The Land of Terror

Chapter 20. THE DEATH SCENE

THE remainder of the night was uneventful — if noisy.

With daylight, and the simultaneous retiring of the more ferocious of the colossal reptiles, Doc and his men slid down their tree ferns to see what damage the overgrown beavers had done.

Doc’s shot had not been fired any too soon. Monk’s tree was supported by a piece no thicker than his wrist. And some of the others were as near falling.

One noteworthy incident enlivened their investigations.

"It’s gone!" Oliver Wording Bittman’s shriek crashed out.

The skeleton-thin taxidermist was clutching madly at his watch chain.

"My skinning scalpel!" he wailed. "It has disappeared! I had it when I retired, I am certain!"

Doc helped Bittman look for the scalpel under the tree. They didn’t find it. Bittman seemed distraught.

"It can be replaced for a few dollars," Doc suggested.

"No! No!" Bittman muttered. "It was a keepsake. A souvenir! I would not have taken five hundred dollars for it!"

Unable to locate Bittman’s vanished trinket, the adventurers set out in search of breakfast. They cannily kept close to the giant tree ferns which offered the best safety available to man here in the ghastly lost domain of time.

Doc Savage it was who bagged their breakfast. A large ground sloth flushed up in their path. A bronze flash, Doc’s mighty form overhauled it. A rap of his mighty fist stunned the creature. It resembled a cross between a tailless opossum and a small bear, and looked inviting enough.

"It feeds on herbs and such fruit as there is," Doc decided. "It shouldn’t be bad eating!"

It wasn’t. But before eating, while the sloth was cooking over a fire near a steaming brook, Doc took his exercises. He never neglected these. The previous morning he had taken them in the tree, although he had not slept a wink during the night.

The kit containing the vials of differing scents and the mechanism which made the high and low frequency sound waves had reposed in his pocket throughout. It was, other than their arms, practically the only piece of their equipment they had saved.

After breakfast, Doc made an announcement.

"I’m leaving you fellows. Stick together while I’m gone. I mean that! Don’t one of you get out of sight of all the others! The danger always afoot in this place is incalculable!"

"Where you going, Doc?" Ham queried.

But Doc only made a thin bronze smile. A swift motion — and he was gone! The earth might have swallowed him.

Doc’s friends would have been awe-stricken had they seen the pace with which he traveled now. His going was like the wind. For there was no need to accommodate his steps to the limited speed of his less acrobatic companions. He seemed but to touch the rankest wall of jungle — and he was through. Often he took to the top of the growth, leaping from bush to creeper to bush, maintaining balance like an expert tightrope walker.

Near the slain prehistoric beaver which had been dragged to their nocturnal refuge by Kar’s men, Doc picked up a trail. Kar’s men had numbered two!

Doc’s speed increased. He swept along the trail like a bronze cloud pushed by a swift, if a bit sporadic, breeze. A mile dropped behind him, then another.

His golden eyes missed little of the amazing prehistoric life about him.

One incident intrigued him particularly.

He glimpsed a very black, sleek animal. It had white stripes and spots traveling the length of its body. In size, it approximated an African lion. But it was vastly different in build, being chunky and sleepy looking.

The unusual animal had a black, bushy tail nearly four times the length of its body! This tail waved above the matted tropical growth like a banner — a flag of warning.

And flag of warning it was! Doc realized the creature must be ancestor to the common and obnoxious American polecat!

As he watched the animal, one of the stupendous killers, a tyrannosaurus, came bounding along, its stringlike front legs occasionally batted sizable trees out of its path. The reptilian monster stopped often, balancing on its enormous three-toed feet, and turning slowly around after the manner of a dog standing on his rear legs. The carnivorous giant must have failed to satisfy its appetite during the night, and was still hunting.

Doc, concealed behind a clump of ferns, kept perfectly motionless. In doing this, he was obeying the first rule of the wild — the same rule that causes a chicken to freeze into immobility when it is sighted away from shelter by a hawk. Common safety commanded that he let the hideous reptilian giant quit the vicinity before he continued on the trail of Kar’s men. And motionless objects escape notice best.

Doc was surprised to see the great prehistoric killer, as large as many a house, flee from the black-and-white edition of a skunk’s ancestor. It was a lesson in the effectiveness of the latter’s gas-attack defense. It was not unlikely that the little animal was the only thing on earth the odious reptile behemoth feared.

The trail of Kar’s men worked toward the center of the crater. Several times it was evident they had sought to hide their tracks by wading in the edge of such water pools as were not too hot. But Doc held the scent.

DOC halted to cut a long, bamboolike shoot, not unlike the ordinary cane fishing pole. He stripped off the leaves. He worked on the larger end for some minutes. After that, he tested the heft of the javelin he had fashioned.

For the next few minutes, his alert gaze not only kept track of the trail he was following, but roved in search of something to test his spear on.

He found game in the shape of a small but vile-looking creature which had a back covered with hairs that were stiff and pointed like thorns. No doubt this was the predecessor of the common porcupine.

Doc cast his javelin accurately. He inflicted a minor wound on the beast’s flank. It ran off briskly — and suddenly fell dead.

As the animal tumbled lifeless — the trilling sound abruptly came to Doc’s lips. Low and mellow, inspiring, but now awesome, it was such a sound that probably had never before been heard in this lost crater — this land of terror. The sound seemed to creep away and lose itself in the weird, luxuriant jungle, and silence came.

It was as though some profound fact had become certainty in Doc’s mind.

