The Glass Mountain

CHAPTER XV The Old Indian

In thinking that Benson, in his faster plane, should have landed near the camp before the other planes with the new crew, Mac and Smitty and Josh had been right. It was in the cards that he should beat them there by hours; and, indeed, he had preceded them.

The sky was light-pink when The Avenger landed, as lightly as a dried leaf, and taxied his plane beyond the curve of the glass mountain, hidden from the camp.

He had coasted down on a long slant for eighteen miles to avoid having his motor heard, for he wanted to land here without anyone knowing it.

He got out of the plane, and came back around the foot of the mountain to where he had first seen Ethel Masterson. The dead rancher’s daughter, it appeared, had met the old Indian, who claimed to be Chief Yellow Moccasins, several times in this vicinity.

The Avenger wanted to meet the old Indian, too. But not just to chat with him.

He had been there for three hours before he heard anything near him. In the meantime, the planes with the new crew had landed, and the camp had filled again.

Then Benson heard a breath of sound some little distance to his right. He stared over that way.

The ancient he wanted to see was just picking a silent way around a rock shoulder. The Indian sat down on a big rock and stared out over the rock-strewn tableland.

So much time had passed that Benson knew he had to move fast. He started creeping up on the man.

He got within fifty yards of the old Indian, unseen and unheard. Then Benson took out Mike.

The special little .22 took a fleeting aim, and a slug whispered from its silenced, venomous little muzzle.

The Indian sagged sideways, without a sound, creased by the bullet. He would be out for hours.

Benson went up to him. In his left hand was a case which he had brought from his plane. It was about the size of an ordinary overnight bag; but when he opened it, the contents were revealed as being far indeed from ordinary.

There was a top tray with dozens of pairs of little glass shells, designed to slip over a human eyeball. Each pair had a slightly different colored pupil on them. There were wigs and plastics and flesh-colored adhesive, and a hundred other aids to make-up. And in the top lid was a small but perfect mirror.

The Avenger propped the deeply unconscious Indian up in a sitting position, and placed the case so that the mirror was next to the Indian’s face. Then Benson went to work on his own paralyzed features — and a miracle was wrought.

Man of a Thousand Faces, able to simulate the appearance of practically any person! His title, it could be seen now, was well-earned.

Steely, slim fingers prodded at the flesh of his face. And where that dead flesh was placed, it stayed, as if made of some sort of plastic itself. For when Benson’s face was paralyzed and his hair whitened by the nerve shock of his tragic loss, more than the nerves of his countenance seemed to have been affected. The flesh seemed to have lost life itself, and to have become incapable of springing back to its natural outlines when moved out of them.

A hawk nose appeared, and deep seams of great age, and a slightly narrower jawline. Eye-shells with brown, slightly muddy pupils were slipped over the icily flaring, pale eyes. A small razor took off hair at temples till Benson’s skull was bald high above the forehead as an Indian’s skull is hairless. There was a wig with long, straight black hair containing just a few that were gray.

The Avenger slipped on the redskin’s patched overalls and stood up. He was no longer Benson; he was the old Indian!

He bound the unconscious man’s legs and arms, examined him to make sure he had suffered no serious hurt, and left him in a shallow niche at the foot of the rock where the sun wouldn’t bake him the rest of the day.

With the Indian on ice for many hours to come, Benson went back in the direction from which the redskin had appeared. As he moved, he examined the flank of the glass mountain, inch by inch. He was hunting for a lair, or cave, from which the native might have emerged.

The painted pupils on the eyeshells interfered with vision a bit. But in spite of that, Benson saw what ninety-nine out of a hundred plainsmen would have missed; a spot where a squat, gnarled tree that was hardly larger than a bush seemed to have a darker background at its base than at its top.

He went to it. The tree hid a hole in the base of the rock hardly larger than an incinerator chute. Benson crawled lithely in, and was at once in a labyrinth.

There were burrows like those in a rabbit warren going all over the place. Most of them were irregular and natural; but a few were carved by human hands, though it had been done a long, long time ago.

Benson nodded, the seamed, darkened skin of his made-up face as expressionless as only dead flesh can be. Everything he was seeing was confirming the ideas he had slowly, methodically formed about the glass mountain and its vicinity.

To choose one of the many tunnels to travel along seemed hopeless; but Benson didn’t hesitate more than a few seconds. He stared at the various holes only till he found one going definitely upward. Then he entered that one, with his small but powerful flash, and began a long, steady ascent.

Mt. Rainod was certainly a thing of surprise. No wonder it had a sinister reputation, extending back through the-ages! It was small, as mountains go; but with all these tunnels and age-old shafts piercing its vitals, all sorts of weird things could happen here.

Benson went up and up along the low tunnel. This was one of the artificial ones, painfully hollowed out of the glass mountain by countless savage hands centuries ago. It was quite regular and easy to travel. But even at that, it took him over an hour to get to the end of it.

When he got to the end of the tunnel, he got to the heart of at least one mystery.

