With a sudden feeling of disquiet, Dexter shaded his eyes to survey the upper ridge; and all at once he made out a tiny figure standing erect and sentinel-like, clearly outlined against the limpid horizon. As he looked, a second figure hove into view—a third: three human shapes—men!
The climber on the middle slope was waving one hand, and pointing down the gulley with the other. Dexter had the unpleasant knowledge that the group on the ridge had caught sight of him. In the moment of his hesitation he saw one of the small figures leave the others and move cautiously towards the edge of the snow cornice. And then, as he peered upward, his eyes widened in horrified comprehension. The man had a stick or a rifle in his hands, and he was bending forward, apparently prying at the overhanging drift. The mass of snow, almost loosened by its own soggy weight, was ready to break off at the slightest touch.
Dexter saw the shadow disappear as the cornice gave way; saw a flash of white, a spurting cloud of snow. And as he turned ignominiously to flee for his life, he heard a crash from the ridge top, and then the gathering roar of an avalanche that descended the slope behind him.
CHAPTER XXI
PATH OF THE AVALANCHE
The walls of the gulley hemmed Dexter in on two sides, and he saw at a glance that it would be foolish to try to climb out of the trap into which he had blundered. Either he must gain the lower exit in time to fling himself from the path of onrushing death, or else go down, crushed and buried, under hurtling tons of ice and snow and shattered tree trunks. A single misstep, a fraction of a second lost, and his one slender chance was forfeit. He went down the steep pitch of the gulley with snowshoes creaking, fairly hissing in the snow, gliding when he could, taking obstacles with flying leaps, as a ski jumper covers the ground, throwing himself bodily towards the mouth of the chasm. But fast as he traveled, the avalanche came faster behind him.
From the first rumbling crash the sound grew thunderous, and then rapidly gained volume beyond all sense of hearing. The mountainsides reverberated and he could feel the earth shake and tremble underfoot. Once he dared to glance over his shoulder, and from the tail of his eye he saw a mass of snow and rocks and gyrating trees, all mixed up in a white cloud and pouring down upon him like foam in a waterfall. And he ran faster than he ever thought he could run.
He was among the spruces, with the brook in sight, and he plunged on between the trunks like a dodging rabbit. Twelve yards—six—three long strides needed to reach the mouth of the gulley: he strained onward in his final spurt. But the snowslide was almost upon him. The clump of sturdy spruces might have been so much wheat straw standing in the way of the scythe. The impact was like a hundred freight trains in head-on collision. Branches swayed and tossed overhead; great trunks splintered, snapped, and went down in scrambled wreckage.
Dexter took a last leap, passed the mouth of the fissure, whirling out beyond a jutting corner of rock. But as his foot touched ground, irresistible forces caught him from behind. He felt himself lifted, hurled through the air, flung aside. And masses of rock and snow and trees poured past him, out of the gulley, across the creek—and hit the slope on the other side. For seconds afterwards the earth quivered as an organ pipe vibrates with the undernotes of a deep bass chord. Then an unbelievable silence closed over the valley.
And from out of the silence Dexter's mind returned to troubled wakefulness, and struggled slowly to think about things. It gave him a queer sensation to find himself alive and able to see about him with his dim, distorted vision. But he could look, and move his head a little, and try to puzzle it all out.