The hut keeper asked questions about snow conditions on the south side of the pass, and I described what I had seen, and it was all as clear as could be. I did not attempt to tell him about my encounter with the helicopter, which was beyond my German to express, and so the conversation proceeded well. At one point, enjoying my ability to do it, I asked him how long it would take me to hike over the Muttenchopf, and when the last cable car of the day left Galbchopf for Tierfed.

The question startled him: Why? he asked. Did I want to take it?

Exactly, I said. I did want to take it.

He walked across the porch to me and said very firmly, “Du muss schon gegangen sein!”

You must already gegone to be.

I thought it over; yes, that was what it meant; most of the words were utterly simple, and I knew very well that “schon” meant “already,” because that was what I used to yell at my Swiss baseball teammates when they did something good, meaning to yell “schцn” like they did, a mistake that had given them no end of amusement before they had finally corrected me. So:

You must already be gone!

“Whoah!” I said. The hut keeper nodded as he saw I understood, just as the train conductor had that morning. He took me by the arm and walked me down to a trail sign just below the hut. In rapid but still magically comprehensible German he told me that the trail that went down to the dam, and then through a tunnel to the cable car station, was a much faster route than the trail over the Muttenchopf-so much faster that it was my only hope of catching the last car, which left at 3:45.

It was now 3:05. I got out my topo map and he nodded approvingly and traced with a thick finger the trail I should take. “Fiertzig minuten,” he said emphatically. Forty minutes. And then he stepped back and cried, “Fliegst du!”