The Silent Barrier Part 22

"All the better. It is not deep here. The shock of that avalanche opened it up. You will find a way down. Cut the steps close together.

You know how to polish them, Karl?"

"Yes, I can do that," said the porter.

"And watch the _signorina's_ feet."

"Yes, I'll take care."

Barth was peering fixedly into the chasm. To Helen's fancy it was bottomless, though in reality it was not more than forty feet deep, and the two walls fell away from each other at a practicable angle. In normal summer weather, a small creva.s.se always formed there owing to the glacier flowing over a transverse ridge of rock beneath. To-day the impact of many thousands of tons of debris had disrupted the ice to an unusual extent. Having decided on the best line, the leading guide stepped over into s.p.a.ce. Helen heard his ax ringing as he fas.h.i.+oned secure foothold down the steep ledge he had selected. He was quite trustworthy in such work.

Stampa, who had a thought for none save Helen, gave her a rea.s.suring word. "Barth will find a way, _fraulein_," he said. "And Herr Spencer knows how you should cross your feet and carry your ax, while Karl will see to your foothold. Remember too that you will be at the bottom before I begin the descent, so no harm can come to you. Try and stand straight. Don't lean against the slope. Lean away from it. Don't be afraid. Don't trust to the rope or the grip of the ax. Rely on your own stand."

It was no time to pick and choose phrases, yet Helen realized the oddity of the absence of any reference to Bower. One other in the party had a thought somewhat akin to hers; but he slurred it over in his mind, and seized the opportunity to help her by a casual remark.

"Guess you hardly expected genuine ice work in to-day's trip?" he said. "Stampa and I had a lot of it last week. It's as easy as walking down stairs when you know how."

"I don't think I am afraid," she answered; "but I should have preferred to walk up stairs first. This is rather reversing the natural order of things, isn't it?"

"Nature loves irregularities. That is why the prize girl in every novel has irregular features. A heroine with a Greek face would kill a whole library."

"_Vorwartz--es geht!_"

Barth's gruff voice sounded hollow from the depths. Karl, in his turn, went over the lip of the creva.s.se. Helen, conscious of an exaltation that lifted her out of the region of ign.o.ble fear, looked down. She could see now what was being done. Barth was swinging his ax and smiting the ice with the adz. His head was just below the level of her feet, though he was distant the full length of two sections of the rope. He had cut broad black steps. They did not seem to present any great difficulty. Helen found herself speculating on the remarkable light effects that made these notches black in a gray-green wall.

"Right foot first," said Spencer quietly. "When that is firmly fixed, throw all your weight on it, and bring the left down. Then the right again. Hold the pick breast high."

"So!" cried Karl appreciatively, watching her first successful effort.

As Spencer was lowering himself into the creva.s.se, he heard something that set his nimble wits agog. Stampa, the valiant and light hearted Stampa, the genial companion who had laughed and jested even when they were crossing an ice slope on the giant Monte della Disgrazia,--a traverse of precarious clinging, where a slip meant death a thousand feet below,--was muttering strangely at Bower.

"_Schwein-hund!_" he was saying, "if any evil befalls the _fraulein_, I shall drive my ax between your shoulder blades."

There was no reply. Spencer was sure he was not mistaken. Though the guide spoke German, he knew enough of that language to understand this comparatively simple sentence. Quite as amazing as Stampa's threat was Bower's silent acceptance of it. He began to piece together some fleeting impressions of the curious wrangle between the two outside the hut. He recalled Bower's extraordinary change of tone when told that a man named Christian Stampa had followed him from Maloja.

Helen was just taking another confident step forward and down, balancing herself with graceful a.s.surance. Spencer had a few seconds in which to steal a backward glance, and a flash of lightning happened to glimmer on Bower's features. The American was not given to fanciful imaginings; but during many a wild hour in the Far West he had seen the baleful frown of murder on a man's face too often not to recognize it now in this snow scourged cleft of a mighty Alpine glacier. Yet he was helpless. He could neither speak nor act on a mere opinion. He could only watch, and be on his guard. From that moment he tried to observe every movement not only of Helen but of Bower.

The members of the party were roped at intervals of twenty feet.

Allowing for the depth of the creva.s.se, the amount of rope taken up in their hands ready to be served out as occasion required, and the inclination of Barth's line of descent, the latter ought to be notching the opposing wall before Stampa quitted the surface of the glacier. Though Spencer could not see Stampa now, he knew that the rear guide was bracing himself strongly against any tell-tale jerk, with the additional security of an anchor obtained by driving the pick of his ax deeply into the surface ice. It was Bower's business to keep the rope quite taut both above and below; but the American was sure that he was gathering the slack behind him with his right hand while he carried the ax in his left, and did not use it to steady himself.

Spencer a.s.sumed, from various comments by Helen and others, that Bower was an adept climber. Therefore, the pa.s.sage of a schrund, or large, shallow creva.s.se was child's play to him. This departure from all the canons of the craft as imparted by Stampa during their first week on the hills together, struck Spencer as exceedingly dangerous. He reflected that were it not for the words he had overheard, he would never have known of this curious proceeding. Indeed, but for those words, with their sinister significance augmented by Bower's devilish expression, had he even looked back by chance, the maneuver might not have attracted his attention. What, then, did it imply? Why should a skilled mountaineer break an imperative rule that permits of no exceptions? He continued to watch Bower even more closely. He devoted to the task every instant that consideration for Helen's safety and his own would allow.

