The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four (78 page)

In the nose of the flying eye there was contained a small detector element called a fluxgate, kept parallel to the magnetic field of the earth by a gyro mechanism. As the magnetic field varied in intensity with variations in the earth’s crust, the changes were picked up by an alternating current imposed upon the detector. These sharp pulses in voltage were picked up, amplified, and recorded. Once recorded, these observations were sent to geophysicists and geologists who interpreted the information, with the result that possible oil structures as well as mineral bodies could be identified with fair accuracy.

Darkness closed in around the tiny camp, and overhead the stars came out, bright and close. The water of the lake lapped lazily at the amphibian’s hull, and Turk leaned back against his rock and stared into the fire. Phil had picked up his guitar and was singing a Western ballad when suddenly there came a new sound.

Turk heard it first. He stiffened, then held up a hand for quiet. The lazy sound of the voice and the strings died and the fire crackled, and the water lapped with its hungry tongue. And then the sound came again, the low, throbbing sound of distant drums.

F
ROZEN IN PLACE
, they listened. Buck Rodd sat up and stared over at Turk.

“They know we’re here,” he said grimly. “The natives know it, anyway.”

“They sound pretty far off,” London hazarded.

“Maybe.” Turk shrugged. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell. They often sound loudest at a distance.”

The drums throbbed, then died, then boomed louder still, and then the sound ended abruptly and the silence lay thick upon the jungle and savanna. Waiting, listening, they suddenly heard something else—a woman’s voice singing in the distance.

A voice with a strange accent sang,
“Home, home on the range!”

London sat up. “Oh, no!” he said. “Not that! Here in the middle of the jungle some babe starts singing cow ballads! What is this?”

“Next thing somebody will start broadcasting soap operas!” Rodd said sarcastically. “Ain’t a man safe anywhere?”

Turk Madden’s scowl grew deeper, and his green eyes narrowed. It didn’t make sense. Not any way you looked at it.

Not even, he thought, if the Petex outfit had beaten them to it.

“You can be ready for anything,” Joe Leone had said, “they’ve got Vincent Boling running their show, an’ you know what he is. An’ he’s got Frank Mather, Sid Bordie, and Ben Pace working with him.”

Turk knew them all. Bordie and he had tangled only a short time before, and Mather was a man who had done a short stretch in the federal pen for flying dope over the line from Mexico. The three were flying muscle men, and in this game they were playing for stakes that were enormous. And what happened back here in the jungle might never be known.

“Tomorrow we start working,” Turk said, looking up suddenly. “Every man carries a gun at all times, but no shot will be fired unless you are first fired upon. If possible we must make friends with the natives, or whoever there is out here. First, remember these boys we’re playing tag with are tough. Nobody is to go into the jungle alone unless it is Buck or myself, and I don’t want either you, Mora, or Dick going into the jungle alone until you know your way around.”

“You think we’ll have trouble? Shooting trouble?” London asked.

“Look, guns aren’t something to be taken lightly, and neither is shooting when you are shooting at other men. We’ve got a job to do, and that’s the first thing. If they want war, let them start it.”

D
AYLIGHT FOUND
D
ICK
L
ONDON
working over his gear with Mora at his side. Turk came out from under the mosquito bar mopping the sweat from his face despite the early hour. It had been a thick, close night.

“We may get a storm,” Turk said, “so let’s get busy.”

They ate a quick breakfast, and Turk went out with Shan to give the ship a thorough check. Buck Rodd came down to the beach and called out to them.

“You can land up here if you want,” he said. “I’ve just been over this savanna. There’s no rocks, no dead trees.”

Madden came ashore, wiping his hands on a piece of waste. At a jerk of Rodd’s head, he followed him to one side.

“Come have a look,” Rodd suggested. “I didn’t want the others to know about this.”

The two big men walked side by side, up the slight rise to the long level of the savanna. A light wind stirred the tall grass, but scarcely ruffled the heavier leaves of the jungle growth beyond. Buck stopped suddenly and pointed. In a patch of bare ground near an anthill there was the track of a human foot—a sandal track.

