Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace (11 page)

Box Daniels was hardly in need of protection, because he lay on his back under the open compressor room window with his right temple caved in. Like a black island in the puddle that had leaked from the temple lay the weapon which had taken old Box’s life.

Gull, staring at the weapon, knew it for one of the heavy, brass-bound shoes which the disturbing girl, Saint Pete, had been wearing.

Chapter X

BIG NECK

DOC SAVAGE TOOK a moment to compose himself.

This in itself was highly unusual. The bronze giant had been schooled to conceal all outward emotional display. This had been a part of his rigorous training, the scientific system that made him a virtual superman.

Doc put out his arms and made of his fists two blocks of bronze. He stared at them as if exerting a supreme effort of will to make his fingers flex into the shapes of fists.

He did so with studied purpose, as if attempting to contain an inner excitement.

For a moment, the bronze man did not seem to know what to do with himself. So without warning, he launched into a portion of the two-hour routine of exercises that had been his habit since very, very young.

These were responsible for his tremendous muscular development and astounding mental powers.

This was the physical regimen. Doc removed his shirt and thus stripped to the upper waist, went into a run of calisthenics that included pitting his fabulous muscles against one another. Muscles formerly in repose now sprang forth like bundled wire and cables, as if straining to emerge from skin resembling flexible bronze.

When he was done, some fifteen minutes later, a thin sheen of perspiration bathed his upper torso, making their metallic aspect all the more distinct. His flake-gold eyes, which had been whirling violently, now settled down to their customary eerie currents and eddies.

Quietly, Doc Savage donned his shirt and faced the others.

“How long was I away?” he asked quietly.

Monk spoke up. “About three hours.”

Doc nodded. “Two hours and fifty minutes passed by my watch.”

“Where were you?” asked Ham curiously.

“Where I was, it was broad daylight, a little past the noon hour,” answered the bronze man in an odd tone.

Doc’s men looked to one another. Sunrise was creeping up above the bushy tree line.

Johnny popped a question. “How can that be?”

Instead of answering directly, Doc Savage rapped, “It is imperative that we locate Big Neck.”

“Who?”

“The Indian brave who attempted to scalp Renny. He is called Big Neck and must be returned to his people.”

“Who are his people?” asked Ham.

“It is too dangerous to allow him to run loose in the present time,” said Doc, as if he had not heard the question.

They set off back to the anchored dirigible, reasoning that it would provide the best vantage point from which to conduct their woodland search.

At Doc’s direction, they walked along with their machine pistols firmly in hand, held at the ready should they sight their quarry.

“It would be best to bring him down with mercy bullets at our first opportunity,” Doc advised. “Capturing him might prove difficult.”

“But how the deuce did you learn his name?” questioned Ham Brooks, walking along with his sword cane in one hand and intricate superfirer in the other.

Instead of replying directly, Doc Savage began telling a story.

“The last battle between white and red men that occurred in this area took place in July of 1829,” he said steadily.

Johnny nodded. “It was lost ignominiously by the palefaces.”

Doc went on. “A hunting party of Iowan Indians known as the Big Necks because that was the name of their chief, came into the Chariton area west of here, near a settlement known as the Cabins. Here the Indians’ dogs attacked the settler’s pigs and killed a few of them. The Indians ate the pigs.”

Monk looked down at Habeas Corpus totting along beside him and suddenly gathered him up in one arm protectively.

“The next day,” continued Doc, “three white settlers—Isaac Gross, John Crain and Jim Myers—called on the camp to make a complaint about the lost hogs and ordered the Iowans out of the area. Big Neck refused to comply with their demands. He also stated that if anyone wanted to start something, be at it. The three white men took to their heels. They fled south to Randolph County, some seventy miles away, where they stirred up a scare.

“About forty volunteers got together under the command of Captain William Trammell to chase the Big Necks back to Iowa. They made a fast march, forty-four miles in two days, to reach the Indian camp.

