But the far-thinking brains of Ron Ti and Hul Jok had laid out a carefully evolved plan, and aside from continuing to drive the Lunarions mad with the hated music and evading further collisions with their Aethir-Torps (no light task, either, considering their speed) we of the expedition refrained from using our Ak-Blastors until the Lunarions must have come to the very conclusion our master-strategists desired them to reach eventually—that in some manner we had exhausted our vibratory charges.
At last, one morning we were made the objects of a concerted attack. From all points came hurtling those old-style Aethir-Torps, and we—we fled from before them! Finding that their old-model Ak-Blastors had little or no effect upon us, protected as we were by the Berulion plates, they fell back on their levin-bolts, and these they hurled incessantly, until they, as well as we, were well out of Aerth’s atmosphere, and into the great Ocean of Aethireal Space.
But ever we played that same maddening music, and it acted as powerful incentive to hold them to the pursuit, for they had lost all caution in their rage. And ever, as we fled from before them, we laughed.
And at last, some five million miles from Aerth’s surface, we turned upon them!
Stretched out in a long, curved line, we awaited their coming, and as they came within our range, every Aethir-Torp commenced whirling about as if on a transverse axis, presenting one moment the nose, next a side, then the stern, and again the other side, and once more the stem or prow, in this manner giving play to all six Ak-Blastors—the forward one, the two on each side, and the one pointing to rearward.
And the Lunarions, although heretofore we might not injure them, were soon without protection, their Aethir-Torps shattered, left exposed to the deadly chill of outer space, and their forms, loose though they were in structure, subjected to the awful pressure of the inelastic Aethir!
It compressed their bodies as if they had been density itself. And, having no defense, they instinctively drew close to each other—and Aethiric pressure did all that was necessary.
They were jammed into a single mass, and then we played upon that with the Ak-Blastors until that mass, too, became as nothing!
Only from that blank space where the fiends, the Lords of the Dark Face, had been, floated in all directions a shower or swarm of dull red sparks, which, even as we watched, slowly flickered and burned out in the depths of Abysmal Night!
Ron Ti bowed his head in reverence to that great Power which had permitted us to be the instruments of Its vengeance, signing in the air before him the Looped Cross, symbol of Life.
“As I suspected,” he said, gravely, “they were soulless. They had naught but form and vitality, mind and will—life of the lower order, non-enduring. The red sparks proved that—and even those have burned out, resolved back into the Sea of Undifferentiated Energy. Our work is ended. Let Aerth work out its own rehabilitation. That wondrous race of Aerthons will soon rear the foundations of an even greater civilization than their world has ever before known.”
FOR WOUNDING—RETALIATION
Originally published in Adventure, November 20 1922.
Old Inez Chachalaka threw a pad made from gunny-sacking across the back of the long-legged, one-eyed, lop-eared burro, swung a cluster of the beautiful grass baskets—in the weaving of which she excelled all other members of her tribe, the Pimas—into place, and with much spryness, considering that she was well past eighty-six, mounting first on a convenient boulder, hopped astride the gray burro and kicked him in the ribs with her bare, bony heels.
She was on her way to the trading-store kept by one Brunson. She was out of coffee and sugar, and since she was now wealthy, thanks to the grateful if lawless Ben Mallock, she saw no reason for stinting herself.
Coming back after her “shopping trip,” she suddenly stopped her mount, and stared at something lying fairly in the middle of the trail.
For a moment she could scarcely credit the evidence of those two faithful servitors, her eyes.
Inez had a lucky streak that way—she was forever finding something or some one—but a baby—a tired, disconsolate, dirty little Pima child of the same sex as herself, sound asleep, with its absurd thumb stuck in its ridiculous slit of a mouth—at least three miles from anywhere—it was too much for Inez!
Hurriedly dismounting, she approached the sleeping infant. No sooner had she touched it than the coal-black eyes flew open, the mouth followed suit, and from the mite’s lungs issued a roar fit to wake the dead.
