The Avenger 8 - The Glass Mountain (11 page)

Ethel Masterson didn’t go far. Just to the stone outcropping the shape of a great duck, near the big dead tree.

The tree, by the way, had been investigated, and was found to be like any other tree. It was a hollow shell, but seemed firmly rooted. There was no reason for it to move. Therefore everyone had accepted as fact the statement that it had not moved.

Everyone, that is, save Dick Benson.

Under the shadow of the rock outcropping, you could not see the construction camp. It was as deserted a spot as could be found in all Idaho.

Ethel went there, with Nellie a full quarter of a mile behind, and felt sure she wasn’t seen by her quarry. Ethel went right to the flank of the glass mountain and sat down on a square rock.

She looked as if she was waiting for someone, and, sure enough, in a short time, she had company.

Nellie didn’t see the approach of that company. She was looking downward for a moment to be sure she planted her trim small feet where they wouldn’t make any noise. When she had looked down, Ethel was alone. When she looked up again Ethel was not alone.

It was uncanny; as if the man suddenly with her had materialized out of thin air. And, indeed, the man seemed the type that might be able to do all sorts of weird things.

He was an old, old Indian in patched overalls, but somehow looking as dignified as though in full, ancient war regalia.

Smitty had told her about this Indian, whispered to be Chief Yellow Moccasins himself. He had also told her how much trouble the old Indian had stirred up with his talk to the men about the Rain God, and the ability to walk abroad in a little green cloud and kill folks he disliked with lightning bolts.

Now he was meeting a girl who was a bitter enemy of The Avenger.

Nellie edged forward. She would have given a year of her life to be able to hear what this rancher’s good-looking daughter and the seamed old Indian were talking about. But she was not to have that privilege. Long before Nellie had gotten near enough even to try to read lips, as all The Avenger’s aides could do, the Indian disappeared again.

His disappearance was not quite so spectacular as his appearance had been, but it was startling enough.

He walked toward the straight wall of black basalt at the foot of the Donald Duck rock. He stooped over. Then he wasn’t there any more.

“I’m crazy, or he’s a magician,” Nellie whispered to herself.

She came nearer, then suddenly lowered behind a rock. Ethel, it seemed, was going to have more company. A very busy girl, Ethel!

Two men, dressed as were the workmen in the construction camp, appeared around the far hummock beyond the outcropping. They saw the girl, waved, and came toward her.

Nellie had to hear. That was all. Just seeing the people Ethel conspired with wasn’t enough.

The girl was sitting within ten feet of the black basalt wall. And about twenty feet behind her was another boulder. If Nellie could get behind that boulder she could hear. And she thought she could get to the boulder by skirting along the foot of the cliff from the camp side.

She got to the beginning rise of the glass mountain, sure she had not been seen; and began worming her way nearer the girl she was detailed to watch.

Not unlike The Avenger himself, Nellie was trained in the ways of woodcraft and wilderness. She had accompanied her archaeologist father on all his expeditions, and was as expert at concealing herself in an astonishingly bare space.

She got to the boulder. And now she could hear.

“It’ll happen soon,” growled one of the men. “Depends on how the tunnel goes. When it does— Well, you had better play ball with us.”

“You know I will,” Nellie heard the girl say huskily. “You know why I’ll co-operate to the last move.”

“Yeah! Sure! Just don’t forget, that’s all. Where’d that old Indian go?”

“I don’t know,” Ethel shrugged. “Why?”

“There’s stories going around that he ain’t human. He gives me the creeps. Sometimes I’ve wondered if he ain’t—ain’t—”

“The Rain God himself?” said Ethel. “I hardly think so. I’ve known him a little all my life. I guess he’s human.”

“Well, mind what we’ve told you,” the man concluded.

He and the other man went off toward camp. And Nellie had had her work for her pains.

She had found out nothing. “It will happen soon, depending on how the tunnel goes.”

Those were the only words she had heard, after all her effort. And she couldn’t see that they had any meaning. But maybe if she followed the girl some more she might still learn something of value.

Ethel got up from her flat rock and began to walk slowly along the foot of the black basalt cliff. Nellie crept after her, about fifty feet behind. She was in about the center of the smooth-rock spot when the thing happened.

It was one of those nightmarish things that simply cannot occur in real life. And yet it did occur.

She was crouched at the very foot of the cliff. It reared up beside her, straight, smooth for thirty feet, then rugged and rough.

And the cliff fell on her.

There was nothing but a rustling sound to warn her. That and movement caught out of the corner of her eyes. She saw something like the wall of the mountain itself leaning toward her. She turned her head.

The entire straight part of the cliff was leaning over her at a forty-five-degree angle. In another three seconds she would be under hundreds of tons of black, glassy rock—pounded like a fly between hammer and anvil, as the thirty-foot slab ground her into the rocky floor beneath.

