Doc Savage - The Stone Man Part 14

"Not to us," Doc said. "However, we might make counter proposals and reach a more fair-"

The old chief shoved up his chin arrogantly.

"We are not interested in bargaining," he said. "You will do as we say."

The bronze man's flake-gold eyes got small fires in them, but his voice remained steady enough. "Do you know just what you are going up against in this Spad Ames?"

"We do not fear him."

"Being brave and using good sense are two different things. Spad Ames has plenty of men with him, and he is armed with modern bombs and probably poison gas."

"You mean that you cannot overcome him?"

"I did not say that. We can try. Have you got the clothing you took from us, and the stuff that was in the pockets?"

"Of course."

"On the weapons that we had with us will depend our chances of overcoming Spad Ames."

The chief said something in the dialect. Two of the red-garbed men went away, came back bearing a basket containing the clothes of Doc and his men.

Slyly, the chief sorted through the stuff and removed machine pistols which Monk, Ham and Long Tom had been carrying. He kept these.

"We're not taking chances with you fellows," he remarked.

Doc Savage decided none of the stuff was missing. He went through it, poking with one finger, noting high-explosive grenades, various chemical and small devices. He touched a number of the things, but always with a fingertip.

"All right," he said.

A man picked up the basket and started away. He covered four or five yards, made a mumbling noise, and put the basket down. Then he fell loosely beside it.

The men jumped up excitedly. They were very animated for a few moments, then they began collapsing two and three and four at a time.

DOC had been holding his breath; his men were doing likewise. They had seen one of the objects he had touched-a small cylindrical bomb of anaesthetic gas which had a timing mechanism which caused it toopen several moments after the lever was flicked.

Monk upended the basket, began sorting their clothing. They donned some, discarded other of the garments as unnecessary.

"This is a fine mess," Renny grumbled. "We've got to fight all these guys, beside Spad Ames and his crew. Either outfit would be a handful."

"What next?" Long Tom wanted to know.

"Holy cow," rumbled Renny. "I'm interested in this south end of the valley."

"We'll go there," Doc said. "But first, we'll go back to the pit."

"The pit-why there?"

"The old-timer," the bronze man explained. "We need a guide."

There were none of the white-haired Indians around the pit rim. Doc found the rope ladder, coiled on the rim, and dropped it down.

The old-timer was not glad to see them.

"You hombres is a tarnation source of trouble," he complained. "I didn't wish you no bad luck, but I wasn't hankerin' to see you again."

"Want to guide us around this place?" Doc asked.

The old-timer chuckled. "Sure. Might as well."

They set off through the darkness, the old-timer leading and making fast time. Evidently he had exaggerated somewhat about being no more active than a terrapin.

When they reached the steep hill down which the cage had rolled with such jouncing violence the night before, their guide stopped.

"I ain't useful from here on," he said.

His voice did not hold a great deal of enthusiasm about venturing farther toward the south end of the valley.

"Would you help us by waiting here, and giving an alarm in case we're followed?" Doc asked.

"Sure as tootin'."

They left him there. The hill was smooth, slippery and difficult climbing. "Wonder we didn't get killed in that cage," Ham said grimly.

Doc said: "That shooting and bombing this afternoon was down in this end of the valley. Evidently Spad Ames was trying to force an entrance."

The bronze man made the remark because of dull thumping sounds which he could hear occasionally.

The noises were irregularly s.p.a.ced. He went toward them, moving ahead of the others, using extreme caution.

The thumping noises became audible to the less intensively trained hearing of the others."Sounds like shooting," Monk muttered.

"Wait here," Doc said in a low voice.

He found the mouth of the tunnel five minutes after he had left the others. The thumping noises guided him. As nearly as he could ascertain with his hands, it was a great gaping aperture. Extremely cold air blew out of the opening.

Doc went back to the others.

"You wait outside," he directed. "No need of all of us getting trapped in there." Then he added sharply: "Wait! There are torches coming!"

ABOUT a dozen natives came from the direction of the village of box-shaped stone houses. There were three torch bearers in the group. They were hardly excited enough to be pursuers.

They strode into the tunnel, and Doc followed.

The bronze man kept close enough on their heels to get some benefit of the torchlight. That was probably fortunate, because there were points where the pa.s.sage worked along the edge of great pits. This was a natural cave for the most part, eroded by underground water in the course of innumerable centuries.

The sounds he had been hearing were shooting.

Suddenly, there were many men ahead. They were gathered about a steeply sloping tunnel, behind a barricade of huge boulders. There were other boulders behind the barricade-ammunition, it appeared; for at intervals, men would seize one of the stones and pitch it over the barricade, where it went thumping down the steep shaft beyond. Sometimes one of the missiles caused pained howls; more often, there were answering shots.

The Spad Ames gang must have blasted open the secret entrance closed by the river flowing out of the cliff. They had penetrated this far, and were being stood off by the primitive device of rolled boulders.

