The Man of Bronze (21 page)

Renny needed no more than his great iron fists. Long Tom, Ham, and Johnny stood off and pitched bombs wherever opportunity presented.

Doc, his golden eyes throwing glances seemingly everywhere at once, moved back and forth through the combat. Time after time, red-fingered fiends dropped before his skill and strength without even knowing what manner of blow had downed them.

The great stone likeness of Kukulcan atop the pyramid gave a sudden lurch to one side, uncovering the secret entrance to the mammoth treasure vault of ancient Maya.

Tribesmen poured out. Roaring for vengeance on the red-fingered ones, they flooded down the pyramid stairs. Some fell in their excitement. They bounded up unhurt. Rocks, sticks, anything handy, they seized for the fray.

A spike of steel poked furtively out of a clump of jungle shrubs. It was the snout of a machine gun. It snarled two shots, four—bronze hand closed on the warming barrel. A hand with the strength of alloy steel. It jerked. The gunman, a finger unluckily hung in the trigger guard, was hauled out of the tropical foliage.

A warrior! The man probably never saw for sure it was Doc Savage who had seized the weapon. A block of bronze knuckles belted the man’s temple. He went to his spirit hunting grounds as suddenly as Mayan man ever did.

Doc was disappointed. He had hoped to get the snake man or Morning Breeze. The machine gun was one of Doc’s own weapons. He tossed it to Renny.

Rapidly, Doc glided among the combatants. His attitude was detached, disinterested. He showed fight only when tackled. Then the consequences were invariably disastrous.

Doc was hunting the man masquerading in the serpent skin. He wanted Morning Breeze, too. Both had warranted his wrath.

DOC perceived shortly that the snake man and Morning Breeze were not taking part in the battle.

With this discovery, Doc slid over and was swallowed by the luxuriant tropical leafage. He had an idea the two leaders were skulking somewhere until they saw the outcome of the battle. Around the scene of the engagement, Doc skirted. No one saw him.

Fully half of the red-fingered men had now perished. The Mayan populace, terribly incensed, were giving no quarter. The sect of warriors was being wiped out forever.

Nowhere about the battlefield could Doc find the two he sought.

He began a second search—and found the trail. The tracks of two men! The mark left by the dragging serpent tail identified them with certainty.

Like a hound on a scent, Doc followed the spoor. Most of the time the tracks were lost to the eye of an ordinary observer. The snake man and Morning Breeze had taken the greatest care to conceal them. They went down rocky gullies. They even waded a distance in the lake edge.

It was plain the pair had fled the moment they saw their cause was lost.

They were seeking to fly from the Valley of the Vanished! Their course was set directly for the entrance trail in the chasm.

Doc suddenly abandoned the tracking process. He had been moving swiftly, but it was like the wind he now traveled. He knew whence they were bound. Straight for the chasm exit, he sped.

The snake man and Morning Breeze beat him there!

The villainous pair had been running. They had perspired. They had left the smell of sweat on rocks they touched with their hands. So precarious was the route that they were continually clutching handholds.

Into the chasm, Doc swung. He traversed fifty yards, then stopped to kick off his high-backed Mayan sandals. He needed a delicate touch on this fearsome trail. The way slanted upward.

A few hundred feet below, the little stream threshed and plunged. So tortuous was his channel that the water became a great, snarling rope of white foam.

Doc caught sight of his quarry. The pair were ahead. They looked back—discovered Doc about the same time he saw them.

Over the bawl of the water through the chasm, Morning Breeze’s scream of terror penetrated. It was a piping wail of fear.

The snake man still wore his paraphernalia. Probably there had not been time to take it off. He wheeled at Morning Breeze’s shriek.

Evidently they thought Doc had a gun.

Morning Breeze, cowardly soul that he was, sought madly to get past the snake man. There was not room on the trail for that.

Angered, the snake man slugged Morning Breeze with his fist. The Mayan warrior chief fought back. The fellow in the serpent garb struck again.

Morning Breeze was knocked off the trail.

OVER and over spun the squat, vicious Mayan’s body. It struck a rock spur. Morning Breeze probably died then. If he did, he was saved the terror of watching the rock-fanged bottom of the abyss reach for him. The foaming river was like slaver on those ravenous stone teeth.

