The Red Skull

XV — The Thundering Death

Arrangements were quickly made putting Doc Savage and his aides in control of the construction work.

An engineer of impressive repute, Renny Renwick took over the mechanical end — the actual work! He was greeted with sour looks by a number of the under-foremen who resented seeing an outsider in authority.

Within an hour, the grumbling stopped. The complaining ones stared in astonishment.

They realized that here was a man who knew his stuff!

It chanced that an elderly employee on the job had once worked with Renny on a South American bridge job. This man spread hints about Renny’s reputation. Hints which were not hard to believe since within his first hour, the big-fisted engineer had made a half-dozen changes which would save thousands-of-dollars in costs.

In the second hour, Renny had a fight. To keep the concrete cool while it was in process of settling — a necessity because of the heat generated in the setting process — water was circulated through numerous pipes set in the dam body. These pipes became a part of the dam and later would be pumped full of “grout” or thin mortar. But at the present moment, they were carrying water which was chilled in a refrigerating plant.

The plant attendant — a gangling giant almost as big as Renny — let the ammonia compressors overheat. As a result, a bearing froze.

Renny raised a roar that could have been heard a mile! Not an uncommon performance for a construction man.

The attendant took a swing at Renny…

…and awakened in the camp hospital 4 hours later. For the next week, the fellow maintained he had been hit by no human fist. It could have been nothing less than a 16-pound rock hammer! But eyewitness testimony was to the contrary.

Examining the ammonia compressor oil, Renny found it was not oil at all but a compound imitation which had no lubrication qualities whatever. This accounted for the burned bearings.

Renny promptly stopped work. He gathered all the workmen — even having the night force routed out-of-bed.

Then he read the “riot act” to them!

With his huge fists parked like rusty kegs on his hips, he told them what-was-what. That somebody was trying to break the Mountain Desert Company. And she was pending plenty of money to do it!

“I’m not wasting the breath to tell you it’s gonna stop,” he finished. “I’m just blasted well warning you that you’d better not be caught! It won’t be healthy. In fact, it’ll be blame fatal!”

This was taken by the construction men in sober-faced silence. They seemed to realize the full seriousness of the situation. Not a smile appeared. The quiet was like that in a courtroom waiting for a death sentence to be pronounced.

Then somebody in the rear gave Renny a loud “bird”.

Renny stormed into the crowd in search of the jokester but didn’t find him.

As a matter-of-fact, it had been Ham who had happened along in time to hear Renny’s dramatic declaration. He couldn’t resist the opportunity, having acquired bad habits from his perpetual quarrel with Monk.

Ham had just returned from his mission to get the fingerprints off the car stolen from Keller and O’Melia.

“Fingerprints had been wiped off the wheel, door handles, emergency brake, and so forth,” he reported to Doc Savage in the improvised laboratory. “There wasn’t a thing of value.”

“All right,” Doc replied. “I’m going to have a look around.”

He stepped out of the laboratory. Several persons — workmen off-duty or hangers-on about the mushroom town of Skullduggery — stared at him.

Doc had removed the make-up used during the night, restoring the natural bronze color of his skin. This — coupled with his remarkable proportions and notable bearing — was what drew attention.

He was a man who commanded interest!

Of all those who saw Doc striding along the construction camp street, probably no one was more impressed than Buttons Zortell. The scar-cheeked villain drew his eye from the peephole in the wall of his shack hiding place.

“Blazes!” he muttered. “The bronze guy is finally goin’ down to the job. That’ll give the Boss his chance!”

Jud chuckled dryly.

“50 bucks says this is the last time we ever see Doc Savage,” he offered.

Buttons snorted. “You want a sure thing!”

This drew a round of mirth from the other men, some of whom were sprawled on the floor. Others sat in the cellar where it was less smoky and where they could keep an eye on Lea Aster.

A truck rumbled along the street, laden with sacked cement.

Doc hitched a ride on the vehicle. The truck followed a curving, rutty, rather steep road which wound down to the dam scene.

Doc alighted near the workings, leaving the truck to continue on to the great battery of concrete mixers. Danger seemed farthest from his mind as he stood on the site of a spillway and took in the spectacle.

Coffer dams erected above-and-below the main construction held back the water. Big pumps kept the space between the coffers fairly dry. The river was diverted through tunnels in either wall of the chasm. These would later serve to carry water to the powerhouses.

On cables slung across the canyon traveled basket-like cars sometimes called “storks”. The nickname probably came from the dizzy rides they offered. They had been erected to ferry the workmen from the opposite side at the hour when shift changed.

Near by, power shovels were mucking rock into trucks. A bit farther on, scalers were working on the cliff with jack-hammers and drills, setting powder shots. This work had to do with opening a road which was to cross the dam.

Doc moved in search of Monk.

A caterpillar tractor with a “bulldozer” on the front and a “cowdozer” on the rear was pushing loose rock into piles for the mucking shovels.

Over the whole scene rolled the rattle and clank and scream of machinery, the whine of motors, the chugging of trucks, the clattery gurgle of concrete, and the shouts of bosses. Dust squirmed in clouds.

The heat was terrific! Practically none of the workmen wore shirts and the Sun had burned them brown as Indians.

