From that day they lived imprisoned, hardly venturing outside the house. They had divided up the chores between them and each one did his job as a matter of routine. Ulrich Kunzi undertook all the scrubbing and washing, everything that was necessary to keep the place clean. He chopped the wood too, while Gaspard Hari did the cooking and kept the fire in. The monotonous routine work was interrupted by long games of cards or dice; there were no differences, for both men were quiet and even-tempered. There were never even minor tiffs or sharp words, for they had laid in a stock of patience against their winter in the mountains. Sometimes old Gaspard took his gun and went out for chamois; from time to time he got one and there was a festive banquet on fresh meat in the Schwarenbach Inn.

One morning he went out on his errand. The thermometer was registering eighteen degrees of frost. The sun was not yet up and the old hunter hoped to surprise the animals near the Wildstrubel.

Ulrich, left alone, stayed in bed till ten o’clock – he was naturally a good sleeper. But he would not have dared to indulge this weakness in the presence of the old guide, who was always up bright and early. He dallied over his mid-day meal with Sam, who also spent his days and nights asleep in front of the fire; presently he felt depressed, frightened by the utter loneliness; he suddenly missed his daily game of cards, as one always feels any break in the established routine of life. So he went out to meet his commpanion, who was due back at four o’clock.

The snow had levelled the whole deep valley, filling up the clefts, hiding the two lakes and draping the rocks.
It was three weeks since Ulrich had been to his look-out above the village at the top of the descent. He now returned to it before scaling the slopes leading to the Wildstrubel. Leuk was now under snow too and the houses were indistinguishable, buried under their white pall.

After that he turned to the right and made for the Loemmern glacier. He walked with the raking stride of a mountaineer, digging his iron-shod alpenstock in the snow, which was now as hard as rock. All the time he kept a sharp look-out for a tiny black speck moving over the immense snow field in the distance.
He stopped on the edge of the glacier, wondering if the old man had gone this way after all; but he started off along the moraine, increasing his pace as his anxiety mounted.

The sun was sinking and the snow was getting pink; a keen cold wind was blowing in gusts over the icy surface. Ulrich gave a shout, shrill, resonant, long drawn out. His voice soared up in the deathly silence of the sleeping mountains; it echoed in the distance over the deep, motionless waves of icy snow, like the cry of a bird over the waves of the sea; then it was swallowed up in silence; there was no answer.

He started off again; the sun had set behind the summits still flushed with the reflection of the crimson sky, but the valleys deep below were darkening.

The young man was suddenly afraid; he felt that the stillness, the cold, the solitude, the wintry death of these mountains was penetrating into him and would stop and freeze his blood, stiffen his limbs and turn him into a motionless figure of ice. He began to run, making for the inn. The old man, he kept thinking, had returned while he was away. He had taken a different way and would be sitting before the fire with a dead chamois at his feet.

He soon sighted the inn but there was no smoke rising from the chimney. He ran quicker and opened the door. Sam rushed out to welcome him back, but Gaspard Hari had not returned.

Frightened, Ulrich swung around as if expecting to find his companion hiding in a corner. Then he lit the fire again and made the soup, always hoping to see the old man coming back.

From time to time he went out to see if he was not in sight. Night had fallen; a thin, yellow crescent moon, about to set behind the peaks, cast a dim, pale, ghostly half-light over the scene. The young man came in again, sat down and warmed his feet and hands, imagining possible accidents. Gaspard might have broken a leg or fallen into a crevasse or slipped and sprained an ankle. He might be lying in the snow, paralysed and stiff with cold, a lost soul, calling for help perhaps, shouting with all the power of his lungs in the silence of the night.

But where was he? The mountain was so vast, so rough, so dangerous to approach, especially at this time of year, that it would have taken twenty guides a week to cover the mountain and find a man in this immense area.
Nevertheless Ulrich Kunzi determined to set out with Sam if Gaspard Hari had not returned between midnight and one o’clock, and he made his preparations.

He put food for two days into a rucksack, took his steel crampons, wound a long thin rope round his chest, and tested his alpenstock and ice-axe. After that he waited. The fire was blazing in the chimney and the big dog snoring in the firelight; the clock was ticking regularly in its resonant wooden case like a heart beating.

He waited, straining his ears to catch any sound in the distance, shivering when the light breeze whispered round walls and roof. Midnight struck and he shuddered. Still feeling upset and nervy, he put some water on to boil in order to have a cup of hot coffee before starting.

When the clock struck one he got up, woke Sam, opened the door and set off towards the Wildstrubel. He climbed for five hours, scaling the rocks and cutting steps in the ice, using his crampons, up and up, sometimes hauling the dog up, if it had stopped at the foot of a slope too steep for it. It was six o’clock when he reached the top of one of the peaks where the old man often went after chamois. There he waited for the sun to rise.

The sky began to grow pale overhead; and suddenly a mysterious light from no visible source lit up the great army of dim peaks extending from a hundred leagues round. It was as if this strange half-light came from the snow itself and was reflected into space. Gradually the highest summits in the distance flushed a lovely flesh pink and red sun rose behind the massive giants of the Bernese Alps.
Ulrich Kunzi started off again. He walked like a tracker, bent forward, looking for foot-prints, saying to his dog: ‘Hunt, old man hunt!’