# Drome/Chapter 10

Chapter 10
On the Mountain
It was a few minutes past 3 on the afternoon of the day following when Rhodes and I got into his automobile and started for Rainier. When we arrived at the Park entrance, which we did about half-past 6, the speedometer showed a run of one hundred and two miles.
"Any firearms, a cat or a dog in that car?" was the question when Milton went over to register.
"Nope," said Milton.
There was a revolver in one of his pockets, however, and another in one of mine. But there was no weapon in the car: hadn't I got out of the car so that there wouldn't be?
A few moments, and we were under way again, the road, which ran through primeval forest, a narrow one now, sinuous and, it must be confessed, hardly as smooth as glass.
Soon we crossed Tahoma Creek, where we had a glimpse of the mountain, its snowy, rocky heights aglow with a wonderful golden tint in the rays of the setting sun. Strange, wild, fantastic thoughts and fears came to me again, and upon my mind settled gloomy forebodings—sinister nameless forebodings, terrible as a pall. We were drawing near the great mountain now, with its unutterable cosmic grandeur and loneliness, near to its unknown mystery, which Milton and I were perhaps fated to know soon, perhaps to our sorrow.
From these gloomy, disturbing thoughts, which yet had a weird fascination too, I was at length aroused by the voice of Rhodes.
"Kautz Creek," said he.
And the next moment we shot across the stream, which went racing and growling over its boulders, the pale chocolate hue of its water advertising its glacial origin.
"Up about 2,400 feet now," Milton added. "Longmire Springs next. I say, Bill, I wonder where we shall be this time tomorrow, eh?"
"Goodness knows. Sometimes I find myself wondering, if the whole thing isn't pure moonshine, a dream. An angel and a demon on the slopes of Rainier! And they say that this is the Twentieth Century!"
Rhodes smiled wanly.
"I think you will find the thing real enough, Billy me lad," said he.
"Too real, maybe. The fact is I don't know what on earth to think."
"The only thing to do is to wait, Bill. And we won't have long to wait, either."
When we swung to the grade out of Longmire, I thought we were at last beginning the real climb to the mountain. But Milton said no.
"When we reach the Van Trump auto park, then we'll start up," said he.
And we did—the road turning and twisting up a forest-clad steep. Then, its sinuosities behind us, it ran along ​in a comparatively straight line, ascending all the time, to Christine Falls and to the crossing of the Nisqually, the latter just below the end of the glacier-snout, as they call it. Yes, there it was, the great wall of ice, four or five hundred feet in height, looking, however, what with the earth and boulders ground into it, more like a mass of rock than like ice. There it was, the first glacier I ever had seen, the first living glacier, indeed, ever discovered in all these United States—at any rate, the first one ever reported. Elevation 4,000 feet.
The bridge behind us, we swung sharply to the right and went slanting up a steep rampart of rock, moving now away from the glacier, away from the mountain; in other words, we were heading straight for Longmire but climbing, climbing. At length the road, cut in the precipitous rock, narrowed to the width of but a single auto; and at this point we halted, for descending cars had the way.
The view here was a striking one indeed, down the Nisqually Valley and over its flanking, tumbled mountains, and the scene would probably have been even more striking than I found it had the spot not been one to make the head swim. I had the out side of the auto, and I could look right over the edge, over the edge and down the precipitous wall of rock to the bed of the Nisqually, half a thousand feet below.
The last car rolled by, and we got the signal to come on. This narrow' part of the load passed, we swung in from the edge of the rampart, and I confess that I was not at all sorry that we did so.
Silver Forest, Frog Heaven, Narada Falls, Inspiration Point, then Paradise Valley, with its strange tree-forms, its beautiful flower-meadows, and, in the distance, the Inn on its commanding height. 5,500 feet above the level of the sea; and, filling all the background, the great mountain itself, towering 14,400 feet aloft: the end of our journey in sight at last!
The end? Yes—until tomorrow. And then what? The beginning then—the beginning of what would, in all likelihood, prove an adventure as weird as it was strange, a most fearful quest.
Had I been a believer in the oneiro-critical science, the things I dreamed that night would have ended the enterprize (as far as I was concerned) then and there: in the morning I would have started for Seattle instanter. But I was not, and I am not now; and yet often I wonder why I dreamed those terrible things—those things which came true.
And, through all the horror, a cowled thing, a figure with bat wings, hovered or glided in the shadows of the background and at intervals, in tones cavernous and sepulchral, gave utterance to that dreaded name: "Drome!"