Tuffy looked down into the Mexican’s rage-filled face. He drew back his fist to pound it into the fellow when he heard a scream of warning from the girls. Quickly he doubled over and then slid sideways. One of the crew went sailing over his back.
But at that same instant the man at Tuffy’s feet sprang at him, a long, naked blade in his right hand. Tuffy jerked back and felt the cold steel slide past him and bury itself into the wood of the door. A fist to the point of the knife-wielder’s jaw finished him for the moment.
Tuffy turned to face the rest of the crew.
Five of the most evil-looking men he had ever faced in any kind of fight were lined up on the deck waiting for him to come out. All held knives in their hands. On their brutal, ugly faces were grins of unholy joy at thought of the butchery that was to come. Behind them cringed the three girls.
Swiftly Tuffy pulled out the knife from the wood behind him. With it in his left hand, he crouched in the small opening waiting for their next move. One by one he could handle them. In the open he wouldn’t have a chance.
Tuffy felt a surge of power go through him. Back there on the scow he had thought great thoughts about what he would do for these three girls. And now was his chance. Now if ever they needed him. They depended on him to bring them through safely. He’d do it too. Those Mexicans weren’t going to stop him now.
Then something happened—
The three girls who had been crying and weeping in each other’s arms suddenly leaped on the backs of three of the crew. That left only two of that free to meet Tuffy.
At once he sailed into them. One he laid low with a sledgehammer blow. When the other came at him with knife upraised, Tuffy dodged, snapped the man’s arm back, and sank his own blade in the fellow’s throat.
The three others of the crew meanwhile were having their troubles trying to toss off the biting, scratching cats on their backs. Tuffy grabbed one of them and with three swift blows put him down, the girl still on top of him, tearing and gouging. The other two he grabbed, one in each hand, his fingers seizing their throats in a death grip. The girls on their backs were holding the men’s hands from using their knives.
Then came the voice of the captain to put a quick end to the fight.
“Get back, all of you,” he bellowed.
Tuffy looked up to see a pair of revolvers leveled at him. He released the two men who squirmed away from him as fast as they could.
With the three girls, their dance outfits in shreds, behind him, Tuffy faced the captain.
“If you know what’s good for you,” Tuffy said indignantly, “you’ll bring your men under control and get us back to land as fast as you can. We are American citizens.”
“You kill Stephano. I feex you, I kill you and take girls. And when we are through with them, we use them for bait, si… Bait for tiger sharks. And who finds out? I think that ees good way for to revenge Stephano, no es verdad!”
Tuffy looked up into the man’s insane face. He could feel the girls cowering at his back. If they were all to die, the three girls were going to have the worst of it. Somehow or other, his own quick death didn’t seem so very terrible.
The man cocked one of his revolvers and leveled it at Tuffy’s heart.
Was this to be the end, he wondered vaguely? The end to all those grand ideas for living? There was nothing he could do to save himself. The captain was a full dozen steps away. Two black holes yawned at him. They would presently spurt flashes of crimson and unseen slugs of lead. And that would be the end of him.
Tuffy felt a nudge at his back. One of the girls was poking him. He slipped his hand behind him and felt the sharp point of a blade slide between his thumb and forefinger.
The captain was talking to him again, reluctant to end the delightful torture of his victim.
“You will die, mi amigo. But the girls, they will not die for awhile. I will take thees girls, one by one. I will drink the first drink from each little lovely bottle, si. After me my men can drink. My five men who are left, they will drink the three bottles empty. And then we toss them to the sharks. Three empty bottles. Do you not envy us, mi amigo?”
Swiftly the blade flew through the air, straight for the captain’s throat. And there it struck, hilt out. A look of wonderment crossed the captain’s face. He tried to look down at the flow of blood which suddenly gushed out from him.
Then he toppled over.
Almost before the body touched the deck, Tuffy had covered the distance and grabbed up the revolvers as they clattered at the man’s feet. With one in each hand he faced the crew. The three girls crouched down in a compact heap to avoid being in the way should Tuffy have to shoot at the men. But all the fight had been taken from the Mexicans.
