by Don Wilcox
“I won’t deliver.” Whitey said it and he meant it. Poor scared guy, his voice trembled. He was a weak kitten and he knew it. He’d trapped himself by coming here. But he repeated his choked, “I won’t! Let me go.”
“You’ll do it or die!”
With a rush of bare feet the savage Cobert went for him. For an instant we couldn’t she either of them. Then both men swung into view. The fury of flying fists was before us—only for a moment.
Cobert’s ugly fingers closed on Whitey’s throat. Another second would have been the end of Whitey.
The Kid stepped in with his pistol. He didn’t speak. He just walked in on Cobert, and that cunning demon saw him coming.
The Kid’s lips curled in a slight smile, as if here was a nice favor he could do for his friends. A pleasant bit of accommodation.
Cobert threw his hands up. Futile gesture. The Kid shot him dead.
Later that day several of us gathered at the roundtopped mountain and dropped the dead body into the pit. The Fire Goddess must have been waiting. There was a slight fssst!, a wisp of dark smoke, and Cobert was gone.
CHAPTER XXXIV
The Blessed Event
The father was, contrary to tradition, the only calm and collected person in attendance when the time came.
Those winged women, trying to be so efficient and thoughtful, were fairly flying circles around themselves. Jabber, jabber, jabber—you never heard so much wingwoman talk. You’d have thought this was the birth of an heir to a royal throne from all their hubbub.
The Greek ran around from one group to another, asking whether there was any news yet, wondering how much longer it would be. He was so excited McCorkle said, “Who do you think you are, the father?”
But the Greek’s excitement was supercharged with a very personal interest. He was going to be a father himself, in due time, and he wanted to be sure this business of having offspring could be managed successfully.
He found his best listener in Maxie Hammerstein. It seems that Maxie had taken a fancy to a certain little winged dame he called Kewpie-puss. He was making some plans of his own.
In the seclusion of the cinnamon roll tunnels of Green Tooth the child was born. At high noon Rattle Whiskers came bouncing out of the new tunnel entrance. He came yelling and hip-hurrahing in all languages at once. He jumped up and down until he started a small avalanche down the Green Tooth.
“It’s a boy! It’s a boy! A boy with legs—with hands—with wings!!!”
Wells was so proud he couldn’t do anything but smile an immense broad grin for the rest of the day.
Meanwhile the news went over the mountains as fast as wings could carry it.
“It’s a boy—with arms—hands—legs—and wings!”
CHAPTER XXXV
The Noise of Battle
A party flew south on a scouting mission, and I was one of the wingless men who got to go along.
We hid in the mountain crags with the Octagon in full view. It had become a parade ground for the exercises of war. Primitive war, indeed, but no less to be reckoned with than the more highly civilized forms of dealing death.
Throughout the day you could hear the thump, thump, thump of falling rocks. This was the noise of target practice—dropping rocks from the air.
A target, such as a pile of dead brush, would be placed in some corner of the Octagon. Then a squadron of winged huskies would zoom off into the air—almost with the precise formation of bombers—each husky carrying one single rock which he would drop as he approached the target.
At first these efforts were so inaccurate as to be comical. Still, as the day progressed, we could see that some of these huskies were becoming excellent marksmen. All of them would, in due time, if Thunder Splitter’s ranting had any effect.
There were other types of drill. The most fearful to my eyes, was that of the same old mass attack that had hit our party the night they got Slim. Those swift swoops of three or four wingmen toward a single victim (usually a sand rat in these practice attacks) were enough to worry any man not blessed with wings.
McCorkle and I agreed that the best defense against these would be a long sharp sword in a lightning-quick arm. We had never forgotten the lesson the Greek had taught us. Back in our camp, swords were being turned out slowly—crude blades of soft iron, with handles of tightly wound strands of yellow grass.
