The Man of Bronze (14 page)

Monk abruptly swallowed the rest. But it was too late. He had said the wrong thing.

Princess Monja spun on her heel and vanished among the large rocks. The trace of a sob lingered behind her.

MONK stood there in the moonlight a while. Then he went back to his sleeping quarters. Doc and Renny were still missing.

Just to ascertain that things were all right, Monk stepped into the adjoining room where Johnny, Long Tom, and Ham were supposed to be slumbering.

All three were gone!

Monk’s huge fingers curled and uncurled. He knew something was wrong now! All five of his friends would not be out taking the night air at once.

A giant, animal-like figure, Monk sprang outside. His keen ears strained. They detected faint noises. To the right! He made for them, his leaps enormous, bounding.

Quite a number of men seemed to be receding furtively through the night. Monk put on a burst of speed to overhaul them.

The golden pyramid came in view.

On the left of it, Monk discerned the men he was following. Fully a dozen of them! They carried a limp, bound form in their midst.

Monk had a technique for running in the dark. His unnaturally long arms played an important part. He simply doubled over and traveled by great bounds, balancing himself with his long arms when he stumbled. He could make unbelievable speed.

He raced his best now. He tried repeatedly to see who it was the men—they were red-fingered warriors—were carrying.

Johnny! They had Johnny!

Monk did not know Long Tom and Ham had already gone into the sacrificial well, or he would have been even more horrified than he was.

The red-fingered men had seen him now. They quickened their own pace, shedding caution. They ran out on the stone pavement around the sacrificial well.

Still fifty feet from them, Monk saw them lift Johnny’s bound and gagged frame and toss him into the fiendish pit!

Monk heard the loud, heavy thump come up from the well bottom!

That turned Monk into such a fighting devil as he seldom became. His great hands scooped up two rocks. He hurled them with the velocity of cannon balls.

Both rocks downed their men.

So sudden was the attack, so fearsome a figure did Monk present that the red-fingered group turned to a man and fled wildly into the brush. Monk overhauled one before they got away. He heaved the loathsome creature up like a feather and dashed him against a tree. The lifeless body bounced back almost to his feet, so terrific was the impact.

Into the undergrowth Monk dived. He searched like a terrier after rats. But the warriors knew the vegetation. They evaded him.

It was high tribute to the fright Monk inspired that they did not even dare throw a knife or a spear at him, but crept away like sneaking coyotes into the night.

Slowly, with his heart the heaviest it had ever been, Monk went back to the sacrificial well. He had heard that thump come up from the bottom—he knew the well must be at least two hundred feet deep.

Poor Johnny! To meet a fate like that! One of the most brilliant living geologists and archaeologists snuffed out at the dawn of his career. It was awful.

Nearing the well, Monk could hear the gruesome hissing and swishing of serpent bodies deep in the black Gehenna of a pit. He recognized the noises for what they were. Johnny didn’t stand a chance of being alive! Salty tears came to Monk’s eyes.

With an effort, he brought himself to look over the rim of the sacrificial well.

Out of the pit came Ham’s sarcastic drawl.

“I ask you, brothers, did you ever see an uglier face than that?”

S
O astounded was Monk that he came within a hair of toppling head-first into the sacrificial well. He hastily got away from the brink.

A sibilant “Sh-h-h!” came out of the hole, warning silence.

Johnny then appeared, shoved from behind. Johnny was a little scuffed and pale, but otherwise none the worse for his grisly encounter. He kept low, behind the screen of bushes that surrounded the sacrificial well.

Long Tom was helped out next. Then Ham. They, too, were unharmed. And finally Renny.

At last, Doc himself appeared.

“You wait here,” Doc whispered. “I’m going to the plane to get some materials.”

He vanished like a bronze ghost in the moonlight.

“What happened to you birds?” Monk demanded.

“The red-fingered rascals got us, one at a time, bound and gagged us, and threw us in the well,” Long Tom explained.

“Aw-w-w! I mean, what saved you?”

“How?”

“It beat anything you ever saw,” Long Tom murmured admiringly. “Doc and Renny were out prowling, and saw the warriors grab me. Doc ran to the plane and got a stout silk rope, or, rather, two of them.” Long Tom pointed.