None of the white-haired Indians carried weapons. For that matter, the old-timer had explained that for generations there had been no need of weapons in the valley.

The ineffectiveness of gas-Spad Ames undoubtedly had gas-puzzled Doc Savage for a moment. Then he noticed the strong current of chill air, concluded this wind was blowing the poisonous fumes out as fast as they were released.

Suddenly, Doc whipped back and sought cover.

A file of white-haired men was approaching. They had clambered down out of a shaft which led upward.

Each carried a burden. As they pa.s.sed, Doc paid particular attention to the peculiar substance which they were carrying.

The stuff had a greenish-yellow hue, resembling sulphur somewhat. It was in sizable blocks, as if the lumps had been mined from a great ma.s.s.

Each of the carriers was very careful to keep his hands wrapped in many folds of coa.r.s.e cloth.

As they approached, Doc hurriedly delved into his clothing for an article he always carried-a long, stout silk cord, to one end of which a collapsible grapple was fixed. Ordinarily he used the device for surmounting walls.He flipped the silk line out from the niche in which he had hidden himself, made it fall in a loop on the cavern floor. Waiting, he held the two ends.

He began to think that none of the burden bearers were going to step in the loop he had made. But finally one put his foot down in the proper spot. Doc jerked. The bearer upset. Doc hurriedly hauled in the silk line, got it out of sight before they discovered it.

The man who had fallen said a great many words in his native language, all of it forceful. Then he got up and scowled at his lump of greenish-yellow material, which he had dropped. It lay in two large pieces, and some smaller ones.

He gathered the two lumps together, left the smaller ones, and went on with the others.

Doc glided out of the niche, used his flashlight-it had been recovered along with his clothing and gadgets-and made the beam very small, dashed it only momentarily.

Spreading his handkerchief, the bronze man raked some of the greenish-yellow substance onto the fabric, not using a finger for the raking, but the flashlight.

He returned to his men.

"WE were beginning not to like waiting," Long Tom informed him.

There was more shooting back in the cavern, continuous but irregular, as if a child might be playing aimlessly with a drum in the depths.

"Sounds like a nice little war going on in there," Monk suggested. Wars always interested Monk.

Doc Savage spread his handkerchief on the ground and put a flashlight beam on the yellow-green particles.

"About the same color as sulphur," Ham suggested.

"Or the color your face is gonna be after I choke you one of these days, providin' you keep messin' with me," Monk told him.

Doc scrutinized the material intently. He had no pocket magnifier, something he would have liked to use.

He smelled the stuff.

It had an odor, but not particularly strong.

Very carefully, he rolled a small particle of the stuff onto the palm of his hand-and suddenly dropped it.

With furious haste, and some slight trace of pain on his metallic face, the bronze man scrubbed his hand in the sand. He rubbed it against his trousers leg, scrubbed it again.

"Holy cow! The stuff bite you?" Renny peered with great interest.

Doc Savage snapped the fingers of the hand several times, then put a light on the palm so the others could see.

An unpleasantly large blister was already rising.

"Should have known better," he said thoughtfully. "Already had a pretty good idea of what the stuff was.""You had- Wait a minute!" Monk forgot to whisper, and gave a squawk of excitement. "You know what it is?"

"Not the exact chemical composition," Doc said. "A chemical a.n.a.lysis will show that."

"But I don't get it!"

Instead of explaining, Doc said: "Listen!"

They held their breaths, instinctively extinguis.h.i.+ng their flashlights in alarm, and it was very still; except for two deep thumping noises from inside the cave, and also very dark, although they could hear the night breeze moving through nearby crags, and the odor of the mists was a faintly pleasant redolence.

"I don't hear nothin'," Monk said.

Doc, who had trained his hearing with years of scientific exercise, caught a faintly cautious voice some distance away calling: "Doc Savage! Hey, where the heck are you?"

"Old-timer!" Doc called.

The old prospector scrambled up to them. "They found out you got away," he said. "And they've got a war party on your trail."

"Fat chance they've got of findin' us," Monk said.

"That's where you're wrong, good-lookin' feller," the old-timer told homely Monk. "They've got bloodhounds."

"Bloodhounds?"

"Well, these dogs ain't the long-eared kind of pot licker, but they can trail a man. Listen."

The night stillness was broken abruptly by the long kiyoodling howl of a dog taking up a trail.

"They can't trail so good in the mists, and they had lost the trail," the old-timer explained. "They've got it again now. We better be doing something."

Doc wheeled toward the tunnel mouth, and the others followed him, for greater convenience each man holding to the belt of the man ahead of him. They entered the tunnel.

"Dag nab it!" the old-timer exclaimed delightedly. "Did you find a way out of the valley?"

"With the best of luck," Doc said, "it may be sort of an indirect route."

Chapter XVII. THE STRANGE CAVERN.