Read Online The Avenger 8 - The Glass Mountain by Kenneth Robeson - Free Book Online Page A

unconscious force that made the fellow cry out.
    “Where is he?” snapped Smitty. “What’s wrong?”
    “There’s a little valley around the left end of the mountain,” panted the man. “I was there a little while ago and—”
    “How is it you were around the foot of the mountain?” Smitty caught him up. “Why weren’t you at the tunnel site?”
    “They didn’t need me. I’m a driller, an’ they ain’t drillin’ right now. They’re crackin’ the rock.”
    “Go ahead!”
    “I was near this little valley, an’ just goin’ in when I seen this pillar of cloud everybody’s talkin’ about. It was quite a ways off so I watched it for a while, ready to run if it came my way. Then I seen the guy lyin’ a little ways in front of the mist.”
    “MacMurdie? You’re sure?”
    “Yeah!”
    “And he was just lying there? You mean he was unconscious?”
    “Yeah! Sure! He must have been or he’d run—like any sensible guy from that damn green cloud. I didn’t have the nerve to get him. I’ll admit it. Everybody that’s gone near the green fog has died, an’ I didn’t want to be one of the dead ones. So I legged it for camp. Hurry back with me! It’s probably all over, minutes ago. But we might still be in time.”
    Josh was shedding his apron. The man began running back, along the foot of the glass mountain.
    “Why,” moaned Josh, who hated physical exercise as a cat hates it, “couldn’t they have horses here at camp?”
    “What do you think this is?” said Smitty in reply. “A construction camp, or a riding academy? We’ve got a couple trucks, to go to town Saturday nights, but they happen to be away. So we leg it.”
    It developed that they weren’t destined to leg it very far.
    Ahead of them was one of the jutting slopes that occurred like bastions around Mt. Rainod’s foot at irregular distances. Between each of these, like the space between outstretched arms and a chest, with the mountain being the chest, was a shallow box canyon.
    They rounded the natural bastion ahead of them, and abruptly stopped running. The man who had come to them with the urgent message about Mac being in trouble, grinned. He was breathless but triumphant.
    There were two men at the other side of the rock outcropping. Each had a gun. Each had stepped suddenly into the way of the running men.

    A gun was poking a hole in Josh’s stomach, and another was grinding against Smitty’s hard abdomen.
    The giant looked down at the gunman in front of him, and then at the man who had come to camp for them.
    “So we weren’t running to help Mac,” he said evenly. He was breathing almost easily in spite of the run in the hot, thin air. And the gunmen noticed that fact, significant of great endurance as well as great strength, and handled their guns even more warily than they had before.
    “No,” said the panting man who had guided them into this pitfall, “you weren’t runnin’ to help your Scotch buddy. Nobody can help him. It’s even too late, now, for the guy with the white hair to bring him back to life. He’ll have been dead an hour by now.”
    “You seem very sure,” said Smitty.
    “Oh, I’m sure enough,” retorted the man, wolfish grin widening. “I oughta be. I’m the guy that turned him over to the Rain God.”
    “Then I’m going to be the guy who turns you over to the rats,” said Smitty. “I’ll let you feed your brothers, if they can stand you.”
    “You won’t be turnin’ nobody over to nobody,” said the man whose gun was in Smitty’s stomach. “But you’ll see your pal, all right, after the Rain God gets done with you.”
    The other man nodded. His gun was not so warily held as was his companion’s. It didn’t seem necessary to watch anyone as sleepy-looking as Josh very closely. Just a scared, dull-witted, harmless Negro.
    “March,” said the man with Smitty, “right on along the way you were running. And I’ll blow your spine in two if you make a funny move.”
    Smitty and