“I ought to shoot every damn’ one of you,” Tuffy swore. “You’re just a lot of rats. But I’ll give you a chance. Get this tug going. And see that we keep going. I’m going to sit right out here, and at the first sign of treachery, I’ll cut you down like dogs. Do you understand?”
The men nodded meekly.
With the girls’ help in guarding the men from any possible mischief, Tuffy held the course steady all that day until late in the afternoon they sighted the mainland. And before dark they had reached San Diego and had firm ground under them again.
* * * *
While the girls skipped off to a friend’s home to be bathed and fed and clothed, Tuffy Scott saw the crew of the Mexican fishing boat safely in the hands of the authorities.
And only after he had a shave and a haircut, and had borrowed a suit of clothes from a seaman friend of his did Tuffy call on the girls to say good-bye to them.
Silently he shook their hands. Almost he wished he were back on that old scow with them still in those little silk dance outfits instead of the dresses they now wore. He, alone with those three beautiful blondes. The boys would never believe it. He was even beginning to wonder if he believed it himself.
At his forlorn expression the girls burst into sudden laughter. There was a merry twinkle in their eyes. It was Honey who finally made the proposition to him.
“You know, Tuffy,” she said mock-seriously, “we’re mighty famous people now. The papers have been full of us for days. And you should read what they say about your rescue of us from those bold bad Pancho Villas.”
“Get to the point, Honey,” Mai urged.
“Give me time, darling,” Honey laughed. “Anyway, Tuffy, with a bunch of us making the headlines, and our pictures plastered over the front page of every big time newspaper in the country, we’ve decided to cash in on it. We’re making up an act, and we want you to be in it!”
“Me, in your act!” Tuffy cried in disbelief.
“Sailor, you’ll make a hit!” Mai said. “With those shoulders of yours—boy! A diamond in the rough. Won’t he, girls?”
“Aw, no, you’re kidding,” Tuffy laughed at their eagerness. “What about later—when the excitement dies down. What then?”
“Well,” Zoe replied, “we really are pretty fair dancers, you know, and we can always get along. We’ll pay you a salary just to stay with us, whether you work in the act or not. You can be our bodyguard. It sorta looks like we need one anyway. You’ll never make as much as a deckhand.
“And you can go everywhere with us. And there’ll be lots of pretty girls. And plenty to drink. And places to go. Just a swell life. How about it, Tuffy?”
“Aw heck, girls,” Tuffy blushed. “You’re swell to me. I’m crazy about all of you. But I wouldn’t be no good in that sort of life. All I’m good for is swabbing decks and such things. A guy just doesn’t up and leave the sea, you know. But I would sorta like to ask a last favor of you.”
“Sure thing,” the three exclaimed.
For a moment Tuffy hesitated. Then he reached over clumsily and kissed each one of the girls full on the lips—and dashed wildly from the house, his eyes gl
owing and his borrowed tie flying free in the wind.
QUEEN OF THE FLAMING ARROWS, by Frank E. Marks
Originally published in Spicy-Adventure Stories, September.1936)
Bush Wyman straightened up his six feet of sinewy body from his transit and jerked a bandana handkerchief from a pocket. He mopped the perspiration from his sun-tanned face and looked along the straight cleared path that his crew were cutting through the jungle.
He stooped and placed his hard gray eye to the instrument again. His muscles tensed. Through an aperture in the verdure the gleaming figure of a girl on horseback flashed before the lens. Wyman swung the barrel of his transit, tried to follow the apparition. The matted vines cut off his view. Then he saw her again as her black mount picked its way across the field of his vision.
Bush Wyman’s blood surged. The girl on horseback was practically nude!
The telescope brought her close. She had reined in her horse and was looking in his direction. Every detail of her glorious youthful body stood out clearly against the green background. Her slender body glowed with the whiteness of marble. Her thighs, clear-cut, over the black steed, were as matchless as sculptured alabaster. Her breasts would have done justice to a statue of Venus.
