Men were screaming, dying. Guns were going off. Then some one shot holes in the gasoline tank of one of the cars and threw a lighted match.
The shooting was brisker. More men shrieked. Tant outlaws, mostly. Burning gasoline threw a light of h.e.l.l over everything. Johnny fought to free himself with the fragment of gla.s.s.
The burly Tant lieutenant tried to run off across the road into the brush. Three attackers aimed their rifles, and fired together, as if all fingers jerked by the same string.
The burly man, when the three rifle bullets. .h.i.t his vital places, acted like a rabbit nailed by a shotgun charge.
He went up in the air, emitted a bawl of a noise, and landed flat on his back and never moved afterward.The rest of the Tant outlaws surrendered, which was the wise thing to do, outnumbered as they were.
A man wearing black gloves came over and glared at Johnny. He was wiry, wore a plain blue suit under a knockabout topcoat, and his necktie showed bright under his chin.
Johnny knew him to be the man who had tried to seize Vida Carlaw in the plane bound for New York.
The wiry man said, "I think we"ll croak you for good now, skin-and-bones!"
He swung his clubbed gun, and Johnny ducked, but not enough, and he got the dizzy impression that he was a ghost in an infinite place where there was nothing but darkness. And he had no head.
JOHNNY got around to feeling somehow that he was somewhat like the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow, except that it was infinitely dark where he roamed looking for his head, so dark that he could never see anything.
But eventually it dawned on Johnny that he had a head, although it was full of pain, and that the darkness was a blindfold. He tried not to move, and lay very still, listening to voices mutter near by.
"We"re getting things in hand," the wiry man, who wore black gloves always, was saying. "We"ve got Tant"s mob on the run. We"ve got all of Doc Savage"s men."
This was a surprise to Johnny, who had been under the impression that Monk, Ham and Renny, along with Enoch Andershott, had been seized by Outlaw Tant"s men. Apparently Tant"s enemy had done the job, cleverly making it look as if the blame belonged to Tant.
"We"ve got this red monster business pretty well underway," the wiry man continued. "The whole dang midcontinent oil field has been swept by the news. We"ll clean up in the Indian Dome Fields, and later, one at a time, the monsters will appear in the other oil fields."
"What if somebody gets wise? They"re sure to."
"We"ll keep our eyes open, and wipe them out. The monsters will just come along and absorb that guy, see."
"Uh-huh."
"Furthermore, the boss has got a sure-fire scheme worked out for gettin" hold of Doc Savage and gettin" rid of him."
"That scheme of decoying him out the cliff road along the river was supposed to be sure-fire!"
"Well, h.e.l.l! The bronze guy was lucky! But he can"t keep it up forever. Anyway, this is a real scheme. It can"t fail!"
"What is it?"
Johnny strained his ears. He wanted to hear this. But the next instant he was kicked in the ribs with painful force.
"I think this bony is "possumin!" growled a voice.
The wiry man came over, with the one he had been talking to, and they all fell to kicking Johnny. The gaunt geologist opened his eyes and groaned realistically.
"I guess he wasn"t fakin"," said the wiry man. "Even if he was, he didn"t hear anything. We never talked about nothin" important."
One man gulped, "The boss"s scheme to-"
"Shut up!" snapped the wiry man with the black gloves. "That wasn"t discussed in detail!"They gathered Johnny up and carried him down some stairs. They searched him thoroughly, stripping off his clothing entirely and giving him an ancient pair of soiled overalls to wear.
"Like to see "im get away now!" a man chuckled.
Johnny was lifted and hurled into a room which had a concrete floor and was dimly lighted.
The wiry man with the black gloves came in, leaned down, and said fiercely, "In a few minutes, we"re gonna let some of them jelly devils in here to eat you!"
Then he left.
Johnny rolled over, thought about the situation deeply for a minute, then groaned as-he realized an instant later-he had never groaned before.
"The noises you make sure help a lot!" complained a voice.
Johnny squirmed around and peered at a number of individuals whom he had not seen before due to the murk.
"Monk!" he exclaimed.
MONK, the homely chemist, was not alone. With him was Ham, looking less dapper than usual in a garment which consisted simply of a gunnysack with holes cut in it for his legs. Also present was big-fisted Renny, and behind him, Enoch Andershott.
Amazed, Johnny sat up. Also in the room was a man who was about one hundred and thirty pounds of skin over wires, and who had eyes with a scare deep within them.
"I am Alonzo Cugg," said this man, reading the question in Johnny"s eyes.
Only Long Tom, the electrical wizard, was not present.
Johnny asked, "Where are we?"
"Somewhere in the Osage, north of Tulsa, I think," said Monk.
"You ape, you don"t know where we are!" Ham muttered.
"If I wasn"t tied, I"d kick your ears so flat they"d be mistaken for crepes suzettesl" Monk snarled.
"It"s a good thing I"m tied!" Ham a.s.sured him.
Johnny, looking about, observed that they were all tied.
"I say," Johnny suggested tentatively, "If we were untied, would we have a chance of escaping?"
A fly could almost have been heard calling in the silence which followed.
"You mean you got a way of gettin" these ropes off?" Monk gulped.
Johnny opened his mouth. His monocle, which during his acting of the part of the crook Snook Loggard, had been concealed in his clothing, now fell out of his mouth.
"I had a heck of a time keeping it hidden there," Johnny explained. "I got it just before they searched me a few minutes ago."
Monk said, admiringly, "For once, you can say, "Supermalagorgeous," or, "I"ll be superamalgamated," and I won"t feel like chokin" you!"
Johnny now broke the monocle on the floor. He grasped one of the particles, moved over to Monk, and beganto saw on the ropes securing the homely chemist. He got them sawed through. Monk began to untie his own hands.
