The Second Western Megapack

by Various Writers

  Nevada turned his pale eyes to the other hillock. Sprawled across the summit of it was a great stone and adobe building, that made the huts squatting in the village below it took meaner by contrast.

  “The Castle of No Return,” Utah McCatchy was saying, “on account of plenty hombres who git inside never come out again. Even the Penitentes ain’t got much use for the place!”

  Nevada was listening to his partner with only half of his attention. His eyes were on the two tall stone towers rising from either end of the great hacienda. Wires were strung between them. He could just make them out through the gathering dark.

  “I’ve heard it said,” McClatchey was going on, “that parts of the castle was built clean back in Aztec times. The Penitentes have added to it since. The boss Penitente hangs out thar and some of the things I’ve heard it said they do thar would curl yore hair. They go clean back tuh Bible times for a lot of their notions.”

  “And right up to date for the rest of ’em,” Nevada cut in. “Those wires strung between them towers are one of these here aerials, which means they got a rad-io in one of the towers. And I’ll betcha on a outfit that size they can send out stuff as well as git it in. Fella, yore Penitentes didn’t put up that rad-io. It’s the work of them damned furriners.”

  Utah nodded. “Yo’re right there, Jim. Makes my toes itch to tromp them sidewinders. An’ now,” he added gloomily, as they watched the platoon of soldiers carrying the pseudo woodcutter’s figure up the hill toward the castle, “we got to figger out a way to get inside that gate, grab that hombre they’ve done pulverized, git our gold which is bound to be in that danged castle, and the hombres responsible for killin’ ol’ Dan Conover, and then get them and us back out to the Border.”

  Nevada chuckled. “Let’s just concentrate on getting inside that fence,” he said dryly.

  He had hardly spoken the words when a far-off drone, like a bumble bee buzzing, came to them. Utah jerked. “Leapin’ blue blazes,” he exclaimed hoarsely, “it’s that danged airyplane comin’ back.” Then his canny old eyes surveyed the darkening plateau, and he relaxed a little. “They won’t see us here, at that,” he chuckled comfortably. “It’s gittin’ too dark.”

  “Yeah?” Nevada drawled sarcastically. As he spoke, a brilliant light flooded the plateau, for flood lamps, half-buried in the sandy topsoil of the mesa came suddenly alight.

  The radiance was blinding for a moment. Utah blinked like an old owl. “An’ now,” he growled, “we stand out like a wart on a sore thumb! Jim, we cain’t stay here, and there ain’t no danged sense in goin’ back. What in hell are we goin’ to do?” Nevada Jim looked at his old partner. There was a flaring, ugly gleam suddenly in his pale eyes. “When you can’t go back, feller, you got to go forward. Climb yore cayuse, and don’t forget that toy soldier salute.” He fixed Utah with his eyes, and said sternly: “Don’t open that ugly trap of yores, and don’t look surprised at anything I say.”

  He pulled the little red notebook from his hip pocket again. “Mebbe this here souvenir will be a sort of passport through the gate.”

  Utah blinked at the book. “That thing will more’n likely be a passport tuh hell,” he said gloomily.

  * * * *

  Mounted, and riding again, as though they were just reaching the end of the steep, precipitous trail, Nevada led the way toward the sentry-gate. Through eyes that appeared not to notice such things, he watched the sentries jerk to attention, grips tightening on their rifles, and then they relaxed as Nevada Jim shot his arm skyward in that stiff-arm salute.

  Lounging carelessly in his saddle, Nevada leaned forward, and his hand brought the red-leather book from his pocket. One sentry dropped his rifle at sight of it. The other paled, like a man about ready to faint.

  “Found this down in the canyon,” Nevada said in Spanish masking his surprise at the sensation the notebook caused, “after that old charcoal burner passed by. We were doin’ a little prospectin’, and by the time we picked up this here book, he was too far ahead to catch. Looked like he was comin’ up here, so we figured to bring it to him.”

  “Si, si senor,” one of the sentries stuttered. “Andale, Ramon,” he addressed the other sentry, “press the button. Let these senores enter.”

  Nevada watched the wire portals swing wide. In the air above, the drone of the silver monoplane had increased to a roar. The plane would soon be landing, and before that happened, they had to find some hiding place.

