She climbed easily
and steadily, stopping for brief rests. Early in the week
she had ridden down to the village, where she had bought
climbing breeches and stout leggings. She laughed at Albert
Edward and his fears. By one o'clock she had reached
Boulder Field. She found the rocks glazed with ice. Just
over Keyhole, that freakish vent in a wall of rock, the blue
of the sky had changed to the gray of snow-clouds.
Tenderfoot though she was, she knew that the climb over
Boulder Field would be perilous, if not impossible.
She went on, from rock to rock, for half an hour, then
decided to turn back. A clap of thunder, that roared and
crashed, and cracked up and down the canyons and over the
peaks, hastened her decision. She looked about her. Peak
on peak. Purple and black and yellow masses, fantastic in
their hugeness. Chasms. Canyons. Pyramids and minarets.
And so near. So grim. So ghastly desolate. And yet so
threatening. And then Fanny Brandeis was seized with
mountain terror. It is a disease recognized by mountain men
everywhere, and it is panic, pure and simple.
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