Our supply of bullets had melted away to a sadly small reserve. Now in the face of an oncoming battle we realized that firearms couldn’t be depended upon. Half of the pistols had been lost to Thunder Splitter’s huskies on the night of Slim’s tragedy.
And so, as we weighed the elements of fighting power, we realized that any battle might boil down to a clash of wing against wing, muscle against muscle.
The third of the population we had seen to be doubtful had begun to break up. The tension over the desert was too hot for any able bodied husky to remain long on the fence.
Thunder Splitter’s rallying slogan tugged like a magnet for the allegiance of many of these doubtful ones. His cry went out as soon as he heard the news of Orchid’s winged baby. It was a slogan meant to appeal to every native denizen of the desert:
“No other race—no combination of races—can ever be superior to the true wingman.”
When in the caprices of flight of some of our wingmen—or women—passed within hailing distance of Thunder Splitter’s wingmen, this slogan was hurled through the air.
But no mere words could shake the feelings of Orchid’s friends who came to her bed of grass and saw her babe. That finely shaped little creature nursing at her breast had a way of reaching right to their hearts. They couldn’t help being thrilled at the sight of its tiny, cunning fingers, or the long, silvery blue tapering wings that reached almost to its pink heels.
“There was never a baby like that before,” the old wingwomen would say, and then they would laugh with delight to recognize the new truth which this baby gave to their old well-worn expressions of sentiment.
“But will he be able to fly?” the skeptical old males would ask. “Won’t those legs grow too heavy and clumsy before he ever learns?”
“He will fly!” Orchid would say. “Of course he will fly. Just wait and see! On his wings he will soar over the highest clouds. And with his clever hands he will fashion the finest tools. He will bring the life of our desert to a new level.”
The old males would fall silent, wondering if it might be so. And the females would jabber their extravagant compliments. Even the mother and father would be surprised in the course of time, such wonders would this child accomplish.
No one found any fault, of course. Unless it was the Greek warrior, who, in spite of his amazement at the wonder of such a baby, did drop the comment that a little more of the typical Grecian features would have improved its face.
“It’s a perfectly good face,” McCorkle countered. “Good enough to be named in honor of St. Patrick. I suggest we name it—”
“Not so fast, Corky,” said Wells. “It’s Orchid Wings’ privilege to choose the name.”
Orchid smiled. “I have had the name ready all along. I will call him Little Wells.”
Did that ever made our erstwhile lieutenant proud! He fairly strutted without taking a step.
Until the naming of the baby, Wells had been reluctant to take a position of leadership over the wingmen who had sided with us. Now that he saw their reaction, their whole-hearted approval over a winged child’s being named for its non-winged father, his own self-confidence reached a new high.
“I have everything to fight for,” he told the old males as they counselled with him. “Yes, I will accept command of your defenses. Rattle Whiskers shall be my first assistant.”
“As your first assistant,” said Rattle Whiskers, “I advise that you and Orchid take your baby to some safer refuge to the northwest. The rocks may hail down on this region at any hour.”
That week the first few tons of rocks fell around the new tunnel entrances near t
he top of the Green Tooth.
At first we laughed. They couldn’t possibly hurl rocks to make them whirl through the bends at the tunnel entrance. The most damage they did was to cut up some of our paths around the peak.
For a few weeks these insignificant skirmishes came and went with very few casualties. Our knives caught three wingtips early one morning when the huskies thought they were about to get away with a sneak attack. When the feathers flew, so did the huskies—at each other, in keeping with their old custom.
But this was the last time the old wingtip gag worked. Our winged patrol followed the husky squadron on their mockery chase back to camp. There Thunder Splitter gave his men a thorough dressing down.
The old tradition, Thunder Splitter declared, was as dead as a flesh-cleaned skeleton. Henceforth no wingman would ever so much as bat an eye in ridicule if one of his fellows lost a wing-tip.
“It is blood, now, that counts. Smashed skulls, wings ripped off, crushed talons, broken backs—there are the scores that will count.”
