Snowman by Norman Bogner

widened as the fissure expanded, heaving blocks of ice as large as ten-story buildings down the mountainside. New ice channels were forming between the pinnacles of snow, and troughs belched forth as boulders were shifted and trees uprooted. The rumbling sounds could not be heard eighteen thousand feet below at the lodge, and in a few moments the tremors became muted in the vicious hacking of the wind.
    Under the surface, frozen rock was being crushed. An opaque light, gray and diffuse, began to sear the frozen ice cascades. An arm sprang through the melting glacier, and the Snowman emerged.
    He moved downhill toward the lodge. He took huge strides, and the ice hissed from the heat given off by his body. The blizzard conditions near the summit drove him into a frenzy. He had come down thousands of feet and was now just above the advanced slope. In the distance the lights from below formed a darting jellied viscous pattern. His attention was diverted by the whipping of the cables which the gondolas ran on.
    The wind changed direction, and now on the mountain there were other sounds which were familiar. In the guttural rasp of the eddying winds the roars of bears were carried as they prowled the dense forests. He took the scent and hacked down a large fir tree. Intruders threatened his hunting ground.
    Ashby started out at six the following morning, to avoid the downtown freeway traffic. The distance to the Desert Center was about two hundred miles, but he had no idea how long after that it would take to reach the reservation. He stopped off at a roadside deli and bought himself a couple of sub sandwiches and a six-pack of Coors. He rolled down all the windows, because the heat was becoming intense. When he reached the desert, sand devils struck his car unexpectedly, causing it to veer from side to side. In the distance, smoking, swirling tornadolike winds rose from the flats as though from a witch's caldron, whipping the sage-brush and yucca. There was a constant hum over the baked terra-cotta arroyos and then the sudden swoop of a shrike and its vicious "chack" as it attacked a spadefoot toad too slow to reach its burrow. Waterless stream beds twisted down the slate mountains. Along the roadside behind cacti tortured into peculiar shapes were rattlers, lizards and Gila monsters. The windshield was smeared with a variety of fire ants and centipedes blown from the ground by the sand devils.
    In all the years he had been a reporter, his curiosity had never been so powerfully aroused by a man. It was beyond him to understand how a man like Bradford had given up civilization for this barren life. Bradford's retreat struck him as not only unreasonable but also enigmatic. He could not reconcile the idea that a Rhodes Scholar and an Olympic skier could end up in this desolate no man's land. He was determined to find out why Bradford had punished himself this way. Was he in fact a murderer and this a form of penance?
    The glare of the sun became relentless, and after a while the shimmering effect dazed him. He had left the main road and was bouncing along a primitive dirt track. Nothing, he thought, could survive in this heat. Some miles farther he was forced to change his mind. On the roadside was a battered whitewashed adobe hut. Several Indians with washed-out hooded eyes and hardened leather skin toned to dark copper regarded him with a hint of curiosity. Indian jewelry, pottery, and blankets were displayed beside the hut in a fruitless commerce.
    Ahead of him, like a group of lost, haunted souls, were a number of Indians working with primitive axes and shovels on a road. Beyond them the road was well made, with a tarred surface. Ashby drove past them along the verge.
    The Indians, stripped to the waist, wore ragged shorts and tattered shorn jeans. Sweat gleamed from their chests and backs. They seemed indifferent to his arrival.
    The sun had set moments before he reached the entrance of the reservation. The ride had been a