Doc Savage - The Stone Man Part 12

"I am really sorry about this," he said. "I wish you had taken my warning-and not attempted to find the answer to this mystery."

Monk grabbed the bars and shook them. He yelled: "Somebody is gonna be a danged sight sorrier before we're through!" and continued to shake the bars until someone gave his knuckles a whack with one of the lighted torches, after which the homely chemist bounced around among the sparks and yelled so loud that the surroundings gobbled with echoes. "What's the idea of puttin' us in cages?" he squalled.

"We're not apes!"

"There might be a difference of opinion on that point," Ham suggested.

Monk, too angry to think of a response, sank back and snarled: "I wonder what they done with our clothes?"

It was a little embarra.s.sing, too, because all of them were as naked as the day they were born.

THE cages had wheels. But the region over which they were to travel, they discovered, had no roads.

Strange white-haired men got behind and pushed until they came to the top of a steep hill, after which they gave the cage a shove. The careening ride down the hill was something to remember. The cage jumped, bounced, did everything but swap ends. At one point, it must have been coasting fifty miles an hour; it seemed like five hundred.

The captors galloped after them, and after the cage stopped rolling, surrounded them and scowled malevolently.

"They don't seem to like us," Long Tom decided.

"The sentiments are mutual," Long Tom announced.

One of the white-haired men put his hands to his mouth and emitted a low, weird caterwauling cry. A summons of some kind, evidently, because a crowd suddenly surrounded the cage.

The newcomers were attired in long capes of something that resembled suede leather. They wore tall conical headgear of the same material. Both capes and headgear were deep crimson in color; hence the effect was somewhat astounding.

Monk yelled: "How about giving us some clothes, you guys!"They made no answer, but gathered around the cage to stare. There was, it became increasingly evident, nothing friendly in their manner. One made an expressive gesture, drawing a finger across his throat. Two others spat.

Mark Colorado stepped close to the cage and spoke in a whisper.

"Do not do anything to anger them," he warned.

"If I get out of here," Renny promised, "I'll do more than anger them."

"You idiot!" Mark Colorado yelled. "I'm trying to save your lives."

"Oh, sure," Renny said skeptically.

"Don't worry. If it wasn't that I promised my sister, I would wash my hands of you. I didn't ask you to follow us here."

The remark, being true, was something to think about.

Laying hold of the cage, the crowd shoved it along. A score of torches shed crimson light that enhanced the bright scarlet of the robes. And abruptly a cobbled pavement was underfoot; then buildings shoved up around them in the mist.

Every building, every part about each building, was square or rectangular. They were like boxes piled one atop the other, large boxes on the bottom, smaller ones on top. The colors were brilliant and varied; greens and yellows and blues were plentiful, but nowhere was there a red structure.

Not all of the people here were garbed in red. Twenty of them, at a rough estimate, wore scarlet, Doc Savage decided.

"The guys in red seem to be the big shots," Monk remarked. He raised his voice: "Hey, you funny-looking clowns! How about some clothes? I'm getting cold."

Someone hurled a torch at the cage, and hot sparks showered them plentifully.

The crowd seemed to approve; it howled in glee.

"Say, maybe the guy was right about behaving ourselves," Monk muttered.

They came abruptly to a red building, larger than the others, a great perfectly square box of a structure.

"The jail house, I guess," Renny hazarded.

He was not exactly correct. There was a pit in front of the red building. Ropes were attached to their cage, and it was rolled over the pit rim, with no regard whatever for their comfort. The cage bottom was evidently hinged so it could be yanked open with a rope, for they suddenly tumbled out on hard stone, and the cage was yanked upward again.

It was incredibly dark in the pit.

Something thudded near them. Doc investigated. "Seems to be a bundle of skins," he reported. "Probably what we are supposed to wear."

THERE were five of the skins, each barely large enough for a man to wrap around his waist. Having donned these makeshifts, they looked up, and decided that the pit was circular, since the thing was edgedby burning torches. The mists seemed to be thinner here, although the air still had a befogged appearance.

"Holy cow!" Renny rumbled, peering up at the torches. "What kind of a place have we gotten into, anyway?"

"Kind of a lost valley, or something," Long Tom hazarded.

"Sure, sure, but what are these people? They look a little like Indians, only their skins are too light. And who ever heard of Indians having white hair?"

An interruption arrived in the form of a hurled torch. The missile apparently had been pitched at the sound of their voices. It came close enough that the splash of the sparks showed their figures. Instantly, a dozen torches were hurled.

They scattered hurriedly.

Monk growled: "I'm gonna play their game with 'em."

The homely chemist seized one of the torches, wound up like a baseball pitcher, and knocked a tall red cone of a hat off of a tormentor's head.

An entirely new voice addressed them.

"Hey, pards," the voice said. "You're just stirrin' up a mess. If they can devil you, they'll stay there and throw things all night."