The shaft ended in a larger one that was a natural rift in the basalt. And this, in turn, ended in something as unexpected, in this place of nature’s freaks and ancient man’s labor, as would be a night club on top of Mt. Everest.

It ended in an ordinary, modern gate-valve.

The thing was immense with at least a five-foot opening. It was set in tons of concrete, which blocked tightly the space between valve and walls of the rift.

Benson went back to the tunnel he had just left. Beside it, where it entered the bigger rift, was a block of basalt as accurately cut as if by jewelers’ tools. Cut to fit the tunnel mouth and block it from the rift.

The gate-valve was shut, with just a few drops of water oozing under apparently enormous pressure around the edges of the bronze gate. And lying next to it, as if his had been the hand to shut it, lay a man. But the man would not shut, or open, anything any more.

He was dead. And, also, he was familiar.

Benson went swiftly to the body, and knelt down with the flashlight on his face.

The dead man was Crast, from the Chicago office.

Benson was very still. The pale eyes behind the eye-shells glared like ice under a polar moon. Jim Crast, here in this place, though everyone had supposed him to be in Chicago!

Crast had been shot in the back of the head. The gun that had killed him lay beside him. Benson picked it up in hands stained and lined to resemble the hands of the ancient Indian. There were initials on the butt of the revolver.

The initials were T.R. The Avenger knew of only one man, remotely connected with this business, with those initials.

Thomas Ryan.

Benson started to go through Crast’s pockets for a key to his unexpected presence here at Mt. Rainod. Then his hands jerked back, and he got to his feet in one fast, flowing motion.

Steps were sounding down the rift from the big gate-valve. The steps of many men.

Benson stood straight and still beside the corpse, facing in the direction of the sounds. He made no move at all to get away. His flash was off and in his pocket.

Men came into sight down the tunnel. There were eight of them, dressed in working clothes. Benson recognized them. They were of the original crew. Evidently not all had gone to Boise on the work train after they’d quit.

The men stopped short as they saw the erect figure before them — ancient, seamed face, straight body in faded overalls.

“Well, well,” said the man in the lead, “it’s old funny face. How’d he get loose?”

“Maybe it’s—” began another.

“Naw! He’s back there. This is the other one, all right. Hey, Chief Yellow Dogs, time to go back to your basket.”

Benson drew himself straighter still, and folded his arms over his chest.

“Don’t he make a pretty picture?” sneered the man in the lead. “But he makes a prettier one tied up like a furled sail and stuck in the back of the Rain God’s house. Get him and take him back.”

The men’s words were telling Benson many things. So many that he made not one move when the men laid violent hands on him.

He stood perfectly still, as the dignified old savage he was pretending to be probably would have done. Since it was apparent that eight young men could overpower one old one, Chief Yellow Moccasins probably would not have lost his dignity by engaging in useless struggle.

The men tied him even more securely than he had tied the old Indian outside. And then there were more steps. And a figure came into the light that made the men swear and blink in awe.

The figure that wove into the light was apparently the same figure that stood tied by the gate-valve. There was the same seamed and ancient face, the same hawk nose and arrogant posture, the same faded overalls.

“Boy, you’re good,” said one of the men holding Benson, as he stared at the second figure.

The Avenger stared, too, eyes icy behind the disguising eye-shells.

Benson knew that the man he had bound and left outside was not this man. Even if he had not known it was impossible for him to be up and around so soon, he would have known because this man had no gash on the top of his skull where Mike’s small slug had bitten.

So there were, with Benson’s own pretense, three old Indians around the glass mountain where only one was supposed to be.

“I think we ought to knock the old duck off,” said one of the men, glaring at Benson. “This is the second time he has worked out of his ropes.”

“No, not yet,” said the other figure in the faded overalls. “Take him back to his cell again.”

“How about this thing?” said a man, nudging the body of the dead partner, Jim Crast, with a callous toe.

“Leave it here.”

“The gat? There’s initials on the butt.”

“Leave it, too. It will be sealed in here forever next time the valve is opened.”

The men followed the one figure in faded overalls back down the rift, half-shoving and half-herding the other, similar figure; that of Benson.

The Avenger said nothing and attempted nothing. He went where he was prodded, all the long way down a slope similar to the one he had climbed from outside the mountain. He got to the great cave Nellie Gray had seen, in which was the weird image of the Rain God.

There he was dragged to a place behind the statue. A rock slab was rolled back, and he was shoved in. The slab was replaced.

Benson had snapped out his flash when he heard sounds while standing at the gate-valve. The men hadn’t bothered to search him, so he still had the flash. He lit it after some time had elapsed, holding it in his bound hands.

He was in a cell about ten feet square. There were remains of food in here, and, on a sharp projection, a wisp of faded blue denim. The old Indian whom he had creased with Mike had obviously been held in here for some time before escaping — to fall into The Avenger’s impersonal way.

The third figure in faded denim? The twin to Chief Yellow Moccasins?

There was the heart of the riddle.