Her hair was golden, wavy, like the autumn wheat Wyman remembered back home in the States. And then, as he stared breathlessly, the girl jerked the reins with her rounded arms. Horse and rider were swallowed up among the giant orchids and trees.
Wyman stood up, gazed toward where the girl had disappeared. Suddenly, his body went rigid. Something vivid, like a fiery eye, whirred through the jungle leaves. It came with the speed of a comet. Bush Wyman ducked. The flaming object whizzed by his ear. He turned, looked toward the corral behind him. A burro reared on its hind legs, pawed the air with its front hoofs, whinnied, and fell to the ground.
A stableman ran to the fallen animal. The man’s eyes bulged. He turned an ashen face to Wyman, shouted, “My God! Look at this!” Wyman strode to the fallen burro. It was dead.
“See what killed him?” the stableman asked.
Wyman stooped. Half the length of an arrow was embedded in the animal’s chest. The forward end of the weapon had been smeared with asphalt, set afire before it had been sprung from the bow. The portion of the shaft projecting from the beast terminated with a red feather.
“Indians!” the excited mule-tender exclaimed. “None of us are safe in this damn jungle!”
Wyman’s sharp eyes saw a wrapping near the feathered end of the arrow. He opened his pocket knife, cut the fine cord that bound it to the cane rod. It was a small square of white linen paper. On it there was a message written in English on a typewriter. It read: “If you do not want to meet the same fate as your burro, come no farther.” There was no signature.
Bush Wyman handed the slip of paper to the startled man beside him. “Venezuelan Indians don’t use English so fluently, Joe,” he told him. “Neither do they have typewriters.”
He took a map from his field book, spread it open. “See here,” he pointed. “This is Lake Maracaibo. At the south end of it is where we unloaded the Mammoth Oil Company outfit from the steamer. We have to get the machinery through the road we’re building.” Wyman traced his pencil lower, inland. “This round circle is the asphalt bed reported by the airplane survey. We expect to find oil thereabouts.”
“So what?” Joe wanted to know.
“You remember that other gang—the Shale Oil Company? They started two months ahead of us—took another course.”
Joe nodded.
“It’s my hunch they’re trying to throw a scare into us, hold us back until they file on the property themselves.”
“And send a note like that?” Joe asked. “It don’t look like the real thing if they want to make us think it’s Indians.”
Wyman hunched his shoulders. “That dead burro is real enough.” He left the burro keeper, went to the forward end of the cleared line where the crew was hacking at the rank vegetation. He spoke to the foreman, “Go back and run the instrument for me this afternoon. I’m going to do a little scouting ahead.”
“Okay, chief.”
Wyman picked up a machete, went forward to the end of the cleared trail. He plunged into the thickness of the jungle, followed a narrow stream. Huge pitcher plants slapped his perspiring face. He slashed at them with his blade, hacked at their tough stalks, tore through the towering ferns as he trudged along the ravine.
Gay-plumaged macaws chattered in the mangrove trees above him. Monkeys with grotesque white faces gibbered from the branches. The curious bellbird sounded its solitary note: a single ring, like a gong.
Monstrous bats sailed toward Wyman’s head. He struck at them. They darted upward, screeched with a sinister sound. Fat frogs croaked, jumped into slimy holes under Wyman’s feet. He plodded on.
His mind dwelt on the girl he had seen through the telescope of his transit. That she had something to do with the death of the burro he was certain. Maybe the rival oil company had used her in a scheme to frighten his men. Could she be a white Indian? Wyman had read of such a tribe that lived in Venezuela’s interior.
Slicing at the matted vines, ripping into the interlaced barrier that was like woven wire, Bush Wyman reached a clearing. He sat down on a mossy rock. He found a damp cigarette paper in his pocket, rolled some tobacco into a cylinder and lighted it. He blew a fog of smoke into the still air.