She was too horrified to scream. Her breath froze in her throat. She could only cower there, with the whole world seeming to be rushing down on her in ghastly silence.

At Cloud Lake Ranch, The Avenger stopped his hobbled march under the big tree designated by his four captors—the tree with the heavy limb nine feet above the ground. Such a handy height for a hanging.

That Benson was to be hanged had been made all too clear. These four Idaho ranchers, neighbors and employees of Ethel Masterson, were going to take a life for a life. Somebody cleverly impersonating Benson, after receiving word in advance that Benson was coming to these parts, had killed Ethel’s father. Now the murderer was to be killed, too, as far as the men knew.

“The limb looks big enough,” said Les stolidly. “But we better test it.”

They had lashed Benson’s wrists, and the white-haired man was hobbled, so they had sheathed their own guns. They didn’t see the need for keeping guns trained on a bound man.

In this they showed that The Avenger was unknown to them. Had they had any idea at all of the capabilities of this man with the white, paralyzed face and the blazing, colorless eyes, they wouldn’t even have taken the chance of hanging him. They would have shot him down at once.

They had lashed the wrists of the man they were sure had killed Masterson.

But those wrists weren’t lashed now!

Benson’s hands were even more inconspicuous than the rest of him. None of him was oversized. He was average in size throughout—perhaps a little less than average—and it verged on the miraculous to discover what power and quickness were in him.

His hands were a good example.

They were white and well-kept, with slender fingers.

They were steely in strength, but slim. In fact, they were slim enough so that when The Avenger held them with thumb in palm and fingers compressed, as only his training was able to do, they were no bigger in circumference than his wrists.

More than once people had discovered that too late. The Avenger could slide out of the tightest handcuffs and ease out of the harshest bonds. And he had done so now.

He had loosened the rope around his wrists by slight hand movements as they marched him to the tree. Now, as the four men gave the lynching tree their attention instead of the man they proposed to lynch, Benson dropped the rope to the ground and was free.

Any other man would have found himself about as bad off as when bound. But not The Avenger. Though he knew that Mike and Ike, undiscovered in their holsters, would not prevail against these four men. Another method of action had snapped instantly into being behind the pale and deadly eyes.

Les had his rope over the branch. One end was formed into a running loop. The other end was unknotted. He pulled on the rope doubled, and the limb above scarcely quivered.

“It’d hold six like this guy,” he said.

And his hold on the rope slackened.

It was the moment The Avenger had been waiting for. Three of the four men were next to the bole of the tree, including Les. The fourth man was standing beside Benson.

So fast that the eye could hardly follow his movements, The Avenger whipped his hands from behind his back. His left, like a gray steel model of a hand instead of flesh and blood, caught the man beside him on the side of the jaw. His right got the rope and jerked it from the lax grasp of the startled and incredulous Les.

The rope whisked down from over the tree limb and seemed to come alive in The Avenger’s steely, slim hand. It snapped around tree and men in a great circle.

Benson had thrown the loop end of the rope because that had more weight than the other end. The loop slapped into his hand after making a flying circuit of men and tree. The free end seemed to leap through the loop of its own volition.

Then Benson whipped the rope taut.

Les had managed at last to get his gun out. The free end of the rope lashed out like the end of a blacksnake whip. It smacked the gun from the rancher’s hand just as it belched flame. The bullet went into the ground.

One man unconscious on the ground, three men lashed to the bole of the tree like three captives bound to an Indian stake—and the white-haired man with the blazing, glacial eyes the only one free.

Holding the rope taut, Benson reached down with his left hand and got Ike from its slim scabbard. The throwing knife slashed the rope hobbling Benson’s ankles. But at no second was Benson’s white gaze off the three men.

Still holding the rope taut, he walked up to them. Just out of reach of Les’ free arm, he reached into his pocket and drew out letters and documents.

“You wouldn’t let me show you these before,” he said, voice quiet and calm. His face was expressionless, of course; it never would show emotion in that dead flesh. The roped men gazed at him in awe. What manner of person was this who could come within an ace of being hung, escape by a trick little short of miraculous in its swiftness—and still look as calm and cool as if strolling down a city sidewalk?

“I’d like you to glance at these now,” said Benson.

He opened the letters one by one in front of Les. The other two men were held, backs against the tree, at Les’ left and right, and couldn’t see.

“What do they say, Les?” one demanded, tone bitter at the reversal of circumstances and because of wounded pride in being trapped like this.

“Plenty,” said Les. “This guy seems to be about the biggest thing in the State. Letter from the governor of New York an’ from J. Edgar Hoover of the F.B.I., and one from the President. All sayin’ he’s a special investigator an’ to be given every consideration.”

“You still believe I murdered Masterson?” asked The Avenger, quiet-voiced.