<h2 id="c7"><br/>CHAPTER VII <br/>THE ENCHANTED MOUNTAIN</h2>
<p>Since the time she had been able to remember
anything, these mountains of the far north,
standing away in bleak triangles of lights and
shadows, smoking with the eternally drifting
snows, had always held an all but irresistible
lure for Marian. Even as a child of six, listening
to the weird folk-stories of the Eskimo, she
had peopled those treeless, wind swept mountains
with all manner of strange folks. Now
they were fairies, white and drifting as the snow
itself; now they were strange black goblins with
round faces and red noses; and now an Eskimo
people who lived in enchanted caves that never
were cold, no matter how bitterly the wind and
cold assailed the fortresses of rocks that offered
them protection.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_66">[66]</div>
<p>“All my life,” she murmured as she tightened
the rawhide thong that served as a belt to bind
her parka close about her waist, “I have wanted
to go to the crest of that range, and now I am to
attempt it.”</p>
<p>She shivered a little at thought of the perils
that awaited her. Many were the strange, wild
tales she had heard told round the glowing stove
at the back of her father’s store; tales of privation,
freezing, starvation and death; tales told
by grizzled old prospectors who had lost their
pals in a bold struggle with the elements. She
thought of these stories and again she shivered,
but she did not turn back.</p>
<p>Once only, after an hour of travel up steep
ravines and steeper foothills, she paused to
unstrap her field glasses and look back over
the way they had come. Then she threw back
her head and laughed. It was the wild, free
laugh of a daring soul that defies failure.</p>
<p>Attatak showed all her splendid white teeth
in a grin.</p>
<p>“Who is afraid?” Marian laughed. “Snow,
cold, wind—who cares?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_67">[67]</div>
<p>Marian spoke to her reindeer, and again they
were away.</p>
<p>As they left the foothills and began to circle
one of the lesser peaks—a slow, gradually
rising spiral circle that brought them higher
and higher—Marian felt the old charm of the
mountains come back to her. Again they were
peopled by strange fairies and goblins. So real
was the illusion that at times it seemed to her
that if worst came to worst and they found
themselves lost in a storm at the mountain top,
they might call upon these phantom people for
shelter.</p>
<p>The mountain was not exactly as she had
expected to find it. She had supposed that it
was one vast cone of gleaming snow. In the
main this was true, yet here and there some
rocky promontory, towering higher than its
fellows, reared itself above the surface, a pier
of granite standing out black against the whiteness
about it, mute monument to all those daring
climbers who have lost their lives on mountain
peaks.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_68">[68]</div>
<p>Once, too, off some distance to her right and
farther up, she fancied she saw the yawning
mouth of a cavern.</p>
<p>“Doesn’t seem possible,” she told herself.
And yet, it did seem so real that she found herself
expecting some strange Rip Van Winkle-like
people to come swarming out of the cavern.</p>
<p>She shook herself as a rude blast of wind
swept up from below, all but freezing her cheek
at a single wild whirl.</p>
<p>“I must stop dreaming,” she told herself
stoutly. “Night is falling. We are on the
mountain, nearing the crest. A storm is rising.
It is colder here than in any place I have ever
been. Perhaps we have been foolhardy, but now
we must go on!”</p>
<p>Even as she thought this through, Attatak
pointed to her cheek and exclaimed:</p>
<p>“Froze-tuck.”</p>
<p>“My cheek frozen!” Marian cried in consternation.</p>
<p>“<i>Eh-eh</i>” (yes.)</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_69">[69]</div>
<p>“And we have an hour’s climb to reach the
top. Perhaps more. Somehow we must have
shelter. Attatak, can you build a snow house?”</p>
<p>“Not very good. Not build them any more,
my people.”</p>
<p>“Then—then,” said Marian slowly, as she
rubbed snow on the white, frozen spots of her
cheek, “then we must go on.”</p>
<p>Five times in the next twenty minutes Attatak
told her her cheeks were frozen. Twice Attatak
had been obliged to rub the frost from her own
cheeks. Each time the intervals between freezings
were shorter.</p>
<p>“Attatak,” Marian asked, “can we make it?”</p>
<p>“<i>Canok-ti-ma-na</i>” (I don’t know.) The Eskimo
girl’s face was very grave.</p>
<p>As Marian turned about she realized that the
storm from below was increasing. Snow, stopping
nowhere, raced past them to go smoking
out over the mountain peak.</p>
<p>She was about to start forward when again
she caught sight of a dark spot on the mountain
side above. It looked like the mouth of a cavern.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_70">[70]</div>
<p>“If only it were,” she said wistfully, “we
would camp there for the night and wait for
the worst of the storm to pass.”</p>
<p>“Attatak,” she said suddenly, “you wait here.
I am going to try to climb up there.” She
pointed to the dark spot on the hillside.</p>
<p>“All right,” said Attatak. “Be careful. Foot
slip, start to slide; never stop.” She looked
first up the hill, then down the dizzy white slope
that extended for a half mile to unknown depths
below.</p>
<p>As Marian’s gaze followed Attatak’s she saw
herself gliding down the slope, gaining speed,
shooting down faster and faster to some awful,
unknown end; a dash against a projecting rock;
a burial beneath a hundred feet of snow. Little
wonder that her knees trembled as she turned
to go. Yet she did not falter.</p>
<p>With a cheerful “All right, I’ll be careful,”
she gripped her staff and began to climb.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_71">[71]</div>
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