“There was an argument, and at first it seemed Big Neck was willing to go back to Iowa without a rumpus. However, the talk got loud, both red men and white made a show of waving guns and loading flintlocks—until a gun went off by mistake. Jim Myers thought he had been shot, and killed an Indian. With a war-whoop, the Big Necks tied into the settlers. The white men’s horses stampeded. Several threw their riders. The whites took to their heels.”

“I remember this account,” interrupted Johnny. “Three settlers were killed—James Owenby, Frayer Myers, and a poor devil named William Wynn, who was wounded and carried for a short distance by friends, then tossed aside to be scalped and burned at the stake.”

“Nothing of the sort happened to him,” Doc related.

“How do you know that? There is only one account of the Big Neck War. I have read the same document that you are recalling from memory.”

“Because I came upon William Wynn, who was dying of his wounds. I could not save him, so I buried him.”

A long silence greeted that remarkable statement. The sounds of the forest along the dirt path, the leaf rustling and the calling of waking birds in trees, were all that filled their ears.

“What does the record say about Big Neck?” asked Monk after a suitable interval.

“Big Neck, alarmed by the fuss he had stirred up, went back to Iowa and was not heard from again.”

“Wondered what happened to him?” muttered Monk.

“History,” Doc Savage said thoughtfully, “may not record his fate because it has yet to be decided.”

Another thick silence followed.

AT length, they reached the blimp-sized dirigible.

Because he felt a need to work off some of the nervous excitement he felt, and not because it was necessary, the bronze giant vaulted into the trees and reached the leafy crown. Amid the changing leaves, he was hard to discern, the browns and gold blending with his clothes, which ran to khaki and tan.

Reaching out, Doc snared the guy wire and, bracing himself, hauled the dirigible down, using only the Herculean thews that nature and a life of intensive, physical conditioning had bestowed upon him.

Soon, the open hatch was hovering at teepee level.

“One at a time,” Doc called down.

And so, one by one, they climbed the knotted rope and worked their way to the hatch. Ham went first.

The minute he disappeared from sight, the dapper lawyer gave out a violent yell and there was a thrashing commotion followed by a few lusty whacks of Ham’s cane.

“What’s goin’ on?” Monk bellowed up.

Out of the hatch flew a solitary bat, wings beating like the Devil himself.

“Bat took up a roost in the gondola,” Ham called down. “I have chased away the beggar.”

“Great goblins!” said Johnny. “A fitting omen for a Halloween of a night.”

The others took their turns climbing; finally Doc Savage swung on board.

Six men—especially six who weighed as much as they did—made the airship hang logy and sluggish in the air. It bogged down somewhat.

“The projecto-receptor lens won’t be of any help, now that it’s light,” Long Tom ventured.

“We have other means,” said Doc Savage, taking the controls.

They cast off in the usual manner, reeling in the grapple and climbing rope, and began a careful orbit of the patch of woods on the west side of the Chariton River.

Doc Savage turned the controls over to Long Tom Roberts and brought a pair of binoculars of excellent quality to his ever-active eyes.

Through them, he scanned the surrounding terrain. It was tough work. The brave had worn deerskins and this, along with his sun-cured hide, enabled him to blend into the autumnal forest to a degree that smacked of magic.

In time, their patience paid off.

Along the banks of the Chariton, Doc Savage spied a wisp of white smoke. It was climbing skyward.

“Camp fire!” squeaked Monk.

“Possibly someone cooking his breakfast trout,” Doc suggested. Reaching over, he killed the engines and allowed the airship to loaf along. Fortunately, there were few crosscurrents of air and so there was little deviation from the course he set.

Riding along in an airship is a sometimes uncanny experience, especially when not under power. The ride is smooth, silent and serene. Floating on a cloud may be the closest equivalent—if men could ride clouds, that is.

In time, they came to a place where they could see the river bank.

Crouching over a fire, a small figure in buckskins was holding a speared fish over the flames. He turned the stick around, so as to cook the fish evenly, and from time to time pulled off bits of flesh with his fingers.

“That’s our boy!” said Monk.

The Indian brave may have been an expert hunter and tracker, but while he looked about from time to time to see if he was being observed, it still did not occur to him to look upward.

He had no inkling that an airship was stealing silently upon his camp.

