Doc Savage - The Derrick Devil Part 20

Doc yelled in Mayan, "Don't fight them! Run for it!"

The bronze man knew the foes, once they discovered there was nothing more serious than a bad acid vapor burn wrong with them, would fight with a will.

Doc himself dived for a door, got through it.

Gla.s.s broke to the left. It was a windowpane crashing out. Monk came into view, whirled and caught Vida Carlaw as some one heaved her out. Renny, Long Tom, Johnny and Ham followed. All were burned by the fumes.

An armed man came charging out of the big room after Doc. The acid vapor had affected his eyes, and he could see not too well. Doc hit him. The man, in falling, chanced to throw his gun in the direction of Monk and the others.

Alonzo Cugg, fright still in his eyes, was climbing through the window out of the pumphouse. He hit the ground, saw the fallen gun, and sprang for it. He got it.

"I'll finish you, anyhow!" he shrieked.

He pointed the gun at Doc Savage.

Probably he wouldn't have hit Doc, because the bronze man was weaving forward, and Cugg could see none too well. But Monk was closer, hauled off, and kicked Alonzo Cugg in the temple, then expertly caught Cugg's gun as it flew out of the man's senseless fingers.

"First I knowed Cugg was one of the crooks!" Monk gulped.

Doc's aids ran away from the pumphouse, helping Vida Carlaw to make speed.

Doc waited. Tant-Reservoir Hill-did not appear.

"Tant!" Doc called, sharply. "Come on!"

"h.e.l.l with you!" roared the old reprobate's voice. "As Reservoir Hill, I might run, but as Tomahawk Tant, me and my hombres is gonna clean house here! Then we're gonna get you yourself!"

Doc did not argue. He spun and drifted away from the pumping station with the speed of a hard-driven cloud.

HIS aids and Vida Carlaw had already reached the dike around an oil tank, and they tucked behind this barricade.Bullets began to pa.s.s close to Doc, making whistling snick! noises, but he reached the bank and dived over it "Boy, oh, boy!" Monk groaned. "Does that acid vapor burn! I feel like I'd been skinned alive!"

"You look as if you were made for skinning!" Ham said, referring slightingly to Monk's furry hide.

Doc said, "Whichever side wins that fight, it makes no difference to us. They'll be after us. Come on!"

They ran around the big oil tank, got it between themselves and the old pump station, and by running madly, reached the shelter of another dike.

Monk paused to peer backward. There was shooting at the station, a great deal of it.

Tomahawk Tant was still inside the station with his men who had been taken prisoners. They must have seized weapons from their late captors. Tant could be heard squawling, and there was a mad rage in his voice which one would never have suspected, after knowing him in the garrulous personality of Reservoir Hill.

The leader of the other crowd was a.s.sembling his men outside, bawling orders at them. The figure of this fellow who had tried to foist a mythical earth monster off on the oil fields as a death device to gain control of leases, could be seen plainly.

Monk recognized this mastermind.

"Blazes!" he howled. "C'mere an' see who's got horns and a spike on his tail!"

Renny heaved up and had a look. "Holy cow!"

Doc Savage said, "It is Enoch Andershott."

"Enoch Andershott is the leader!" Renny agreed. "But when'd you guess it?"

"When he told about the monsters besieging him in his house," Doc said, quietly. "It was obvious he was lying, telling us his partner, Cugg, was kidnaped, so that they could decoy us on a fake chase after him, a chase that would lead us into a trap!"

"But you went ahead into the trap, anyway!" Renny boomed.

Doc said, with a trace of wryness, "When they laid the ambush on the cliff road, it was sooner than expected."

"Lookit!" Monk grunted, and pointed.

Enoch Andershott was leading his mob in flight from the pump station.

Tomahawk Tant and his men charged out after them.

TWO of Andershott's men were shot down before they reached the nearest dike around a huge oil tank and popped over it. They began to shoot over the bank at Tant's crowd.

