"Doc Savage Adventure 1935-07 Quest of Qui" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

A dog went "wur-r-r-o-o!" over Johnny's head. Another canine barked more sharply. They had sniffed him out. Johnny wished fervently that he had taken a bath more recently than the previous Saturday. It might have helped.

A copper-nickel slug came clubbing down through the snow, jarred the frozen ground close to Johnny's fingers, and the report of the gun which had fired it sounded far less muffled than Johnny had expected. The drift must not be as deep as he had thought.

Men were crunching up. Johnny had made himself a little cave. The weight of those above collapsed that. Snow got into his eyes, mouth. Only the most heroic effort kept him from sneezing.

"Where's that machine gun?" bawled a voice which reminded Johnny of the sound one got by pulling a resined string through a tight drumhead.

"Comin', Kettler," called some one more distant.

Kettler rasped, "Hurry it up He's somewhere under here where the dogs are sniffin' and barkin'."

There was a pause. Feet crunched in the snow.

"Here's the gun," said a voice.

"Don't set it up on the tripod," directed Kettler. "Three of you hold the damned thing so the recoil won't knock you down. We'll get this guy under the snow, whoever he is."

Johnny reached a hurried decision.

"Hold it!" he shouted. "I am coming out."


HE HALF expected them to pay no attention, but thanked his stars when they did, and scrambled, not without difficulty, to the surface. Men grabbed him, yanked him, with the result that they all went through tile crust and there was much cursing and floundering around.

Johnny perceived that a large stone upthrust near by east a shadow, and it was this which had deceived him into thinking the snow was deep. Some one hit him with a fist, and that jarred snow out of his eyes, so that he got a good look at his captors.

He abruptly felt as if something colder than snow water were running down the back of his neck.

They were a hard, evil-looking crowd, and in size they averaged neither unusually large nor particularly smal!l, but about what one might expect from a group assembled, not because of their size, but because their brains had the same twist, if it is a brain twist that makes a criminal.

One thing Johnny did note that all had in common. Their foreheads, noses and central cheek area was weather-beaten until it brought thoughts of the back of a toad. The rest of their visages, where a beard would have protected the skin, were quite pale. All of them, like the wounded man Johnny had found, had recently cut off heavy beards.

"Let 'im have it!" ordered Kettler.

Kettler was the tallest man in the crowd, and he had a doglike face. He was wearing a muskrat cap with earfiaps that hung down and gave him a hound aspect. He bent forward, too, giving the impression that he might be more at home on all fours.

A man lifted a rifle, he looked closely at Johnny over its sights.

"Unconscionable intempestivity!" Johnny said hastily.

The man with the rifle all but dropped the weapon.

"Oh, hell!" he choked. "Oh, hell!"

Kettler put out his doglike jaw and said, "Go ahead! Pop 'im off."

A man began, "Maybe we better - "

"Better what?"