“There they are!”

Monk looked, and perceived what he had not before noted in the moonlight. The two ropes, thin but extremely strong, were tied to a couple of the stout shrubs surrounding the paved circle. The ends of the ropes dangled in the well. The Mayans, too, had missed seeing them.

“Doc and Renny slid down into the well before the warriors got here,” Long Tom continued. “Renny held a big rock in his arms. He tied the rope end around his waist to support him.”

Long Tom laughed softly—but not very heartily. “When the red-fingered men tossed me in, Renny dropped the rock to make it sound like I had hit bottom. And—”

“And Doc simply swung out and caught them, one at a time, as they came down,” Renny chimed in. “Then they clung to the sides of the well. That was not much of a job, because the sides are very rough, some blocks sticking out enough for a man to sit on in comfort.”

“You looked like you were crying when you stuck your mug into the pit,” Johnny chided Monk. “Did you really hate to see me go that much?”

“Aw-w, fooey on you!” Monk grinned.

Doc came back, appearing with the silent unexpectedness of an apparition.

“Why didn’t you and Renny pitch in and clean up on the warriors when you saw them grab Long Tom?” Monk asked.

“Because I reasoned he’d be thrown into the sacrificial well alive,” Doc replied. “That is the customary manner of sacrificing offerings. And I wanted the red-fingered devils to think Long Tom, Johnny, and Ham are dead. I’ve got an idea to pull.”

“What?”

“The warriors are our immediate trouble here,” Doc explained. “If we can convince them we are really supernatural beings, we’ll have half the battle won. Then we can concentrate on trapping this man who is behind the Hidalgo revolution scheme.”

“Sure,” Monk agreed. “But how to convince them is the catch.” He rubbed his big knuckles. “I’m in favor of glomming onto Morning Breeze and the rest of them, and have an old-fashioned lynching party. That’d fix it.”

“And have the rest of the Mayans on top of us,” Doc pointed out. “No. I’m going to convince those superstitious fighters I am an extra sort of a guy. I’ll run such a whizzer on them that they won’t dare to listen to Morning Breeze telling them we’re ordinary men!”

Doc paused dramatically, then revealed his plan. “I’m going to bring Long Tom, Johnny, and Ham to life for the warrior sect’s benefit!”

Monk digested that. “How?”

“Watch us,” Doc suggested, “and you’ll catch on.”

WORKING rapidly, Doc pried up paving stones in a line to the thickest part of the surrounding jungle. In the soft earth beneath, he dug a narrow trench.

He had brought with him from the plane a coil of stout piano wire. No greater in diameter than a match, it had a strength sufficient to support several men. This he laid in the trench, afterward replacing the paving stones, careful no evidence remained of their having been disturbed.

The end of the piano wire he ran into the sacrificial well, and straight across and out the other side. To a dead-man-stick anchor some yards beyond he secured the end, uprooting other paving blocks and replacing them so the whole work would go unnoticed.

Directly below the well mouth he rigged a sort of saddle on the wire.

“Catch on?” he asked.

Monk did. “Sure. I hide out there in the brush and give the wire a big pull when you pass the word. Long Tom, Johnny, and Ham take turns sitting in that saddle arrangement. When I pull the wire tight, they will be tossed out of the well. Just like an arrow is thrown from a bow.”

“Or a rock from a kid’s bean shooter,” Doc agreed. “One more little detail.”

Inside the well, close to the anchored end, Doc cut the wire. He tied the end in a loop. The other end he secured to that in such a manner that, by yanking on an ordinary twine string which Doc attached, the last man thrown out by the ingenious catapult could separate the wire.

“And you pull in the end, saddle and all,” Doc pointed out to Monk. “That gets rid of the evidence, in case anybody is suspicious enough to look into the well.”

Johnny, Long Tom, and Ham climbed down into the well, to spend the rest of the night roosting on the jutting ends of the huge rocks which formed the masonry walls.

“Don’t get drowsy and fall off!” Monk chided.

“Not much danger!” Long Tom shuddered. “Just you don’t let the end of that wire slip out of your hands while I’m in the saddle!”

Monk leered delightedly at his old roasting mate, Ham. “Now, there is an idea!” he chuckled with mock threat. “I’ve got the ugliest face in the world, have I?”