“Last night,” Buck said, “someone probably came down to look us over.”

“Yeah,” Turk agreed. He hitched up his belt and grinned. “Well, maybe we’ll have trouble, but lets hope we duck it.” On a sudden thought, he turned and glanced toward the spur of the mountain. If there was any tower there, he could not distinguish it now. He remarked about it.

“I noticed that, too,” Buck agreed, “but if the thing is there, and it is old and weathered, we might not see it. At sundown the outline is sharper against the sky. Should I have a look?”

“No, better not. We’ve unloaded most of our gear here, so why don’t you and Shan stick around and keep an eye on things. Sort of fix the camp up, too. Mora, Dick, and I are going upstairs now.”

W
ITH THE AMPHIBIAN TURNED
into the wind, Turk warmed the ship up and started down the smooth water of the lake. The speed built up, and the ship climbed on the step as he put the stick forward. Then he brought it back and the ship took off easily, skimming off over the low jungle, building up speed.

In a wide circle, he swung back toward the lake, his eyes scanning the jungle, yet there was nothing, nothing except…He stared again, and back in the notch of the hills he saw some taller trees. His eyes sharpened. He knew the trees growing among ruins often grew to greater height.

Over the lake, the magnetometer was slowly trailed back into position, and Mora had his camera ready to shoot the continuous strip of 35mm film that would make an unbroken record of the flight path. At five hundred feet, the amphibian swept back over the jungle and settled down to steady flying. Pointing the ship due north toward the far distant Amazon, Turk held the speed at one hundred fifty miles an hour.

Below them the green jungle unrolled, broken by wide savannas and occasionally by the upthrust of ancient mountain ranges. Leaning back in his seat, Turk glanced around, his eyes less on the jungle than the sky, for it was from the sky that trouble was most likely to come. Remembering the sudden dive of the mysterious plane on the preceding day, he thought of Sid Bordie, the Petex muscle man. It would be like Sid to try something like that. He was tough, but he was also a bluffer, and he always believed other men were more easily frightened than himself.

For two hours they flew north and then started back for their base, flying a route a quarter of a mile west of the first course. Turk glanced over his shoulder as they flew in toward the lake.

“Everything okay?”

“Couldn’t be better!” Dick yelled in answer.

Landing the ship, Turk taxied to the shore. He saw Buck Rodd come strolling down to the beach.

“Everything quiet here,” Buck said. “I didn’t look around any. Mostly too busy.”

On foot then, Turk walked swiftly up the slight hill through the tall grass, eager to stretch his legs. Surprisingly, the air was cool. Despite the latitude, they were fairly high here, and now, in the late afternoon, the heat was already slipping away.

He struck straight for the edge of the jungle. There was less underbrush than he had expected and, following a route that paralleled the jungle’s edge, he headed toward the spur of the mountain where they had believed they had seen the tower.

As he walked, he saw no tracks, no marks of any man or woman. Yet despite the tower, if such it was, his mind was more curious about the girl’s voice, singing “Home on the Range.” It was absurd, of course. Had he heard the song alone, he would have been convinced he had only imagined it.

The route led up to the mountainside, and soon he was out of the jungle and making his way through sparse brush and scattered boulders. Then he stopped abruptly. Before him in the path there was a track.

He knelt, studying it. The foot was moccasin- or sandal-clad, small and well shaped. The stride was even and firm, as of someone of light weight and not too tall. He had a feeling the track was not many hours, perhaps not even many minutes old.

More slowly, he walked along. Once his hand went to his shoulder holster for the reassuring grip of the gun. A flyer in the East Indies and South America before the war, and in Siberia, China, and Japan during the war, Turk was no stranger to danger, but he knew that actually, it was always new. A man never became accustomed to it.

The tracks proceeded down the path ahead of him, and then he came around a boulder and stood on the edge of the ridge, and before him was the tower. There was no doubt. It was a tower.

T
URK
M
ADDEN HALTED
, stirred by a strange uneasiness. It was that peculiar feeling known to those who come first to ancient ruins. The feeling of being watched, of walking upon hallowed ground, of intruding.

