Read The Avenger 10 - The Smiling Dogs for Free Online

invented and which he called celluglass. At this long range it would stop even a high-velocity rifle bullet, but the impact was going to leave a bruise on the Scot’s back.
    “The skurrrlie!” he burred, panting his way upward. “If I get my hands on him—”
    They got to the top, but not before Smitty had felt the kick of a bullet against his side and Mac had winced under another on his shoulder. Then they were over a ledge and half sliding, half running down a steep slant.
    They were in the crater of an extinct volcano, all right. It was as steep as the sides of a giant’s shaving mug.
    But it was not entirely dead, at that. In the center was a column of steam that ascended lazily for a few hundred yards before losing itself in the air. The steam was yellowish.
    “There’s yer hot spring, or geyser, or whatever,” said Mac, rubbing his shoulder. “And the tint of the steam whispers of sulphur, Smitty. Also the smell.”
    They made their way toward it. For the time being, the marksman could be put out of mind. It would take him a long time to catch up with them by climbing over the route they had followed. Meanwhile, they were safe down here.
    There was movement ahead of them, near the spring. Mac instantly squatted down.
    Smitty laughed. “Ducking jackrabbits now, Mac?” he jeered.
    “Oh, a rabbit,” said the Scot, getting to his feet again and turning a little red.
    “Yes—and tame. Things don’t come in contact with humans enough to get scared of them in here, I guess.”
    Mac eyed the rabbit, which was making a slow way toward the steam column. “No,” he said, after a moment, “ ’tis not that he’s tame. He’s not feeling so good.”
    The giant saw that, too, after a moment.
    The rabbit acted like a sick animal. They saw him more clearly for a moment, saw that there were sores along his mangy flanks. Queer-looking sores, open and apparently incurable. Then the animal was around the steam column and out of sight.
    “And there’s another sick beastie,” said Mac, pointing.
    This one was a young buck. It hopped away from them, toward scrub underbrush at the far side of the big cup. On the deer’s flanks, too, were the strange sores.
    “Must be some funny kind of disease,” said the Scot, frowning. “Or else, maybe the water here slowly poisons anything drinking it steadily.”
    “Must be,” said Smitty vaguely. He wasn’t interested in funny diseases. He was interested in sulphur and salt, and in a marksman who might be showing over the rim of the crater at any moment, now.
    He went on toward the steaming hot spring. The thing had built bulwarks around itself, through the centuries. The bulwarks were of glistening, yellow-white mineral deposit. The spring looked as if surrounded by a lot of little pulpits, climbing up and up to the steam.
    Smitty bent down and scraped up some of the stuff. He put it in a small tin box he had brought for the purpose. He started to straighten up, and saw something a little farther ahead.
    The object was quite a curious one to find here in an out-of-the-way place.
    It was, of all things, a lady’s handbag.
    “So we think we’re such good mountain climbers,” he said to Mac. “Yet some woman’s been here before us. An elderly one, too, from the look of the bag.”
    He picked it up. It was large, dull-black, with a gun-metal clasp.
    “Yes, the kind a woman over fifty would carry. Conservative, durable and—”
    He stopped and stared at Mac. The Scot wasn’t listening, that was obvious. Mac was staring at something instead—staring with his bleak blue eyes very wide indeed.
    He was staring at the steam column. “Smitty,” he croaked. “Smitty!”
    “Well?” said the giant peevishly.
    “Am I goin’ mad, or do you see it, too?”
    Now it was Smitty’s turn not to answer, but just to stare with his eyes sticking out so you could have hung canes on them.
    He was looking at the steam column, too. Or, rather, at something in the live, hot heart of