The Man of Bronze

Chapter 10. TROUBLE TRAIL

Doc, Ham, and Monk strolled through the moonlight to the spot on the lake shore where they had pitched camp. A crowd of curious natives were there inspecting the plane, talking among themselves. Aircraft were still a novelty in this out-of-the-way spot.

Doc, a bronze giant nearly twice as tall as some of the swarthy fellows, mingled among them and asked questions in the mixture of Spanish and Indian lingo they spoke. He wanted to know about the blue plane which had attacked him at Belize

The blue plane had been seen a few times by the natives. But they did not know from whence it came or where it went.

Doc noticed some of the swarthy little men were very superstitious about the blue plane. These would give him little information. In each case the features of such men showed they were of Mayan ancestry.

Doc recalled then that blue was the sacred color of the ancient Mayans. It only added to this mysterious thing confronting him.

Renny and the others had erected a silken tent. But they had also dug inside the tent a deep hole, sort of a dugout in which to sleep. From the outside, the excavation would escape detection. They were taking no chance on a sudden machine-gun burst in the night.

Monk and Ham, completely recovered from their narrow brush with death, decided to sleep in the plane cabin, alternating on keeping guard.

Doc himself set off alone through the night. Thanks to the marvelous faculties he had developed by years of intensive drill, he had little fear of his enemies attacking him successfully.

He went to the presidential palace. To the servant who admitted him, Doc gave simply his name and a request to see the President of Hidalgo.

In a surprisingly brief interval, the flunky was back. Carlos Avispa, President of Hidalgo, would see Doc at once.

Doc was ushered into a great, sumptuously fitted room. The chamber was in twilight, and a small motion-picture projector was throwing shifting images onto a white screen. However, the film being run off was one concerning military tactics instead of a mushy love drama.

Carlos Avispa came forward with a warmly outstretched hand. He was a powerful man, a few inches shorter than Doc. His upstanding shock of white hair lent him a distinguished aspect. His face was lined with care, but intelligent and pleasant. He was near fifty.

"It is a great honor indeed to meet the son of the great Senor Clark Savage," he said with genuine heartiness.

That surprised Doc. He was not aware his father had known Carlos Avispa. But Doc's father had many friends of whom Doc was not aware.

"You knew my father?" Doc inquired.

Carlos Avispa bowed. There was genuine esteem in his voice as he replied: "Your father saved my life with his wonderful medical skill. That was twenty years ago, when I was but an unimportant revolutionist hiding out in the mountains. You, I believe, are also a great doctor and surgeon?"

Here was a break, Doc reflected. He nodded that he was a doctor and surgeon. For that was the thing he knew more about than all others.

In the course of a few minutes Doc had told his story and mentioned that Don Rubio Gorro, the Secretary of State, had refused to honor his grant to the territory in interior Hidalgo.

"I shall remedy that at once, Senor Savage." declared President Carlos Avispa. "Anything I have, any power I control, is yours."

After he had thanked the elderly, likable man properly, Doc inquired whether President Avispa had any idea what made the tract of land so valuable that many men were anxious to do murder to prevent him reaching it.

"I cannot imagine," was the reply. "I do not know what your father found there. He was bound for the interior of Hidalgo when he came upon me ill in camp twenty years ago. He saved my life. And I never saw him again. As for the region, it is very near impregnable, and the natives are so troublesome I have given up trying to send soldiers to explore."

President Carlos Avispa reflected deeply, then went on.

"It worries me, this action of my Secretary of State, Don Rubio Gorro," he said. "Some sneak has destroyed the records of this heritage your father left you. They should be in our archives. But I cannot understand why Don Rubio should act as he did. Your papers were enough, even though ours had vanished. He shall be punished for his impertinence."

Doc was silent. The moving-picture machine was still running off the reel of military maneuvers — the type of picture shown at war colleges.

With a smile, President Avispa indicated the cinema machine. "I must keep myself advised of the latest fighting methods. It is indeed regrettable. But it seems we can never have peace here in the south. There is always a revolution brewing.

