The Man of Bronze (13 page)

Doc nodded. “The agreement is one fifth to the government of Hidalgo. That is eminently fair. The President of Hidalgo, Carlos Avispa, is a fine old gentleman.”

“A third of all gold removed is to be placed in a trust fund in the name of my people,” explained King Chaac. “You are to establish that fund and see that suitable honest administrators are appointed. The other two thirds you are to have, not to build up a personal fortune, but to spend as you see fit in furthering the work in which your father was engaged—in righting wrongs, relieving the oppressed, in benefiting mankind in every way possible.”

“A third to your people don’t seem like a very big percentage,” Doc suggested.

King Chaac smiled. “You will be surprised at the sum it will come to. And we may never need it. This Valley of the Vanished, you understand, remains just as it is—unknown to the world. And the source of this gold will also be unknown to the world.”

JOHNNY, twiddling his glasses which had the magnifying lens on the left side, had been an interested listener to all this. Now he broke in with a puzzled query.

“I noticed the nature of the rock about here,” he said. “And, although the pyramid is made of high-grade gold ore, there is no sign of quantities of the rock near by. If you’re figuring on giving us the pyramid, will your people stand for it?”

“The pyramid remains untouched!” There was a sharpness in King Chaac’s voice. “That is our shrine! It shall stand always!”

“Then where is the gold?”

King Chaac turned to Doc. “You will be shown to it within thirty days—or sooner, if I decide it is time. But until then, you will know no more.”

“Why this condition?” Doc inquired.

There seemed the slightest of twinkles in the old Mayan’s eyes as he retorted: “That I do not care to disclose.”

Throughout the entire confab, pretty Princess Monja had been standing to one side. And almost the whole time, she had been watching Doc, a strange, veiled expression in her eyes.

“I wish she’d look at me like that!” Monk confided to Ham.

King Chaac’s declaration of the thirty-day moratorium on all information concluded the interview. He gave orders to his followers that Doc and his men should be treated with the best.

Doc and his men spent the remainder of the day making friends with the Mayans. They did little tricks of magic that highly entertained the simple people. Long Tom with an electrical shocking apparatus he rigged up, and Monk with some chemical displays, were the favorites.

Morning Breeze and his warriors, however, kept severely aloof. They were often seen chatting in surly groups.

“They’re gonna give us trouble,” Renny declared, playfully cracking soft rocks with his ironlike fists to awe and amuse a young Mayan.

Doc agreed. “They’re more ignorant than the others. And this devil who is behind the Hidalgo revolution is a nabob in the sect of fighting men. He’s going to send the Red Death on the tribe before long.”

“Can’t we stop it? That infernal Red Death, I mean?”

“We can try,” Doc said seriously. “But I’m doubtful that we can do much until it strikes. We don’t even know how they spread it, much less what the cure is.”

“Maybe if we got them the gold in the form of a bribe so they wouldn’t inflict this Red Death—”

“That would mean the success of the Hidalgo revolt, and hundreds of people killed, Renny!”

“That’s right,” Renny muttered soberly.

For sleeping quarters, they were allotted a many-room house not a great distance from the gleaming golden pyramid.

They turned in early. The night gave promise of not being as chilly as they had expected it to be up here in the mountains.

T
HE following day was devoted to nothing more glorious than killing time. Exhibiting little tricks soon palled. So Doc and Renny set out to explore the Valley of the Vanished.

They found it as much a prison as a fortress. The narrowest of paths chiseled into the sheer gorge side was the only route out, afoot. And by air, nothing except a seaplane could land. No dirigible could withstand those terrific air currents.

The sides of the valley were in cultivation, growing vegetables and many
milpa
patches. There was cotton, and domesticated, long-haired goats, for clothing. Jungle growth was rank everywhere else.

“They’re pretty well fixed,” Doc remarked. “Not fancy. But you couldn’t want more.”

Strolling back to the little city beside the golden pyramid, Doc and Renny encountered the attractive Princess Monja Obviously, she had maneuvered this meeting. She was, it could plainly be seen, greatly taken with the handsome Doc. This embarrassed Doc no little. He had long ago made up his mind that women were to play no part in his career. Anyway, his was not a nature to easily lend itself to domestication. So he answered Princess Monja’s eager patter in monosyllables, and carefully avoided being led into discussions about how pretty American girls were in comparison to, well—Monja, for instance.

