For an hour it raged. It was beyond her wildest imagination. Never had she beheld or even conceived anything so utterly merciless and devastating. Great masses of snow were lifted from the mountain-top and driven before the almost solid wind. It lashed her few inches of exposed flesh, until she found the antidote by placing her heavy mittens before her face and burying her head close to the ground.
Then it lifted, and the sun shone in dazzling radiance from a frozen sky. The packs and the party were white as the landscape that yawned away on all sides. Before them was a slope as precipitous as that they had just negotiated—but it went down. The Indians dug out their packs and, taking their pay, went on in search of further jobs.
Angela wondered how Jim was going to negotiate the dizzy downward path. It ran almost perpendicularly to Crater Lake, beyond which it was easier going.
Jim took the big sled to the top of the slide, 122 and commenced to dump the various packages on to it. With a coil of hemp rope he lashed this load into one compact mass. It hung on the sheer edge of a precipice, ready for instant flight. The meaning of it suddenly came to her.
“You—you aren’t going to slide down?”
“I jest am,” he said. “Sit you down there.”
Reluctantly she obeyed, clinging tightly to the knotted rope. She saw him give the sled a violent push and jump aboard. It started down the incline, gathering momentum at a dreadful rate. In twenty seconds it was rushing onward like a cannon-ball raising the snow and shrieking as it went.... The speed eventually decreased. They passed the frozen lake and made for Linderman, Jim dragging the sled and Angela pushing on the gee-pole.
After that it was a nightmare. Angela’s impression was of one endless white wilderness, broken only by a network of frozen lakes and occasional icy precipices. At nights they pitched their tent amid the vast loneliness, banking it with snow to keep out the freezing cold. At times they were held up for days, confined to the evil-smelling tent with a blizzard blowing outside. 123 The oilstove was a blessing, despite its sickening odor, and only the piled-up snow kept the small tent from being blown to ribbons. It was little more than an Esquimo igloo.
When the wind went this merciless husband downed the tent, packed up, and was off again into the wilderness—and there were 400 miles of this! The glare of the sun on the white snow blinded her, until she accepted the snow goggles which she had at first indignantly refused. The stillness frightened her. Never had she imagined such terrible soul-torturing silence; at times she asked questions merely for the pleasure of hearing a human voice. When they overtook some struggling party the desire to stop and talk was all-consuming. But Jim wasn’t for wasting time in useless conversation.
She hated him for that. She hated him for all the agony and pain that he had brought her. Fits of uncontrollable anger possessed her. She gave vent to her feelings in bitter rebuke. It had some effect, too. She knew it hurt him by the queer light in his eyes, but he said nothing—which made her angrier still.