  He pushed his mount through the gate with Utah close at his heels, heard it clank shut behind them. And as it did, Nevada Jim James saw that they had made a mistake.

  A sneering grin parted the lips of the Mexican by the control board.

  “You are veree smart, senores,” he said in English, “but you make one leetle mistake. Thees is not the first time you have visited Tres Cruces. For if you have not been here before, how would two desert rats like you hombres know the Commandante’s own salute?”

  Utah McClatchey started to bluster out something, and then both of them saw it was too late to talk.

  The Mex sentries were jerking up their rifles, but they didn’t know they were facing the Hellers from Helldorado, men who could spot a man to the draw and beat him to the shoot.

  Nevada’s gun seemed to leap into his hand of its own accord, but fast as he was, old Utah’s Peacemaker was the first to roar. His shot caught the sentry who had never learned to shoot first and talk afterward right in the teeth. Nevada dropped the other with a bullet through the forehead, before his rifle could speak.

  “That’ll teach them hombres not to shoot jackasses and gringos,” Utah chuckled as he pouched his smoking gun.

  “And us to quit being so smart about salutin’,” Nevada said grimly. “Take a look,” he gestured with his Colt, at the closed gate behind them, then at twisting alleys out in front of them. The very thing was happening that they had hoped to avoid. Alleys were filling with people—Mexicans in those black uniforms, Penitentes in ragged cotton drawers and dirty blouses. The shots had brought them out.

  Utah cursed. “We got about as much chance now of hidin’ out till we see what’s goin’ on here as we have of climbin’ golden stairs tuh Heaven.”

  Nevada Jim’s eyes were sparkling suddenly. He laughed harshly, and gestured at the Castle of No Return. “One of them towers,” he called, “would make a mucho fine fort. Andale, amigo.”

  He struck spurs to his mount, and dropped the reins along the big animal’s neck. Hunched low in the saddle, with a flaming gun in each hand, he pounded away up the straight street toward the castle. Utah came racing along right behind him, whooping each time he let go a shot at a head poking from a hut.

  “Like old times,” he yelled. “I recollect oncet when we shot up Tombstone when we were pups!”

  Darkness aided them in their flight once they were past the spread of floodlights marking out the landing field. Above the roar of their guns, Nevada heard the plane coming in. He grinned. Somebody was going to be a mighty sore jasper when he reached town and saw what had happened to a pair of his tin soldiers.

  Lead was beginning to shower about them now, and from somewhere behind them came the sudden ominous rat-a-tatt-tatt-ing of a machine gun. But that single burst of fire was all that came from the gun. Nevada jerked around in his saddle to see why. It was dark, and he was riding fast, but he caught an impression of white shapes, and black, too, writhing in the dust of the street. The machine gun had taken a toll of Penitentes and their own men!

  * * * *

  The castle loomed ahead of their racing mounts. One of the great stone towers, that were a good forty feet high from base to top, faced them. Nevada saw a domed, iron-banded oak door swing open. Another of the black-clad men leaped into view. Light from behind outlined him. He had a stubby-barreled machine gun in his hands.

  Utah’s lead knocked him back into the tower. “Peacemaker’s is still best when you use ’em fust,” he chuckled.

  Side by side they left their mounts.
Nevada risked a glance back down the hill as he passed through the tower door. A confused mass of yelling, raving mankind was filling the street from side to side. He slammed the door, noting the solidness of it with satisfaction, as he dropped a heavy bar in the iron slots that locked it.

  He was conscious suddenly of a strange hum filtering down from above. Utah was already heading for a flight of stairs leading up to a hole in the heavily beamed ceiling.

  “Come runnin’, Jim,” he yelled across his shoulder. “We might just as well raise as much hell as possible. We ain’t ever goin’ to get outta this danged town alive now!”

  Nevada, for once in his life, was prone to agree with one of Utah’s gloomy prophesies. Three steps at a time, he followed McClatchey, but before he reached the second floor he heard a crash and the humming noise stopped. Nevada saw why as he reached the second tower room. Utah had found himself an iron bar somewhere, and his powerful old arms were laying it here and there into every mechanical device that filled this room.