It was not an easy course to take. Monja was one of the most ravishing young women Doc had ever encountered.

Back at the city, they could not help but notice a subtle change in the attitude of many of the Mayans. Even those who were not of the red-fingered sect now looked at Doc and his friends with unfriendly eyes.

The red-fingered warriors were mingling with the populace, doing a lot of taking.

Doc chanced to overhear one of these conversations. It told him what was happening. The red-fingered men were poisoning the minds of the other Mayans against the whites. Doc and his men, the warriors claimed, were pale-skinned devils that had ridden here like worms in the innards of the great blue bird that landed on the water. And so, as worms, they should be destroyed.

It was clever work on the part of the red-fingered ones. Doc went away thoughtful.

That night, Doc and his five friends turned in early again, largely because the Mayans seemed to go to roost with the chickens. Whether it was the hardness of the stone benches that served these golden-skinned folk for beds, or because of nervous excitement over their position here in the Valley of the Vanished, they didn’t sleep well.

LONG TOM, occupying a large room with Johnny and Ham, stuck it out on his stone slab exactly one hour. Then insomnia got the best of him. He yanked on his trousers and took a stroll in the moonlight that penetrated faintly to the floor of the great chasm of which the valley was a part.

For no particular reason, Long Tom’s footsteps took him toward the pyramid. The thing fascinated him—so rich was the ore of which it was built that it was literally a mound of gold. What a fabulous value it must have!

Long Tom hoped looking at such wealth would make him sleepy.

It didn’t. It cost him dearly.

For while he was having his first eye-filling look at the golden pyramid with the stream of water running steadily out of its top, a man sprang onto his back. A vile hand clapped over Long Tom’s mouth.

Long Tom might look none too healthy, but under his sallow hide were some very ropy, powerful muscles. He couldn’t have stood the gaff with Doc’s bunch without them. He could probably whip ninety-nine out of every hundred men you meet on the street, and not shown fatigue in doing it.

He angled both fists around, drove them behind him. He hit nobody. He bit the unclean fingers that held his mouth. The lingers jerked away. Long Tom started a yell. A hand, thoroughly protected by cloth this time, stoppered his jaws.

Other attackers rushed in. They were bounding dervishes in the moon glow. The red-fingered warriors!

Long Tom kicked mightily backward. He peeled a shin. He and his assailants toppled among round rocks and soft dirt.

One of Long Tom’s clawlike hands found a rock. He popped it against a skull—knew by the feel of the blow that one of the red-fingered fiends was through with this world.

Sheer weight of numbers mashed Long Tom out before he could do more damage. He was securely bound at wrist and ankle with stout cotton cords, then drawn into a helpless knot as his wrists and ankles were tied in a single wad.

A red-fingered Mayan who had kept well away from the fight, now came up. Long Tom recognized Morning Breeze, chief of the fighting men.

Morning Breeze clucked a command in the Mayan tongue, which Long Tom did not understand.

Lifting Long Torn, they bore him around to the rear of the pyramid. They shoved through a high growth of brush, coming then to a circular flooring of stone blocks. In the center of this gaped a sinister, black, round aperture.

Long Tom was left in doubt as to what this was for only a moment.

Morning Breeze picked up a pebble, smirked evilly at Long Torn, then tossed the rock into the round opening.

One second dragged, another! The pebble must have fallen two hundred feet! There was a loud clatter as it struck a rock bottom. Then out of the ghastly hole came a bedlam of hissings and grisly, slithering noises!

The hole was a sacrificial well! Long Tom recalled reading how the ancient Mayans had tossed human offerings into such wells. And the hissings and slitherings were snakes! Poisonous, beyond a doubt. There must be hundreds of them in the well bottom!

Morning Breeze callously gave a command.

Long Tom suffered unutterable tortures as he was lifted and tossed bodily into the awful black opening.

Morning Breeze listened. A moment later came a horrible thump from the well bottom. The poisonous serpents hissed and slithered.

