I moved to the window and peered in. Ghotak was in the room, seated cross-legged on a mat on the floor. He was puffing on a water-pipe and writing on a parchment scroll. I shot a glance at the guard. He'd be out for a half hour at least, but there might be others coming. Peering in the window again I took another look, glanced at my watch and decided I had to wait around. There was still time for him to move out. I took the guard and, using his own shirt and some leaves, bound and gagged him and dragged him into some brush nearby. I settled down for a vigil outside Ghotak's window, checking in on him every half hour. He continued writing on the parchment until finally he set it aside and smoked his water-pipe in short, staccato puffs. I glanced at my watch and realized that if he were going after the patriarch he should have been on his way by now. I dropped low, passed under the window edge and started back through the darkened village.
He was there. I should have been satisfied and yet I was uneasy, with the same uneasy feeling I had had at Hilary Cobb's cryptic remark. The monk was entirely too calm. He knew, certainly as well as we did, that when the patriarch returned it would discredit the whole edifice of spiritual power he had built up for himself. Why the hell was he so calm about it all then? I wished I knew the answer to that. The house was in total darkness when I returned and I went to my room, thinking that perhaps Khaleen had gone to bed and fallen asleep. But a small, warm hand reached out from beneath the fur blanket and I quickly undressed, putting Wilhelmina and Hugo on the floor beside the bed. I slipped under the blanket with her and found her eagerly, deliciously, reaching for me, her hands reaching out to welcome my body against hers, her soft legs thirsting to open the portals of ecstasy for me.
We made love and held each other and made love again, almost as though we were both trying to shut out the thought of the old man out in the blackness, alone in the raging winds of snow and the towering sheets of ice. When we finally went to sleep, utterly spent and surfeited, I cradled her in my arms as one might hold a sleeping child.
In the morning when I awoke, she was still beside me. She stirred and we lingered in the shut-away world of each other's arms. When we finally rose, Khaleen made breakfast as I shaved and, as if by some silent agreement, neither of us spoke of that which was most in our thoughts. Khaleen busied herself with housekeeping chores as the morning wore on and I went outside. My eyes were inexorably drawn to the towering peaks that rimmed the village. I was filled with an angry restlessness that grew worse as the day wore on and Khaleen's father failed to appear. I'd never been on a mission where so much was going on and so little was happening. I even found myself feeling bitter about Harry Angsley and his damned fever. He ought to have been here on this thing. The English were more experienced and more fitted by nature for this kind of cat-and-mouse game. We Americans are too direct, too action-oriented for it. Of course, I couldn't know it then, but the action I craved for was building up to a fast eruption.
Hilary Cobb, looking statuesquely beautiful in a white sweater and a colorful Campbell tartan kilt, came down the sheet, saw me and headed over to where I stood.
"Has he come back yet?" she asked bluntly. Her busybody, snooping, directness only grated on my angry, apprehensive unrest.
"None of your damned business," I growled. I saw her eyebrows raise slightly and her eyes narrow immediately after.
"You're consistent, anyway," she snapped. "Always unpleasant. I take it that you've heard nothing and you're getting rather uptight about it."
I could have cheerfully wrung her neck for that bit of accurate analysis. She glanced at her watch.
"If you tell me he's had time to get back by now I'll kick your ass all the way Mount Everest," I snarled. I held her eyes in a long piercing exchange and suddenly saw them soften and change expression. She blinked, looked away a moment and then held her gaze on me.
"Do you believe in the yeti?" she asked quietly, soberly, almost like a little girl.
"You, too?" I fairly shouted. "No, goddamnit, I don't believe in good fairies, banshees or abominable snowmen." I turned on my heel and strode off, muttering to myself. Khaleen was at the window as I strode in, grabbed my heavy parka and started for the door. She didn't have to ask where I was going.
"I will go with you," she said simply.
"No," I said brusquely, and then, softening my voice, I held her for a moment. "It is best I go alone. I will take two of the Sherpas with me. I think perhaps your father may have been trapped in a snow-slide or a clogged pass. We'll bring him back."
She clung to me, kissed me quickly and stepped back. I walked out wishing I felt as confident as I'd sounded. I wasn't buying any damned abominable snowman, but I did fear that something had happened to the old man. All I could see in my mind was Ghotak's form the night before, sitting calmly, puffing on his pipe. I rounded up two Sherpas, and we struck out into the forbidding towers of snow and ice that looked down at us with such unyielding disdain. The patriarch's tracks were clear and easy to follow in the snow. As we climbed higher, and the snow on the ground grew deeper, his tracks were even easier to pick up, and we made good time. He had gone deep into the mountains and the trail grew steeper and more dangerous. I finally saw a snowcovered ridge ahead at the top of the steep ascent we were negotiating, and I pointed to it. The Sherpa nodded in agreement, and we headed for it. It seemed a likely place for him to have made camp. I reached it first and saw the remains of the campfire. The blue pack he'd brought along was scattered on the ground and the snow was trampled and roughened. I followed the ledge to where it curved around a section of the mountain, and now one of the Sherpas halted and I heard his voice, strangled and high-pitched, cry out in terror. I turned and he was pointing to the snow.
"Yeti!" he cried, gasping out the word. "Yeti!" I followed the direction of his arm and saw the tracks in the snow, the damnedest tracks I'd ever seen. It was the print of a huge bear, I first said to myself, since claw marks were clearly visible. But instead of a pad it bore the imprint of a human sole and heel. I knelt down and looked at the imprint in the snow more closely. There were more, a number of them, and I studied each one closely. The shape and outline of a foot was clearly there, but ended in the spread pads of an animal with long claws. I'd never seen a track like it before, and the creature, whatever it was, had dragged something with it through the snow. I followed the tracks, and the Sherpas followed me. Rounding another turn, I saw the shattered, blood-stained form with a heartsick feeling. I went over to it and recognized the clothes. The shape was barely discernable as a man. The partriarch Leeunghi had been literally torn apart, huge gouges of flesh ripped away, one arm torn from its socket, the legs twisted in grotesque shape. His chest lay bare with tremendous raking strips of flesh peeled from it, and the end of a smashed rib poked out through the skin.
"The yeti," the Sherpas kept repeating in a monotone, making the word into a solemn chant.
"Nonsense," I said. "He was killed by an animal, probably some huge bear."