The Sky Walker

CHAPTER VII Death — Odds-On Favorite!

Fergus MacMurdie had a most peculiar trait. When everything was going smoothly, it was his dour Scotch nature to predict the most dreadful things that were sure to happen any minute. Always he looked on the gloomy side of life.

But when an emergency arose in which these seemed no conceivable way out, he grew almost cheerful, and predicted sure success.

On the work train, Smitty’s gigantic muscles were writhing and straining against his bonds as he stared out the window. Free, and with a good purchase for back and arms and shoulders, he might possibly have broken the rope. But in his cramped position a solid inch of good new hemp was a good deal too much, even for him.

“We’re sunk,” he said, looking out the window at the scenery flashing past. “Those guys said we’d hit seventy. My guess is we’re topping even that speed. And when we hit that sharp curve—”

“Whoosh, mon,” said Mac, straining at his own ropes, “we’ll come out of this. We’ve come out of worse.”

“You’re nothing but a disgusting Pollyanna,” snapped Smitty.

“And ye’re just an overgrown schoolboy who gives up at the first lick of teacher’s ruler on the back of yer hand,” burred Mac.

“Oh, I am, am I!” In his indignation, Smitty almost broke free.

Behind them the overstrained switch engine roared like a tortured bull, with its drive wheels turning so fast they were mere blurs. And Smitty thought of something else. Something adding no cheer whatever to the scene.

“Those two flatcars loaded with rails!” he said suddenly.

“What about ’em?” said Mac.

“When we go off the track, the car we’re in will bury itself and stop — but the rails on those flatcars won’t! They’ll break their chains and keep right on sliding forward. Two carloads of steel rails. They’ll spill all the way through this old wooden day coach like a couple of hundred half-ton lances.”

Smitty began fighting his bonds with renewed fury. And then Benson’s quiet voice sounded over the uproar of the speeding work train.

“Mac, are your legs free?”

“Yes, they’re free.”

“Then,” said Benson, “put your feet against the back of my seat, if you can, and push me as far forward toward Smitty’s seat as you’re able.”

They were seated in line, first Smitty, then Benson, then MacMurdie. The gang had bound them to the backs of the three seats, but hadn’t bothered with their legs. Why should they? A man can’t untie himself with his feet.

But the gang had neglected to search the three from the knees down, as well as up, for weapons. Which proved that they were quite unfamiliar with at least one of The Avenger’s armament habits.

Benson habitually wore, in a slim holster strapped to his right calf, the small, special, silenced .22 pistol which he called, with grim affection, Mike. Strapped to the other calf was a needle-like throwing knife with a light, hollow tube for a handle, which was designated Ike.

Now, the man with the white, dead face and the death pools of eyes had managed to draw his left leg up enough to get the handle of razor-sharp Ike in his fingers.

Benson couldn’t cut himself free — he hadn’t that much leeway of motion. But he could cut the giant Smitty loose if he could lean forward enough to reach the ropes where they wound around the back of Smitty’s seat.

And the seats of the day coach were standard, in that they could be tilted forward to reverse the seating arrangement when the end of a run had been reached.

Mac put his huge feet against the back of Benson’s seat and shoved. Benson and seat back and ropes all shifted forward. Ike’s sharp edge almost touched Smitty’s lashings.

“More,” said Benson.

The Scot shoved harder. Benson drew his lithe body in on itself at the waist, and the knife touched.

The blade had bitten only half through the key loop when Smitty’s giant muscles suddenly completed the task by snapping the rest. He burst free and stood up.

A powerful thrust freed Benson, and another did for MacMurdie. Then the three stared out the front door of the car in the direction in which they were speeding, and Smitty’s great hands clenched.

The work train was almost on the curve the gang leader had mockingly mentioned.

The roadbed hugged the lake shore here as it did in most of its length. The water was about twenty feet down, over a sand bluff which formed a natural breakwater to keep the track from being washed out during storms.

A little ahead, the track curved sharp right, to follow a similar curve of the beach. And the work train, roaring over the rails, could not possibly make that turn. It would plow straight ahead, over the twenty-foot drop and into the. lake.

“Whoosh!” cried Mac. “We’ll have to jump—”

But a leap from the train at that great speed would be as deadly as staying on it and being plunged on and on into the lake.

They couldn’t jump off and they couldn’t stay on.

It is the main characteristic of great leaders that in times of catastrophe, other men, who might be brilliant and capable themselves, look to them for direction.

Mac and Smitty looked at their ice-eyed chief that way now. And without faltering Benson answered. His face, unable to change expression even at such a time of crisis as this, was a fearful, dead mask. His eyes were like cold gray flames. But his voice was quite calm.

“Top of the car. Fast! At the last moment, jump to the side as far as possible.”

Mac and Smitty leaped to obey even though, for a few seconds, the meaning behind the strategy didn’t become clear to them. At the open door of the speeding car, Smitty caught Mac by the thighs and lifted him straight up till the Scot could grasp the shank of the old hand-brake wheel atop the car. The shrieking rush of air caused by the train’s speed helped hold Mac in place.

Smitty tossed Benson up the same way, then swarmed up himself like a great gorilla. For just an instant his eyes rested speculatively on the hand brake, but he knew the thing had no meaning here. He could twist it clear off, and the speed of the train wouldn’t be slowed enough, in the short distance left to the curve, even to notice.

“Here we go!” his great voice loomed.

The roar of the locomotive behind them had risen to a steady shriek. The flatcars loaded with rails were doing a kind of devil’s dance along the track, seeming almost to leave it at times, such was the pace.

They had almost reached the sharp curve ahead!

Benson was crouching on the sloping left side of the car roof, the lake side. Smitty and Mac had taken similar positions, several yards apart.

