down the snoiv- 
Precipice of the Dents Blanches 
delta in long, sliding steps. Suddenly I 
was arrested by a call from far below, 
which reechoed throughout the rocks. 
Looking below me I saw a tiny figure at 
the base of the snow-slope. At that 
great distance the man, whoever he was, 
appeared like an insect and I must have 
looked to him Tike a fly crawling down a 
colossal sugar-cone. 
Leaning on my ice-pick, which acted as 
a third leg behind me, I commenced to 
glisade. The snow flew by and in less 
than a minute I stood beside the individ- 
ual who had called. It was one of the 
Savoy guards — armed to the teeth. “Bon 
lour, camarade!” I saluted. He did not 
answer me. Instead, he gazed at me 
from head to foot under beetling brows, 
not knowing quite what to surmise from 
my bland and innocent mien. “What 
were you doing up there?” he questioned 
sternly. “Oh, picking edelweiss — have 
Cross and pole on Dents Blanches 
one?” I suggested, pulling one from my 
hat and offering it to him with a smile. 
He gazed at it perplexed. Then he an- 
swered me with another question: “Heard 
you any one shooting up there?” he in- 
quired. “Ah, oui!” I averred, “one shot 
on the Dents Blanches. I saw someone — 
an old Swiss, I think — climbing up there 
early this morning. “Ah!” exclaimed the 
Savoyard, departing in the direction 
where I had pointed. 
t ( IMPOSSIBLE !” exclaimed old Victor 
as I was having supper with him 
that evening in the smoky kitchen 
of his chalet and had narrated my ad- 
venture. Lady Victor said neither one 
thing nor the other as she cut the bread, 
holding it with her pink chubby hands, 
and all the little Victors gazed at me with 
their mouths open. But I ended by con- 
vincing the old man and, a trifle weary 
though I was, there was now no holding 
him back. 
We started at dusk for the slopes of 
the Dents Blanches. Victor had a long 
rope coiled in his rucksack while in mine 
I had my sweater and a powerful elec- 
tric flash-light. It was dark when we 
reached the meadows of Barmaz, where 
we stopped a few minutes only, to have 
a cup of coffee. We wended our way 
around the Beda by moonlight and it was 
midnight when we had climbed up my old 
foot-holes in the steep snow-delta. I 
showed Victor the tracks where the Savoy 
guard had come to speak to me. “Nom- 
de-nom!” he ejaculated. 
Putting on thick sweaters and coats to 
protect us from the intense cold, we slow- 
ly let ourselves down into the chasm of 
ice. When we had descended as far as 
the width would permit we braced our- 
selves between the cold ramparts and 
took the articles from our rucksacks. 
Suddenly I flashed the light down direct- 
ly below me and there, shimmering in 
that strange frigid sepulchre was the 
chamois buck, his head between his front 
legs. “He Sacre nom de nom!” exclaimed 
the old guide, “There he is! You are 
slick, you Americans, — Hein!” 
I tied a good cattleman’s noose in the 
rope and, after some persistence, got it 
around the buck’s little black, hooked 
horns. Luckily the rope just proved long 
enough to reach the top of the chasm. 
Climbing out, we pulled together. Our 
prize broke away from the ice-vise and 
came sliding up like a huge fish, frozen 
stiff. 
Bringing the chamois down the long 
snow-slopes was ap easy matter, but, this 
accomplished, we were confronted by a 
dilemma. To carry the animal down to the 
village in open view, even at that hour of 
night, was too risky; to skin him and cut 
off his head while frozen was impossible. 
We found our way into a little sequestered 
gulley at the timber line, however, and 
here a solution to the problem presented 
itself. Making a cheerful little fire of 
stunted pine-stumps, old Victor and I 
spent a most pleasant hour waiting for 
Buck Chamois to thaw out, and telling 
yarns. When he had limbered up we took 
his pelt, his head and a nice fat haunch. 
These we sequestered where the little 
rifle had been, and turned homeward. 