Abruptly, Wyman crouched, sprang to his feet. Something had swished the air behind him. Wyman wheeled. He faced a man whose descending arm wielded a club. In that split second Wyman raised his machete. The bludgeon crashed on the blade. The outer end of the club was lopped off. But the portion that remained in the man’s hand furrowed down Wyman’s chest, tore viciously into his flesh.
Wyman winced, felt the rasping pain of his lacerated skin. He plunged at his attacker, raised his blade, brought it down on the man’s skull. His opponent’s head split like a cocoanut.
Wyman stared at the man he had killed. “A white Indian!” he gasped. The native was bare save for moccasins and a breech-clout. His hair was like coal; his cheek bones high; mouth large and sensual.
Yells split the air as Wyman backed against a big tree. He shifted the machete to his left hand and jerked his revolver from its holster. It seemed as though every rock had come to life. Heads and shoulders of white natives appeared everywhere.
Wyman’s gun spewed fire, cracked resonantly through the canyon. An Indian slumped behind a ledge. Bush Wyman’s weapon spat flame at the oncoming horde. Then the hammer of his revolver snapped uselessly against an empty shell. He jammed the gun back into its holster, and raised the machete as the white Indians closed in a semi-circle about him.
A giant of a man stood out in their midst, watching his tribesmen. An Indian took an arrow from his quiver. The giant sprang to the native, jerked the arrow from his hand, threw it to the ground. The native made no further attempt to use his deadly darts.
Like a soft-footed puma, another white brave advanced. Wyman waited until the man was in striking distance and then slashed with his uplifted machete. The Indian sidestepped the descending blade. Wyman stumbled from his own momentum, went to his knees. He scrambled to his feet, punched out with his left fist. It landed on the jaw of the native. The man dropped backward into the muck.
Wyman’s machete cut the air as another Indian approached. But the powerful hands of a man from behind clamped his arms, kept the long knife from falling. The throng of yelping natives closed in, pinioned his legs. Wyman was dragged to the earth.
With lightning swiftness, the Indians jerked Wyman’s arms behind him. Native rope was tied around his wrists. He was pulled to his feet, stood between two muscular men. They held the points of their javelins against his sides. The giant Indian who seemed to be the leader came up to his captive. He took the cartridge belt and revolver from Wyman’s waist.
And then, to Bush Wyman’s amazement, the leader spoke in English, “Follow me!” he ordered. The big native started forward. Wyman was prodded into action. The two guards hugged closely.
Bush Wyman was led over a trail through the forest. They cut across arroyos, plodded over knolls, sloshed along the soggy bed of a stream. At last they climbed a precipitous rise, reached the top, halted. Wyman’s eyes swept the valley below. It was a cleared area under cultivation. In the distance, a village sprawled. Thatched-roofed huts squatted in winding roads. The band descended the hill.
Wrinkled old men stood with open mouths; naked children gaped; squaws stared as the band reached the village and passed along its narrow street. From doorways hung with matting, young girls, white-skinned, peeped out shyly. Wyman’s blood quickened as he caught glimpses of their flashing thighs, their nubile breasts and lithe bodies.
At the far end of the road, the leader who had spoken English, stopped. A large structure of bamboo stood back from the street. It was a two-story house. The upper section projected over the first story and had a veranda that skirted the entire building.
Brightly-colored flowers and pampas grass grew luxuriantly in the garden.
The giant leader looked up toward the veranda. Wyman’s eyes followed his gaze. A door opened. A girl walked to the rail of the portico. She was nude except for a girdle of dried twisted flowers and a necklace of fresher blossoms that sheltered her breasts. Her whole body was a symphony of breathtaking loveliness. Golden hair caressed her curving shoulders. Wyman gasped. It was the girl he had seen through the telescope of his surveying instrument. And she was not an Indian!
The girl stared steadily at Wyman. She spoke something in the native dialect. The leader of the Indians bowed as she went back into her room. He gave an order to his tribesmen. They turned, left. The giant chief clapped a hand on Wyman’s shoulder, gestured toward the outside stairway. Captive and captor entered the blossoming grounds. Wyman went up the steps.
The Spicy-Adventure Page 24