  The old Heller grinned at Nevada, gesturing at the tangled mass of machinery and wires that he was demolishing with each swing of his bar. “Reminds me of a nest o’ rattlesnakes, Jim, an’ I always tromp ’em.”

  Nevada stared at the wreckage, a wicked gleam in his eyes. “Feller, there ain’t no tellin’ what we’ll run into before we’re through here. Let’s keep movin’, until we locate that gringo lawdog.”

  Utah eyed the destruction he’d wrought. “Nobody’s goin’ to fix this outfit very soon,” he said with satisfaction. “I jest hope there’s more of these contraptions in the room above this’n.”

  Nevada’s Peacemaker punctuated his partner’s words with a roar, echoed almost instantly by the sharper explosion of an automatic. Utah turned just in time to see a figure that seemed to be all arms and legs come tumbling down from another tower room above them.

  Nevada leaped forward. He kicked an ugly looking automatic from the man’s fingers. “This hombre,” he explained casually to McClatchey, “tried to pull a sneak on us.”

  “You only hit him in the laig,” Utah remarked. “Yo’re slippin’, Jim,”

  “Hell!” Nevada exclaimed, “all I could see was his foot and gun hand. I had to sort of aim around the corner.”

  Some sort of battering ram had been brought to bear on the heavy door downstairs. The sound of the ram against the solid oak sounded like the boom of an ancient Aztec drum.

  The man on the floor heard it, too. He showed his gold-filled teeth and snarled at Nevada Jim’s ugly, beard-stubbled face above him. “You will pay for this, mister!” He spoke English with a clipped, Oriental accent.

  Nevada bent over him, smiling evilly. “I’m shore glad you can talk English,” he drawled. “On account there’s somethin’ we wanta know.”

  “I will tell you nothing!” the man snapped. “When The Commandante captures you, you will pay for this with your life.”

  “My life ain’t wuth a tinker’s damn, right now,” Nevada grinned. “So I got nothin’ to lose, amigo, by taking you with me when I go.” He twirled one of his big Colts on a finger, and looked speculatively at the little Oriental. “All you got to do is tell me where they took the gringo dressed up like a Mex woodchopper, and I’ll leave you here for yore pards to find when they git this far.”

  The saffron-faced man stared fascinatedly at the big gun in Nevada’s hands. It looked very much to him as though the lanky, ugly American would just as leave shoot him as look at him. He decided that life was very sweet.

  “The man you speak of is in the other tower,” he said sullenly, “in The Commandante’s office.”

  A crash from the room above punctuated the man’s statement. Nevada saw him wince. “That’s my pard,” he explained dryly. “His life ain’t wuth a tinker’s damn either, but he’s havin’ a bell of a lot of fun while it lasts!”

  He left the wounded foreigner, whose leg was broken, and took the stairs to the third story.

  “This is wuss’n rattlesnakes,” Utah greeted him. Nevada’s gray eyes encompassed this highest tower room. Control boards with dials on them covered most of the available wall space. Here, he realized was the real pulse of this strange old castle the Aztecs had built. Here was proof, if they needed it, that they had stumbled onto something a lot bigger than themselves. It made him feel humble suddenly, and then he jerked himself back to the realities of the moment.

  “That law-dog is in the other tower,” he said to Utah. “Mebbyso we can climb across the roof from here tuh there.”

  McClatchey wiped his brow. “We can try!” he grunted.

  Nevada Jim had already moved to one of the modern windows that had been set into the walls of this control room. Pushing it open, he stepped through. The roof covering this section of the castle, was flat, with a built-up parapet, pueblo style.

  Utah followed him, but as he slipped from the window a howl from the flagstoned plaza told that they had been discovered. Instantly, lead started chipping stone from the parapet at their side as they dropped to their knees.

  “A man ain’t got no privacy around this place, Jim,” Utah grumbled.

  Nevada grinned as he led the way along the flat roof on all fours. Utah was enjoying himself, or he wouldn’t complain so much. They had been in some tight spots during their lives, but nothing such as this where every loophole of escape appeared closed.

  Voices lifted from the courtyard again, as the Penitentes and foreigners there saw Nevada Jim’s lathy figure lift and smash open a window of the Commandante’s office with the butt of his six-gun. Like a jack-in-a-box he popped through the opening before the guns below could fire. McClatchey dove after him, struck the floor on hands and knees.

