the rushing water from the thawing glacier, the palace of the Ice Maiden.
He set the ladder in a swinging motion, like when a spider tries to grab hold from its long, swaying thread. And when Rudy touched the tip of the lower ladders the fourth time, he got hold of them. He tied them together with a sure and steady hand, but still they wobbled as if they had worn hinges.
The five long ladders that reached up towards the nest looked like a swaying reed as they leaned vertically towards the mountain wall. Now came the most dangerous part. He had to climb like a cat climbs, but Rudy could do that. The cat had taught him. He didn’t sense
“Now I’ll catch you!”
In a corner of the eagle’s nest he saw the eaglet sitting, big and powerful. It couldn’t fly yet. Rudy fastened his eyes on it, held on with all his might with one hand, and with his other hand threw a sling around the young eagle. It was captured alive, its leg in the tight cord. Rudy slung the sling with the bird over his shoulder, so the eagle dangled a good distance below him, and clung to a helpfully lowered rope until his toes again reached the top rung of the ladder.
“Hold on tight! Don’t think you’ll fall and you won’t.” It was the old mantra, and he followed it. He held on tight, crawled, was sure he wouldn’t fall, and he didn’t fall.
There was yodeling then, loud and happy. Rudy stood on the firm rocky ground with his eaglet.
8. THE HOUSECAT HAS NEWS
“Here’s what you called for,” said Rudy, who walked into the miller’s house in Bex and set a big basket on the floor. He took the cloth off and two yellow, black-rimmed eyes glowed out, so flashing and wild that they looked like they could burn into and through anything. The strong, short beak was gaping to bite, and its neck was red and downy.
“The eaglet!” cried the miller. Babette shrieked and jumped aside, but couldn’t take her eyes off Rudy or the eaglet.
“You don’t scare easily!” said the miller.
“And you always keep your word,” said Rudy. “We each have our distinguishing feature!”
“Why didn’t you break your neck?” asked the miller.
“Because I held on,” answered Rudy, “and I’m still doing it. I’m holding on to Babette!”
“Make sure you have her first,” said the miller and laughed, and Babette knew that was a good sign.
“Let’s get the eaglet out of the basket. Look how terribly he’s glaring! How did you get a hold of him?”
And Rudy told the story while the miller’s eyes grew bigger and bigger.
“With your courage and luck you could support three wives,” said the miller.
“Thank you! Thank you!” cried Rudy.
“Well, you don’t have Babette yet,” said the miller, and slapped the young hunter on the shoulder in jest.
“Did you hear the latest from the mill?” The housecat asked the kitchen cat. “Rudy has brought us the eaglet and is taking Babette in exchange. They kissed each other right in front of Father. They’re as good as engaged. The old fellow didn’t kick. He pulled in his claws, took a nap, and let the two sit there and fawn over each other. They have so much to say that they won’t finish by Christmas.”
And they didn’t finish by Christmas. The wind whirled the brown leaves. The snow drifted in the valley as it did on the high peaks. The Ice Maiden sat in her proud palace that grew bigger when winter came. The cliff walls were glazed with ice, and there were yard-wide icicles as heavy as elephants in places where the mountain streams waved their veils in the summer. Garlands of fantastic ice crystals shone on the snow-dusted spruce trees. The Ice Maiden rode on the roaring wind over the deepest valleys, and the snow blanket reached all the way down to Bex. She could ride there and see Rudy indoors, more than he was used to being. He was sitting with Babette. The wedding would be in the summer. Their ears were often ringing, so much was the wedding discussed among their friends. There was sunshine, and the loveliest glowing rhododendron. There was the merry, laughing Babette, as lovely as the spring that came. Spring—that had all the birds singing about summer, and about the wedding day.
“How those two sit and hang on each other!” said the housecat. “I’m tired of that miaowing of theirs!”
9. THE ICE MAIDEN
Spring had unfolded its lush green garlands of walnut and chestnut trees that were especially luxuriant from the bridge by St. Maurice to Lake Geneva along the Rhone, which rushed with tremendous speed from its source under the green glacier, the ice palace where the Ice Maiden lives. She lets herself be carried on the piercing wind up onto the highest fields of snow and in the bright sunshine stretches out on the drifting pillows of snow. There she sat and looked with her far-sighted glance down in the deep valleys, where people busily moved about, like ants on a sunny rock.
“Powers of reason, as the children of the sun call you,” said the Ice Maiden. “You’re nothing but vermin. A single rolling snowball, and you and your houses and towns are crushed and obliterated!” And she lifted her proud head higher and looked around widely and deeply with her death-flashing eyes. But there was a rumbling sound from the valley, the blasting of rocks. This was the work of men—roads and tunnels for the railroad were being built.
“They’re playing mole!” she said. “They’re digging passages. That’s why there’s a sound like gunfire. If I were to move my palaces, there would be roaring louder than the boom of thunder !”
Smoke lifted up from the valley, moving forward like a fluttering veil, a waving plume from the locomotive that was pulling the train on the newly laid tracks. It was a winding snake whose joints were car after car. It shot