Inez was appalled! Then with the swift instinct of woman the world over, without stopping to placate the wrathful small one, she picked it up, chuckling delightedly at the soft, yielding feel of the little figure.
Something in the wizened old face evidently reassured the imp, for it ceased its howls as suddenly as it had commenced. It another instant it was chuckling back to the old woman. The entente cordiale had been established.
How did she work it? That’s a mystery deep and unfathomable.
But if Inez ever undertakes to make love to a full-grown mountain lion, it’s a safe bet that inside seven minutes, she’ll have him sitting up, rolling over, and playing dead! Some fascinating—Inez!
She tried to pry some information from the little tad. And met with mighty poor luck. Either it didn’t know where it came from, or how it got there in the trail, or else with innate cussedness, it didn’t propose to tell. And it didn’t!
Really, Inez was just as well-satisfied. If she didn’t know where it belonged, she couldn’t very well take it back.
On the other hand, it wasn’t hers. Findings isn’t always keepings.
All right then; she would advertise in the Pima Daily News Lost and Found column—something like this:
Tearing a small wisp of cloth from the toddler’s dress, she tied it to a bush in plain sight. This read—
“Baby found at this spot.”
A stick, one end pointed, the other notched and laid in the trail clearly stated:
“Finder gone this direction. Follow the arrow!”
A shred torn from her own dress and tied about the impromptu arrow would inform any distracted searchers that the “Finder is a woman,” thereby relieving any mother with two grains of common sense of needless worry, and giving assurance that the little midget was safe and in good hands in A-1 condition.
Her advertisement written, Inez started homeward, serenely content with herself and the day’s events.
Reaching the jacal she opened a can of milk and set about the first duty of the desert-dweller to a guest—that of filling said guest’s aching void, pronto!
* * * *
George Two-Deers, with his wife, his wife’s sister, Chaska, and his tiny daughter, little Star-gleam, were on an auto tour in that part of the desert country.
George was twenty-two years of age, his wife nineteen, and Chaska was fifteen. The Star-gleam was going on three.
George and his wife were both products of the Indian school in California. Now he was “land-looking,” actuated by that universal craving for a home of his own, which is a fixed obsession with all married folks, regardless of race, age or color.
They were camped at a water-hole over a mile from the trail where Inez found the baby.
Something had gone “funny-ways” with the flivver, and Mr. and Mrs. Two-Deers were remarkably busy.
Chaska took the little imp and went for a stroll.
When she was within a couple of hundred yards of the private trail old Inez had worn in her pilgrimages to and from the trading-store the young Star-gleam had snatched at her string of beads.
Naturally, the string broke.
Chaska hurriedly set the baby down and crawled about salvaging the wreckage.
Having recovered the most of them, she commenced re-stringing her precious necklace.
That done—she fell asleep!
Star-gleam became afflicted with “explorer’s itch” and started.
After a bit, she got sleepy, and selected the middle of a trail as her temporary bo
udoir.
And old Inez annexed a baby!
Later, when “dad,” “maw,” and “auntie” bulged in on the scene, Inez realized that she had four fast friends. Star-gleam was the fastest!
She swore by old Inez and promptly swore in her baby prattle—at least, the sounds she emitted couldn’t be interpreted as anything else—-at any one attempting to pry her loose!
The upshot was that the Two-Deers outfit moved camp and took up temporary residence about a hundred yards from the jacal of Inez.
Within a week, George had found just what he was looking for.
Any white man would have passed the place up in disgust.
Not so Mr. Two-Deers. To his englamoured sight the arid, barren stretch of earth which had taken his eye represented an embryonic paradise.
Wherefore, he stepped on the gas and blew in to interview Kyle, the agent.
Stopping in front of Brunson’s trading-store, he left his car and hurried across the street to the agency.
Kyle, after the manner of Indian agents, was anything but cordial. Men of his stamp all too frequently transpose the word “authority” into “Autocracy.”
And then people wonder why the agent and the reservation Indians are in a state of perpetual, if thinly-veiled hostility toward each other!
