"They have other guests by this time, I suppose?"
"Yes, a few. The last that came's a young lady. I took her up from the afternoon train."
This was what I had wanted to find out. My instinctive dislike of the ugly-faced chap vanished. I felt almost fond of him.
"Let's get on," I said.
Another man had been looking after his dogs, a man also coated and capped in fur—a big chap whose face I could not see, as he didn't trouble to salute or look my way before climbing into his seat beside the driver's place. The suitcase I'd brought from New York was disposed of: I tucked myself into the strong-smelling rugs of rough black fur, and the dogs flashed away like a lightning streak, their forms racing with shadow ghosts on the blue whiteness of starlit snow. Soon we came to a cross track, marked with a sign-post. A red lantern on the top seemed to drip blood over the words "Crescent Mountain Inn. Winter Sports."
To my surprise, though the dogs made as if to swerve leftward and dash up this beaten white way, the driver swore, and with his long whip forced them straight ahead.
"We take the short cut. 'Tisn't everyone who knows it," he deigned to fling over his shoulder at me.
I made no comment, and we sped along, until abruptly the dogs balked as at something unseen. With oaths and savage lashings they were goaded on through deep, new-fallen snow. The leaders yelped but obeyed. Then, suddenly, the driver flung reins and whip full in my face. The unlooked-for blow dazed me for a second as it was meant to do: but, as in one of those photographic dreams which come between sleeping and waking, I saw the two fur-coated figures in the front seat spring from the sledge into snow drifts. I tried to follow suit, too late, for down slid the team over the brim of a chasm dark as a cauldron, and dragged the sledge in their wake.
*****
Teano, it seems, though too polite to say so, did not like my mountain expedition. As he was not allowed to join me, he decided that the next best thing was to watch my interests in New York. He and his wife Jenny (who had an exaggerated sense of gratitude for me) discussed, according to their habit, what they would have done and what they would do were they in the "Enemy's" place.