by Don Wilcox
I didn’t go back for any further exchanges with the German. If the shocks were going to grow to serious proportions there was no telling how he might plan to take advantage of them. In a crisis he was a good man not to be around.
The fuller realization of danger came to me when I saw what a commotion these forewarnings had caused among the wingmen. Mothers swooped down over the hillsides screaming like a midnight fire alarm, calling their children to fly home as fast as wings would carry them. I saw one mother skim along the sand, pick up five little winged urchins, and sail off into the sky.
I didn’t wait to catch the full picture of this confusion. But I heard orders and counter-orders shouted back and forth. Five times before I got out of my cavern hide-out I distinctly heard the savage cry going the rounds that Orchid Wings must pay for this. She and that vonzel must be captured and delivered to Thunder Splitter.
Blackness! And total blackness!
My legs couldn’t carry me fast enough. Coming up from that cinnamon roll tunnel I used every muscle from toe to chin. A jolt had shaken the horizontal window closed just as I had started to crawl out. I had left a couple fingernails—a small price to pay for escaping the squeeze of a few million tons on the back of my neck.
The tunnel rocked under my feet as I progressed. But there was daylight, now, just a few yards ahead. It was daylight dimmed by a rolling cloud of sand and dust, trailing down in the wake of tumbling rocks.
Lucky for Orchid Wings that she hadn’t returned. Wings could have been clipped short by some of the faults that sheared within inches of my stinging fingers.
Now I was out. I jumped back. A boulder bounced down across my path. The odor of sparks mingled with the dust smells. The roaring and crashing came and went like erratic thunder, now close, now only low, sullen echoes from some distant hills.
Should I try the dash amid this fury of tumbling death? If I could once get down to the wide level sand these shattering stones would never reach me. And the wingmen? One glance reassured me. They were soaring for altitude. They meant to rise above the sand clouds. The flat desert was mine—mine to play ostrich in—if I could make it.
I started. Then I fell flat. With a crackle like breaking thunder, a slice of stone as big as the side of a courthouse ripped off the steep bank of mountain directly above me. Down it came, sliding, faster and faster. Above it the scar of dark purple stone widened.
“Granddaddy McCorkle, here comes your grandson Toby!” I uttered the words, hardly knowing what I was saying. The one picturesque thought which leaped into my mind was a bit of whimsical curiosity. I wondered whether that spreading scar of purple stone would retain a spot of red where Mrs. McCorkle’s son Toby got smeared against if.
CHAPTER XXI
Rattle Whiskers’ Riddles
A yellow talon slipped under my mid-section like a pie knife in the hands of an expert. Wings flapped—I saw them out of the corner of my eye, though I couldn’t hear them for all the ungodly roar. Then up, and up, and out of the dust cloud I sailed.
It’s strange, the way the vision of something you expect will sink into your mind’s eye almost as if you actually saw it. I looked down at that wide slab of rock, sliding over me—almost. It roared over the tunnel opening where I had just been, and I gulped, “There goes Toby McCorkle—but for the grace of Rattle Whiskers.”
When the slab had passed on down to a crushed heap of dead stone, I could see through the fog of dust that there simply wasn’t any tunnel entrance left.
Where, I wondered, was the German professor?
“Thanks, friend,” I called up to my winged carrier as soon as we were in the comparative quietness of the echoes that mingled high above the desert. “I thank you, and you can be sure all my grandfathers thank you. I’d have gone to join them in another half second.” Rattle Whiskers put a strong wing to the gale. He was calculating his strokes, like a truck driver trying a new and dangerous road. It didn’t make for a very satisfactory conversation. He answered my questions in riddle.
“Are you taking me to the goddess of white flames?”
“The wind is taking us.”
“I must talk with the goddess,” I said, “And I must find Wells. Do you think he will be there?”
“Ask the goddess.”
“Tell me,” I said, “what brought on this earthquake?”
“Does anyone know?”
“I mean—what do you think? Do you take any stock in this silly rot about breaking tribal customs? How can anything that you do cause these mountains to shake off their sides?”
“Please do not blame it on me,” said Rattle Whiskers.
I wasn’t getting an ounce of opinion out of him. I tried other lines of attack.
“You’ve lived here with the natives all your life. You should know—”
“Not all my life,” said Rattle Whiskers. “I have spent a share of my days in a different world—yours. Careful, there, don’t be squirming. You don’t have to look up at me to talk.”
He took a tighter grip on me and strained his muscles against the accelerating wind.
“I mean you’ve lived here long enough to know everything. Tell me, did you ever see an earthquake like this before?”
“No two earthquakes are ever alike.” I followed through and got a little information on this point. Yes, he had seen some small earthquakes, and any number of avalanches and minor landslides. But he reminded me that there were no vast heaps of broken rock at the bases of most of these peaks. That plant life had never been destroyed on many of the slopes. That the desert rodents abounded in spite of all past geological changes.
“I do not know,” he said, “whether any sand rats will live through this shaking. I do not know whether berry trees will still grow.”
“Maybe the fire goddess will know,” I suggested.
“Maybe the fire goddess will not live through,” he said.
