The boys stared at it for a moment as if it might magically open up.
‘Do we knock?’ Tikaani asked after a moment.
Beck swore to himself. ‘I’m sorry. I really thought this was it.’
‘Hey, it must be around here somewhere,’ Tikaani pointed out logically. Beck could hear the disappointment in his voice but his friend was quite right. ‘We can go different ways to look for it.’
‘Yes . . .’ Beck really didn’t want to split up, but it would save time. ‘Don’t go too far. A hundred metres, tops. We make sure we can see each other all the time, right?’
‘Right.’
Tikaani headed south, Beck went north, carefully scanning the foot of the rock face. Suddenly his eyes caught a gap in the cliff a couple of metres up. His heart leaped. Right! Of course! No one said the entrance to the pass had to be at ground level.
He kicked off his snowshoes and scrambled up the bare rock. The gap he was aiming for was no more than three metres wide, and it angled away from him. No wonder they hadn’t seen it from a distance. He was careful to keep to his own rules, making sure Tikaani could see him, but at least he could get to the entrance. He stood there triumphantly and looked at . . .
. . . more rock. The gap went back for a few metres, and then its sides closed together. No pass.
Beck slowly turned away and climbed back down. He sat down and tied on his snowshoes.
Tikaani was trudging towards him. ‘Nothing this way,’ he reported. ‘Not within a hundred metres anyway.’
‘OK,’ Beck sighed. ‘We’re going to have to go further. We’ll look for it together.’
‘Which way?’ Tikaani asked.
Beck mentally tossed a coin. ‘South,’ he said, so they went back the way Tikaani had come.
They worked their way south along the cliff for five hundred metres, poking into every nook and cranny. Sometimes they climbed up the rocks as far as they could get to investigate more prospects like the one Beck had found. No luck. Finally they found themselves looking out over another crevasse in the snow. It had been carved out by a stream of melt-water that trickled by a few metres below. It was far too wide to cross and there was no way over it.
‘If it’s on the other side of that—’ Tikaani began.
‘It isn’t,’ Beck said shortly. Things like crevasses didn’t show on the map – they came and went too quickly – but he was sure they were well past the likely area for the pass. The crevasse was nature’s way of pointing this out and saying ‘Turn round’. And so they did. They worked their way back again – Beck reckoned there was no harm in rechecking the cliff they had already covered – until they got to the point where they had started. Then they looked at each other, shrugged, and kept going.
‘Hey . . .’ Tikaani said at one point, and Beck’s heart leaped. Then he realized his friend was looking up at the crack he had already explored. He shook his head.
‘Sorry. Done that.’
Tikaani’s shoulders slumped and they trudged on. The cliff face bulged out ahead of them, and then curved back towards the mountain.
It took them a moment to realize it kept curving. Another minute and the cliff on their left was suddenly the left-hand side of a cleft going into the rock. They stood and looked at it for a moment. They’d had enough hope knocked out of them that they didn’t get excited. Neither of them wanted to waste any more energy exploring another dead end.
‘Is this . . . ?’
‘Could be . . .’
‘Well, someone else seems to think so,’ Beck said, pointing at a line of tracks in the snow that also disappeared into the cleft.
They looked like a set of dog’s paw prints. Each foot had four little toe marks arranged in a semicircle above a larger indentation. But both of them knew they didn’t come from a dog.
The boys looked at each other.
‘So what do we do if the wolf’s still in there?’ Tikaani asked.
Beck shrugged. ‘Say, “Nice doggy”?’ He craned his neck to peer further in. ‘“Woof”?’
The cleft was certainly deeper than the blind alley he had found earlier. You couldn’t see all the way down it because it twisted and turned, but it went in the right direction. Yes, this could well be the pass . . . and it could be occupied. The paw prints didn’t emerge again. The wolf was still in there. A hungry, possibly desperate predator. Beck didn’t want to share a confined space with one of those.
Or, of course, he thought, it might have gone all the way through.
Well, there were two of them, and only one wolf, and they had sticks and they could probably scare it off. One thing was certain – they couldn’t wait out here for ever.
‘Come on,’ Beck said, and they ventured in.
‘This could be it,’ Tikaani said after a minute. They walked in single file between high walls of rock on either side, still clutching their sticks against any possible wolf attack.
‘Yup . . .’ Beck agreed as the walls began to part. They could walk side by side now. There was a sharp corner up ahead. Sooner or later this pass would have to open out into a proper valley, and he thought that might be where it happened. ‘Just round here . . .’
They turned the corner – and found their noses pressed against a sheer rock face. It was another dead end.
‘No!’ Tikaani shouted, a sharp bark of anger.
‘Don’t shout,’ Beck said automatically. ‘This is prime avalanche territory.’ Though right then he wouldn’t have minded if the mountain had dumped a thousand tonnes of snow right on top of them. He added: ‘Sorry, mate. We just have to keep going.’
‘And I’m hungry,’ Tikaani muttered as they turned back. It had been a long time since they had eaten. Beck thought back and realized it had been well before they reached the glacier. They’d had enough on their minds since then to keep their thoughts off hunger. But now . . .
All their gathered food was gone. Beck had been counting on getting through the pass and finding more food on the other side before hunger set in.
They could be in for a hungry night.
Tikaani paused and fingered the rock face. ‘How about this?’ he asked. Grey-green lichen sprouted out of the cracks in the rock. Tikaani pressed one of the spongy clusters with his finger. It shrank under the pressure, then sprang back again like rubber. ‘I mean,’ he added, ‘you eat most stuff.’
‘No good,’ Beck told him with a shake of his head. ‘It’s too acidic for humans. If you wanted to eat it, you’d have to process it somehow to neutralize the acid.’
Tikaani pulled a face. ‘And those rocks are starting to look mighty tasty too . . . So where did the wolf go?’
‘Maybe he just dropped dead of hunger,’ Beck muttered.
‘Uh-oh . . .’ Tikaani had found the paw prints again and was following them with his eyes. He crouched down. Then he crouched down a little further, his face almost pressed against the ground. ‘Uh, Beck . . .’
Beck was by his side in a moment and they saw what had happened. There was another crack in the rock face here. Rather, there had been, once. There wasn’t now because at some time – maybe a thousand years ago, maybe yesterday – a boulder had fallen down and blocked it off. The only way through was under the boulder – through that tiny, snow-clogged space that Tikaani had just discovered.
Or, he thought, you could go over the top.
‘Wait here,’ Beck said. He pulled off his snowshoes and scrambled up the side of the rock. It was steep and he had to be careful, always making sure he had three secure anchors – feet or hands – before moving the fourth. But it wasn’t that high, and in just a few moments he was standing on top of the boulder, gazing west. Then he called down to Tikaani.
‘Come on up and admire the view!’
Tikaani joined him a minute later and they gazed out onto the pass.
Beck’s guess had been right. The narrow cleft opened out into a wider path and, beyond that, a whole valley that continued up into the mountains.
‘Woo-hoo!’ Tikaani hooted with joy, and immediately bit his lip. ‘Sorry,’ he added, more quietly, crestfallen. ‘I know, avalanches. But, woo-hoo, anyway.’
‘Woo-hoo,’ Beck agreed, grinning broadly. ‘Get your snowshoes and let’s go.’