To which Ham grinned: “You’re a raving beauty until I get out of that saddle, Monk!”

A FAIR degree of daylight came long before the sun actually could be seen from the floor of the Valley of the Vanished, due to the tremendous depth of the chasm.

With the first flush of luminance, Doc was in conference with old King Chaac, benign sovereign of the lost clan of Maya.

The elderly ruler was very enraged when he heard Morning Breeze and his red-fingered men had consigned three of Doc’s friends to the sacrificial well during the night.

Doc had neglected to mention that his three men were still quite alive.

“The time has come for a firm hand!” the Mayan chief said in his surprisingly good English. “In the past the people have put the warrior sect in its place when their depredations became unbearable.

“Morning Breeze has been working for a long time, slowly undermining my authority. Not satisfied with being chief of the fighting men, which is not such an honorable post, he desires to rule. It is also no secret that he wishes my daughter in marriage! I shall call together men and seize Morning Breeze and those next him in authority. They shall follow your men into the sacrificial well!”

Likable old King Chaac, Doc reflected, had waited a little too long before putting a firm hand upon Morning Breeze.

“Your people are under the spell of Morning Breeze’s eloquence,” Doc pointed out. “To lay hands on him would cause an uprising.”

The Mayan winced a little at the blunt statement that his power had ebbed. Reluctantly he agreed.

“I have let Morning Breeze go too far, hoping to avert violence,” he admitted. Then he looked wryly at Doc. “I should have been more alert. Our warriors have never been considered members of an honorable profession. It is not like your country, where soldiers are fine men. We Mayans are by nature a peaceable folk. To us war is a low thing.”

He shrugged. “Those of our men who are inclined to violence naturally turn to the warrior sect. Many lazy men join the fighting group because the warriors do no labor. Too, petty criminals are sentenced to join the red-fingered ones. The fighting guild are a class apart. No upstanding Mayan would think of taking one of them into his home.”

“But they seem to have more influence than that now,” Doc smiled.

“They do,” King Chaac admitted. “The red-fingered men fight off invaders from the Valley of the Vanished. Otherwise their sect would have been abolished hundreds of years ago.”

Doc now broached the subject of his visit. “I have a plan which will dwarf the influence of the red-fingered sect.”

Renewed energy flowed into the elderly Mayan sovereign at Doc’s statement. He looked at this bronze Apollo of a man before him, and seemed to gather confidence.

“What is your plan?”

“I am going to bring my three friends who were thrown in the sacrificial well back to life,” Doc disclosed.

This brought varied expressions to the staid Mayan’s face. Uppermost was skepticism.

“Your father spent some months in this Valley of the Vanished,” he told Doc. “He taught me many things—the fallacy of belief in evil spirits and heathen deities. And along with the rest he taught me that what you have just promised to do is impossible. If your men were hurled into the sacrificial well, they are dead until judgment day.”

A faint smile warped Doc’s strong bronze lips; appreciation glowed in his flaky golden eyes. The Mayan sovereign was as free of superstitious, heathen beliefs as any American. Probably more so than many.

So Doc explained how he had caught his friends as they were thrown into the fiendish sacrificial pit. A bystander would have marveled how insignificant Doc made his feat sound.

Elderly King Chaac fell in heartily with the resurrection scheme.

EVERY community of human beings has certain individuals who are more. addicted to talking than others. These gossips no sooner get a morsel of news than they start imparting it to every one they meet.

King Chaac, using his deep understanding of his Mayan subjects, selected about fifty of these walking newspapers to witness the reanimation of Johnny, Long Tom, and Ham. There was not room for the whole tribe, which would have been the best audience. They would have overflowed the stone paving about the sacrificial well and surely discovered Monk hidden in the luxuriant tropical growth. And the whole resurrection depended on Monk’s tremendous strength to jerk the wire, the tightening of which would fling Johnny, Long Tom, and Ham out of the well mouth.

Doc, since his knowledge of the Mayan language was not sufficient to make a public speech, left the oratory to King Chaac. The elderly Mayan was an eloquent speaker, his mellow voice making the clattering gutturals of the language pleasantly liquid.