After observing the man for some time, Doc Savage switched on the loudspeaker and microphone hook-up that allowed him to call down commands to a ground crew during landing.

He spoke a language none of them understood.

The camping Indian looked startled. His head twisted around, his dark eyes darting this way and that way. It still never crossed his mind to him to look up.

Using the man’s native tongue, Doc Savage suggested that he do so.

The Indian craned his thick neck about, seeking the source of the voice. He soon found it.

Even from a distance, the expression on his well-cured face could be read. It was a twisting, wide-mouthed horror.

Taking up his stick, he threw it at the airship, steaming trout and all. The only result was that he lost his meal.

Doc called out something else.

“You
puck-achee!”
the Indian called back loud enough to be heard.

“What did he say?” asked Ham.

“Scram,” said Johnny Littlejohn dryly.

“He wants us to go away,” agreed Doc Savage.

“That ain’t likely to happen,” snorted Monk. “Ain’t that right, Habeas?”

The porker grunted boisterously in response.

Mention of Habeas gave Ham Brooks an idea. “Perhaps we should offer him that infernal pig as a gift to entice him into surrendering.”

“Nothin’ doin’,” said Monk, grabbing up Habeas.

To everyone’s surprise, Doc Savage said, “That is a very good idea.”

Taking the homely shoat from Monk’s hairy hands, Doc Savage held the pig up to the windscreen and displayed him.

Then he spoke.

Curling his lips, the Indian retorted in a way that indicated displeasure.

“What’d he say?” asked Monk.

Doc replied, “He said that the pig is too scrawny for eating.”

Doc Savage returned the insult with another short remark.

“I just told him that Habeas is a better meal than a lost trout,” explained Doc.

That seemed to impress the Iowan brave. He sat down and folded his arms as if daring them to drop the pig at his feet.

“I will tell him to expect the pig momentarily,” said Doc.

Another gobbling exchange took place and Doc ordered the airship dropped as close to the ground as practical.

It was soon floating over the burbling river, within a few feet of land.

“He thinks we are cloud men,” Johnny said, after listening to the Indian talk loudly for a time.

Handing Habeas to Monk, Doc Savage said, “Drop him into the water.”

Monk’s small eyes got round. “But Habeas will get—”

“Do it.”

Reluctantly, Monk complied. The homely chemist dangled the scrawny porker by one ear, then let him drop. His wide face hung slack.

Habeas landed in the stream with a noisy splash and was soon swimming for shore. His beady eyes took one look at the deerskin-clad native wading out to capture him and changed his mind. Reversing his course, he made for the opposite shore.

The Iowan rushed out to grab him.

Doc Savage pried a machine pistol from Monk’s fist and set it to fire single shots. Sighting through the open hatch, he trained the spiky muzzle on the advancing man in the deerskins.

Doc fired once. The report was modest. A single brass cartridge about the size of a penny jumped out of the receiver.

The splashing Indian flew backward and began floundering in the water. His struggles were brief. He sank. Disturbed water regathered over his shaven skull.

Doc plunged in, lest the man drown.

Reaching him, Doc lifted his head from under water and dragged him to shore, where the bronze man laid him out. The Indian did not move, except to breathe.

The others brought the airship nosing over and several dropped off, except Long Tom who held onto the controls as Monk went splashing after Habeas.

After gathering him up, Monk worked his way back to shore.

Doc Savage had the Indian he called Big Neck stretched out on the pebbled dirt and was examining his deerskin outfit, testing the stitching and quality of hide.

The Indian wore good moccasins. Everything about his apparel seemed of recent manufacture.

“This material is too fresh to be authentic,” Ham decided after fingering it.

“All clothes were new once,” said Doc cryptically.

Once his examination was complete, Doc Savage lifted the brave’s eyelids and saw that the man would be out for at least an hour.

“What do we do with him?” rumbled Renny.

“Take him on board the dirigible.” Doc supplied.

This was easily accomplished. Long Tom threw out the knotted climbing rope and Monk and Renny—the two largest save Doc Savage himself—hauled the airship toward the ground.