Monk was slung down the dam face. With the aid of 2 “scalers” (i.e., men who had formerly been circus acrobats), he was sinking small holes into the concrete and taking samples. Later the holes would be filled with grout under pressure.

“Everything seems to be okay so far,” he reported.

Monk’s assigned job was to ascertain whether any faulty material had gone into construction — material which might later cause the great barrier to give way. His ability as a chemist fitted him for this work.

High up on the abysmal walls, Doc could discern Johnny. The lanky geologist was moving about like a “granddaddy-long-legs” spider. He carried his spectacles with the magnifying left lens in one hand and a prospector’s hammer in the other. A bag for rock specimens was slung over his shoulder and bounced around as he climbed the cliff.

Johnny was seeking the cause of mysterious rock-slides which had not only destroyed valuable machinery at various times but also had crushed 4 workmen to death. Apparently solid areas of stone had a habit of giving away for no explainable reason, according to reports.

What caused this, Johnny was pretty certain to learn. Few men knew more about the structure of the Earth than did Johnny.

Doc took an elevator down to the rear of the dam and made for the powerhouses. These were 2 in number — one on each side of the river — and were only partially built. Installation of the turbines and generators had yet to be attended to.

The electrical wizard Long Tom had taken charge of this phase of the work. Doc found him in the left-hand powerhouse grumbling because his favorite type of equipment was not being installed.

“And there’s another thing,” he informed Doc. “The bases they’ve installed cannot be used for the type of turbines they’ve ordered. Changes will have to be made at a cost of 15-or-20 thousand dollars.”

“We’ll check up on the mistake,” Doc said grimly. “I want to question whoever is responsible. We’ll learn somehow who is behind all this sabotage.”

“I’ll make inquiries,” Long Tom declared.

Leaving the powerhouse, Doc strode along below the beetling cliff. Sun-baked muck of the dry river bed was underfoot. The stream had been hardly more than 50 feet wide here. The dark rock sides rose almost vertically.

Overhead, the wire hawsers of the cable cars draped like scattered, huge cobwebs.

A sharp thump of an explosion sounded.

Doc glanced around… then up. An appalling sight met his gaze.

The entire frowning chasm wall seemed to be sliding down upon him!

It was a rock slide of tremendous proportions! It extended for many yards in either direction. And enough stone was coming down to fill the entire stream bed!

Escape seemed a fantastic thought. Outrunning the avalanche was an impossibility. Scaling the opposite wall of the canyon was also beyond hope. It was rock worn glass-smooth by the rushing waters of ages.

Doc lost no time in aimless staring or speculation. He went into action as though he had practiced this very thing a thousand times.

His hand flicked out the silk cord and grapple. He flung it upward!

A single cable line of the many above was not anchored in the sliding wall. This hawser extended from a point near the dam diagonally down to the powerhouse which was just beyond the slide area.

The grapple seemed hardly to touch the aerial hawser before Doc was dangling from the silken cord, hauling himself up. Even then, he was none too quick. A boulder — leaping in advance of the rest — struck him. His bronze form swung like a penny on a string.

Roaring, cracking, and grinding with cataclysmic fury, the slide piled into the canyon bed. Rocks the size of houses bounced like marbles and smashed like snowballs. Dust vomited from the debris. It enveloped Doc’s rapidly climbing form.

The canyon quaked to the reverberations of rending stone. The dust spread and spread until it swathed even the dam scene itself in a choking fog. The slide was doing no damage to the dam, though.

Workmen — unable to tell the extent of the slide — became panic-stricken and fled their jobs. Yelling and cursing, they fought each other to be first up the truck roads.

Suddenly out of the dust haze enveloping the dam terminus of the powerhouse cableway, a mighty Bronze Man appeared.

His voice — crashing through the confusion with an uncanny Power! — arrested frightened men in their tracks. They listened to the bronze giant’s orders. Sheepish looks came to their faces. They returned.

Ambulances and fire wagons came caterwauling down the crooked road from Skullduggery. Women — whose men-folk were employed on the dam — trailed these in a hysterical horde.

An ambulance driver failed to allow enough for a turn. As a result, his vehicle rolled over twice without leaving the road. They hauled the driver out with a broken arm.

Amazingly enough, this man suffered the most drastic injury produced by the gigantic rock slide. There were numerous bruises, minor cuts, and a few black eyes and skinned knuckles — the latter among fellows who had fought to be first to imagined safety.

But not a man had perished in the slide!

Upon learning the latter fact, Doc took a curious viewpoint.

“It looks to me as if a lot of the workmen might have been expecting this and kept out of danger!” he informed Monk.

At this point, a burst of excited shouts drew Doc’s attention. He ran for the sound, rounded a spur of rock…

…and surprise halted him.

Johnny had his gaunt frame sprawled atop a prone man. The pair had evidently been fighting with Johnny the victor.

“What’s the trouble, Johnny?” Doc demanded.

“I caught this bird runnin’ from the place where the rock slide started!” gritted the bony geologist. “I think he caused it!”

Doc shifted to get a view of the prisoner’s features.

It was the red-whiskered member of the partner trio — Ossip Keller!