"060 (B084) - The Mountain Monster (1938-02) - Harold Davis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

THE MOUNTAIN MONSTER
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson

Chapter I. TERROR STRIKES
"THE MONSTER" came without warning. It came as Indian legend had said it would come, in the night and while a storm raged. It brought terror and horror to peaceful Arcadia Valley. It transformed an Alaskan paradise into a panic-stricken, fear-blanched hell.
Arcadia Valley had been chosen as the site for one of the government's settlement projects. The land was fertile, water was plentiful. Cabins sprang up swiftly as modern pioneers saw realization of long-cherished hopes almost within their grasp.
John Alden was one of the government engineers. His cabin was at the upper end of the long valley, his closest neighbor two miles away.
And it was there The Monster first appeared!
Rain hammered on the tin roof of the cabin. Thunder cracked in the near-by mountains. John Alden tossed on his cot.
Then came the scream.
John Alden jerked bolt upright. The shrill echo of that scream rang in his ears.
Then it came again. It was high, sharp, not the scream of a man in pain, but the scream of a man whose nerves have given away.
The scream ended on a high note. It was cut off short, almost as if a giant hand had crunched about the throat from which the sound came.
Cold chills swept the engineer's long, lanky body. And then his straining ears caught another sound, a sound such as he had never heard before. It came like the splashing of boots in thick mud.
But it was more than that. It was as if some giant man or beast was taking huge steps, and not with two feet or four, but with many.
Somehow, John Alden found he had left the cot; his fear-numbed hands sought the rifle that hung over the door. He levered a shell into the barrel. A moment more and he had dashed from the cabin.
COLD rain whipped into Alden's face. Drenched and shivering in pajamas, the tall engineer crouched, all senses alert.
Those screams could have come from only one man. "Buck" Dixon, his partner, must be in peril. And Dixon was a former soldier, knew how to take care of himself.
Buck Dixon had gone down into the valley to call on some new arrivals. He must be hurt, possibly deadЧ
John Alden strained his ears. The queer sounds he had heard vanished. Rain and thunder broke the stillness.
He found himself recalling the stories the Indians had told him of The Monster, the legend of a dread, foul beast that lived in the mountains.
And it was then Alden received another indication of the horror that was to come.
There was an odor in the air, an unclean, almost overpowering odor. It was sickening. It seemed like the scent of some animal.
And the Indians had said such an odor was always present when The Monster appeared!
John Alden's tongue suddenly felt thick. The odor had a peculiar, cloying sweetness that hung in the air despite the rain. It penetrated the brain, made him feel almost light-headed.
And it had another result as well: While his entire body shrank with distaste, although the odor was repelling, yet it had a queer fascination, an almost hypnotic pull.
While his mind cried out for him to turn and run, John Alden found that his muscles were not obeying. Instead, foot by foot, he was moving ahead into the darkness, where the scent became more powerful.
John Alden had never been called a coward. But he was afraid then.
He knew that another force, stronger than his own, had taken possession of his body. That force was dragging him resistlessly onward.
He opened his own mouth to scream. No sound came from his lips. His vocal cords apparently were paralyzed. The dread odor grew stronger and stronger.
JOHN ALDEN broke into a run. A choking, bubbling sound came from close ahead, seemed to break the uncanny, hypnotic spell.
The sound came again, but John Alden was no longer afraid. There was nothing supernatural about that sound. It came from human lips.
The trail made a sudden twist. A dark object, sprawled doglike, loomed ahead. The queer, bubbling sounds came from it.
The sprawled figure tried to rise as John Alden came in view. Shrill words burst from it:
"I saw it! I saw it! It was a big monster, a huge, creeping shape with many legs. It almost got me. Then it went away. It jumped over the trees."
John Alden grabbed the figure by the shoulders, shook violently. "Buck! Buck! Snap out of it!"
Of all things that happened that night, what occurred next was strangest to John Alden.
Buck Dixon suddenly scrambled to his feet. His face underwent an amazing transformation. The fear and panic left it. It set in its usual hard, self-reliant lines.
"What are you doing out here with that gun in your hands?" Buck Dixon rumbled. Only faint embarrassment was in his voice. He grabbed John Alden by an arm, propelled him toward the cabin.
"Come on, we'd better get under cover before you take your death of cold."
John Alden gasped. He sniffed the air, hesitated. His eyes held an unbelieving, baffled look. That strange, overpowering odor had vanished. The air was clean and pure.
JOHN ALDEN and Buck Dixon did not tell the Arcadian colonists what had happened. In fact, John Alden had difficulty in making his stocky partner admit the next day that anything out of the way had occurred.
Outside, the sun was shining. The events of the night did seem improbable to John Alden, too. But he remembered the queer sounds he had heard.
A harried look came to Buck Dixon's face when the tall engineer told of those sounds. His hands trembled.
"It was huge, with enormous legs. A terrible smell came from it. It came right toward me. I thought I was a goner. Then it leaped over the trees," he whispered.
"There should be tracks," John Alden said.
John Alden was right. They found tracks!
The tracks were curious. Both Dixon and Alden were woodsmen. They knew how to read signs. But they could not identify the marks they found.
Back-tracking, they found the first marks near the mountains, three miles away. The tracks came almost in a straight line toward the cabin. They were widely spaced, sometimes as much as fifty yards apart.