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

the Donald Duck outcropping. It was that which made him sure that the tree had moved; even though logic told him that such a move was impossible.
    A while ago the dead tree had been to the right of the freak outcropping and not so near to it. At least, that was his thought. He was prepared to doubt his own senses on the point.
    He climbed a little ridge. The ridge was of the black basalt forming the bulk of the mountain itself.
    The rock around here was hard enough—but that black basalt! It was exactly of the texture of inferior glass, almost as smooth and dense as metal. Tunnelling through that was going to be a real job!
    He looked at the tree again.
    “Whoosh! I’m balmy with the heat,” he said aloud.
    The tree had been right beside a boulder, shaped a little like a decayed skull. Now it was in front of the boulder.
    Mac told himself that as he himself had moved, his line of vision had altered enough to account for the change. But he didn’t believe it for a minute.
    “It did move!” he admitted finally.
    Then he saw three men.
    There was no place the men could have come from, without Mac’s having seen them before. The mountain’s side was smooth in front of him, with no rock big enough to hide the three. The camp was quite a distance off. The three men would have to spring from the ground, itself, to get so near Mac so fast. That was as absurd as the thought of a tree walking.
    But there the three men were.
    They were dressed as were the construction crew. But Mac couldn’t place them. That didn’t mean for sure that they weren’t from the camp, because about sixty men were on the rolls, and the Scot couldn’t be dead sure of that many faces.
    Nevertheless, he was disquieted a little because he couldn’t recognize them, and he moved warily as he neared them.
    “Hello,” he said. “Some kind of work goin’ on here, too?”
    The biggest of the three smiled ingratiatingly.
    “It’s noon hour,” he replied. “We’re just strollin’ around a little to get the rock chips out of our lungs.”
    Mac nodded. It was lunch time, all right. But most of the men spent that period right at the tables now being served by Josh. The Scot’s wariness increased.
    He kept on toward the tree that was his goal. He was pretty close, and it seemed to him that there were signs of fresh dirt or, rather, fine shale, around the gnarled roots.
    The men kept on, too—toward Mac.
    He debated shouting to the camp, but decided it would be foolish to holler before he was hit. And the men seemed quite good-natured. It was the natural decision of a man who doesn’t want to risk looking like a fool. And it was a wrong decision, this time.
    Mac got to the tree just as the men did. The biggest of the trio grinned at Mac with all the amiability in the world. At the same time he said to the two others:
    “All right, take him!”

    It was done with such two-faced, treacherous swiftness that Mac, even though he’d had a slight apprehension of trouble, wasn’t ready for it.
    A man got him from the right and another from the left. He felt a fist club under his ear, and another rake across his cheek.
    The Scot had fists, himself. Doubled, they were like big bone mallets. Dazed as he was by the blow under the ear, he lashed out and knocked the man to his left sprawling. He doubled the other man up with a blow to the stomach.
    The third, the biggest fellow, rammed him. There was a smack as knuckles contacted with Mac’s jaw, and a thud as a heavy boot caught him in the thigh. He sank to the ground feeling as if his legs had been broken. Then the big fellow picked up a rock and hit Mac with it.
    The Scotchman went out as if dropped into a black ocean, after seeing a million lights explode behind his eyeballs.
    “Kind of tough, ain’t he?” said one of the men, getting up from the ground and rubbing his jaw.
    “All the guys who work for that dead-pan they call The Avenger are tough,” said the big fellow.
    He was bending over Mac’s