They dismounted at the foot of a knob flanked by loose rock. The red stain of old snow was under their feet and beyond the spur shone the clean, blue-green edge of the glacier. "We are higher than the treeline, now," said Philip, "and above the clouds." She drew a breath of delight, lifting her glance to the near dome. "And it looks as though we could reach the summit in fifteen or twenty minutes. Oh, Phil, come, let’s go." Kingsley laughed. "We haven’t climbed nine thousand feet; the hardest third of the ascent is above us. Don’t you remember, the only two men who ever made that summit were half a day in just passing Gibraltar. We may find it no longer passable." While his look rested on the grim fortress a thin cloud rose like smoke from its base. It covered the cliff swiftly and trailed across the dome. "Out of nothing, without notice," and he shook his head; "that’s what I’ve heard." He turned. Stratton was busy searching for a safe hitching-place for his horse; he never stood well. But Mose had stepped nearer Kingsley. The boy’s shoulders were inclined forward, and his eyes, in that instant, were those of a crouching animal about to spring. "Well, Mose," he said carelessly, "your Tyee Sahgalee is hiding his face. I suppose you think we’ve come far enough. But we’ll show him." He moved on with Alice up the knob, and Stratton joined them. But presently Mose stalked by leading the way to the glacier. His face had the gray look of fear, but his lips were set in the thin line that gave him an older, sinister touch, the shadow of cruelty. He moved swiftly and surely. He did not once look back. He gave no direction or warning. They followed, slipping and stumbling through the moraine, and gaining the ragged brow of the knob, found themselves suddenly on the brink of a mighty precipice. Far, far down, the infant Cowlitz sprang into life and struggled out between stupendous columns and needles. Locked in the opposite pinnacled cliffs shone the sheer, blue-seamed front of the glacier, and the throes that gave the river birth resounded through the gorge. Stratton uncoiled the spare lariat he carried, and taking an end, with Philip closing, and the girl between, drew slowly along the rim. Mose, curving far ahead, came out on the slippery incline of the glacier. Finally he stopped under a great upheaval of ice, and resting against a block, waited, with his back turned to them and his face lifted to the clouding dome.