They swayed there on the balls of their feet, on the lake side of the jerking car. Benson hadn’t had to simplify his orders any more. Their quick brains had understood when they were on the car top.

The old day coach hit the beginning of the curve. With its first awful lurch, Benson and Smitty and Mac jumped.

Like three stones shot from a sling, their three bodies whirled out, away from the track, over the twenty-foot drop, a dozen feet out into the lake. The terrible snap of the car at the curve, plus their own impetus, had catapulted them an unbelievable distance.

They hit — not hard earth as they would have struck had they leaped before — but waist-deep water. Hitting even this, with such force, was a little like being rolled over granite paving blocks. But at least it wasn’t sure death.

They plowed like surfboards over the water for a dozen yards, then sank, but came to the surface again in time — so short had been the elapsed interval — to see the last of the work train.

For an instant it had seemed that the three cars and the engine would actually make the curve, in spite of the terrible speed. But the instant hadn’t endured. Halfway around, the old day coach tore from its forward truck and launched out over the embankment into the lake. The three flatcars and the locomotive followed it, like obedient sheep following a leader’s change of course, while the loose truck and car wheels went skimming on end around the curve and off down the track.

The coach struck the water with a geyser splash like the eruption of Old Faithful. It kept on going.

On the flatcars behind, the chains holding the tons of rails did queer, snaky things, and the rails began to cascade forward, driven by their original impetus.

The rails went into the rear end of the wooden coach, and on through and out the front end, like giant needles piercing through tissue paper. And behind them came the engine. Hundreds of tons of train, going at well over a mile a minute, takes a lot of stopping.

The day coach was shoved out till it was clear under water before the forward movement ceased. By then it was so pierced by rails that it looked like a giant’s pincushion. And then the water hit the locomotive’s firebox — and that was that. The whole west beach of Lake Michigan seemed to rise up into the air, spit out rails and sand and pieces of car wheels. And then there was silence.

Mac stood up in water about breast-high and wiggled both arms. They seemed to work all right. He moved his neck and legs. He was apparently unfractured anywhere; and Smitty and Benson seemed that way, too. It had been a narrow squeak indeed, but now all seemed clear sailing. Whereupon, the Scot instantly began to view the world with gloomy pessimism.

Even his pessimism was put to it to function after such an escape. But finally he found something to croak about.

“Whoosh!” he said, wringing at his wet coat sleeves and scowling bleakly. “We’re through now. Ye know, we’ll catch our death of colds in this water if we don’t watch out.”

Benson had the map of the railroad’s course in his mind.

“Rosemont is about five miles up,” he said. “It’s one of the bigger shore towns. We can get a car there — maybe a plane.”

But they weren’t to get to Rosemont without a short delay.

They saw the great dark bulk of the shore when they’d rounded a headland about a mile up. A huge thing like a long, flat box with the ends undercut, weather-beaten and shabby.

It was a car ferry. On the sides were still the letters, “Catawbi Railroad.” It was high on the beach, but such was its length that the far end extended quite a distance out into the water. Its condition suggested that it had long outlived its usefulness, and hence had simply been beached and abandoned. So there the great scow stood, like a tremendous cake of soap half in and half out of the lake.

Benson’s icy, pale eyes probed the vast hulk as they approached it. When they were even with it, Smitty and Mac started to swing on, but Benson stopped them.

“I think we’ll have a look at that,” he said.

They covered the hundred yards from track to water, and walked around the part on the beach.

At end and sides, the heavy timbers rose like an unbroken cliff, offering no way into the thing. It was just what it seemed, an abandoned barge on the beach. But Benson still was not satisfied. The opposite end, out in the lake, was out of sight of anyone standing at any point on the shore.

“We’ll wade out,” he said.

They waded, then swam. And Benson’s thoroughness was justified. In the lake end of the ferry, which loomed up at least twenty feet from the water, was a thin crack which ran on and on till the eye took in the fact that it was the edge of a gigantic door.

A portal taking up almost the whole end.

Down at the side, near the water, a plank was broken in what seemed an innocent way. But as they swam nearer they saw that the jagged resulting hole was ample to take a man’s body.

The broken plank made a little door beside the huge one.

The three went in, with Smitty having a little trouble forcing his great bulk in the small opening. Inside, the feeling was that which you get in a big cave. All was darkness; the fragment of light coming in where the plank was broken away did not extend for more than a few yards.

Benson took out a small flash whose case was waterproof and whose bulb had withstood the shock of hitting the water. He played it around.

The tiny ray didn’t begin to penetrate the length and breadth of the ferry. But it did light on something that brought instant identification to all three men.

That object was a length of small, narrow-gauge track running at a slope down into the water at the lake end of the ferry. On the track was a small wooden cradle mounted on flanged wheels. It was the sort of runway which is used to haul surfboats out of the water and up on a drydock.

Or amphibian planes.

“This may have been abandoned once,” said Smitty. “But it isn’t any more. It’s being used as an airplane hangar now.”

“For once, ye’re right,” said the Scot. Between him and the giant had developed a habit of biting repartee that might have made a stranger think they disliked each other very much. But the stranger would have been wrong.

Benson eyed the track with thoughtful, pale eyes. In the icy clarity of those eyes was grim urgency. Many lives had been lost in the affair of the man who walked the sky. Every fiber of the dynamic body impelled Benson to fast action lest many more be lost.

“I’ve got to get back to the city,” he said, dead lips, as usual, barely moving in his paralyzed face. “But just the same, this place ought to be investigated thoroughly. Smitty, you look around and come back to me with a complete report. Mac, you’d better come with me.”

The gray fox of a man went out the broken-plank exit, followed by Mac. Smitty was left alone in the vast interior of the barge.

When the human dynamo, whom men called The Avenger, had gone, it seemed as if a light had been turned out in the place, leaving it darker than before.