“Do I win or not?” said the brakeman, appearing behind them. “That’s the mountain. Pretty soon, off south, you’ll see some higher ones, down in Utah.”
“How far is it to that mountain—about five miles?” Bennie asked.
It looked two, but he thought he’d add a few.
The trainman grinned. “I wouldn’t try to walk it before breakfast,” said he. “It’s about twenty or thirty, I reckon.”
That day they rolled along through endless miles of the naked cattle country, that in the East would have seemed like a desert. No New England cow could have lived on it, Spider declared. Then they began to get into the Idaho mountains, on the branch line, and turned and twisted down cañons with the naked red hills folding up in front of and behind the train. They went to sleep in Idaho and woke up in Oregon—woke up to see more mountains, and more snow—long ranges of mountains to left and right with snow on the summits, though it was now almost July first, and hot as Tophet in the train.
The train presently began to climb an endless grade, up and up and up, getting over the pass of the Blue Mountains, and into heavily timbered country—real woods at last, after the long ride through the prairie and the sage brush. On and on went the train, till at last it reached the Columbia River, and the excited boys, braving the cinders that swirled in on the observation platform, sat out there and saw at last below them the great green river rushing swiftly along, cutting its way through the high, rocky banks.
These banks began to get higher and steeper. They were entering the gorge of the Columbia, where it cuts through the Cascade range. Soon the banks were real precipices, 1,000, 2,000 feet high. At The Dalles, they picked up the Columbia Highway, the most wonderful motor road in America, and could see where it was cut right out of the sides of the cliffs in places. When the train stopped at Hood River, a lot of people got off to stretch, the boys with them, and a man took them down the platform and said, “Look!”
They looked to the south, and there it was! Shooting up apparently right behind the depot, shaped like a cone, dazzling white, tall, stately, beautiful against the sky—Mount Hood! These were the eternal snows! There was a real climb!
Bennie just gasped for a second. Then he found his tongue. “It—it’s just as big as I thought it would be!” he said.
“It’s the finest thing in the world,” said the man. “I live in Portland, and every clear day I look at it, sixty miles away, and it’s like a friend.”