Thus, indirectly, did mere terror of Doc bring death to Morning Breeze.

The snake man continued onward. He had one of Doc’s pistol like machine guns. It could be seen hanging at his belt. But he did not try to use it. No doubt he thought he would let Doc get closer.

The chase resumed. Doc did not go as swiftly now. He was unarmed. Wily, he was biding his time. His great brain sought a plan.

A mile was traversed. Better than two more! The chasm walls became a vague bit less steep. The stone was crisscrossed with tiny weather cracks. Most of these were no wider than pencils.

Doc suddenly quitted the trail. He had another plan. Upward, he worked. Where seemingly no possible foothold offered, he clung like a fly. His steel fingers, his mobile and powerful feet, materialized solid support where the eye said there was none.

Doc could make the barest projection support his weight, thanks to his highly developed sense of balance.

The speed he made was astounding. Nearly a thousand feet above the snake man, Doc passed the fellow. He went on. His course was now downward, so as to intercept his quarry.

Doc found the sort of a spot he sought. The trail rounded a sharp angle. A thousand feet below, hundreds above, was almost vertical stone. Doc waited around the angle.

Before long, he heard the hard, rattling breath of the snake man. The fellow was nearly exhausted.

The man was looking back as he came around the angle in the trail, wondering if Doc had come closer.

Doc reached out a great, bronzed steel hand. The long, powerful fingers closed over the snake man’s gun belt. They jerked downward. Like an aged string, the gun belt snapped before that tremendous strength. Doc tossed gun and belt into the abyss.

Only when he felt the terrific wrench about his middle did the snake man turn his head and discover Doc. He had thought his Nemesis was behind him.

The man had removed his serpent-head mask. His features were disclosed.

THERE was a terrible silence for a moment.

Then, coming from everywhere, and yet nowhere, arose a low trilling sound. Like the song of some exotic bird it was, or the sound of wind filtering through pinnacles of ice. It had an amazing quality of ventriloquism.

Even looking directly at Doc’s lips, one would not realize from whence the sound emanated.

It was doubtful if Doc even knew he was making the sound. For it was the small, unconscious thing he did in moments of utter concentration. It could mean many things. Just now it was a sign of victory.

The very calmness of the terrible quality in that whistling sound made the snake man tremble from head to foot. The fellow’s mouth worked. But words would not come. He took a backward step.

Doc did not move. But his inexorable golden eyes seemed to project themselves toward his quarry. They were merciless. They chilled. They shriveled. They promised awful things.

Those eyes, far better than words could have, told the snake man what he could expect.

He tried to speak again. He tried to make his nerveless legs carry him in flight. He couldn’t.

Finally, by a tremendous effort, he did the one thing that could get him away from those terrifying eyes of Doc’s.

The snake man jumped off the trail!

Slowly, his body spun on its way to death. The face was a pale, grotesque.

It was the face of Don Rubio Gorro, secretary of state of the republic of Hidalgo.

G
REAT was the jubilation when Doc Savage returned to his Mayan friends in the Valley of the Vanished. Doc’s five men gave him a tumultuous welcome. King Chaac’s wound proved to be minor.

“We cleaned the slate!” Monk grinned. “Not a red-fingered warrior survived.”

Elderly King Chaac put in with a firm declaration. “The sect of red-fingered men will never be permitted to revive. Henceforth, we shall punish minor criminals by making them mine the gold. The most manly of our men will do whatever fighting has to be done.”

So jovial did the Mayans feel that they insisted the ceremony of inducting Doc and his friends into the clan be picked up at once where it had been interrupted.

The rituals went through without a hitch.

“This makes us members of the lodge,” Ham chuckled, eying the gaudy Mayan trappings they wore. Fresh clothing had been supplied.

Renny, whom Doc had dispatched to check over their plane, returned.

“The ship is O.K.,” he reported. “And thanks to the big supply of gasoline we started out with, there’s plenty left to take us to Blanco Grande.”

“You are not leaving so soon?” King Chaac inquired sorrowfully.

And entrancing Princess Monja, standing near, looked as disappointed as a pretty young lady could.

