"A. E. Merritt - Dwellers in the mirage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merritt A. E)

"If we camp at the base of those hills, we'll be out of that wind,"
said Jim. "It's five o'clock. We ought to make it in an hour."

We set off. Bursts of willow ptarmigans shot up around us from the
berry thickets like brown rockets; golden plovers and curlews were
whistling on all sides; within rifle shot a small herd of caribou was
feeding, and the little brown cranes were stalking everywhere. No
one could starve in that country, and after we had set up camp we dined
very well.

There were no sounds that night--or if there were we slept too deeply to
hear them.

The next morning we debated our trail. The low range stood directly in
our path north. It continued, increasing in height, both east and west.
It presented no great difficulties from where we were, at least so far
as we could see. We determined to climb it, taking it leisurely. It was
more difficult than it had appeared; it took us two hours to wind our
way to the top.

We tramped across the top toward a line of huge boulders that stretched
like a wall before us. We squeezed between two of these, and drew
hastily back. We were standing at the edge of a precipice that dropped
hundreds of feet sheer to the floor of a singular valley. The jumble of
snow-and-ice-mantled mountains clustered around it. At its far end,
perhaps twenty miles away, was a pyramidal-shaped peak.

Down its centre, from tip to the floor of the valley, ran a glittering
white streak, without question a glacier filling a chasm which split
the mountain as evenly as though it had been made by a single sword
stroke. The valley was not wide, not more than five miles, I estimated,
at its widest point. A long and narrow valley, its far end
stoppered by the glacier-cleft giant, its sides the walls of the other
mountains, dropping, except here and there where there had been falls
of rock, as precipitously into it as the cliff under us.

But it was the floor of the valley itself that riveted our attention.
It seemed nothing but a tremendous level field covered with rocky
rubble. At the far end, the glacier ran through this rubble for half
the length of the valley. There was no trace of vegetation among the
littered rocks. There was no hint of green upon the surrounding
mountains; only the bare black cliffs with their ice and snow-filled
gashes. It was a valley of desolation.

"It's cold here, Leif." Jim shivered.

It was cold--a cold of a curious quality, a still and breathless cold.
It seemed to press out upon us from the valley, as though to force us