Kenneth Robeson - The Man of Bronze

He raced his best now. He tried repeatedly to see who it was the men — they were red-fingered warriors — were carrying.

Johnny! They had Johnny!

Monk did not know Long Tom and Ham had already gone into the sacrificial well, or he would have been even more horrified than he was.

The red-fingered men had seen him now. They quickened their own pace, shedding caution. They ran out on the stone pavement around the sacrificial well.

Still fifty feet from them, Monk saw them lift Johnny's bound and gagged frame and toss him into the fiendish pit!

Monk heard the loud, heavy thump come up from the well bottom!

That turned Monk into such a fighting devil as he seldom became. His great hands scooped up two rocks. He hurled them with the velocity of cannon balls.

Both rocks downed their men.

So sudden was the attack, so fearsome a figure did Monk present that the red-fingered group turned to a man and fled wildly into the brush. Monk overhauled one before they got away. He heaved the loathsome creature up like a feather and dashed him against a tree. The lifeless body bounced back almost to his feet, so terrific was the impact.

Into the undergrowth Monk dived. He searched like a terrier after rats. But the warriors knew the vegetation. They evaded him.

It was high tribute to the fright Monk inspired that they did not even dare throw a knife or a spear at him, but crept away like sneaking coyotes into the night.

Slowly, with his heart the heaviest it had ever been, Monk went back to the sacrificial well. He had heard that thump come up from the bottom — he knew the well must be at least two hundred feet deep.

Poor Johnny! To meet a fate like that! One of the most brilliant living geologists and archaeologists snuffed out at the dawn of his career. It was awful.

Nearing the well, Monk could hear the gruesome hissing and swishing of serpent bodies deep in the black Gehenna of a pit. He recognized the noises for what they were. Johnny didn't stand a chance of being alive! Salty tears came to Monk's eyes.

With an effort, he brought himself to look over the rim of the sacrificial well.

Out of the pit came Ham's sarcastic drawl.

"I ask you, brothers, did you ever see an uglier face than that?"

So astounded was Monk that he came within a hair of toppling head-first into the sacrificial well. He hastily got away from the brink.

A sibilant "Sh-h-h!" came out of the hole, warning silence.

Johnny then appeared, shoved from behind. Johnny was a little scuffed and pale, but otherwise none the worse for his grisly encounter. He kept low, behind the screen of bushes that surrounded the sacrificial well.

Long Tom was helped out next. Then Ham. They, too, were unharmed. And finally Renny.

At last, Doc himself appeared.

"You wait here," Doc whispered. "I'm going to the plane to get some materials."

He vanished like a bronze ghost in the moonlight.

"What happened to you birds?" Monk demanded.

"The red-fingered rascals got us, one at a time, bound and gagged us, and threw us in the well," Long Tom explained.

"Aw-w-w! I mean, what saved you?"

"How?"

"It beat anything you ever saw," Long Tom murmured admiringly. "Doc and Renny were out prowling, and saw the warriors grab me. Doc ran to the plane and got a stout silk rope, or, rather, two of them." Long Tom pointed. "There they are!"

Monk looked, and perceived what he had not before noted in the moonlight. The two ropes, thin but extremely strong, were tied to a couple of the stout shrubs surrounding the paved circle. The ends of the ropes dangled in the well. The Mayans, too, had missed seeing them.

"Doc and Renny slid down into the well before the warriors got here," Long Tom continued. "Renny held a big rock in his arms. He tied the rope end around his waist to support him."

Long Tom laughed softly — but not very heartily. "When the red-fingered men tossed me in, Renny dropped the rock to make it sound like I had hit bottom. And — "

"And Doc simply swung out and caught them, one at a time, as they came down," Renny chimed in. "Then they clung to the sides of the well. That was not much of a job, because the sides are very rough, some blocks sticking out enough for a man to sit on in comfort."

"You looked like you were crying when you stuck your mug into the pit," Johnny chided Monk. "Did you really hate to see me go that much?"

"Aw-w, fooey on you!" Monk grinned.

Doc came back, appearing with the silent unexpectedness of an apparition.

"Why didn't you and Renny pitch in and clean up on the warriors when you saw them grab Long Tom?" Monk asked.

"Because I reasoned he'd be thrown into the sacrificial well alive," Doc replied. "That is the customary manner of sacrificing offerings. And I wanted the red-fingered devils to think Long Tom, Johnny, and Ham are dead. I've got an idea to pull."

"What?"

"The warriors are our immediate trouble here," Doc explained. "If we can convince them we are really supernatural beings, we'll have half the battle won. Then we can concentrate on trapping this man who is behind the Hidalgo revolution scheme."

"Sure," Monk agreed. "But how to convince them is the catch." He rubbed his big knuckles. "I'm in favor of glomming onto Morning Breeze and the rest of them, and have an old-fashioned lynching party. That'd fix it."

"And have the rest of the Mayans on top of us," Doc pointed out. "No. I'm going to convince those superstitious fighters I am an extra sort of a guy. I'll run such a whizzer on them that they won't dare to listen to Morning Breeze telling them we're ordinary men!"

Doc paused dramatically, then revealed his plan. "I'm going to bring Long Tom, Johnny, and Ham to life for the warrior sect's benefit!"

Monk digested that. "How?"

"Watch us," Doc suggested, "and you'll catch on."

Working rapidly, Doc pried up paving stones in a line to the thickest part of the surrounding jungle. In the soft earth beneath, he dug a narrow trench.

He had brought with him from the plane a coil of stout piano wire. No greater in diameter than a match, it had a strength sufficient to support several men. This he laid in the trench, afterward replacing the paving stones, careful no evidence remained of their having been disturbed.

The end of the piano wire he ran into the sacrificial well, and straight across and out the other side. To a dead-man-stick anchor some yards beyond he secured the end, uprooting other paving blocks and replacing them so the whole work would go unnoticed.

Directly below the well mouth he rigged a sort of saddle on the wire.

"Catch on?" he asked.

Monk did. "Sure. I hide out there in the brush and give the wire a big pull when you pass the word. Long Tom, Johnny, and Ham take turns sitting in that saddle arrangement. When I pull the wire tight, they will be tossed out of the well. Just like an arrow is thrown from a bow."

"Or a rock from a kid's bean shooter," Doc agreed. "One more little detail."

Inside the well, close to the anchored end, Doc cut the wire. He tied the end in a loop. The other end he secured to that in such a manner that, by yanking on an ordinary twine string which Doc attached, the last man thrown out by the ingenious catapult could separate the wire.

"And you pull in the end, saddle and all," Doc pointed out to Monk. "That gets rid of the evidence, in case anybody is suspicious enough to look into the well."

Johnny, Long Tom, and Ham climbed down into the well, to spend the rest of the night roosting on the jutting ends of the huge rocks which formed the masonry walls.

"Don't get drowsy and fall off!" Monk chided.

"Not much danger!" Long Tom shuddered. "Just you don't let the end of that wire slip out of your hands while I'm in the saddle!"