But if Kyle was brusque and overbearing, George was patient and persistent.
Inwardly, Kyle cursed all education—when applied to “The Wards of the Nation.” It gave them too clear an insight into their rights and—wrongs.
The interview terminated in Kyle giving his promise to run out in his Gar to the jacal of Inez, meet George there, and look over the desired location.
And, for a wonder, he did, in less than a week after George made application for an allotment.
Kyle had his short-comings as well as his long-goings. A pretty face—of the other sex—and he immediately qualified for the office of target for the “fool-killer.”
His first sight of Chaska took his breath. She was a howling little beauty for a fact.
Still, Kyle was old enough to have been her Daddy, and he should have been old enough to be sensible, but he wasn’t.
He chucked her under the chin, making some idiotic remark, and staggered back with two long, bleeding scratches from eye to jawbone on the left side his erstwhile grinning face.
The impulsive little wild-cat had clawed him!
Enraged, his open hand landed with vigor on her delicate, flower-like cheek, and Chaska was knocked sprawling. Her slender brown fingers curled about a conveniently handy dornick, and she scrambled hastily to her feet.
Right then George took a hand in the merry little war!
He was a pretty hefty guy—more than one white on opposing foot-ball teams could give testimony thereto, after playing against the “braves” of the Indian School—and he was no slouch with the gloves. Also, he held himself the equal of any man, be he white, red, green, blue, or—yellow!
His fist started somewhere about the center of the earth and gave a perfect imitation of a pile-driver working upward, with Brother Kyle’s jaw as the pile-cap.
Kyle was mad all the way through, and his dignity had been jarred, but so was his head when that unholy wallop connected. And his head got jarred again—sudden—when his feet flew up and he landed on the region of his cow-lick. It was no good time to go to sleep, but that’s what he did, nevertheless!
One little mistake was made by Mr. Two-Deers. Instead of frisking Kyle while he had him quiescent, he soused him with a canteen of water, and Kyle gasped, grunted and sat up.
If he had been mad before, he was now in a murderous frenzy. He, Kyle! Struck and knocked out by an Indian—an Indian! It was—or would have been—unbelievable save and except for a sorely aching jaw and a most remarkable pain in his neck, a ringing and sizzling in both ears, and a queer, numb feeling at the back of his head.
“Hell’s angels!” he snarled. “You—mud colored—! Hit me, will you?”
In his hand appeared a full sized Government model Colt’s .45 automatic. A slug from that was guaranteed to stop an elephant in full charge.
Kyle was quick—considering the shape he was in—but pretty little Chaska was “jest a leetle shade faster on the shoot!”
Her graceful, shapely arm flew back and forward again.
The dornick she had been cherishing took the infuriated agent where it would do the greatest good—squarely over the ear—adding another bump to those already collected—and Kyle, realizing that it had been his busy day and that he felt tired, sighed gently and took another nap!
* * * *
He awoke to find old Inez bending over him, trying first aid to the sleeping—modus operandi the same as used by George—nice, sloppy, wet water, liberally poured from a five-gallon coal-oil can fitted with a baling-wire handle.
With a groan, he sat up and glared about.
“Where’s that—?” he demanded.
“Gone went!” Inez explained succinctly, then added: “Him took you’ gun, too! Him gone Mesico! Him bad Injun!”
“Why’n’t somebody stop him?” Kyle howled furiously.
Inez shrugged.
“Only me here. Me ol’ womans. Why me wan’ stop him? Him got you’ gun, me tell you one time a’ready! Gun go bang! No Inez! Goo’by me! Why you no stay ’wake an’ stop him for you’self?”
Kyle, groaned again. He felt like groaning.
“All right, Inez,” he mumbled. “No use me chasing him while he’s got my gat. Besides, I’m sick! I’ll git him some day!” And he scowled malevolently.
Once in his car he felt a trifle better.
“Inez,” he said, simulating a heavy joviality he was far from feeling, “you’re a pretty good old gal. Here’s a dollar for you. If that — comes ’round here again, let me know, an’ I’ll give you fifty of ’em! Fifty dollars, sabe?”