"Just recently I have heard strong rumors that an attempt is to be made to assassinate me and seize power. Many of my people of Mayan ancestry are involved. But I do not know the ringleaders. I understand they await only money to buy arms before making the attempt."

There came into the elderly chief executive's eyes a fiery, warlike glint.

"If I could but find from what source their money is expected to come, I would soon put a quietus on them. And, best of all, it would be done without bloodshed!"

Doc conversed for a considerable time, mostly about his great father. Politely declining an invitation to spend the night at the presidential palace, he departed at a late hour.

Striding through Blanco Grande's sleepy streets, Doc was thoughtful. Could it be that the money for the revolution against President Carlos Avispa was tied up directly with his heritage? The fact that Mayans were involved in both pointed that way. Maybe his enemies were trying to rob him of his legacy; and use it to finance a revolution to overthrow President Avispa!

The enemies had tried hard enough from the first to prevent him even finding out about the legacy. Strange — the whole thing!

Then Doc stopped suddenly.

Before him on the dimly moonlit cobbles lay a knife. It had an obsidian stone blade, a hilt of wound leather — exactly such a knife as the Mayan in New York had carried.

Some fifteen minutes later, there was a curious meeting in a top-floor room of Blanco Grande's one hotel modern enough to be fitted with running water and a radio in every room. The hotel happened to be the pride of all Hidalgo. Three stories high!

But the gentry meeting in the top-floor room were easily the scourge of Hidalgo. They were the ringleaders of the latest crop of revolutionists. These men were motivated by no high ideals of freedom. If so, they wouldn't have been here, because no kinder or more upright official ever administered a nation than elderly President Carlos Avispa.

Greed was behind every act of these men. They wanted to overthrow President Avispa's honest, low-cost government, so they could loot the public treasury, tax the citizens to bankruptcy for a year or two, then skip to Paris and the fleshpots of Europe for a life of luxury on the proceeds.

Eleven outlaws from the hills were congregated on one side of the room. Shaggy, vicious fellows, every one of them was a murderer many times over.

Before them was a curtain. Behind the curtain was a door into an adjoining room. This door opened, and the assembled bandits could hear a man enter. They grew tense, wary. But when the man spoke, they relaxed.

For the man was their boss! The brains behind the revolution! He was going to fill their pockets from the Hidalgo treasury

"I am late!" said the ringleader whom none of them could see — and, indeed, whom none of them even knew! "I lost my sacred knife, and had to go back and hunt it."

"Did you find it?" interrupted one of the bandits. "That thing is important. You need it to impress those Mayans. They think only members of their warrior sect can have one and live. If an ordinary man gets one, they think he will die. So you need it to make them think you're the son of that god of theirs they call the Feathered Serpent."

"I found it," said the man behind the curtain. "Now, let's get down to business. This Savage person has proved to be more of a menace than we ever dreamed."

The speaker paused, and when he continued, there was a distinct twinge of fear in his voice. "Savage visited President Avispa to-night, and Avispa 0. K.'d everything. The old fool! We shall soon be shut of him! But we must stop Savage! We must wipe him out, and those five fighting devils with him!"

"Agreed," muttered a hairy cutthroat. "They must not reach the Valley of the Vanished!"

"Why not let them go ahead into the Valley of the Vanished?" growled another bandit. "That would be the end of them. They'd never get out!"

Greater became the fear in the voice of the revolution master mind. "You idiot! You do not know Savage! The man is uncanny. I went to New York, but I failed to stop him. And I had with me two members of that fanatical sect of warriors among the inhabitants of the Valley of the Vanished. Those men are accomplished fighters. Their own people are in terror of them. But Savage escaped!"

Uneasy was the silence that impregnated the room.

"What if the members of this warrior sect should find you are not one of them?" asked an outlaw. "You've led them to believe you are the flesh-and-blood son of one of their old deities. They worship you. But suppose they get wise that you are a faker?"

"They won't!" snapped the man behind the curtain. "They won't, because I control the Red Death!"

"The Red Death! gulped one man.

Another breathed. "The Red Death — what is it?"

