The Avenger 11 - River of Ice Read Online Free PDF

glacier’s cold dispersed, the big thing was beginning to show its age. “It smells,” Brent said aloud. “So does the guard,” he added morosely, looking at the long-dead mummified sentry who sat almost under the mastodon’s trunk, grasping his polished spear.
    Brent finished his dinner. He didn’t know why he should choose this cave, out of all seven . . . But he did know. There was no use kidding himself. He kept having the sneaking suspicion that the seven dead sentries moved a little once in a while. With the mastodon—it was more than a suspicion. It was an absolute conviction!
    He could swear he had seen the mastodon move on at least three occasions. Once, its great trunk had swayed a little. Once, an ear had distinctly flopped. Once, the left foreleg had twitched, sending a shiver through the whole mighty bulk. Yet he knew that wasn’t possible. The thing was so dead that it smelled. It couldn’t move! He was going insane in here. To preserve his own sanity, he forced himself to stay in the cave of the mastodon more than in any other, as a matter of strict self-discipline.
    The mastodon didn’t move—while he finished his dinner at any rate. Brent took his frying pan out to the outer cave again, and cleaned it in glacial water. He debated going outdoors and decided against it. It wasn’t dark yet. There was always the chance that some hunter or trapper might see him and investigate his presence in the wilderness. It was bad enough to have to have smoke coming out the foot of the cliff.
    He went into the cave containing costumes of the vanished race. Furs—nice thick ones. He selected a cape to throw over the fur suit he had already filched from the cave. It was as cold as the devil under the glacier. “Hey!” he screamed suddenly, jumping a yard. Then he swore at himself. He thought he had seen the guard in this room move its spear. “I am jittery,” he snapped, aloud. “That’s what comes of studying the stuff in the caves too much.”
    To while away the time, as much as to learn, Brent had gone over some of the records in the library cave and had studied more minutely the pictures painted in the mastodon cavern. He had learned more about the master of mastodons. The master was headman of the tribe, all right. More, he was supposed to have everlasting life and to be able to guard the race always. His spirit was thought to have gone from body to body of a succession of reigning masters, and to be imperishable. Brent was reminded of the fear of the three Chinooks who had deserted him and Lini. “Old spirits.”
    “I’ll get a Hollywood orchestra on the radio,” Brent shivered. “I need something to cheer me up. Boy, I’m earning any dough we might get out of these caves!” He went back to the seventh cave where his fine radio was set up. He pressed at the right-and-left spots on the door to swing it open—and whirled with a gasp! He thought he had heard the sound of a step. It had seemed to come from the cave of the costumes which he had just left. There were no further sounds, but so strong had been his sense of hearing a step that he went back to that cave door and opened it. There was nothing moving within, of course. How could anything move in a place where death had reigned for thousands of years?
    Brent returned to the mastodon’s cave and went in. The radio was against the side wall. He walked to it, passing the dead sentry within a yard, walking almost close enough to the mastodon to brush its trunk. He’d show the damned dead thing if he was afraid of it! He snapped on his radio which was set at the wave length he and Lini used. He’d leave it on that for a little while, before getting some dance music to make the hours endurable in this awful place. It wasn’t the hour when Lini usually communicated with him, but she might try a little earlier tonight.

    In the civilized sophistication of her hotel suite, thousands of miles from the glacier caverns and thousands of years from it