Silently, he approached the glow on the cliff… only to be surprised by the discovery that the rock rose sheer and unscalable.
He purposefully made a little noise.
A revolver instantly roared from above!
With a loud, vicious thud, a bullet planted itself in the sand at his feet!
XI — The Canyon Fight
Doc did not change position. The gunman could not see him, anyway.
Giving his voice a brutal coarseness and a tearing note of rage, he sent a shout upward.
“What d’you think this is, anyhow?”
“It ain’t no place to go strollin’ in the dark!” came the snarled retort. “Who’re you, hombre?”
“I’m the jasper that’s gonna walk your carcass if you throw any more lead!” Doc bellowed, simulating the truculent manner of one tough guy addressing another.
“How many men are with you?”
“I don’t need any help to take care of you!” Doc blustered up at the gunman.
“Cut the clownin’! Did the Boss come with you?”
“No!” said Doc, taking advantage of this tip that the mastermind was not present. “I’m gonna wait here for ‘im.”
“Don’t be too sure of that! Are you the sheriff?”
“Are you tryin’ to insult me?” Doc howled.
Laughter rattled from the man overhead. He seemed to consider the sheriff query a great joke.
“Hang around,” he directed. “I’m comin’ down to interview you, sweetheart.”
Instead of one man, several descended a rope ladder which they flung down the cliff face. They brought electric lanterns.
The Arizona penitentiary and all the dives on the border could have been combed without netting a more savage-looking collection. A slovenly beard stubble decorated most of the faces. They all would have benefited from a bath.
The man who had shot at Doc — a tubby individual with ears thickened and nose flattened as the result of much pounding — scowled darkly.
“So the Boss sent you here to wait for ‘im, huh?”
“You don’t think I’m here for my health do you?” Doc snorted.
He was deliberately assuming the character of a hard-boiled personage. With insolent, flippant answers, he could evade dangerous questions.
“Your health is gonna be affected if you keep on crackin’ wise!” grated the other. “I never saw you before.”
“That’s your loss.”
“Oh yeah? Are you a new man?”
“You might call me that.”
The stocky man glanced about meaningly at his companions. “This guy showin’ up looks kinda fishy to me. The Boss ain’t said nothin’ about takin’ on any new hands.”
“Does the Boss have to ask your permission?” Doc growled sarcastically.
“What trail did you use comin’ here?” the fellow countered.
“Don’t make me laugh!” Doc snorted and hoped mightily that some hint would show him the proper answer.
2 of the other men laughed.
“You can’t kid this fellow, Jud!” one told the burly man. “He knows the only way of reachin’ this place alive is by water. An’ plane.”
The remark was illuminating. The men must have a powerboat on Red Skull river — a craft able to cope with the current.
“Who brought you up?” the tubby Jud persisted.
Doc bent a fierce glare upon his questioner.
“Maybe you have to have somebody lead you up that river,” he sneered. “But I don’t!”
“Oh?” Jud looked vastly enlightened. “So the Boss took you on because you know this country an’ the river?”
Ignoring the remark, Doc waved an arm overhead.
“You hombres know the plane from New York is comin’ in before long, don’t you?”
“Sure.”
“And you know about the girl?”
“Sure. We got a radio up above. The Boss slips us important orders over that.”
The remark about the wireless set was bad news to Doc. Suppose these men should get in touch with their leader in an effort to verify his connection with the gang? This would disrupt his careful plans.
“I’m here to take charge of the girl,” he continued.
The men showed no surprise at the remark. One greeted it with a rowdy snort.
“What’s the matter? Ain’t we good enough to keep the city dame company?”
Doc decided to put in a few words which they might later recall as a warning.
“The man that harms that girl signs his own death war-rang,” he growled vehemently. “And don’t any of you hombres forget that! She may be the price that will buy Doc Savage off in case he gets us cornered. If she is harmed in the slightest, it’s gonna be just too bad!”
For a moment, Doc thought he might have put the speech a bit too forcibly. The group gave him curious stares.
But the incident was permitted to pass.
Doc was invited to mount the rope ladder which hung down the vertical cliff face.
He did so. It led him into the square opening which he had first glimpsed from the air.
Beyond the aperture was a stone room in the center of which a campfire burned fitfully.
Doc gazed about, not a little surprised. Other rooms opened off this one. And still more seemed to form additional stories. The walls were of roughly shaped stone set in a dry-mud mortar. Stout timbers supported the ceiling and the floors above.
It was an ancient cliff dwelling — a ruin of the type not at all uncommon in Arizona and other Southwestern States.
Built hundreds — possibly thousands — of years ago by some race long forgotten, the structure was in good preservation. Outlines of human fingers could be seen upon the mortar. The dry climate had kept the wooden timbers from decaying.
“A nifty hang-out, eh?” suggested one of the men.
“It is IF it don’t fall down on you!” Doc retorted gruffly.
“It won’t. Not after standin’ this long. I’ll bet nobody had been in it for a thousand years until the Boss found it. He said he had a dickens-of-a-time gettin’ up to it!”
Standing well out of the firelight, Doc began to fish slyly for information.
“When did he find it?” he asked, feigning only cursory interest.
“I dunno. Before the dam buildin’ started, I guess.”
“How come the Boss to be pokin’ around this region?”
The other man looked surprised.
“You don’t know much about the Boss, do you? How’d you come to tie up with him?”
“Through a friend of his — Buttons.”
And that, Doc reflected, was no lie!
“Buttons Zortell, eh?” said the other, making conversation. “Buttons is quite a guy. But I hear he didn’t do so well in New York.”
“Who cares about Buttons,” Doc yawned. “What I’m interested in, partner, is learnin’ more about this scatter I’m mixed up in. The Boss didn’t have time to tell me much. What’s the ‘kitty’ in this thing? What’re we after?”
Doc was alert for the slightest sign of hostility after he put the bold query. He expected such ignorance in an accepted member of the gang to arouse instant suspicion. But he got a surprise.
The men emitted snorts of laughter!
“We don’t know ourselves what the Big Boss is after,” one chuckled. “We get paid. We do our work. We keep our mouths shut. That’s all there is to it.”
“It must be somethin’ in connection with the dam,” Doc suggested.
“With keepin’ the dam from gettin’ built, you mean!”
Doc filed this bit of news for future consideration. So there was opposition to the building of the dam!
“I see,” he grunted. “But what about the Boss? What little I know, I got through Buttons.”
The other man seemed unsuspicious.