There was not much light in the creva.s.se. Heavy clouds and the smothering snow wraiths hid the travelers under a dense pall that suggested the approach of night, although the actual time was about half past one o'clock in the afternoon. The wind seemed to delight in torturing them with minute particles of ice that stung with a peculiar sensation of burning. These were bad enough. To add to their miseries, fine, powdery snowflakes settled on eyes and eyelids with blinding effect.

During a particularly baffling gust Helen uttered a slight exclamation. Instantly Spencer stiffened himself, and Barth and Karl halted.

"It is nothing," she cried. "For a second I could not see."

Barth's ax rang out again. The vibrations of each l.u.s.ty blow could be felt distinctly along the solid ice wall. After a last downward step he would begin to notch his way up the other side, where the angle was much more favorable to rapid progress. Spencer stole another glance over his shoulder. Bower had fully ten feet of the rearmost section of rope in hand. His head was thrown well back. Standing with his face to the ice, he was striving to look over the lip of the schrund. Stampa, feeling a steady tension, must be expecting the announcement momentarily that Barth was crossing the narrow crevice at the bottom.

Helen and Karl, intent on the operations of the leader, paid heed to nothing else; but Spencer was fascinated by Bower's peculiar actions.

At last, Barth's deep ba.s.s reverberated triumphantly upward.

"_Vorwartz!_"

"_Vorwartz_, Stampa!" repeated Bower, suddenly changing the ice ax to his right hand and stretching the left as far along the rope and as high up as possible. Simultaneously he raised the ax. Then, and not till then, did Spencer understand. Stampa must be on the point of relaxing his grip and preparing to descend. If Bower cut the rope with a single stroke of the adz, a violent tug at the sundered end would precipitate Stampa headlong into the creva.s.se, while there would be ample evidence to show that he had himself severed the rope by a miscalculated blow. The fall would surely kill him. When his corpse was recovered, it would be found that the cut had been made much closer to his own body than to that of his nearest neighbor.

"Stop!" roared Spencer, all a-quiver with wrath at his discovery.

Obedience to the climbers' law held the others rigid. That command implied danger. It called for an instant tightening of every muscle to withstand the strain of a slip. Even Bower, a man on the very brink of committing a fiendish crime, yielded to a subconscious acceptance of the law, and kept himself braced in his steps.

The American was well fitted to handle a crisis of that nature. "Hold fast, Stampa!" he shouted.

"What is wrong?" came the ready cry, for the rear guide had already driven the pick of his ax into the ice again after having withdrawn it.

Then Spencer spoke English. "I happen to be watching you," he said slowly, never relaxing a steel-cold scrutiny of Bower's livid face.

"You seem to forget what you are doing. Follow me until you have taken up the slack of the rope. Do you understand?"

Bower continued to gaze at him with lack-l.u.s.ter eyes. All he realized was that his murderous design was frustrated; but how or why he neither knew nor cared.

"Do you hear me?" demanded Spencer even more sternly. "Come along, or I shall explain myself more fully!"

Without answering, the other made s.h.i.+ft to move. Spencer, however, meant to save the unwitting guide from further hazard.

"Don't stir, Stampa, till I give the order!" he sang out.

"All right, monsieur, but we are losing time. What is Barth doing there? _Saperlotte!_ If I were in front----"

Bower, who owned certain strong qualities, swallowed something, took three strides downward, and said calmly: "I was waiting to give Stampa a hand. He is lame, you know."

Helen, of course, heard all that pa.s.sed. She had long since abandoned the effort to disentangle the skein of that day's events. Everybody was talking and acting unnaturally. Perhaps the ravel of things would clear itself when they regained the commonplace world of the hotel. In any case, she wished the men would hurry, for it was unutterably cold in the creva.s.se.

At last, then, there was a movement ahead.

Barth began to mount. Muttering an instruction to Karl that he was to give the girl a friendly pull, he cut smaller steps more widely apart and at a steeper gradient. Soon they were on the floor of the ice and hurrying to the next bridge. Not a word was spoken by anyone. The fury of the gale and the ever gathering snow made it imperative that not a moment should be wasted. The lightning was decreasing perceptibly, while the occasional peals of thunder were scarcely audible above the soughing of the wind. A tremendous crash on the right announced the fall of another avalanche; but it did not affect the next broad creva.s.se. The bridge they had used a few hours earlier stood firm.

Indeed, it was new welded by regelation since the sun's rays had disappeared.

The leader kept a perfect line, never deviating from the right track.

Helen, who had completely lost her bearings, thought they had a long way farther to go, when she saw Barth stop and begin to unfasten the rope. Then a thrust with the b.u.t.t of her _pickel_ told her that she was standing on rock. When she cleared her eyes of the flying snow, she saw a well defined curving ribbon amid the white chaos. It was the path, covered six inches deep. The violent exertions of nearly three hours since she left the hut had induced a pleasant sense of languor.

Did she dare to suggest it, she would have liked to sit down and rest for awhile.

Bower, who had subst.i.tuted reasoned thought for his madness, addressed Spencer with easy complacence while Barth was unroping them. "Why did you believe that I was doing a risky thing in stopping to a.s.sist Stampa?" he asked.

"I guess you know best," was the uncompromising answer.

"Yes, I think I do. Of course, I could not argue the matter then, but I fancy my climbing experience is far greater than yours, Mr.

Spencer."

His sheer impudence was admirable. He even smiled in the superior way of an expert lecturing a novice. But Spencer did not smile.