A man came in the door, carrying a gun, saw that Monks hands were free, and cried out shrilly in alarm.
Other men ran in, and dashed forward. They clubbed Monk down and tied him again. Then they knocked him senseless.
"Look over these ropes!" the man with the black gloves ordered. "I don"t understand how that hombre got loose!"
The knots were tested. While this was being done, and to distract the attention of their captors from the tiny particles of gla.s.s lying half hidden upon the floor, Johnny demanded, "What became of Long Tom? He"s not here!"
The man with the black gloves laughed harshly. "We took him out to ask him some questions about Doc Savage! He wouldn"t talk!"
"Where-where is he now?" Johnny gulped.
The man made a growling sound.
"I"ll try to give you some kind of an idea what happened to Long Tom!" the fellow grunted.
GAUNT Johnny was now seized, one man taking each of his extremities, and carried out of the room and into what seemed to be a porch. They dragged him along a path. Soon, a sizable hulk loomed up in the darkness, and proved to be a small tank.
Johnny, who had not neglected the profitable oil field angle of geology, had been around oil leases enough to recognize the tank as one of the two-hundred-fifty-barrel tanks which oil from small wells is pumped into. But this one had not been used for a long time. It was a wooden tank. A hole, large enough to admit a man, had been chopped in the bottom.
One of the men threw a flashlight beam on the hole in the tank.
Johnny"s hair stood on end. His eyes popped. Squirming, writhing, hideously translucent and ocherous in the light, was one of the fantastic monsters which had first been observed around the Sands-Carlaw-Hill wildcat oil well.
The thing was going into the tank. Swelling and spreading and creeping, it seemed to have no arms, legs, eyes, mouth, nose, nor anything else that an ordinary living creature is supposed to have. It was just-red, semi-transparent stuff, utterly hideous, and living! Back into the tank, it oozed, as if afraid of the light.
"Our little pal was out looking for more to eat," a man chuckled.
Three of the men stopped.
"I went close to that tank to take the other one!" one of these snapped. "I"m afraid of that d.a.m.n thing! You can"t tell what it"ll do! Somebody else take this one close!"
"h.e.l.l, don"t be scared!" snorted the man with the black gloves. "It"s in the tank now! Anyhow, it just absorbed the other guy. Or maybe you"d say it digested him. It hadn"t oughta be so hungry."
"You know durn well it ain"t got no stomach like normal things!" snorted the other. "It don"t know when it"s hungry, because it ain"t got no brain, neither. It"s just-just-well, whatever it"s made out of!"
"We"ll draw lots," said the man with the black gloves.
They drew lots-matched coins rather. Johnny, somewhat irrelevantly, reflected that Monk would have been in his element here, because Monk carried around a trick coin just for matching.The two who lost seized Johnny and carried him close to the tank. They lowered him beside a post.
Johnny goggled at the post. It was a stout piece of wood, and probably had been there a long time. But what interested him was the ropes around the post-and in those ropes, lying loosely, was an a.s.sortment of clothing. Johnny stared at the clothing, for he recognized it.
The garments had been worn by Long Tom when he went to Tulsa!
The black-gloved man said, "Now we ain"t trying to kid n.o.body. We told that other guy, Long Tom, we weren"t kidding. He got his choice of either answering our questions, or we didn"t fool around. He had his choice, and it wasn"t nice. Now, you"re gonna get yours!"
Johnny"s throat felt as if a hot poker had been run up and down it, inside. He had discovered something else, something that was lying nearer the opening into the tank, within which the red horror had withdrawn.
The man said, "We want to know if Doc Savage has found out who our chief is!"
Johnny looked at the thing he had discovered on the ground. He began to feel as if he could never breathe again.
THE object on the ground might have pa.s.sed for a bucketful, a small bucketful of ordinary cup grease which some one had dumped out on the ground. It was rather soiled-looking, and if it had been grease, could have taken on that tint from having been used.
Long Tom"s clothes! This stuff on the ground! Johnny started hearing words as if from an infinite distance.
"I asked you if Doc Savage knows who the chief is?" repeated the man with the black gloves.
Johnny did not answer. He felt cold all over.
"Well," the black-gloved man said, and laughed carelessly. "It"s your funeral!"
One of the other men said, "I wouldn"t call it a funeral." He pointed at the pile of grease. "Of course, somebody might bury that stuff, which is all that is left."
The men began to walk away. They kept their flashlight beams on the hole in the tank, as if to keep the horror within at bay with the light.
It seemed to Johnny that he could hear the monster moving inside the tank which was its lair.
The departing men were saying, "We got some of Tant"s outlaws alive. Them hombres ain"t as tough as this Doc Savage"s crowd. We"ll make Tant"s men talk."
"And when they tell us where Tant is hanging out, that"ll be the last of the Scourge of Oklahoma, as them newspaper lugs sometimes call Tant," offered another man.
"The boss"s gag will also get Doc Savage," said the one with the gloves. "This next trick the boss is going to try is a honey!"
The men halted. One of them called out to Johnny.
"You got one chance!" the fellow shouted. "Just before the thing flows over you and begins to absorb you right out of your clothes, you can let out a beller and we may be able to drive it away!"
Johnny said nothing.
"But you better not wait too long!" the man added.
They departed, taking the beams of their flashlights off the opening in the tank.Johnny began to hear something infinitely horrible. Sounds from the tank. The thing must be coming out!
One of the men, off in the night, said, "He"ll squawl like h.e.l.l when he feels it touch him! The other one, Long Tom, did!"
"They don"t always beller," one corrected. "You remember Sam Sands and that driller? They didn"t beller when it began to digest "em!"