The Metal Monster | Page 6

Over the highways and byways of Persia's glory, Persia's shame and Persia's death we
four--two men, two beasts --had passed. For a fortnight we had met no human soul, seen
no sign of human habitation.
Game had been plentiful--green things Chiu-Ming might lack for his cooking, but meat
never. About us was a welter of mighty summits. We were, I knew, somewhere within
the blending of the Hindu-Kush with the Trans-Himalayas.
That morning we had come out of a ragged defile into this valley of enchantment, and
here, though it had been so early, I had pitched my tent, determining to go no farther till
the morrow.
It was a Phocean vale; a gigantic cup filled with tranquillity. A spirit brooded over it,
serene, majestic, immutable--like the untroubled calm which rests, the Burmese believe,
over every place which has guarded the Buddha, sleeping.
At its eastern end towered the colossal scarp of the unnamed peak through one of whose
gorges we had crept. On his head was a cap of silver set with pale emeralds--the snow
fields and glaciers that crowned him. Far to the west another gray and ochreous giant
reared its bulk, closing the vale. North and south, the horizon was a chaotic sky land of
pinnacles, spired and minareted, steepled and turreted and domed, each diademed with its
green and argent of eternal ice and snow.
And all the valley was carpeted with the blue poppies in wide, unbroken fields, luminous
as the morning skies of mid-June; they rippled mile after mile over the path we had
followed, over the still untrodden path which we must take. They nodded, they leaned
toward each other, they seemed to whisper--then to lift their heads and look up like
crowding swarms of little azure fays, half impudently, wholly trustfully, into the faces of
the jeweled giants standing guard over them. And when the little breeze walked upon
them it was as though they bent beneath the soft tread and were brushed by the sweeping
skirts of unseen, hastening Presences.
Like a vast prayer-rug, sapphire and silken, the poppies stretched to the gray feet of the

mountain. Between their southern edge and the clustering summits a row of faded brown,
low hills knelt--like brown-robed, withered and weary old men, backs bent, faces hidden
between outstretched arms, palms to the earth and brows touching earth within them--in
the East's immemorial attitude of worship.
I half expected them to rise--and as I watched a man appeared on one of the bowed, rocky
shoulders, abruptly, with the ever-startling suddenness which in the strange light of these
latitudes objects spring into vision. As he stood scanning my camp there arose beside him
a laden pony, and at its head a Tibetan peasant. The first figure waved its hand; came
striding down the hill.
As he approached I took stock of him. A young giant, three good inches over six feet, a
vigorous head with unruly clustering black hair; a clean-cut, clean-shaven American face.
"I'm Dick Drake," he said, holding out his hand. "Richard Keen Drake, recently with
Uncle's engineers in France."
"My name is Goodwin." I took his hand, shook it warmly. "Dr. Walter T. Goodwin."
"Goodwin the botanist--? Then I know you!" he exclaimed. "Know all about you, that is.
My father admired your work greatly. You knew him--Professor Alvin Drake."
I nodded. So he was Alvin Drake's son. Alvin, I knew, had died about a year before I had
started on this journey. But what was his son doing in this wilderness?
"Wondering where I came from?" he answered my unspoken question. "Short story. War
ended. Felt an irresistible desire for something different. Couldn't think of anything more
different from Tibet--always wanted to go there anyway. Went. Decided to strike over
toward Turkestan. And here I am."
I felt at once a strong liking for this young giant. No doubt, subconsciously, I had been
feeling the need of companionship with my own kind. I even wondered, as I led the way
into my little camp, whether he would care to join fortunes with me in my journeyings.
His father's work I knew well, and although this stalwart lad was unlike what one would
have expected Alvin Drake--a trifle dried, precise, wholly abstracted with his
experiments--to beget, still, I reflected, heredity like the Lord sometimes works in
mysterious ways its wonders to perform.
It was almost with awe that he listened to me instruct Chiu-Ming as to just how I wanted
supper prepared, and his gaze dwelt fondly upon the Chinese busy among his pots and
pans.
We talked a little, desultorily, as the meal was prepared --fragments of traveler's news
and gossip, as is the habit of journeyers who come upon each other in the silent places.
Ever the speculation grew in his face