The Avenger 11 - River of Ice
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Authors: Kenneth Robeson
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By Kenneth Robeson
#1: J
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#2: T
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ELLOW
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#3: T
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#5: T
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#7: S
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#9: T
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#10: T
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ISBN: 0-446-74-134-5
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CHAPTER III: Priceless Manuscript
CHAPTER XII: Mysterious Cauldron
CHAPTER XIII: The Missing Needle
CHAPTER XVI: Master of Mastodons
RIVER OF ICE
Gale!
The three Indians were afraid. The one with the flat face and the pointed head kept sniffing around like an animal trying to catch a death scent.
The big one with the scar under his left ear was rolling his eyes and jumping whenever a twig cracked in the virgin fir forest that surrounded the group.
The third, a man so lined with age that he looked like a nut-brown monkey, yet with all a monkey’s lithe activity in spite of his years, was chattering something to the other two.
Indians don’t show fear. That is the legend, at least. They are stolid, concealing all their emotions. Maybe so. But these Indians weren’t concealing their emotions! They were scared stiff, and they showed it very plainly.
“What do you suppose it is?” said Brent Waller. Brent was a husky fellow in his middle twenties. He had black hair and snapping black eyes, and thick pads of fur on the backs of his fingers and hands. Dressed in high boots, mackinaw and woolen shirt, he looked like a chap who could take care of himself. Yet he found himself being a little uneasy too with Chinooks chattering around like a trio of frightened children.
“I can’t even guess what ails them,” answered his sister, Lini Waller. Lini was a very attractive brunette, on the small side, with a firm, round chin that hinted that she too could take care of herself. In most cases, anyway. Of course, if something was going to threaten them that had even the Indians buffaloed . . .
She and Brent were north in British Columbia, on the shore of the Pacific. They were scores of miles from any human being, in virgin groves of trees that towered over them like skyscrapers. They had come up here primarily on a vacation, but also to look over the timber situation. Brent worked for a lumber company and was a valued man.
The oldest of the three Indians, the little dried-up monkey of a man, chattered harder and grabbed the biggest Indian by the arm. He made gestures seeming to say: “Let’s get out of here.”
“I don’t understand this at all,” said Brent Waller to his sister. “It’s certainly quiet and peaceful enough.” It was quiet enough, surely. At the moment not even a breeze blew. The late sun sank as if into a sound-deadening blanket of fleecy cotton. High up, in the tips of the trees, there was a sort of constant moan, as a slight wind stirred through the giant firs.
“The sunset looks red enough for a good day tomorrow,” shrugged Lini. She was cute in pants and boots.
“And yet,” said Brent somberly, “there
is
something wrong, somewhere. There’s not one sign of it that you can put your finger on, but I smell a storm.”
“Maybe that’s what the Chinooks are worried about,” nodded Lini.
At that moment the biggest of the three came toward the brother and sister. Behind him trailed the monkeylike little old man and the fellow with the flat face and the pointed head. The big Indian had a few words of English. Through him, Brent had conducted the preparations necessary to retain the three as guides for their trip. “We go,” said the big Indian.
Not much trouble in understanding that. But its clarity didn’t make the brother and sister feel any better. “Go?” snapped Brent. “But our trip isn’t half done. We need you.”
“We go!” repeated the Indian, looking north, south, east and west, as if calling on all the spirits to back him up.
“Go where?” asked Lini, not unreasonably.
The Indian pointed. The direction of his none-too-clean index finger was south and east. Vaguely, it was pointing toward an Indian settlement about fifty miles down the coast and inland, the last sign of human habitation they’d seen.
“Why do you want to go?” demanded Brent. “Aren’t we paying you enough?”
“Bad danger here,” said the Indian. And the other two, sensing the meaning in spite of their lack of English, nodded vigorously.
“What danger?”
The big Indian rolled his shoulders uneasily.
“You mean, you think there’s a storm coming?” said Brent, feeling pretty important that he had sensed a weather change even before these natives had. But he was disillusioned by the response.
“Oh, storm,” said the Indian scornfully. “Sure, storm. Big storm he come. But we not care storm.”
“Hang it, what is the matter then?” said Brent in exasperation.
“Bad danger.” Lini and Brent stared at each other, baffled. From their right, a little up the coast, came a chill, dank breath like a breeze from the tomb. A small glacier was up there. It was tiny as glaciers go; but even a tiny glacier holds millions of tons of ice and can throw out a lot of cold air.
“Is it the river of ice you fear?” said Lini, inclining her pretty head toward the source of the tomblike chill.
The Indian showed indifference again. “No, not that.” The aged Indian was trying to break through the barrier of language. He screwed his face up hideously, half-raised his arms, and called: “Whooo. Whooo!”
“Owls?” said Brent politely.
“Spirits,” said the big Indian. There was a tone of triumph about it. He had evidently been trying a long time for that word. “Bad spirit. Old, old spirits.”
“He’s n-u-t-s,” said Lini impatiently, spelling it out to keep the meaning from Indian ears.
“Nevertheless, he’s in earnest,” said Brent.
“You really mean to go and leave us stranded up here?” Lini demanded angrily.
The Indian got the drift, if not the words. He nodded vigorously. Nothing, it appeared, would change him.
Brent looked at his sister. She was as good as a man in the woods. “Well?” he said.
“Well, yourself,” sniffed Lini.
“These duffers have some supernatural fear on the things they call their minds,” he said. “They’re going to beat it, all right. Do we get out too?”
“No!” said Lini. “We’re not children, and we’re not tenderfeet. We can get along by ourselves. Or, if we can’t, we can easily find our way back to that last Indian settlement. Let them go.”
Brent turned back to the Chinooks. “Make camp,” he said. “You can go in the morning if you like.”
The Indians grunted. The three of them efficiently and swiftly made camp. They pitched the tent, and Brent noticed that they secured it extra tightly. They started a fire. And then, suddenly, they were gone! Just like that. At one moment they were flitting around like red-brown gnomes among the giant tree trunks. Then there wasn’t anything flitting any more. “The dirty dogs,” said Lini indignantly.
Brent shook his head. “According to their principles, they were pretty fair about it. They fixed us up comfortably before they blew. Why do you suppose they were so scared? That flat-faced guy was positively green.”
“ ‘Old spirits,’ ” Lini thoughtfully repeated the words of the big Chinook. “Does that mean the spirits of old men? Or of a race that is old? Or just spirits themselves that have gotten old?”