If his pessimism had been a thing of pounds, the weight would have hurled us down like a stone. And yet it wasn’t unwarranted pessimism, considering the way the landscape was changing form. It was just an absence of optimism—and one could not be optimistic when flying through volleys of air concussions. Through a thundering roar like armies rolling over a hundred bridges. Over a desert flowing with massive waves of gray sand. Toward peaks that were taking on new stripes of nakedness as great slices of their rocky sides shattered and fell.
“Do you think,” I said to Rattle Whiskers, “that there is a love between Wells and Orchid Wings that has brought on this catastrophe?”
“Earthquakes are earthquakes,” he said. “Nature is nature.”
I glanced up at him and saw a hint of an amused twinkle in his steady eyes. He didn’t see my glance. He was looking ahead toward the round-topped mountain. But I knew, then, that my last question had not been answered—that he was deliberately holding back whatever answer there might be . . .
The goddess of flames was burning as bright as if the night’s darkness had been around her. The penetrating white of her forehead burned my eyes. She was rising slowly, her head was tilted upward, the beauty of her face held me.
She was not smiling. She did not extend her hand, and I had no fear, this time, that I would be drawn over the edge into the well of fire.
She was ready to talk with me, eager for me to catch the vibrations of her whispered words.
“Your friends,” she said slowly, “have gone . . . They are in the storm . . . It is no passing storm . . . for them . . . You . . . are the one . . . who may help them . . . And you . . . are the one . . . who may help . . . your men . .
“Sure,” I said. “If there’s anything I can do, just tell me—”
“Beware of Cobert . . . He is scheming . . . Once many days ago . . . he communicated . . . with Thunder Splitter.”
“How could that be?”
“Through the ledge . . . Cobert formed a bond . . . He is one . . . to betray . . . your friends . . . He would . . . sell them . . . Beware of him.”
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“Then the thing for me to do,” I said, “is to go after him right away. What’ll I do with him—bring him to you? Will you give him the works like you did those sand rats? You wouldn’t refuse him, would you?”
Her whispered answers sounded awfully calm in contrast to all the uproar of a storming desert, not to mention my own excited outbursts.
“Bring him to me . . . when you can . . . I will wait.”
“Between Wells and me we’ll run the traitor down as quick as this storm—”
“Your friend Wells,” came the whisper, “may never emerge . . . from his storm.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
“To the south,” said the goddess. For a moment the fine, white flames of her eyelids closed. Then shaking her head slowly, she said, “Just now . . . some wingmen . . . have captured him . . . They . . . have bound . . . his hands and feet . . . with cords . . . They are bearing him up . . . higher and higher. . . to join the tribe . . . flying above the blowing sand.”
I turned and looked up into the foggy yellow sky. All I could see, other than the swirling storm, was the bright image of the flame goddess still lingering in my eyes. The intense brightness had burned in so deep that I would keep on seeing her in my mind for many minutes.
But when I looked back into the fiery shaft she was gone. The fires burned dim under the swirling eddies of dust and sand, that spun everywhere before my eyes.
CHAPTER XXII
Into the Vortex
Rattle Whiskers, after depositing me at the pit of fire, had gone to try to find Orchid Wings and Wells, so he had missed out on my visit with the goddess.
Now, alone, I threaded my way down the smooth, unshaken side of the round-topped hill. Nowhere could I see any living thing. The dim outline of Green Tooth guided me on.
Where would I find the gang? How was Maxie faring against this fury? And Slim? Did they know that Cobert’s traitorous mind was planning something more treacherous than earthquakes and avalanches? Where would I find Cobert?
So he would sell a friend of mine—or several of them! Of course he would. He would sell his own brother.
But in what sense did the goddess mean? Would he sell one of us as butchers might sell food? It was conceivable if he were selling to the voracious Thunder Splitter.
A ripping and a clattering of stone came from the Green Tooth pinnacle. I stopped, in defiance of the wave of blowing sand that was carrying me along. It was a sure bet that the towering spire over the tunnel entrances had come toppling down. That was Wells’ tower. In the very top had been some sort of hiding place where he had held forth many hours after his separation from us in those early days.
For a few seconds I saw dearly the greenish gray side of the peak. Yes, the pinnacle had shattered. The part near the top where we had entered the cinnamon roll tunnel so many times was now a heap of crushed rock. I wondered if the dirt didn’t shake all the way down to the Hammerstein and McCorkle rivers.
So these cinnamon roll tunnels were also closed. Once their closing might have caught Maxie and me and the German professor. Now there was no telling whether anyone had been imprisoned. I thought of the clay water jug that Rattle Whiskers had hidden there the first time he ever picked me up.
Without Rattle Whiskers I was lost. The winds were growing more furious. Every winged creature must have tried for high altitudes by this time.
The wind carried me northward. I tried to follow around the base of the Green Tooth. The darkness was like the last of twilight, though it was only mid-afternoon. An occasional flash of lightning helped me to see.
Once I was sure I saw some human figures clinging to the side of the Green Tooth high above me. Another glimpse—they were climbing down—climbing, sliding, rolling. I tried to propel myself toward them. The hurricane winds carried me away.