"Who the blazes are you?" Monk exploded. He tried to fan a torch into flames for light, but only succeeded in making himself a target which drew a shower of sticks and small stones. He threw the torch away.

"You hombres kinda mosey over this way," the strange voice suggested, "and maybe we'll get us some peace around here after a while."

They felt their way toward the voice, until they encountered the stone pit wall, along the base of which was a stone shelf slightly under a yard in width.

"You rannies might as well make yourselves at home," the voice advised. "This here bench is gonna be your bed, table and home for a while."

The voice was that of a robust old man.

"Prospector?" Doc asked.

"Yep. Easy for you to guess, wasn't it? Reckon I should've knowed this was a heck of a country to hunt gold in, before I started in. What're you fellers? Surveyin' crew, maybe?"

"We were just curious, you might say," Doc explained.

"Curiosity kills cats, don't it? It's gonna get you gents a long and peaceful life. 'Tain't bad here, though.

Kinda monotonous, at times."

"They keep you in this pit all the time?"

"Nope. Unless you do somethin' you ain't supposed. I tried to climb out of the valley. Near as I canfigure, that was about a month ago. Blast the luck!"

"They caught you, eh?"

"Wouldn't've, only I used some bad judgment. Took me a partner, see. Should've knowed better. We made us a rope, and la.s.soed a pinnacle. My partner climbed up first. Then he untied the rope, and let me fall back."

Doc said: "The partner was not Spad Ames, by any chance?"

"Why, heck! How'd you know?"

THEY were startled enough to remain silent for some moments. The old prospector must have done some thinking in the interval, because he made a disgusted noise.

"That durn coyote! I was years figgerin' out the path to escape, and I only took this Spad Ames because I'm gettin' old and about as active as a terrapin."

Doc suggested: "What about this Spad Ames?"

"Hain't much to tell about that jasper. Him an' another scallawag like 'im fell near here in their airplane.

Partner was named Waldo Berlitz if I remember right. He found one of these hermit Indians, an' up an'

killed him. So the Indian's friends turned Waldo Berlitz into a stone man-"

"Into a stone man!" Monk e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"Yep," said the old-timer matter-of-factly. "Then they ketched Spad Ames an' brought 'im here. Spad Ames was a slick one. He learned a lot by playin' up to 'em. I think he was goin' to come back, if he ever got away. Won't-if he knows what's good for 'im."

Doc asked: "How long have you been here?"

"Since fall of 1916."

"Holy cow!" Renny exploded.

"Yep. Voted for Woodrow Wilson for second term as president, then headed into the badlands.

Woodrow said he'd keep us out of war. Heard afterward they had the War anyway."

"Wait a minute!" Monk exploded. "We're getting sidetracked. What about that stone-man business?"

"Nothin' about it. They just made him into a stone man."

"You don't really mean stone?"

"Drop 'em and they break. I calls 'em stone. Use your own judgment."

Monk scratched his head and scowled up at the pit rim. They were still flourishing lighted torches up there, but could distinguish no targets at which to hurl them. Monk snorted.

"Now look, old-timer-just two things can explain what you're telling us."

"Eh?"

"You're kiddin' us-" "I ain't kiddin'-"

"Or you're nuts."

"Figure I'm locoed, eh?" The old-timer sighed without concern. "That's what they always figure when they first land here. Later, they found out they're wrong. You'll find it out too, my squeak-voiced friend."

Doc asked: "How do they manage this-ah-turning a man to stone?"

"Wouldn't know. Ain't ever seen 'em do the job."

The bronze man abandoned that line of inquiry for another, asking: "You say there are others here?"

"Half a dozen. Two of 'em are Hopi Indians who strayed too far from their home-huntin' ground. There's another prospector, two Mormons who were runnin' away from their wives, an' one old geezer who was an arky-arky-whatcha call it?"

"Archaeologist?"

"That sounds like what he call hisself."

"Where are they?"

"Oh, they got houses to themselves. Do a little more work than the regular inhabitants. Ain't an uncomfortable way to live, though. My mistake was in tryin' to escape. What I shoulda done is married an' settled down. Only I ain't never trusted women."

"Married? You mean that they let their captives intermarry?"

"Sure. The prospector an' the arky-arky-what you call him-is married. So are the two Mormons, with one wife apiece, an' always arguin' they're ent.i.tled to more'n that."

Monk snorted again.

"This place may not be so bad at that," he said thoughtfully.

"Don't forget Spad Ames," Ham reminded him.

Chapter XV. THE HERMIT INDIANS.

THE old prospector, possibly irritated by the aspersion Monk had cast on his sanity, suddenly refused to talk further until they had given him the latest news from the outside world. He sat there and listened to the troubles in Europe, the latest crooked politicians to go to jail, the difficulties in China and the baseball situation.