The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four (59 page)

“Well,” Chino said. “I’m going back down in that jungle. I want to see if I can’t find something. Coming?”

“I’ll stick around,” the man said, slowly. “I’m fed up crawlin’ through the brush.”

Turk Madden tiptoed back to Angela.

“One of them’s leaving,” he whispered. “There may be a chance!”

H
E PICKED UP
the stick Angela had carried. Then he turned and slipped back to the cave entrance. Stopping, he felt on the rocky floor to find a loose fragment of stone. Suddenly, there was a gasp behind him and he looked up.

A burly, flat-faced man was standing in the cave entrance, his eyes gleaming with triumph.

“Hold it, buddy,” he said softly. “I don’t want to take no dead meat back to the chief. All you got to do is come quiet.”

“How’d you find this place?” Turk demanded.

The man chuckled wisely. “I seen your tracks back a ways. I said nothing to Chino, because I want that grand for myself. Me, I done some huntin’ as a kid, so I figured the lay. I seen half a heel print from a woman’s shoe right on the rim where there was a little dust.”

“That’s clever, plenty clever.” Turk took a firm grip on the stick. Half concealed by the darkness of the cave, he had inched himself forward to striking distance. Suddenly, like a striking adder’s head, the sharp stick leaped forward, the point tearing a jagged gash through the gunman’s wrist!

Involuntarily, the man’s hand jerked up and his fingers opened wide. He dropped the gun and stepped back with a cry of pain. And in that split second, Turk Madden stepped in.

Slugging the man in the belly with a bludgeoning right, he knocked every bit of breath from his body. Then a short, vicious left hook slammed the man on the chin and drove his head against the jagged rock beside the cave entrance. The man staggered and then fell clear. Where the leering gunman had stood an instant before, now the cave entrance was empty and behind the falling man a cry trailed up through the still air.

Quickly, Turk stepped outside and up the narrow ledge. It was the work of an instant to brush out the tracks, then he retreated as swiftly as he had come forth, picking up the heavy automatic as he returned to the cave.

“That was close,” he whispered.

For three hours, they waited in the cave, hearing the sounds of the searchers above. The gunman’s cry had obviously carried far enough for Chino to hear, yet when they came searching, there was nothing. The men came and went, then darkness began to gather, and finally Chino spoke up.

“To hell with it!” he snarled. “I must’ve been dreamin’! Buck probably went off huntin’ in the brush.”

“No tracks left here,” Karchel insisted. “Where could he have got to?”

“If you ask me,” one of the men said abruptly, “I don’t like it. No guy as tough as Buck vanishes into thin air. If he ain’t here he went somewhere, didn’t he? Well, I don’t like it!”

“Afraid of ghosts?” Karchel sneered.

“Maybe I am,” the man said doggedly. “Funny things happen in these islands! I been hearin’ plenty!”

“Oh, shut up!” Karchel snapped, disgusted.

T
HEY LEFT
. “You know, Angela,” Turk said softly, “we’ve got something there. Those guys may not think they are superstitious, but all of us are a little. And maybe—”

“Maybe what?” Angela asked anxiously.

“I’m going out,” he said. “I’m going out to get Tony. And I’m going to throw a scare into those guys they’ll never forget!”

It was two hours before he slipped through the brush near the house, and paused on the edge of the jungle, studying the layout thoughtfully. Yorke might be imprisoned in the copra shed, and he might be held in the bungalow itself.

Several windows were lighted, and Turk could see men moving about, apparently getting ready to leave. One of the men came out and stood near the roots of a giant ficus tree. Madden glimpsed his face in the faint glow of a lighted match as the man touched it to a cigarette.

With a quick slice of his pocketknife, Turk cut a strip of liana from a long vine hanging near him. Then, soundlessly, he made a careful way over the damp earth to the giant tree. Like a ghost he slipped into the blackness among the roots. Before him, he saw the man stir a little, saw the faint gleam of light on the metal of a gun. He stepped closer.

He made a crude running noose in the end of the liana, and with a quick motion, dropped it over the man’s head, jerking it tight! With a strangled cry, scarcely loud enough to be heard a dozen feet, the man grabbed at his throat. Then, Turk stepped in quickly, and slugged him in the stomach. Without a sound the man tumbled over, facedown in the mud.