Morning Breeze and his evil followers turned away, highly pleased.

UNKNOWN to Long Tom when he left the sleeping quarters, Ham had not been sleeping soundly. One eye drowsily open, Ham had watched Long Tom pull on his trousers and go out.

Ham drowsed a while after that. But Long Tom’s departure had done something to what little desire he had for sleep, so it was not long before Ham also got up and pulled on his trousers. Thanks to the balmy night, no more clothing was needed.

Ham took his sword cane along, although for no particular reason. He just liked the feel of it in his hands.

Outside, he saw no sign of Long Tom. But a little use of his keen brain told Ham where the electrical wizard would be likely to stroll; the most fascinating spot in the Valley of the Vanished, if one disregarded the really entrancing Mayan girls. The golden pyramid, of course! Long Tom, like the rest of Doc’s men, would not be wooing a Mayan damsel at this hour. They were not interested in women, these supreme adventurers.

Ham ambled toward the pyramid, breathing in deeply of the lambent night air. He heard no sound, certainly nothing to alarm him. He clipped the gaudy flower off a tropical vine with a jaunty swing of his cane.

A split second later, Ham was buried under an avalanche of red-fingered men!

No gallant of old ever bared his steel quicker than Ham unsheathed his sword cane. He got it out in time to skewer two of the devils who piled atop him!

Outnumbered hopelessly, Ham was bound and gagged.

They carried Ham to the sacrificial well, and without a word, threw him in.

Morning Breeze, poised on the well rim, listened until he heard the loud smash come up from the pit floor two hundred feet below. The snakes, disturbed, made enraged noises.

Morning Breeze nodded and clucked to himself. Two of them gone! He gave another command.

The three red-fingered warriors who had been killed by Long Tom and Ham were hauled up. One after the other, the dead forms were pitched into the sacrificial well. Three loud thumps and snake sounds arose.

Very elated indeed, Morning Breeze led his followers to get further victims.

MONK had been sleeping soundly, but the stone bed was hard, and Monk got a nightmare. In the nightmare, he was fighting a million clawing, crimson-tipped fingers while a beautiful Mayan princess looked on. Monk whipped all the red fingers in his dream, but as he started toward the entrancing princess to claim his reward, a man who looked suspiciously like Doc came up and took her away. That woke Monk up.

He sat erect, then stood on his feet to stretch. Looking about, he made a discovery that surprised him. Both Doc and Renny should have been slumbering in this same room.

But their stone couches were unoccupied!

Monk thought a bit, concluded they were out talking somewhere, and decided to join them. He started to put on his trousers, then changed his mind. He had noted a
maxtli
, one of the broad girdles the Mayan gentlemen wore. Evidently it had belonged to whoever gave up the house for their comfort, since it hung on the wall.

Monk whipped the
maxtli
twice about his middle in lieu of pants, and sauntered out. He had an idea he’d go swimming if nothing better turned up.

Unable to locate either Doc or Renny, Monk made for the lake shore. He was not worried about his two friends. That anything could happen to them without an alarm being raised was hardly likely.

The lake was an appealing blue. Away from the shore a few yards, were large rocks. Monk wended his good-natured way through these.

Suddenly he got a tremendous start by encountering pretty Princess Monja face to face. She was evidently out strolling in the moonlight. Alone, too.

Monk felt a great deal of confusion. He made a move to go back hastily the way he had been coming.

But Princess Monja smiled sweetly at Monk’s pleasantly ugly face, and requested: “Do not leave so quickly, please! I wish to ask you a question.”

Monk hesitated. He asked bluntly, “What’s the question?”

Princess Monja blushed prettily. For a moment it looked like she was going to be too bashful to put the query. Then, out it came.

It was: “What is there about myself that your leader finds undesirable?”

“Huh?” Monk stuttered, at a loss for an answer. “Oh, Doc likes you all right. He likes everybody.”

“I do not believe so,” said the entrancing Mayan. “He remains aloof.”

“Well,” floundered Monk, “I guess that’s just Doc’s way.”

“There is a girl—he is—?”

“In love with anybody?” Monk snorted. “Heck no! There ain’t a girl livin’ who could make Doc’s heart—”