Read Online Solo Faces by James Salter - Free Book Online Page A

clung to him below. The well-to-do family, school, athletic teams, what these had done for him the mountains had done for Rand. A deep companionship and understanding joined them. They were equals. Without a word, it seemed, they had made a solemn pact. It would never be broken.
    The light had faded. It was growing cold. By nine-thirty they were asleep. An hour later there was thunder, distant but unmistakable. By midnight it began to rain. In a torrential downpour they went down the next day, soaked and miserable. They slept in the back of the van, the three of them, piled together like dogs while chill rain beat on the roof.
    Three times they were to walk to the foot of the Dru. The weather was against them. It had pinned down everyone else as well. Bray was in town. He had talked to one of the guides, a man from the villages who knew the lore.
    “There’s something they call the wind for the year,” he explained. “It comes on the twenty-third of January. This year it was from the west.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “A good day, then two or three of rain, and so forth. Variable.”
    “I could have told you that,” Cabot said.
    In mid-July they started up again. The weather had cleared, climbers were swarming into the mountains. Two were near them on the glacier, one a girl carrying a big pack. Her boy friend was far in front.
    “What’s he bringing her up for?”
    “To milk her,” Cabot said.
    She wore glasses. Her face was damp. Later, having fallen two or three times on the ice, she cried out in frustration and sat there. The boy went on without looking back.
    On the rognon another party was already camped—two Austrians, they looked like brothers. Cabot was immediately alarmed.
    “Let’s go to the other side,” he said.
    That evening they could hear, from across the valley, the whistle of the last train going down. Later there was singing. It was the Austrians.
    “What do you suppose they’re doing? Do you think they’re doing the same thing we are?”
    “I don’t know,” Rand said. “Where were they when it was raining?”
    “We’d better start early,” Cabot warned.
    At five in the morning they broke camp silently and went down onto the glacier that lay between them and the base. It was already light. Their hands were cold. Their footsteps seemed to bark on the frozen surface.
    “If they’re not up yet, this will wake them,” Rand said.
    “They’re doing the regular route anyway.”
    “How do you know?”
    “There they are.”
    There were two small figures far off on the right, making for the couloir.
    “Nothing to worry about now,” Rand said.
    “Right.”
    Between the glacier and the rock there is a deep crevasse, the bergschrund; they crossed it without difficulty. The granite was dark and icy cold. Rand put his hand on it. It seemed he was touching not a face but something on the order of a planet, too vast to be imagined and at the same time, somehow, aware of his presence.
    It was just before six that they began to climb.
    “I’ll take the first pitch, all right?” Cabot said.
    He took hold of the rock, found a foothold and started up.

13
    “O FF BELAY!”
    After a bit, a rope came curling down. He tied Cabot’s pack to it with stiffened fingers and watched as it was hauled up, brushing against the rock. The rope came down again. He fastened his own pack to it. A few minutes later he was climbing.
    At first there is anxiety, the initial twenty feet or so especially, but soon it vanishes. The rock was cold, it seemed to bite his hands. Pausing for a moment he could hear behind him the faint sound of trucks in the distant valley.
    He reached the place where Cabot was belaying. They exchanged a few words. Rand went ahead. He climbed confidently, the distance beneath him deepened. The body is like a machine that is slow to start but once running smoothly seems it can go forever. He searched for holds, jamming himself in the crack, touching, rejecting, working himself