Taking his gun and cartridges, Turk slipped off the crude noose and slipped back among the roots. Working swiftly, he had almost completed a semicircle around the house when he heard the man cry out.

Someone ran past him swearing, and Turk saw lights go out suddenly in the house. In the darkness, he could distinguish a stream of shadowy figures, starlight gleaming on their guns, as they poured from the house.

“What the hell’s wrong now?” Wissler was demanding.

“It was Gyp Davis,” Karchel said, with disgust. “Something jumped on him in the dark, or that’s what he says. Some slimy thing got him by the throat, he says, then kicked him in the belly.”

Wissler made an ugly sound, half a snarl.

“These yellow-bellied tramps!” he sneered. “Gettin’ scared of the dark! You tell Gyp and Brownie to get those ships ready. We’re taking off before daybreak. See that there’s plenty of shells in those crates. And a half dozen of those bombs the Doc makes. We won’t have any time to waste on this job!”

Suddenly, there was a burst of excited voices, and stepping forward in the brush, Turk Madden saw a cluster of figures coming toward the house. One of them was dressed in white, and his heart sank.

“Got her, Chief!” Chino exclaimed, eagerly. “We found the dame. She was in the brush up on Traitor’s Head. Do I get the grand?”

Wissler stepped toward the girl, and grabbed her roughly by the arm, pulling her toward him. Then he stepped back again and let the flashlight travel over her from head to foot.

“Yeah,” his voice was thick. “You get the grand. You take her up to the house and lock her up. Make sure she’s there to stay.”

Turk wet his lips. Well, here it was. There was only one answer now. He slipped both guns from his waistband and clicked off the safety catches. Go out there shooting, get Wissler and Karchel, anyway.

He took a step, then stopped dead still, feeling the cold chill of steel against his neck.

“Hold it, buddy!” a harsh voice said. “And don’t get funny with that gun.”

The man reached out from behind with his left hand to get the right-hand pistol. Then Turk dropped the other gun into the brush, speaking quickly to distract the man’s attention so he wouldn’t hear the sound of its fall.

“Okay,” he said. “You got me. Now what?”

The man prodded him into the open and marched him across the small clearing to where Wissler and Karchel were standing.

“Got the guy, Chief. That Madden fellow.”

Wissler stepped toward Turk. “Tough guy, are you?” He slapped Madden across the face with one hand, then with the other. But Turk stood immovable. A wrong move now, and they’d kill him. If they did, then Angela and Tony were done for, to say nothing of the hundreds of innocent people on the
Erradaka.

Wissler laughed coldly. “All right, tie him up an’ lock him up. I’ll tend to this guy and that dame when we come back.”

S
OMEWHERE DOWN THE BEACH
, the motor of a plane broke into a coughing roar. It wasn’t the Grumman. Probably one of the aircraft they were going to use for the attack on the
Erradaka.

Three of the men hustled him away to the copra shed. He was hurriedly bound, then thrown on the floor. The three men left, and it was only a few minutes until Madden heard two planes roar away toward the sea. It would be dawn soon, and the
Erradaka
with several hundred passengers would be steaming toward a day of horror and bloodshed.

He rolled over, trying to get to the wall. Reaching it, he forced himself into a sitting position and managed to get to his knees. This done, his fingers could just reach the knot behind his ankles.

It seemed that it took him hours to loosen the knot, although as he realized afterward, it could only have been a few minutes. When the ropes fell loose, he staggered to his feet. It was growing light outside and it was gray in the shed. He moved the length of the building, searching for something he could use to free his hands.

In a corner of the shed, he found an old wood saw. By wedging it into the crack in the end-boards of a worktable, he managed to place the saw teeth in the right position. Then he went to work. Finally, a strand of the rope fell apart and he hastily jerked the loosened ropes from his wrists, rubbed them violently. Now—

“Pretty smart, guy,” a voice sneered.

H
E TURNED SLOWLY
. Chino stood in the door laughing at him, a gun in his hand. Turk Madden’s brain went hot with rage. Now, after all this struggle, to be deprived of escape? Chino was coming toward him, chuckling with contempt.