Loud, ugly laughter came from the man back of the curtain. "A drunken genius of a scientist sold the secret of causing the Red Death, and curing it. He sold it to me! And then I killed him so no one would ever get it — or, rather, the cure for it."

A nervous shifting passed over the assembled bandits.

"If we could just solve the mystery of that gold that comes out of the Valley of the Vanished," one mumbled. "If we could find where they get it, we could forget this revolution."

"We can't!" declared the man back of the curtain. "I've tried and tried. Morning Breeze, the chief of the warrior sect of which I have made myself head, does not know where it comes from. Only old King Chaac, ruler of the Valley of the Vanished, knows. And you couldn't torture it out of him."

"I'd like to take my men in there with machine guns!" a bandit chieftain muttered angrily.

"You tried that once, didn't you?" snapped the curtain speaker. "And you were nearly wiped out for your pains. The Valley of the Vanished is impregnable. The best we can do is get enough gold as offerings to finance this revolt."

"How do you get the gold?" asked a robber, evidently not as well posted as the others.

Again the man laughed back of the curtain. "I simply turn the Red Death loose on the tribe. Then they make a big offering of gold which reaches my hands. Then I give them the cure for the Red Death." He snorted mirthfully. "The ignorant dupes think their deity sends the Red Death, and the gold offering appeases his wrath."

"Well, you had better turn the Red Death loose soon," suggested a man. "We need an offering bad. If we don't get it, we can't pay for those guns we must have to put over the revolt."

"I will, very shortly. I have been sending my blue plane over the Valley of the Vanished. That's a new idea of mine. It impresses the inhabitants of the Valley a lot. Blue is their sacred color. And they think the plane is a big winged god flying around."

There was a lot of evil laughter in appreciation of their leader's cleverness.

"That Red Death is great stuff!" grated the man behind the curtain. "It put old man Savage out — "

The speaker suddenly emitted a frenzied scream and sprang forward, taking the curtain with him. He plunged head over heels across the floor.

The stunned bandits saw, towering in the door back of the curtain, a great bronze, frightsome figure of a man.

"Doc Savage!" one squawked.

Doc Savage it was, right enough. Doc, when he had seen that knife in the street, had a moment later heard footsteps approaching. He had followed the man who had picked up the knife to this hotel room.

Doc had heard the whole vile plot!

And for probably the first time in his career, Doc had failed to get his man. Rage at the leader of the revolutionists, the murderer of his father, had momentarily blinded Doc. A tiny gasp had escaped from his great chest — and the man had heard.

A bandit drew a pistol. Another doused the lights. Guns roared deafeningly. Blows smacked. Terrific blows that tore flesh and bone! Blows such as only Doc Savage could deliver!

The window burst with a glassy rattle as somebody leaped through, heedless of the fact that it was three floors to the earth. A second man took the same leap.

The fight within the room was over in a matter of thundering seconds.

Doc Savage turned on the lights. Ten bandits in various stages of stupor and unconsciousness and even death, were strewed on the floor. Three of them would never murder again. And the Blanco Grande police, already clamoring in the corridor outside, would make short shift of the rest.

To the window, Doc swept. Poising a moment easily, he took the three-story drop as lightly as if he were leaping off a table.

Under the window, he found another cutthroat. The man had broken his neck in the plunge.

There was no trace of the leader. The man had survived the jump and escaped.

Doc stood there, rage tingling all through his powerful bronze frame. The murderer of his father! And he didn't even know who the man was!

For Doc, in following the fellow to the hotel, had not once been able to glimpse the master villain's face. Up there in the room, the curtain had enveloped the fiend until the lights went out.

Doc slowly quitted the vicinity of the hotel with its holocaust of death. In that hostelry room, he had left something that would become a legend in Hidalgo. A dozen men whipped in a matter of seconds!

For days, the Blanco Grande police puzzled over what manner of fighter had overpowered these worst of Hidalgo's bandits in a hand-to-hand fray.

Every cutthroat had a reward on his unkempt head. The reward went unclaimed. Finally, by decree of President Avispa, it was turned over to charity.

Doc Savage, with hardly a thought about what he had done, had gone to his camp and to bed.