"Doc Savage Adventure 1934-04 The Monsters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

"0. K.," said MacBride. "But listen, Bruno, what's ailin' you?"

"Nothin'," snarled the breed. "You go 'way."

"You must be nuts," opined Carl MacBride, and took his departure.

By way of paying the good-natured giant back for that last crack, Bruno Hen left his cabin during the afternoon and raided one of MacBride's fish traps. He selected several choice walleyes, and turned the rest of the catch loose. The breed was thoughtful as he slunk back toward his cabin.

"I ought to have told MacBride about what I seen prowlin' around here the other night," he said slowly. "Hell! He would think I was crazy."

Reaching his shack, he fastened himself in securely. Exercise seemed to have lulled his fears somewhat.

He lay down and slept.

The night was well along when Bruno Hen opened his eyes. He lay in a sort of drawn rigidity, listening to what had aroused him.

It was a strange wind, which seemed to be blowing outside. This came in puffs, regularly spaced.

The breed shivered from head to foot. The gusty sounds were too peculiar to be made by a natural wind.

Using extreme care to make no noise, Bruno got up. He gripped his rifle in one hand, his shotgun in the other. He crept to one of the timbered windows and crammed an eye to the crack.

What he saw caused him to shriek out in awful horror.

Jumping back, he lifted his rifle. It was high-powered, intended for bagging moose. He fired. The slug slapped through the planks as if they had been paper. Again the breed fired. He pumped jacketed lead through the wall until the magazine was empty.

Plugging in fresh cartridges, he continued his wild firing.

"It's worse'n it was before," he moaned, referring to the horror outside.

Over the whacking of the rifle and the breed's moaning there sounded a tremendous rending and tearing. The breed stared upward in ghastly terror.

Parts of the roof of his shack were being torn off. Stout boards split apart or snapped off. Rafters buckled under some cataclysmic force.

Still firing madly, Bruno retreated to the other side of the cabin.

With a final squawling of withdrawn nails, and a cracking of wood, a section of the roof came off. Something extended through the aperture.

The breed emitted one squawling shriek after another. He dashed from end to end of the cabin. He was like a trapped rabbit.

The breed's neighbor, Carl MacBride, unlike many big men, was a light sleeper. He heard the yelling and shooting coming from Bruno Hen's cabin. Leaping up, he yanked on his pacs, grasped a rifle and ran for the uproar.

Long before he reached the breed's cabin, MacBride heard Bruno Hen's shrieking die. Its termination was a piercing, bleating sound, remindful of a mouse which had been stepped upon.

Arriving at the shack, MacBride found an amazing sight. The structure itself was little more than a great shapeless wad of timber and planks.

Striking matches for light, he circled the spot. His gaze lighted upon a timber as thick as his leg, and he whistled softly in amazement; for something snapped off that timber as if it were a match stick.

MacBride stood still, straining his ears. There was an occasional creak from the settling ruin of the cabin. From out on the lake he thought he heard faint splashing. This was very distant.