The bronze master hurried on, following the tracks of his quarry. They had not been able to do an effective job of hiding them, due to the intense darkness of the night and the fear of the prehistoric reptilian giants which must have been gripping their hearts.

Although the larger reptiles had attracted most of the attention, there was by no means a dearth of smaller creatures. Doc saw many armor-backed beasts resembling armadillos. Some of these were no larger than rats. Others reached sizable proportions.

Very interesting were prehistoric horse types no larger than sheep. Indeed, one who had not studied ancient evolution types might have mistaken them for short-eared rabbits. A close examination would have shown many differences, though. For one thing, the horselike head was quite pronounced.

Many species of chipmunklike creatures scurried about. These ranged from the size of a mouse to animals larger than dogs. As the ground sloped upward toward a hill, these hole-dwellers became more plentiful.

Suddenly a foul, slate-colored cloud whipped over the jungle. The stirring of great wings like filthy canvas on a skeleton frame made the fronds of the gigantic ferns clatter together as in a gale.

Doc flattened. The slimy wings beat above him. It was as though a great invisible hand were shaking a loose bundle of vile cloth. The rancid reek of carrion was wafted by the squirming wings.

But Doc had been too quick. The immense flying reptile was carried past by its own momentum. Its tooth-armored beak grabbed space with a rattling like boards clattered together.

Not even whipping erect, Doc’s bronze form flew like an arrow for the nearest safety — a clump of thorny growth some acres in extent. He had an idea the membranous wings of the pterodactyls were tender. They would not venture into the thorns.

He reached safety! The aлrial reptile crashed in after him. The thorns spiked it. With a hideous roaring and gargling outcry, it sprang back.

Doc drew his pistol. He could at least disable this monster with a couple of shots, then be on his way.

But another pterodactyl abruptly came! Then another! The cries of the first had attracted them. And they kept coming.

The great batlike shapes became so thick overhead as to literally blot out what light there was. And the wind their wings made bent and twisted the fern fronds and threatened to rend them from their anchorage. The putrid stench was near overpowering.

DOC was in a dilemma. He didn’t have cartridges enough to fight the pterodactyls. To venture out of the thorn patch would be fatal.

Evidently the flying reptiles often chased quarry into the thorns. For, despite the almost nonexistent brains of the things, they knew enough not to venture among the stickers.

Doc relentlessly settled down to wait until the pterodactyls gave up and went away. He believed they would soon depart — if he kept motionless.

But a horrible new development came!

One of the colossal hopping reptiles came bounding up! It was drawn by the cloud of aлrial monsters. Perhaps it had secured quarry which the pterodactyls had chased into the thorns, on other occasions.

The thorny thicket bothered the terrible tyrannosaurus killer not at all! Its tough hide was impervious! It walked into the thorn patch and began to look for Doc. Hopping a couple of hundred feet, it would stop to turn around slowly.

Its hideous, stringlike front legs — legs that were none the less thick as a barrel — flipped in a ghastly fashion. Probably this was caused by the nervous gnawings of appetite. But it looked to the Doc like the thing was clapping hands over the prospect of a human meal!

Doc moved only when the hideous head with its tremendous, frothing rows of teeth was turned from him. Then he took care not to make noise.

He had an unpleasant feeling the reptile titan was going to find him — unless he did something quickly!

To complicate things, he unexpectedly confronted one of the black, marked, bushy-tailed predecessors of the modern polecat. The noisome thing gave every sign of going into action.

Doc’s gun rapped twice. So well-placed were the shots that the bushy-tailed animal dropped instantly.

The reptilian monster had heard the shots. It hopped through the thorns, searching. Its vicious eyes seemed about to pop from its revolting head in its blood lust.

Suddenly it bounded straight for the spot where Doc had shot the striped animal.

But Doc’s accomplished wits were equal to the occasion. He had drawn his knife. With quick strokes, he skinned the beast he had shot.

He draped the distinctive black-and-white hide over him like a coat!

Doc now walked boldly out of the thorn thicket!

The hopping monster, mistaking him for the malodorous animal, in the hide of which he was masquerading, backed off.

Even the flying reptiles, the batlike pterodactyls, made the same mistake. They flopped away from him as though he were a plague.

Doc hurried to freedom!

HE pursued the trail of Kar’s men with more caution, aware it was vaguely possible the villains might have located him by the shots and the cloud of reptile bats.

The steps of the fleeing pair suddenly took to an open glade. The length of their paces showed they were making a wild sprint.

The reason was soon apparent.

Doc came upon a scene of carnal slaughter. The spongy ground was rent, upheaved. Footprints were deep as Doc’s hips! The tracks of a tyrannosaurus, a terrible killer titan of a reptile such as the one from which he had just escaped!

The prehistoric monster had devoured Kar’s two men! Doc, gazing about, saw unmistakable proof of that fact. A shoe, a portion of a human foot still in it, and bits of two different suits of clothing, gave the evidence.

The pair had met a fitting end, considering the evil nature of the journey which had put them abroad in the ghastly night within the crater.

Doc turned back. He ran. The two unfortunate villains, in dragging the giant prehistoric beaver to the grove of ferns where Doc and his men had bivouacked, had undoubtedly left another trail. Doc intended to follow that.

He had pursued the outward trail with great speed, but his return was immeasurably swifter. He carried the black-and-white pelt, rolled tight so it would not smell so badly, under one mighty bronze arm.

A shock awaited him at the spot where he had left his friends. They were gone!

Many tracks were about. They told Doc’s jungle-wise eyes a story — told it as perfectly as a book could have.

Kar had seized his friends!