The doctor laughed. “Not much dust up here—the snow stays clean and reflects the light,” he said.
“Pretty soon you’ll be yelling for more grease paint, too.”
When they started on again, it was boiling hot. In spite of the glasses, their eyes began to smart, for the dazzle got in around the edges, and their faces and necks to burn.
“And now the real business is beginning,” the doctor said, heading directly from the lava island to the base of the northwest shoulder.
Bennie took one look at that shoulder, and cried, “Do we climb that?”
“Sure thing.”
“Well, if you say so, I suppose we do. But I’m no human fly.”
Ahead of them was an unbroken wall of snow, the side of a vast drift which had blown over the shoulder. It was about three hundred feet high, and the angle couldn’t have been less than sixty-five degrees. If you will tip a board or a ruler up to an angle of sixty-five degrees, and then imagine that slope to be hard, icy snow crust, with a drop of two or three thousand feet to the bottom of a cañon below you, you’ve got some idea of what the climbers were up against.
But the doctor went right ahead, cutting steps. He was chopping almost opposite his face, the slope was so steep. Bennie, watching him, had to tip his head way back, as you would to watch a man ahead of you on a ladder. He kept his head tipped back, too. He tried one look downward—and no more. All he saw was the top of Dumplin’s cap—and then the white snow slope sliding away to the hole of the cañon. He swallowed hard and bit his lips, which had already begun to swell and crack.
“I will not get scared,” he whispered to himself. “I will not get scared!”