Argosy, September 1955 — page 50: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

48 H. E. BATES He turned and saw Miss Vane already fifty feet above him. She was walking steadily. Before he could call, she turned and stared back, eyeless in her black sun-glasses, and waved her hand. ‘““T thought you were the big mountaineer.”’ “Oh, wait, wait!’ he said. ‘‘ We must keep together.’’ She seemed to laugh at him before going on. He scrambled after her. And although she was not really hurrying, it was several minutes before he reached her. By that time he was glad she was sitting down. ““ My God, it’s getting hot,” he said. “You were the one who wanted to do this.” ““T know. I’m all right. We mustn’t rush it, that’s all. It’s like everything else—easy if you keep to a system.”’ . “ My system is to lie down at frequent intervals and stop there,” she said. As she lay down on the ledge of short dry grass, she took off her sun-glasses. ‘The glare of sun, too harsh for her, made her suddenly turn and lie on her face, spreading out her arms. Instantly the sunlight, as it had done earlier in the day, shone on the back of her hair with the brilliant effect of edging it with minute thorns of tawny gold. Suddenly the sensation of uneasy intimacy he had first experi- enced in the cabin on the ship, above the dishevelled bed, came rushing back. It became one with the intoxicating experience of having climbed higher than the buzzard on the mountain. He turned her face and began kissing her. He remembered thinking that that was something he had not bargained for in any system—would not have bargained for if he had planned it for a thousand years. | She moved her lips in a series of small fluttering pulsations that - might have been protest or acceptance—he could not tell. The impression was that she was about to let him go and then that she could not bear to let him go. The effect was to rock him gently, in warm blindness, on the edge of the gorge. He was still in a world of spinning blood and sunlight and tilting rock when he sat up again. Her eyes were intensely blue under lowered lids in the sun. In a flash she shut them against the glare, parting her mouth at the same time. *< "That was easy,’ she said. “I mean, I didn’t expect you to do it like that,” she said. “I meant, I thought it would be different with you.” He heard the snapped cry of a bird, like the flap of linen, the only sound in a vast and burning chasm of silence, somewhere above the extreme edge of stunted heath and pine. ‘“* Again,”’ she said. ‘“‘ It made me feel better.”’ Long before the end of that second kiss he was perfectly sure that she belonged to him. He was so sure that he found himself thinking of the rest-house, the dark cover of evening, the way they would be together long after the infuriating whistling of Manuel had died away behind the cage. He felt his pride in his commiclooks.Cconn oh