120 MOUNTAINS

We sat under the canvas, propping our shoulders
against a row of pack-boxes. The wind veered, and
a cloud of smoke blew in under our roof. We held
our breath and shut our eyes until it drifted away.
Between gusts we drank our coffee and ate hot-
cakes and bacon and syrup. Beyond our out-
stretched feet was the fire, with its row of pans
slung across in the smoke. Beyond the fire lay the
downward slope of buck-brush toward the creek
and the upward slope toward the far side of the
pass. And directly opposite, cold and sinister, stood
a dark and jagged mass of mountains. Snow lay in
their folds and clefts, and on their pointed. peaks.
Glaciers wound like flat white snakes among them;
and in a lofty basin below the line of the sky the
bare, icy surface of a cirque showed grey in the
surrounding whiteness of snow and the sharp
serration of rock.

“Them bloody mountains is enough to give a
feller the jim-jams. What a hell of a place to lay
over!”

“Well, unless you want to pack the horses wet,
and roll up a bunch of soaking canvas, and get the
bedding wetter than it is, we might as well stay.”

We crawled from under the canvas to look at the
sky, but the heavy grey clouds were rolling low
over the pass and the rain was falling steadily.