The Crystal Hunters Part 13

"I say, young man," said Dale, "have you a great love for the mysterious?"

"I do not understand you, herr."

"I mean, are you disposed to fancy things, and imagine troubles where there are none?"

"No, herr; I think I am rather dull," said the guide modestly. "Why do you ask?"

"Because that mule made a noise, and you instantly imagined that we were being followed and watched."

"Oh, that! Yes, herr. Our people are curious. Years ago we used to go on quietly tending our cows and goats in the valleys, and driving them up to the huts on the mountains when the snow melted. There were the great stocks and horns and spitzes towering up, covered with eternal snow, and we gazed at them with awe. Then you Englishmen came, and wanted to go up and up where the foot of man never before stepped; and even our most daring chamois hunters watched you all with wonder."

"Yes, I suppose so," said Dale, smiling, as he looked in the guide's frank face.

"You wanted guides to the mountains, and we showed you the way, while you taught us that we could climb too, and could be as cool and daring.

We did not know it before, and we had to get over our suspicions. For we said, 'these strangers must want to find something in the mountains-- something that will pay them for the risk they run in climbing up to the places where the demons of the storm dwell, and who wait to hurl down stones and dart lightning at the daring people who would venture up into their homes.'"

"And very dangerous those bad spirits are--eh, Melchior!" said Dale, smiling.

"Terribly, herr," said the guide. "And you laugh. I don't wonder. But there are plenty of our simple, uneducated people in the villages who believe all that still. I heard it all as a child, and it took a great deal of quiet thinking, as I grew up, before I could shake off all those follies, and see that there was nothing to fear high up, but the ice and wind and snow, with the dangers of the climbing. Why, fifty years ago, if a man climbed and fell, the people thought he had been thrown down by evil spirits. Many think so now in the out-of-the-way valleys."

"Then you are not superst.i.tious, Melchior?"

"I hope not, herr," said the guide reverently; "but there are plenty of my people who are, and suspicious as well. I am only an ignorant man, but I believe in wisdom; and I have lived to see that you Englishmen find pleasure in reading the books of the great G.o.d, written with His finger on the mountains and in the valleys; to know how you collect the lowliest flowers, and can show us the wonders of their shape and how they grow. Then I know, too, how you find wonders in the great rocks, and can show me how they are made of different stone, which is always being ground down to come into the valleys to make them rich. I know all this, herr; and so I do not wonder and doubt when you ask me to show you some of the wildest places in the mountains, where you may find crystals and see glaciers and caves scarcely any of us have ventured to search. But if I told some of our people that you spend your money and your time in seeking and examining all this, they would only laugh and call me a fool. They would say, 'we know better. He has blinded you.

He is seeking for gold and diamonds.' And I could not make them believe it is all in the pursuit of--what do you call that!"

"Science?"

"Yes, science; that is the word. And in their ignorance they will follow and watch us, if we do not take care to avoid them."

"You think, then, that some one has been following us?"

"Undoubtedly, sir; and if it is so, we shall have trouble."

"Pooh! They will, you mean. But I'm not going to worry myself about that. There--let's get on."

Melchior gave a quick glance backward, and Saxe followed his example, his eyes catching directly a glimpse as he thought, of a human face high up, and peering down at them from among some stones which had fallen upon a ledge.

But the glimpse was only instantaneous, and as he looked he felt that he could not be sure, and that it might be one of the blocks of lichened stones that he had taken for a face.

They went on slowly and more slowly, for the path grew so difficult that it was easy to imagine that no one had ever been along there before, and Saxe said so.

"Oh yes," said Melchior; "I have often been along here. It has been my business these many years to go everywhere and find strange wild places in the mountains. The men, too, who hunt the chamois and the bear--"

"Eh? what?" cried Saxe, plucking up his ears. "Bears! There are no bears here."

"Oh yes," said the guide, smiling. "Not many; but there are bears in the mountains. I have seen them several times, and the ibex too, more to the south, on the Italian slope."

"Shall we see them?"

"You may, herr. Perhaps we shall come across a chamois or two to-day, far up yonder in the distance."

"Let's get on, then," said Saxe eagerly. "But hallo! how are we to get the mule up that pile of rocks?"

"That!" said the guide quietly; "he will climb that better than we shall."

He was right, for the sure-footed creature breasted the obstacle of a hundred feet of piled-up blocks very coolly, picking his way patiently, and with a certainty that was surprising.

"Why, the mule is as active as a goat!" cried Dale.

"Well, not quite, herr," said Melchior. "But, as I said, you will find that he will go anywhere that we do, except upon the ice. There he loses his footing at once, and the labour is too great to cut steps for an animal like that."

The great pile of loose blocks was surmounted, and at the top Saxe stood and saw that it was evidently the remains of a slip from the mountain up to their right, which had fallen perhaps hundreds of years before, and blocked up the narrow gorge, forming a long, deep, winding lake in the mountain solitude.

"Fish? Oh yes--plenty," said the guide, "and easily caught; but they are very small. There is not food enough for them to grow big and heavy, as they do in the large lakes."

"Well," said Dale, after a few minutes' study of their surroundings, "this is wild and grand indeed. How far does the lake run up there? Of course it winds round more at the other end!"

"Yes, herr, for miles; and gets narrower, till it is like a river."

"Grand indeed; but it is like a vast stone wall all round, and as far as we can see. Must we go back again?"

"Yes," said Saxe promptly; "there's no means of getting along any farther."

The guide smiled, went a little to the left, and plunged at once into a long crack between two ma.s.ses of rock, so narrow that as the mule followed without hesitation, the sides of the basket almost touched the rock.

"We can't say our guide is of no use, Saxe," cried Dale, laughing.

"Come along. Well, do you like this rough climbing, or would you rather get back to the paths of the beaten track."

"I love it," cried Saxe excitedly. "It's all so new and strange. Why didn't we come here before?"

"You should say, why do not the tourists come into these wild places instead of going year after year in the same ruts, where they can have big hotels and people to wait upon them? Look, there's a view!" he continued, pointing along a narrow gorge between the mountains at a distant peak which stood up like the top of a sugar-loaf, only more white.

"I was looking at that view," said Saxe, pointing downward at the hind quarters of the mule, which was the only part visible, the descent was so steep, to where they came upon a sheltered grove of pines, whose sombre green stood out in bright contrast to the dull grey rocks.

Then onward slowly for hours--at times in the valley, where their feet crushed the beautiful tufts of ferns; then the hoofs of the mule were clattering over rounded ma.s.ses of stone, ground and polished, over which the patient beast slipped and slid, but never went down. Now and then there was a glimpse of a peak here or of another turning or rift there; but for the most part they were completely shut in down between walls of rock, which echoed their voices, bursting forth into quite an answering chorus when Melchior gave forth a loud, melodious jodel.

"But doesn't any one live here?" said Saxe at last.

"No, herr!"

"No farmers or cottage people? Are there no villages?"

"No, herr. How could man live up here in these solitudes? It is bright and beautiful now, with moss and dwarf firs and ferns; but food would not grow here. Then there is no gra.s.s for the cattle; and in the winter it is all deep in snow, and the winds tear down these valleys, so that it is only in sheltered places that the pines can stand. Am I leading the herrs right? Is this the kind of scenery they wish to see?"

"Capital!" cried Saxe.

"Yes," said Dale quietly, as his eyes wandered up the wall-like sides of the gorge they were in; "but there ought to be rifts and caverns up in these narrow valleys where I could find what I seek."