By lunch the next day, we were all out there, roped together, hugging cold stone, moving slowly, painfully, slowly, not looking down much. By day’s end, we’d made it across, to the place where we could hold on and feel something–granted, not much–beneath our boots. It was inclined to be a trifle scant, however, to warrant less than a full daylight assault. So we returned once more to the gap. In the morning, we crossed. The way kept its winding angle. We headed west and up. We traveled a mile and made five hundred feet. We traveled another mile and made perhaps three hundred. Then a ledge occurred, about forty feet overhead. Stan went up the hard way, using the gun, to see what he could see. He gestured, and we followed; and the view that broke upon us was good. Down right, irregular but wide enough, was our new camp. The way above it, ice cream and whiskey sours and morning coffee and a cigarette after dinner. It was beautiful and delicious: a seventy-degree slope full of ledges and projections and good clean stone. “Hot damn!” said Kelly. We all tended to agree. We ate and we drank and we decided to rest our bruised selves that afternoon. We were in the twilight world now, walking where no man had ever walked before, and we felt ourselves to be golden. It was good to stretch out and try to unache. I slept away the day, and when I awakened the sky was a bed of glowing embers. I lay there too lazy to move, too full of sight to go back to sleep. A meteor burnt its way bluewhite across the heavens. After a time, there was another. I thought upon my position and decided that reaching it was worth the price. The cold, hard happiness of the heights filled me. I wiggled my toes. After a few minutes, I stretched and sat up. I regarded the sleeping forms of my companions. I looked out across the night as far as I could see. Then I looked up at the mountain, then dropped my eyes slowly among tomorrow’s trail. There was movement within shadow. Something was standing about fifty feet away and ten feet above. I picked up my pick and stood. I crossed the fifty and stared up. She was smiling, not burning. A woman, an impossible woman. Absolutely impossible. For one thing, she would just have to freeze to death in a mini-skirt and a sleeveless shell-top. No alternative. For another, she had very little to breath. Like, nothing. But it didn’t seem to bother her. She waved. Her hair was dark and long, and I couldn’t see her eyes. The planes of her pale, high cheeks, wide forehead, small chin corresponded in an unsettling fashion with certain simple theorems which comprise the geometry of my heart. If all angles, planes, curves be correct, it skips a beat, then hurries to make up for it.
I worked it out, felt it do so, said, “Hello.” “Hello, Whitey,” she replied. “Come down,” I said. “No, you come up.” I swung my pick. When I reached the ledge she wasn’t there. I looked around, then I saw her. She was seated on a rock twelve feet above me. “How is it that you know my name?” I asked. “Anyone can see what your name must be.” “All right,” I agreed. “What’s yours?” “…” Her lips seemed to move, but I heard nothing. “Come again?” “I don’t want a name,” she said. “Okay. I’ll call you ‘girl,’ then.” She laughed, sort of. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Watching you.” “Why?” “To see whether you’ll fall.” “I can save you the trouble,” I said. “I won’t.” “Perhaps,” she said. “Come down here.” “No, you come up here.” I climbed, but when I got there she was twenty feet higher. “Girl, you climb well,” I said, and she laughed and turned away. I pursued her for five minutes and couldn’t catch her. There was something unnatural about the way she moved. I stopped climbing when she turned again. We were still about twenty feet apart. “I take it you do not really wish me to join you,” I said. “Of course I do, but you must catch me first.” And she turned once more, and I felt a certain fury within me. It was written that no one could outclimb Mad Jack. I had written it. I swung my pick and moved like a lizard. I was near to her a couple of times, but never near enough. The day’s aches began again in my muscles, but I pulled my way up without slackening my pace. I realized, faintly, that the camp was far below me now, and that I was climbing alone through the dark up a strange slope. But I did not stop. Rather, I hurried, and my breath began to come hard in my lungs. I heard her laughter, and it was a goad. Then I came upon a two-inch ledge, and she was moving along it. I followed, around a big bulge of rock to where it ended. Then she was ninety feet above me, at the top of a smooth pinnacle. It was like a tapering, branchless tree. How she’d accomplished it, I didn’t know. I was gasping by then, but I looped my line around it and began to climb. As I did this, she spoke: “Don’t you ever tire, Whitey? I thought you would have collapsed by now.” I hitched up the line and climbed further. “You can’t make it up here, you know.” “I don’t know,” I grunted. “Why do you want so badly to climb here? There are other nice mountains.” “This is the biggest, girl. That’s why.” “It can’t be done.” “Then why all this bother to discourage me? Why not just let the mountain do it?” As I neared her, she vanished. I made it to the top, where she had been standing, and I collapsed there. Then I heard her voice again and turned my head. She was on a ledge, perhaps eighty feet away. “I didn’t think you’d make it this far,” she said. “You are a fool. Good-by, Whitey.” She was gone. I sat there on the pinnacle’s tiny top–perhaps four square feet of top–and I know that I couldn’t sleep there, because I’d fall. And I was tired. I recalled my favorite curses and I said them all, but I didn’t feel any better. I couldn’t let myself go to sleep. I looked down. I knew the way was long. I knew she didn’t think I could make it. I began the descent.