With one sweeping movement of hand and arm, Turk grabbed the saw and hurled it flat at Chino’s face. Chino leaped back with an oath, and the gun roared. Turk felt the bullet blast by his face and then he sprang. The gun roared again, but Madden was beyond all fear. Chino’s face was bleeding from a ragged scratch of the saw, and he lifted the gun to take aim for a killing shot when Turk dove headlong in a flying tackle. They hit the ground rolling, and Turk came out on top, swinging both hands at Chino’s face.

The gun blasted again, and he felt the searing pain of a powder burn, then he knocked the gun from Chino’s hand and sprang to his feet. The gunman scrambled up, his face livid with rage. Turk threw a punch, short and hard, to the chin. The gunman went down. Turk swept up his gun and started running for the door.

A man loomed in the doorway, and Turk fired twice. The man staggered back, tumbling to the ground. And another stepped up behind him, taking careful aim with a pistol, but Turk fired from the hip, and the man staggered, his bullet clipping a notch in a beam over Madden’s head. Then Turk fired again, hurled his now empty automatic after the shot, and grabbed another from the man in the doorway.

He made the house in a half dozen jumps, felt something tug at his clothes, then felt the whiff of a bullet by his face, the reports sounding in his ears, flat and ugly. A big man with a scarred face was standing in the door of the bungalow firing at him. Dropping to one knee, Turk fired steadily and methodically, three shots hitting the man, another taking a stocky-built blond fellow who came around the corner.

Then Turk scrambled through the door over the fallen man’s body and rushed inside. There was no one in sight, but on the table was a tommy gun, a Luger automatic, and several other weapons. Turk sprang past them, and seeing a closed door, tried it. It was locked. He shot the lock away and stepped inside, gun ready.

Angela Yorke was tied in a chair in the center of the room. Tony Yorke, his face white and battered around the eyes, was lying on his back against the wall. Hurriedly, he cut the girl loose, handing her the gun.

“You two watch your step. I think I made a cleanup, but if any more show up, shoot—and shoot to kill!”

A
NGELA CAUGHT HIS ARM
, her face white. He brushed something away from his eyes, and was startled to see blood on his hand. He must have been shot.

“What are you going to do?” the girl exclaimed.

“I’m taking the Grumman. She’s got guns that came with the ship, and I never bothered to dismantle them. I’ve got to stop those guys before they get to the
Erradaka
!”

“But you’ll be killed!” she protested.

He grinned. “Anything’s possible, but I doubt it.”

T
HE
G
RUMMAN TOOK OFF
after a short run, and Turk Madden swung the ship out to sea. The gunmen would land somewhere and wait there for the psychological moment. Their best chance was when the crew and passengers were at breakfast. And the first thing would be to get the radio room. Then sweep the decks with machine-gun fire, board the ship from the yacht, and kill the passengers.

Turk climbed to six thousand feet and opened her up. The Grumman responded perfectly, her twin motors roaring along in perfect time, fairly eating up the miles. The other ships were well ahead of him, he knew, but they would be in no hurry, for the yacht had to come up before they could attack.

Switching to the robot controls, he carefully checked the tommy gun and the other weapons he’d brought along. His ship carried two guns anyway, and with the additional armament he wouldn’t lack for fighting equipment. He left Tanna off to the east, then swung the ship a bit and laid a course for Erronan.

Erronan! His eyes narrowed. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? It was the perfect base for an attack on the shipping lane. There was a good landing on Tabletop, the flat mountain that was the island’s highest point, nearly two thousand feet above the sea. From there it would not be much of a jump to the course of the
Erradaka.
No doubt the attacking ships had settled there to await the proper hour of attack. Well, he grinned wryly, it wouldn’t be long now.

He cursed himself again for letting the sending apparatus on his radio get out of whack. He slipped on the earphones and could hear the
Erradaka
talking to another ship near the coast of New Caledonia. He turned his head, watching the blue expanse of sea beneath him and searching for the yacht. Then, suddenly, he picked it up, and a moment later, the
Erradaka
.

The yacht was taking a course that would bring her up with the
Erradaka,
and he heard the passenger liner calling her, but the yacht did not reply. Suddenly, a flicker of motion caught his eyes, and he turned to see two ships closing in on the liner. They were flying fast, one slightly above and behind the other.