  “This is more sport than dodgin’ posses,” he drawled. “How’s the law-dog?” he added as he scrambled to his feet and with the old gleam of destruction in his eye, started behind the biggest, shiniest desk he had ever seen. There was a row of buttons along one edge of the desk. Utah reached out a hand for them.

  “The law-dog is all right,” the blue-eyed stranger answered, “but he won’t be if you press those buttons. One of them will electrocute me. The rest will just make this seat uncomfortably hot!” He was strapped in a big metal chair in front of the desk.

  Nevada had already started to unbuckle the straps holding him. “Feller,” he drawled. “I’m goin’ to feel like lettin’ you set here if you don’t tell us what you know about this place, pronto!”

  “My name,” the steely-eyed man answered, “is Dick Tarrant. I am an Inspector for the United States, Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  Utah looked up from behind the desk. “I mighta knowed it,” he growled. “Yo’re one of these here watchdogs of de-mock-cracy, I’ve heerd so much about.”

  Tarrant nodded, smiling through lips that had been beaten almost to a pulp. “Yes,” he said, “and you boys may not know it, but you’re better watchdogs than I am!”

  “How so, amigo?” Nevada Jim asked quietly. “This is the headquarters of a Fifth Columnist organization whose aim may sound fantastic to you, but I assure you it isn’t. Their plan is to foment unrest here in Mexico, and in the U. S. with the idea of making an undercover attempt to invade and capture the Western States!”

  “Phew—” Nevada Jim James sounded like a teakettle about to boil over. “I’d a-guessed most anything but that.”

  Tarrant stopped him with a quick gesture. “I want to finish,” he explained swiftly, “while there’s time. The only name anyone knows the leader of this organization by is The Commandante. It is known, however, that he is one of the most dangerous men alive. A genius at organizing coups such as they are planning here. He has participated in the downfall of other great nations lately. We had lost track of him until I come across you boys out at Dan Conover’s mine in the Chiricuahuas, and you gave me the lead I needed by mentioning Tres Cruces. Incidentally, I went there that night to supervise the loading of the gold Dan had in his possession, and your friend the Tucson sheriff
and his deputies were coming to guard it on the return journey to Tombstone.”

  “But these here danged Fifth Columnists beat us to the punch and stole it!” McClatchey raved from behind the desk, where he was busily engaged. “Why the lowdown, ornery pups!”

  Dick Tarrant’s blue eyes sparkled mischievously. “But you were planning on stealing it yourselves,” he pointed out.

  “Hell,” Nevada cut in, “that’s different!”

  “That money,” Tarrant rapped, “plus one other thing, means more than you boys may realize.” His face looked strained suddenly. “The theft, and the presence of The Commandante, means they are just about set to start their uprising. One of us has got to escape and carry word to loyal Mexican troops and their air force of the plot, or God knows what will happen.”

  “We got about as much chance of doin’ that,” Utah groaned mournfully, “as we have to crawlin’ backwards through a knothole.”

  And as though to prove the prophesy of his words, a voice winged up to them from the base of the tower. A voice filled with imperious authority. “This is The Commandante speaking! If you two American outlaws will deliver the Government man you have with you into my hands, unharmed, I will guarantee the two of you safe passage to the border.”

  McClatchey was leaping for the window, old gun upraised, even as Tarrant caught him by the arm. “Don’t do that,” he said hoarsely. “The Commandante will be surrounded by at least a half dozen men who look exactly like him. You’d never get the right man. It’s been tried before!”

  “The thing to do,” he went on earnestly, “is give me up. You’ll be able to carry word to the Tucson sheriff. He’ll know how to set the wheels in action.”

  Nevada Jim grinned. “Yeah,” he drawled, “he shore will. He’ll slap us behind bars so fast it’d make your head swim. Mebbe you’re forgettin’ we’re wanted in every danged State this side o’ the Rockies. Not to mention,” he added dryly, “that this here Commandante would have us shot in the back soon as he got his hands on you. Nope, gents, we got to think of something else.” He fell silent as he stepped to one of the tall windows that let light into the tower.