The Glass Mountain

CHAPTER IV Lightning Defied

Josh had dished out a breakfast such as the construction crew had seldom seen before. From drillers to water boy they were licking their chops. Then Josh took on another job at the command of Dick Benson.

The new job was that of assistant on a surveyor’s task.

Ainslee, dead now, had had an instinctive feeling that no matter what was down on the chart, the tunnel site cleared for the drillers’ work was not in the right place. Benson knew it was not.

Those pale and infallible eyes were better than most instruments. He didn’t have to guess at the inaccuracy here. He could look at the curve of the roadbed over the last mile and know that it did not hit the glass mountain for the tunnel where it should for the fast trains of the present day.

So he was going out with Josh and a transit to check, even as Ainslee and Nissen had gone out. But first he had worked out his own conception of the curve the track should take.

The present location of the surveyor’s peg, wedged in the mountain’s flank for the tunnel mouth, was a little over eighty yards to the left of a big dead tree. So Josh was ambling in the direction of the tree, looking sleepy and slow-witted and harmless.

While he was on his way to a spot not far from a queer rock outcropping that looked like a giant duck, Benson checked the original right-of-way.

And he found that, as marked, it hit the mountain side nearly three hundred yards to the right of the dead tree. So that the original survey had been wrong not only from the standpoint of a practical railroad curve, but also even in the matter of landmarks.

There was a glitter in his pale eyes as he found that out. Because he knew, as Nissen had remarked, that such a thing is practically impossible in surveying. Particularly in such a short distance.

You simply can’t make a mistake of three hundred yards. Yet one had been made here in the matter of landmarks.

Josh was near the dead tree now. Benson, having checked as much as he needed to, without Josh’s aid, was about to call on him to take up his station where the tunnel site should be — far to the right, several hundred yards from the site cleared. Then The Avenger saw that there was some kind of commotion where the workmen were.

The commotion was another visit of the ancient Indian who insisted he was Chief Yellow Moccasins, in spite of the fact that the claim, if true, would make him out to be close to two hundred years old.

The Indian had appeared out of nowhere and talked to the men again.

Smitty was busy with the electrical apparatus, seeing to it that the power generators and motors for the drills were all in order; so he hadn’t seen the Indian’s approach or heard him sound off.

Mac had, but Mac didn’t seem able to counteract the ancient’s croaking speech.

“You are going ahead with your work in spite of all warnings,” the Indian said balefully, looking impressive in spite of his patched overalls and great age. “That means that more will be killed.”

“We want none of ye and yer predictions, mon,” MacMurdie shouted in his Scotch brogue.

The old Indian faced him squarely.

“You are a murderer’s tool, paleface,” he said. “Oh, I know you. You and the Negro and the big man who came in from the sky yesterday are all tools of the murderer.”

“Hey — who’re ye callin’ mur-r-r-r-derer-r-r?” burred Mac, eyes flashing blue flame.

Back came the answer.

“The man who is young but has white hair. The man whose face is dead and never moves. The man whose eyes are like spots of no color, in which death dwells. He is the murderer. He has killed. One of the simple folk in this countryside has fallen under his murdering hands.”

Mac considered knocking what few teeth the old man had down his throat. But he couldn’t hit a bag of bones that skinny and ancient.

“Ye’re plain loony, mon,” he said.

The Indian turned to the men, who had started to mutter again. There was something about that old, old redskin to shake the stoutest nerve.

“The man with the white face and pale eyes would lead you to your deaths,” he said, almost chanting it. “He would lead you once more against the Rain God, whom none can withstand. I tell you to rise and strike him down. Kill the man with the white hair and the lying voice, lest you be killed yourselves.”

“Let’s get to work, men,” said Mac. “There’s profit to no one in listenin’ to this fool.”

But the men were listening, and they kept right on listening.

“Here is what you shall do,” said the old man. “See for yourselves if the Rain God is to be cowed by this man with the white eyes. Make the man challenge the Rain God openly, defy the god to make his answer known. By the result of that shall you know whether to follow the man any more or kill him and leave the mountain.”

A squat man with long arms and a face that wasn’t too bright said:

“That’s fair enough. Get the white-haired guy here and we’ll see what we’ll see.”

“Ye’re a fair pack o’loonies,” barked MacMurdie. “Do ye believe in ghosts as well as spirits?”

But the damage was done. Work was demoralized till this new subtle barb of the ancient Indian could be turned away.

Mac stared off toward where Benson, at that moment, was standing beside his transit. He waved. But The Avenger had already seen, and he had sensed the meaning of the men’s behavior. He started toward the tunnel site.

He could see Josh, at that point, and he could see the men and machines. But an out-thrust bastion of the glass mountain kept Josh from seeing the men, or vice versa.

He saw that the Negro was sitting on a rock now, near the Donald Duck outcropping, waiting for further orders.

The Avenger got to where the men waited, sullen-faced.

Smitty was with them now. He shook his head at his chief.

“They’ve sure got a crazy one now,” he snorted. “Mac was just telling me.”

The Scot’s lips were thin with disgust and anger.

“They want ye to play Ajax defyin’ the lightnin’, Muster Benson,” he said. “That crazy old Indian—”

“Where is he now?” asked Benson, pale eyes on the muttering men.

“Ye’ll do me a favor if ye can tell me that,” Mac shrugged. “He did the most complete disappearin’ act I’ve ever seen. One minute he was here — the next he was no place.