The outlaws promptly dived into a convenient ditch below the oil storage tank and began to return the fire. The whack of rifles was erratic and vicious, and bullets made fantastic singing sounds in the sky.

"Reminds me of the old days in the Great War!" grunted Renny.

Doc said, "Stay here!"

"Whatcha gonna do?" Monk yelled.

"Help whichever side seems to be losing!" Doc told him. "If we can keep them fighting long enough, we'll havemore of a chance of thrashing the survivor."

But something happened before the bronze man could put his idea into practice.

Tomahawk Tant's men had been shooting with their most powerful rifles, at the oil storage tank. The bullets had penetrated the sheet steel, and oil was leaking down.

A firebrand came arching from the ditch where the Tant outlaws lay and fought. It arched over the dike around the oil tank, and fell within. It did not accomplish its purpose.

Another flaming missile was thrown. This one did better. It struck the leaking oil. Instantly, this burst into flame.

Then came what the Tant outlaws had not expected. The flames climbed up and reached gas escaping from top vents of the tank. The tank was only partially full of crude oil, so there was plenty of room for the gas to collect. The tank held thousands of cubic feet of it.

The gas went up in a t.i.tanic zo-o-m! The tank top, falling apart as it arose, went hundreds of feet in the air.

Sides of the tank split outward, disgorging flaming oil.

There was too much of the oil for the dike to hold. It sloshed over, and went pouring toward the ditch where Tant and his men lay. Great sheets of the flaming stuff sloshed over them, driven by the exploding gas.

Within the next few moments, the whole scene of the fight was flaming oil, and black smoke was beginning to arise in a cloud that would crawl like a black snake for miles along the countryside-sole monument to two mobs of men whose creed had been to take by force such things as they might want.

For both crowds, the portions of them engaged in the fight at the time, perished in the oil fire. And that meant the leaders of both factions died. There were, of course, other members of both sides, probably numbering in the scores scattered over the countryside, but these probably lost no time in fleeing Oklahoma. At least, they were never heard from again, nor could a trace be found of them, although Doc Savage had his five aids looking about for them.

DOC SAVAGE, while his aids sought outlaws and Andershott followers, attended to the final details of getting the earth monster scare quieted. It was not hard. Oil men are quick to adapt themselves.

There was one more surprising development. Tomahawk Tant's will-to be more exact, Reservoir Hill's will.

He had left everything-including the properties he owned under other names-to Vida Carlaw.

Vida refused to have anything to do with the legacy. Doc discussed the matter with her. There was no reason why she did not have a legal right to the wealth. She was adamant, didn't want anything to do with it. They compromised by establishing with the funds one of the largest free hospitals in the world in Oklahoma.

Renny, the big-fisted engineer, went over the preliminary plans with Vida Carlaw. Renny was also something of an architect, and he had also become somewhat enamored of pretty Vida Carlaw, and volunteered his services.

In fact, he gave the young lady quite a rush-and Monk and Ham learned something. Monk and Ham had long considered themselves the lady-killers of Doc's little group. But in the present instance, big-fisted Renny left them at the post. They didn't have a chance.

Monk and Ham took their disgust out on each other. It got to a point where it really did look as if they would murder each other. Even their pets, Habeas and Chemistry, which had been in the Tulsa hotel throughout, took to eating each other at every chance.

The coming of THE MENTAL WIZARD might have kept them from actual mayhem. Certainly, the mystery of THE MENTAL WIZARD was a thing so astounding, and so startling in its possibilities that it completely occupied their attention-to say nothing of nearly costing them their lives.It was strange, the beginning of the mystery of THE MENTAL WIZARD. A plane, a plane long believed to be lost, came flying out of the South American jungles. In it was a young man, the pilot, whom the world had given up hope of seeing alive again, years before. Riding beside him was a young woman, a young woman dressed in fantastic garments, speaking a language none could understand.

THE END.