“Our friends all lie in their soft beds with their heads on pillows of down,” I thought, “far away in the valleys and across the plains, in snug, comfortable homes, and we lie on rocky, jagged edges on the very top of a great mountain, far from human ken.” We seemed as much nearer the stars as we were further away from mankind. Venus was like a diamond cut out of the sun, and she lifted an unearthly splendour high into the sooty devouring darkness of the night. In other parts of the sky the meteors shot laconically in and out as if on errands for the planets. Cold winds ravaged the heights, but they did not roar. For the forests were far away. And there was no sound of waters--only the long slow threatening roll and splurge of loose rocks continually detaching themselves from the heights and slipping downward to perdition. I lay and I lay, and Vachel sat unmoving, and we heard, as it were, the pulse of the world. We did not see humanity’s prayers going up to God. We only saw the stars and the night. [Illustration] _If you join the mountain-peak club You’ll notice the old members stare at you, Call you silently a parvenu, interloper, upstart. Upstart you are, of course, But never mind, you’ve got a rise in the world. No use trying to outstare the mountains Sitting in their arms-chairs, nursing their gouty feet. Be a social climber still, Aspire higher, And be put up as soon as you can For the club of Heaven’s stars._ [Illustration: WHERE THE ANTELOPE WILL GO THE BEAR WILL FOLLOW] XIV. DOING THE IMPOSSIBLE BLESSINGS for dawn and the rosy lights and for the cloudlessness of the morning! Had mist enshrouded us we should have had to have remained high up on the slippery knife-edge of the mountain till the mist had passed. We were able to descend, cautiously, cautiously, for three hours in a trackless precipitous zig-zag to the red peak of a lower mountain and a high snow-bound lake, where we made a good fire and made coffee with our last coffee, and lay down again and slept. Then we washed in the snow and ceased to be old weather-beaten tramps and recaptured our yesterdays and our youth, and Vachel began to sing again and our knapsacks felt lighter, as indeed they were, for we had eaten up all the rations, even the iron rations. Then we walked to the valley of the Sun Mountain adown the rocks of a continuous cascade. The descent to the snow-bound lake and the red peak had seemed impossible, and we essayed the impossible again. It was not merely a polite walk downstairs. Every step that we took was a problem. We used our hands and the strength of our wrists as much as our feet and the tension of our ankles. Constantly were we faced with fifteen to twenty-foot drops on to narrow ledges, where a balance must be kept when we alighted.