“Sure me sabe!” nodded Inez, but as the car rolled off, she muttered something which, had he heard it, would have cost Kyle many an uneasy moment, for it was the Pima “Declaration of Unrelenting War.” War, which could never end until the enemy was exterminated.
For Inez had been as deeply smitten by the charms of the little Star-gleam, as that imperious small one had been captivated by the old woman’s infectious grin and heartwarming chuckle.
And now, unless Kyle was eliminated, she would never hold that soft, cunning little imp to her lonely old heart again.
Decidedly, Inez had it in for Brother Kyle, and, like most kindly and tenderhearted people, once arouse her animosity, and she would prove implacable.
The little shindy with the Two-Deers’ outfit was but a prelude. The desert is mighty dry territory, but when it does rain there, Old Man Noah’s shower-bath was a drought by comparison.
* * * *
Two days later Kyle was packing a grouch that caused all other troubles he owned to seem like unmitigated joys.
A huge touring-car stopped before his door barely two hours after sun-up.
A big, gray-haired, gray-eyed man alighted, and proved to be the new Government inspector, and with him traveled his daughter, a golden-haired, rose-and-lily featured, blue-eyed young lady whose gracious smile gave the susceptible agent “heart-trouble.”
Kyle put in the entire morning showing them about.
Charmed by the flattering interest and attention evinced by the sunny-haired Radiance, he waxed vain-glorious—the saga, briefly, thus—
“Irrigation—Civilization—Me, Kyle!” And just then Pete Horgan, Indian policeman, hove into view, hazing ahead of him three Pima bucks sociably hand-cuffed together, howling drunk on “boot-leg” of a peculiarly virulent sort smuggled into tire reservation from south the border!
Pete was using language—also a club. The inspector’s daughter took one look—so did Kyle—so did the Inspector—then she, the adorable one, murmured softly but distinctly:
“Ah, yes! All the benefits of civilization!” And added insult, to injury by an unmistakable, “Tee-hee!”
Kyle turned red clear to the back of his neck! Naturally, he felt still better when the inspector quietly remarked—
“This can be explained, Mr. Kyle?”
Mr. K. explained—too profusely—and when his stock of breath grew scant, the inspector looked bored—incidentally, unconvinced.
* * * *
The next morning the inspector coolly announced that he would tour the reservation without a guide, he wished to inspect for the Government, not for Kyle. And he advised the deflated and crest-fallen agent to hump himself and dig a pit wherein the booze-runners might tumble.
The advice annoyed Kyle exceedingly.
He had reasons for not digging holes—the exercise sometimes raised blisters of a painful sort!
The inspector’s car stopped before a tiny jacal.
The horn blared and a quaint, withered, and unbelievably wrinkled old woman bobbed out the door.
In flawless Pima the inspector asked her her name.
His daughter’s eyes widened as her usually staid and dignified dad hurled his body out of the driver’s scat with a profane shout of:
“Hell’s bells! Inez, d’you remember me?’’
The old crone peered into the face of the big man for a moment, then gave an ear-to-ear grin.
“Sure me know!” she cackled. “You L’ten’t Shane! You one time chase Apache—him carry me off—you catch—turn me loose—me never forget—”
Then pointing one bony linger at his companion—
“You get young wife? Plenty sweet!”
“—, no!” he roared. “She’s my daughter!”
“O-o-o-oh?” quavered old Inez, not a whit abashed. “Me only joke! Me know preety like her no marry weeth fat ol’ mans like peeg!”
Inspector Shane—one-time a slender and dapper lieutenant in the —th Cavalry—gasped; then catching the gleam in the old torment’s eye, he roared again—this time with laughter.
“Light down, Maisie,” he guffawed. “Your old dad’s met up with a friend! We’re due for a long visit! I can learn more from Inez in one hour than the whole Indian Bureau could find out in six months any other way.”
The Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK™, Vol. 4: Nictzin Dyalhis Page 23