“Anyhow, he tells the men to see whether you are the master here, or the Rain God. You’re to challenge the Rain God, to show his hand. Like I say, it’s to be like Ajax defyin’ the lightnin’ to strike him down. Can ye think of a sillier thing?”

But The Avenger did not laugh at the fantastic proposal. His face seemed whiter than ever, and his eyes colder, as the flaming genius behind them tackled the problem.

“There’s a curious method in all this,” he mused at last.

“Method?” said Smitty.

“Yes. There must be. It is desired that I go through a theatrical procedure of defying the Rain God. Why? There must be some good reason; or, rather, a very bad reason.”

“Ye think it’s some kind of trap, Muster Benson?” said the Scot.

“Yes — I do! But a trap so fantastic and unusual that its meaning is not yet even to be guessed at. Well, let’s—”

He walked toward the knot of workmen.

Smitty and Mac followed anxiously. “Ye’re goin’ to do it?” said Mac.

The Avenger nodded, eyes never colder or paler.

“Yes! I’d like to see what happens. Something is certainly scheduled to occur if I defy the Rain God. There would be no point in goading me into doing it otherwise.”

“But, mon,” pleaded Mac, “ye mustn’t do it. If somethin’s planned by somebody, it’d be planned against the mon who did the defyin’ act.”

The Avenger’s pale eyes didn’t even flicker.

“Of course,” he said. “Otherwise, if my act placed someone else in danger, I wouldn’t do it.”

He was within shouting distance of the workmen by now. They had seen the giant and the sandy-haired Scot talking to him and guessed it was about what the Indian had said.

“Well,” called the squat man with the not-too-bright face, “have you got the guts to do it?”

Benson came on without answering.

“The Indian said if you’d challenge the Rain God you’d see who was strongest here,” yelled another man. “Let’s see you try.”

Still Benson didn’t say anything.

“He ain’t got the nerve,” a third man jeered. “He’s too yellow.”

There was a low flat rock in the middle of the crew. The Avenger was making for that. He got to the ring of men. Now, closer to them, the pale, cold eyes seemed to slash at them like knife blades. The tremendous power subtly proclaiming itself in Benson’s average-sized body awed them. No one man wanted to jeer at him now. They realized that it was pretty ridiculous to call this man afraid of anything.

They gave way respectfully before him. And Benson got to the low, flat rock. He stood on it, a little above the heads of the men.

The Avenger didn’t treat the matter as a joke. He knew how grave it was to these workmen, still under the spell of the Indian’s words.

“You have been told,” he said quietly, but with his vibrant voice heard distinctly by everyone there, “that tunneling into his mountain is to displease an Indian spirit called the Rain God. You have been told that he can strike with lightning, and that three men found dead near here were so struck. You have been told that others will die if the work goes on.”

“Yes — yes!” came the answers.

“You have also been told that if the Rain God is challenged he will answer that challenge with some stroke that all may recognize as a direct reply.”

“That’s right,” said the squat man with fear on his face.

“I think,” said The Avenger in his quiet but compelling voice, “that such a challenge should be made. And I shall volunteer to make it — now! Then we shall see what answer is made by this powerful spirit.”

Mac stirred restlessly and whispered up at Smitty’s ear:

“ ’Tis not like the chief. It is a tr-r-rap of some kind, and he’s fallin’ right into it.”

“He doesn’t fall into traps,” replied Smitty stoutly. “He walks into ’em, open-eyed, and comes out with results — always.”

But there was trouble in the giant’s eyes. He was suddenly more afraid for Benson than he ever had been before. After all, three men had been struck dead near here by lightning coming from no man knew where.

The Avenger spoke.

“Draw back from me, men. I’ll be alone in this, with no chance of a mishap to any of you.”

The men drew back, breathless, watching. It wasn’t necessary, Benson was sure. But, master of psychology, he felt that it was good to use theatricals. It would rivet their attention on him even more firmly.

With a thirty-foot circle clear around the low rock on which he stood, Benson stood straight and taut as a figure of metal. Wearing gray, as he usually did, and with his snow-white hair and his dead, pale face and flaming eyes, he looked like a man of gray steel rather than of flesh to the workmen.

He raised his hand in a sort of salute to the heavens. He stared upward.

“Rain God of the Pawnees,” he said, “if you can hear, listen. We shall defy you by going ahead with this work into the glass mountain where your soul is supposed to reside. We shall pierce the mountain in spite of you. This is a challenge, and I am the challenger.”

No man there knew quite what he had expected. A bolt from the cloudless heaven? A bolt that no one could see, suddenly laying this indomitable figure low before them? Some other strange and awful phenomenon?

But none of these happened. At least, not to Benson.

From around the jutting basalt bastion cutting Josh off from sight of the men came a cracked shout of agony and fear. There was death in that cry.

Everyone whirled, and from his rock, Benson stared, too. There was grim apprehension in his eyes. He had meant to risk only his own life, not that of another. But it seemed that the challenge had been accepted and hurled back — on the head of Josh Newton.

“Quick! Help him!” snapped Benson, leading a rush around the jutting rock toward the spot where he had left the Negro.

All saw it as they rounded the natural bastion.

There were faint wisps of greenish vapor, fading even as they first set eyes on it, but plainly the remnants of a compact pillar of mist. And under the fog shreds lay Josh.

He lay very still, body twisted in an unnatural fashion on the rough ground. There was no need of a closer approach to tell that he was dead!