Doc did not answer immediately. It was with genuine unwillingness that he had resolved to depart at once. This Valley of the Vanished was an idyllic spot in which to tarry. One could not desire more comforts than it offered.

“I would like to remain—always,” he smiled at the Mayan sovereign. “But there is the work to which my life and the lives of my friends are dedicated. We must carry on, regardless of personal desires.”

“That is true,” King Chaac admitted slowly. “It is the cause to which goes the gold from the treasure-trove of ancient Maya. Have you any further instructions about how the wealth should be moved? We will send it by burro train to Blanco Grande—to whoever you designate as your agent—”

“To Carlos Avispa, President of Hidalgo,” Doc supplied. “It would be difficult to find a more honorable man than he. I shall designate him my agent.”

“Very well,” nodded the Mayan.

Doc repeated the other details. “A third of the gold I shall use to establish a gigantic trust fund in America. It shall be for the Mayan people, to be used should they ever have need of it. One fifth goes to the government of Hidalgo. The rest is for my cause.”

Preparations for departure now got under way.

Long Tom, the electrical wizard, at Doc’s command, rigged a radio receiving set in the palace of the Mayan sovereign. The current for this was supplied by a small generator and water wheel which Long Tom installed beside the stream flowing from the pyramid top. He made the work very solid. The set should function perfectly for years. He left spare tubes.

With longlasting ink, Doc made a mark on the radio dial. This designated a certain wave length.

“Tune in at that spot every seventh day,” Doc commanded King Chaac. “Do so at the hour when the sun stands directly above the Valley of the Vanished. You will hear my voice sometimes. But not always, by any means. I shall broadcast to you at that hour—but only when we are in need of more gold. Then you are to send a burro train of the precious metal to me.”

“It shall be done,” agreed the Mayan ruler.

PRETTY PRINCESS MONJA was a sensible girl. She saw bronze, handsome Doc Savage was not for her. So she made the best of it. Bravely, she hid her disappointment within her bosom.

She even discussed it philosophically with homely Monk.

“I suppose he will find some American girl,” she finished, with a catch.

“Now you listen,” Monk said seriously. “There won’t be any women in Doc’s life. If there was, you’d be the one. Doc has come nearer falling for you than for any other girl. And some pippins have tried to snare Doc.”

“Is that the truth?” Princess Monja demanded coyly.

“So help my Aunt Hannah if it ain’t!” Monk declared.

Then Monk got the shock of his eventful life. Princess Monja suddenly kissed him. Then she fled.

Monk stared after her, grinning from ear to ear, carefully tasting the young Mayan princess’s kiss on his lips.

“Gosh! What Doc is passin’ up!” he ejaculated.

Two days later, Doc Savage and his five men took their departure. Their sturdy plane battled the air currents up out of the Valley of the Vanished.

Their regret at leaving the idyllic paradise was assuaged by the thought of what was ahead of them. The yearning for adventure and excitement warmed them. Wealth untold was in their hands. It was ample for even their great purpose in life.

Many parts of the world would see the coming of this bronze man and his five friends of iron. Many a human fiend would rue the day he pitted himself against them. Countless rightful causes would receive help from their powerful hands and superbly trained minds.

Indeed, these men were destined hardly to reach New York before new trouble struck them like lightning bolts.

The giant bronze man and his five friends would confront undreamed perils as the very depths of hell itself crashed upon their heads.

And through all that, the work of Savage would go on!

THE END

NEXT MONTH—

Doc Savage, scrapper supreme, with his five companions, comes into a new, weird conflict with man and nature—and an evil mind. Almost before Doc's very eyes, one of his dearest friends dissolves into the air! Doc's own companions are captured and threatened with death; Doc himself is almost vanquished. Such are the experiences these intrepid fellows undergo in:

"The Land Of Terror"

the second episode in the exploits of Doc and his companions, which is told, in a complete book-length novel, in the September issue of DOC SAVAGE MAGAZINE.

From one of our largest industrial plants, to a pirate ship anchored at the very edge of our greatest metropolis; across the sea to a land not forgotten, but entirely unknown—such is the trail that leads you through page after page of thrilling, fighting, exciting experiences. Never a moment of peace, of security. Danger all about—and death at each turn!