I drifted, then, like a rowboat in an angry sea. The winds took me north, and west, and again south. I fell and bounced and rolled. A strange power was carrying me along like a leaf in a cyclone.
I passed over one of the shelters of the gang. For an instant I glimpsed Maxie clinging to a post of rock, his hair blowing, his eyes closed against the blasts of sand.
A little farther on I saw the dim outline of a long-legged figure that must have been. Slim. He was fighting his way into the wind, and you could read his determination and his iron will in the lines of his bent-steel body.
On I went, carried along by this magic current of wind, skimming only three or four feet above the surface of the rocks and sand. Occasionally my feet would come down with a solid bump that would nearly break my back. But the jolt would bounce me back into the fury of the wind, and on I would go.
The caprices of this tornado included a whirl through the octagon. I saw heaps of uprooted yellow grass tumbling along. I caught sight of a metal helmet—that of the Greek who had struck this land unconscious and had furnished the latest feast. The helmet, caught loosely between rocks, was banging back and forth in the wind, ringing like a bell. The skull was in it.
Farther on I was rushed past a flopping shield, now sliding, now jumping over the octagon floor. That fighting Greek with the sword was racing after it, yelling defiantly against the howling winds, swinging his weapon at sand clouds or terrified rodents—or me, as he caught sight of me passing a dozen yards out of reach. But the last I saw of him he was far from overtaking his shield.
I bounced and scooted and flew, again to the north, now following the base of the eastern range.
Ahead of me I saw the German professor clinging to, a harness that held two live wingmen. He had their talons bound. He was driving them. They were young boys, as jumpy as a team of panic-stricken horses. But in spite of their fright and frenzy, he was driving them in the direction he wanted to go.
They were moving toward the huge black vortex of the storm—a column of twisting wind that might have been a screaming, spinning tower of smoke coursing northward over the fiat desert. You might live a thousand years and never see a twister half so powerful or dangerous. Yet it was as plain as a lightning flash that this German professor was driving toward it deliberately.
Like it or not, I was heading for it too. The magic wings that had caught me in their grip were speeding me straight toward it.
I saw dead sand rats, I heard a squalling wing child tumbling along helplessly in a cloud of sand, I saw a dead husky with crushed wings. I saw uprooted bushes streaking through the sand. The only lucky living things in all this desert were the winged hosts that now hovered high above the storm. They—and I. Or was it more than luck that I hadn’t been killed?
But my time was at hand. The tower of black smoke swirled closer and closer. The blackness was taking me in. The scream of spinning sands deafened me.
I was hurled down. To crash the surface at such speed would be sure death. But there was no surface. The very ground was in motion with me, everywhere around me.
Then I knew I was somehow falling through the very foundation of this desert world.
And praise be to St. Patrick, I was not alone! A strong pair of gray-brown wings were with me. Rattle Whiskers! His husky talons swung around my waist.
He was shouting something at me, but I couldn’t hear a word. Soon the blackness was so thick I could no longer see him. Why didn’t he let me fall free? Did he think it would be easier for us to die together?
Somehow I kept breathing through the long weird hour of darkness. Sick from dizziness and fright, I kept telling myself, “I’m still alive. I’m still alive . . . This can’t go on. Another swift round of this black vortex and some flying rock will get me sure. But I’m still alive . . . I’m still going down, down, down. Hang On, Rattle Whiskers, hang on!”
I doubt if he ever heard any of my wild soliloquies.
The blackness faded. We were floating down toward the earth. High overhead were dark, swirling clouds streaming down out of a wide expanse of opaque haze.
Toward the horizons the skies were deep blue, the same skies that on
e might see over Africa, America, or even Ireland. But that area of dull gray haze overhead must have been more than a layer of clouds across the zenith.
It must have been the desert of the damned. It had to be. Hadn’t I just fallen through?
“Don’t sunburn your throat,” said Rattle Whiskers. “You might look the territory over and pick out a place you’d like to land.”
“To the west of that sea coast, if you don’t mind,” I said.
CHAPTER XXIII
News on the Wing
As the cities along the coast rose into sharp outlines, I knew the architecture was American. I knew this must be the Atlantic seaboard rising toward us, deep blue, with white feathery lines of surf.
The conversation from there on down dealt me an awful setback. I was about to get my breathing back to normal, after having actually passed out for a time during the descent. But what Rattle Whiskers now told me knocked the wind out of me again.
“Did you see the two wing boys that carried the German professor into the black Whirl?” he asked.
“Yes, I saw them,” I said. “Why did he need them?”
“For the same reason you needed me. This black whirl, as you see, has been your passage back to your own world. But you’d have had miles to fall without my wings to support you.”
“Then that’s why you dashed into it? To save me?”
“Yes. I knew I could go through and come out alive—on this side of the desert. I had done it once before.”
“But did you want to come back to the earth?” I asked, growing more puzzled.
“If I could have kept you from going, I would have,” said Rattle Whiskers. “But you were caught in the winds long before I could reach you. I think the goddess of white flames must have intended to send you back to the earth—I don’t know why.”
“She sent me?” I stammered. “Why?”