From either end of that narrow, terrible ledge the third night was closing in; it was dropping down on them from the heights of the mountain and slipping up to them out of the abyss, the third night since Loma blazed and they had left it.  Three more days of tramping should bring them in triumph home, and yet their instincts said that all was scarcely well.  We who sit at home and draw the blinds and shut the shutters as soon as night appears, who gather round the fire when the wind is wild, who pray at regular seasons and in familiar shrines, know little of the demoniac look of night when it is filled with curses of false, infuriated gods.  Such a night was this.  Though in the heights the fleecy clouds were idle, yet the wind was stirring mournfully in the abyss and moaning as it stirred, unhappily at first and full of sorrow; but as day turned away from that awful path a very definite menace entered its voice which fast grew louder and louder, and night came on with a long howl.  Shadows repeatedly passed over the stars, and then a mist fell swiftly, as though there were something suddenly to be done and utterly to be hidden, as in very truth there was.

And in the chill of that mist the four tall men prayed to their totems, the whimsical wooden figures that stood so far away, watching the pleasant wigwams; the firelight even now would be dancing over their faces, while there would come to their ears delectable tales of war.  They halted upon the pass and prayed, and waited for any sign.  For a man’s totem may be in the likeness perhaps of an otter, and a man may pray, and if his totem be placable and watching over his man a noise may be heard at once like the noise that the otter makes, though it be but a stone that falls on another stone; and the noise is a sign.  The four men’s totems that stood so far away were in the likeness of the coney, the bear, the heron, and the lizard.  They waited, and no sign came.  With all the noises of the wind in the abyss, no noise was like the thump that the coney makes, nor the bear’s growl, nor the heron’s screech, nor the rustle of the lizard in the reeds.

It seemed that the wind was saying something over and over again, and that that thing was evil.  They prayed again to their totems, and no sign came.  And then they knew that there was some power that night that was prevailing against the pleasant carvings on painted poles of wood with the firelight on their faces so far away.  Now it was clear that the wind was saying something, some very, very dreadful thing in a tongue that they did not know.  They listened, but they could not tell what it said.  Nobody could have said from seeing their faces how much the four tall men desired the wigwams again, desired the camp-fire and the tales of war and the benignant totems that listened and smiled in the dusk:  nobody could have seen how well they knew that this was no common night or wholesome mist.