Free The Avenger 8 - The Glass Mountain by Kenneth Robeson Page B

cylinder carried four special bullets. This he called Mike; and he wore it in a holster strapped to the calf of his right leg.
    Strapped to the calf of his left leg, since a quick search of a man for weapons rarely goes below the knee—was a needle-pointed, razor-sharp little throwing knife with a hollow tube for a handle, which he called Ike.
    He drew Mike now, seemed not to aim at all, and pressed the hair-trigger. There was a hushed, little spat from Mike’s silenced muzzle. And the man at the cave mouth fell over on his face—but not dead.
    Mike’s leaden pea had neatly creased him on the top of the skull so that he was knocked out as if hit on the head with a club. It was shooting requiring infinite skill, but it was an eight-inch shot which Benson had practiced till he never missed.
    He walked to the unconscious man, face as cold and calm as a glacier’s surface, stainless-steel chips of eyes reflecting no emotion whatever.
    He had seen about all he needed to, he thought, after a quick glance into the cave had revealed nothing but plane and drums of gas and oil.
    There was an airplane here. There was a guard. That was all.
    He flipped onto the man’s horse and started toward the larger, more sprawly mountain next to Mt. Rainod.

    Crater lakes are always spectacular things. They look like a giant’s drinking cups, perched high in the sky with steep cliffs for banks. The water in them, welling up under subterranean pressure from somewhere deep in rock that once belched lava, is nearly always crystal clear.
    The lake in the crater of the mountain next to Rainod, called appropriately Cloud Lake, was not quite as clear as some. Leaves from clustered trees along its fringe, and ages of water vegetation and algae, had turned it slightly greenish. But it was no less beautiful; and its sheer sides were no less spectacular.
    But one bank of the lake didn’t have a sheer cliff. That section was low, looking like a large cup with a bite chewed out of one side. Evidently, ages ago when this was an active volcano, the belching lava had torn down one rim of the inner cavity and escaped that way.
    On the rim of the lake, here, was a sprawling, comfortable-looking ranchhouse, with outbuildings and corral fences. Stretching away from it on a long slant down, was the land belonging to it.
    The Avenger rode his horse down a slope to a trail winding along the side of the cliff beneath him. He followed the trail to the house.
    It was here that Ethel Masterson must dwell—the girl who had twice made such determined attempts on his life, and whose father he was supposed to have killed.
    Benson didn’t go to the house at once.
    On the lake rim, a hundred yards from the house, were a boat and a little dock. Ethel had mentioned these. It was here that her father had died, shot three times in the head. The pale eyes of The Avenger dwelt on the boat and dock, and then he reined his horse that way.
    He dismounted with his icily flaring eyes more glittering than ever.
    The dock’s piling showed that the lake was at an ebb slightly lower than usual. The boat showed it, too. It was partially beached, though it was the type that should never be out of the water because, unless submerged, its seams dried and opened.
    Benson vaulted back onto the horse and went at a walk toward the house.
    The structure ahead of him seemed absolutely deserted. The shades were drawn against the Idaho sun, there was no sign of life anywhere around, and his marvelous ears could catch no sound.
    It looked as if the girl had let the normal ranch hands go when her father died and lived on here alone. And it looked now as if even the girl were not here.
    Yet The Avenger felt eyes on him.
    He kept on his way, hands in plain sight, taking a chance against a sudden bullet if his hunch were right. It wasn’t likely that anybody would cold-bloodedly shoot from ambush unless some rat from the underworld happened to be crouching in that still, vacant-seeming building.
    He