It was late evening and the sun was down. The mountains had taken on the darkness of night, and the green of the jungle had turned to deep purple and black. Outlines were vague toward the lakeshore, although even from here he could see the single star that marked their campfire.

Turk stood there, waiting, every sense alert, a big man, well over six feet, and his broad, powerful shoulders heavy with muscle under the woolen shirt.

The tower was black with age, worn smooth by wind and rain. It stood on a small plateau of grass among fallen stones, gloomy, ancient, alone. Yet there was a faint path down the slight incline toward its base, skirting the tower.

Turk knew that there was no known civilization here. The Inca ruins were far to the west, in Peru. The Maya ruins were far to the north, in Yucatán and Honduras, and the Mayas had never been a wandering people. There had been rumors, of course. Two Portuguese seamen in 1533 had a story to tell of vast ruined cities. A Phoenician galley had been found embedded in the mud on the banks of the Amazon. And there had been tales of a still existent Guarani civilization, somewhere in the vast interior.

Slowly, Turk moved down the path, feeling uneasy. He turned around the tower, and before him the hillside broke sharply away upon an inner valley, its steep sides scarred by broken walls and blackened stone. Here and there a wall was intact. In one place, another tower. And before him, in the tower by which he stood, was the black rectangle of an open door.

Turk Madden hesitated. There was no sound but the faint whisper of the wind. He licked his lips and turned toward the door. And then he stopped. Faintly, and far away at first, he heard the sound of a nearing plane. Then he saw the ship. It was coming low over the hills, and incredibly fast.

It could have been the same plane that had narrowly missed them on the day they arrived at the lake, or it might be another ship of the same type. Like a dark arrow it vanished over the lake and into the darkening sky beyond.

Had the pilot sighted their fire? Most likely, unless they had covered it soon enough, for such a fire was visible for many miles. Well, then, they were probably discovered now, their whereabouts known.

Yet there was still the tower. He reached into his pocket for the small flashlight he always carried and stepped up to the door.

The light revealed the inside of the tower, and before him a square stone table, polished or worn until it was smooth as glass. In the center of the table was a plantain leaf, and on it a small cup. Curious, he stepped forward. The cup contained a liquid, and when he placed a hand upon it, the cup was warm.

He hesitated. Obviously, this had been placed here for a reason. An offering to a god? But there was no image here, nothing but the smooth wall. He lifted the cup and tasted the liquid.

He recognized the drink at once. It was something similar to the sweetened
pozole
of the Mayas, a drink made from ground maize. He tasted it again, and then carefully replaced the cup on the leaf.

“Red?”

The voice was so low it sent a shiver through him, and so unexpectedly near. He stood perfectly still, goose pimples running up his spine. It was a girl’s voice, and she was behind him.

“No,” he tried to keep his voice calm, even. “It is not Red. I am Turk.”

There was a whisper of movement, and the girl stepped into the light. She was taller than he had expected, for he was looking for someone like the Mayas, whose women were less than five feet tall, and the men only slightly taller.

She was tall, with very large, slightly oblique eyes. She might have been called beautiful. She was certainly striking, and the garb she wore left little to the imagination.

“I am Natochi,” she said softly, in the same low voice.

Nato, if you see Nato—the prospector had told him—tell her that Red said hello. Then this was Nato.

“Red told me to say ‘hello,’” he said.

Suddenly, at a thought, he turned the light so that she might see his face, too. She looked at him, her eyes large, serious, intent.

“You are friend to Red?”

“Yes. You speak English?”

“Red tell me how. You will be at this place long?”

“Perhaps a week, perhaps a month. You live near here?”

He had to repeat that, and then she nodded. “Not far.”

“At Chipan?” he asked, and was immediately startled by her expression. Stark horror came into her face.

“No! No! Not at Chipan! Nobody lives at Chipan, only the—ghost?”

“Is it near here?” he asked curiously. She shook her head, refusing to reply, so he took another angle. “Are your people friendly?”

She hesitated. “They are sometimes friendly, sometimes not. At first they did not like Red, and then they did. They do not like the other one now.”