chirring of crickets and the vibration of the conifers in the breeze.
He came into the upper bowl of the valley, where the huts clustered at the edge of the brilliant bog grass. They were silent, too. On such a warm and settled afternoon everyone would be up in the high pastures, drowsing among the folds of crest-country where an army could scatter and vanish. It wasn’t easy to distinguish sheep here, they fused with the pale, stony colours and sometimes refused to be detected even in motion. Only the chestnut goats burned like tiny, active jewels in the bleached grass.
He was ranging slowly up the slope, in an easy spiral, when he saw them dancing daintily along the contour path high above him, towards the outcrop rocks that contained the northern col. Behind him and a little below him lay the isolated hut, the highest in the valley; before him was the corrugated, sidelong fall of grass, and then the long grey scar of the rock chute that poured the debris of the heights down to the talus on the ledge. He stood on a level with the upper face of the talus, and not fifty yards from where its first spilled stones welled over into the grass and peppered the slope. It didn’t look so terrible from here, or so steep; it looked almost like a very rough and irregular path, a replica of the one above, but built up ten feet high with stones. The sheep-path on which he stood led vaguely up to it, and there turned to the right, and climbed the staircase of terraced tracks, tread by tread.
And high above him, mincing delicately towards the col, the dark-red goats made a dotted line of colour, with the tall brigand-figure of their herd striding at the head of the line. This time there was no frieze cloak, and no hat glittering with a band of fine chains. But there were the cream felt trousers, the wide-sleeved white shirt, the dappling of embroideries, the length and looseness of that mysterious body, the only one in Zbojska Dolina he had not seen at close quarters. The only one!
Dominic cupped his hands about his mouth, and sent a high, yodelling shout up towards the crests. The goats bounded on, unperturbed. The man halted, two full seconds later, as though the sound had only just risen to him, and looked at leisure about the valley below him. Dominic knew the moment when he was seen. He was the only alien creature there to be found, and the practised eye could not choose but find him. He waved an arm, and an arm was waved casually in return, before the remote figure turned to climb higher.
He would go; there was nothing to keep him, and only fifty yards or so to climb before he slipped through the pass and was lost. And even if pursued, would he be found again? He had time to vanish utterly before Dominic could reach the crests.
There was no moment when he consciously chose what he would do. All he was aware of was of doing it, without hesitation and without argument. Afterwards he did remember feeling glad, after all, about the dark-red sweater that made him a land-mark; and he recalled a sort of logical thought-process which he had probably adopted after the event, to rationalise his actions. If he could not reach the stranger in time, then the stranger must be drawn back to him. Mountain men are for ever suspicious of the folly of visitors, and their unbelievable innocence in dangerous places. It is their instinct to pull novices out of trouble. They can no more ignore the challenge than a fireman can pass by a fire.
He was on the stony edges of the talus almost before he realised it himself; straight ahead, from the dead end of the contour path that turned and climbed here sensibly on solid ground, straight on to the giant’s causeway of boulders. And it was too late to yodel again now, and too late to look up and make sure that he was observed. It was suddenly a wonderfully simple world, and there was only one enemy, and only one issue, whether he survived or died.
If he had really been an innocent, it would have been an easy thing to start on that journey; but if he had been an innocent he would never have done it, because he would not have known that it could serve his purpose. And because he was no raw novice, he began to suffer even before the first solid boulder shivered like jelly under his foot, and brought him up in tense balance, his breath held, his arms spread for stability. It was even more difficult because he had to look sure of himself until he had gone far enough to drag the goat-herd down from his heights. If he looked a fraud, who would bother to come to his rescue, even when he really needed it?
He was still poised, waiting to take the next step, when he heard the long, peremptory shout above him, and his heart turned over and melted in crazy gratitude. He dared not look up. Sweat broke on his body as he raised one arm and waved briefly and precariously in acknowledgment, like a cheerful fool completely misunderstanding the warning. He had to go on. How long would it take the herdsman to drop down the slope to him? How much farther must he go on this quaking, lurching, insecure pathway, that led nowhere except, in a ruinous fall, down to the bottom of the bowl?
He couldn’t look up, and he couldn’t look down. He had read Norman Douglas, too; he wanted to take his grim advice, and drop sensibly on to all fours, to lower his centre of gravity as far as possible, and avoid the shifts of weight that would roll the first stone onward over the ledge, and set the whole appalling mass in motion. There wouldn’t be much left to identify, if he went overboard with this lot. A coffee-grinder couldn’t do a better job on the bean that slid down into its teeth, than these stones would do on his body.
And now he couldn’t look round, either. Absolute balance was everything. One more step, short and steady, sliding the weight gradually from foot to foot, eyes fixed ahead. He felt like a beach-spider scuttling over a quicksand, but in slow-motion; his sense of proportion was suddenly invaded by the monstrous illusion that every honed rock under his foot was a polished grain of sand slithering away and sucking him under. The quiver of insecurity was everywhere, under him, round him, in the air that embraced him. The temptation to lean inward and clutch at the rock face on his right hand was almost irresistible, but he knew he must not do it. That was the quickest way to urge the first stone gently outwards, and loose the avalanche, himself one grain among the many, and the most vulnerable. The grained grey rock leaned to him invitingly. He drew his hand back fastidiously, steadied his breath, and felt with an outstretched toe for the next precarious and shuddering plane on which he could rest.
It accepted his weight perfidiously, and then at the last moment it lurched, and almost brought him down. He swayed and stared, afraid to close his eyes, fighting for balance, streaming with sweat in a sudden flood that scalded his eyebrows and eyelids, and burned bitterly on his lips. His supporting foot slipped, the stone under it rolled with agonising slowness between its fellows, and ponderously found a new equilibrium. He was down on hands and knees, quivering, toppling, wrestling with the air within him and without, fighting to balance his terrified flesh with the poised wings of his desperately calm mind. Under his spread, cautious fingers the stone felt like a ploughed field shaken by earthquake. Slowly, slowly the convulsions settled. He hung still, intact, amazed, running with sweat.
Through the thunder of blood in his ears, he heard a voice behind him saying very clearly and coolly: “Don’t be startled! Keep quite still. I’m here close behind you.”
And indeed the voice was close, steady and sourceless, like voices heard in delirium; and like those voices, it did not startle him, it was strangely acceptable, almost familiar; even the fact that it spoke in unaccented English did not strike him as surprising. The only thing he wondered about then was time. How long could he have been kneeling here sick and blind, fighting for his nerve and his balance, if the stranger had had time to drop down the slope to him and follow him out on to this vibrating man-trap?
“Don’t move until I tell you.”
A hand, long, large-jointed and muscular, came steadily sliding past his shoulder, and closed over his right
