Backlash [antikvár]

One They had left the lowlands and were climbing steadily on the narrow road that wound dangerously around the high flank of the mountain. Below them was the steep fall to the river, rushing loud and boisterous under the overhang of ice and the bare branches of the alders. Above was the heave of the mountainside with its swaths of black pines, beyond which the snow ran clear to the summit and the blue of the midday sky. The jeep skidded perilously on the icy surface, and Sgt. Willis wrestled it away from the drop. They stopped, got out and jacked up the wheels to put on the chains. While Willis was fitting them, grunting and cursing at the cold, Major Mark Hanlon stepped out to the middle of the road and looked up at the mountain. Straight ahead of him was a broad gap in the pines. On either side the dark trunks rose like pillars in an ancient nave, and their diminishing perspective drew his eyes onward and upward, to the sharp line where the sky and the saddle met. Under the trees, the snow was stained brown with fallen needles, but beyond, it was a white dazzle broken only by the grey of rocky outcrops and the organ pipes of the distant Grauglockner. Then he saw the skier. He was right on top of the ridge, a tiny black puppet, with his head in the blue sky and his feet in the white snow. Hanlon took the field glasses from the case around his neck and trained them on the motionless figure. A moment later the puppet began to move, slowly at first, thrusting himself forward with his stocks, then gathering speed as he hit the steeper fall. At the first outcrop he 1