This report our patrol brought back to us. And with it Thunder Splitter’s loud boast that his plan was at last ready. He would carry death to every unfaithful wingman.
On three counts he was sure his army was superior to ours: speed, noise, and numbers.
Our council of men and wingmen talked this claim over in long night hours of discussion.
“Speed they do have,” Wells admitted. “But how many of their swiftest young huskies can outrace our venerable Rattle Whiskers?”
Rattle Whiskers raised an eyebrow. Maybe he knew his speed was no longer tops, but this compliment made him feel that he owned the fastest pair of wings in the world.
“Noise they do have,” said Wells. “But we aren’t afraid of noise. And I ask you, which has the better chance to cleave a wing from a back, the fighter who yells that he is going to do it or one who swoops down silently?”
The listeners nodded their heads in warm approval. Their eyes took on expressions of eagerness for a chance to employ their cunning.
“But what about numbers?” McCorkle asked.
“If we count all who come to us, including those who are past the age of fighting,” said Wells, “our number exceeds theirs. We have won more of the doubtful third than they.”
If this was so, it was partly because the coming of Little Wells had been publicly blessed by the Fire Goddess. And because, in spite of predictions before, and lies after the child’s birth, the whole desert had learned of its physical form.
Thunder Splitter had been ingenious enough to hurl other blocks in the path of racial mixtures. One of these was his propaganda warning that simply because Little Wells happened to have hands, legs, and wings was no proof that all other offspring of mixed parentage would be similarly blessed.
I confess that this warning struck through the weak spot in our scarcely scientific assumptions. After all, could we be sure? Would there ever be another child like Little Wells?
Orchid Wings, bless her heart, knew the answer.
“It is one of my secrets,” she said, “a bit of secret knowledge which I confided to Wells before we married. Far to the north of us there live two or three families that are half winged, half nonwinged. These were formed when a few of the Babylonian vonzels escaped the feasts many seasons ago.
“And from these marriages,” Orchid went on, “have come offspring with hands, legs, and wings—even as our Little Wells.”
To which Wells added, “Orchid took me to the north edge of the desert for our honeymoon and I saw these children.”
“Let Thunder Splitter fly north and see for himself,” Orchid Wings concluded.
And so again our side had the advantage in this strange war of nerves. Our propaganda rang true. It was not noise, but facts. Thunder Splitter must have sensed that nothing short of military victory would regain the prestige now slipping from him.
It came. With a fury that excelled all our anticipations, it struck like a mad beast.
The days were blackened with the hail of stones. The nights were sparked with the clash of blades. Terror cut through the hearts of peace-loving wingmen. And even to such war-hardened soldiers as Wells and McCorkle the bitterness of this primitive war struck home.
What few bullets we had saved from earlier skirmishes were put to good use. They scored almost one hundred percent.
Quickly the last of them were spent—and Thunder Splitter himself failed to catch any of them. He had wisely kept out of range from that dramatic hour when he had seen one of his favorite huskies drop like a stone.
We retreated several times, moving a share of our supplies to some point miles away.
Dawn would find Thunder Splitter’s warriors dropping rocks on an enemy that wasn’t there. And before the rising light revealed us our swiftest wingmen would try to swoop down with knives. Then the wild yells would ring through the morning air. A rapid thumping of stones would follow—for no husky cared to get caught on the wing while burdened with heavy talons.
Furious hand-to-hand combats were inevitable. Wings would flutter like slapping fans. Sometimes one of our wingmen would feign a retreat to the ground, and the enemy could come bounding after him in groups of twos or threes. They would be led in a zigzag chase close over the surface. Then suddenly some one without wings would leap out of the bushes and stab.
And so, as we learned to retreat by night, we acquired the skills of shifty attacks at unexpected moments. The more we retreated, it seemed, the more we strengthened our slight margin of numbers and power over Thunder Splitter’s hosts.
We hardly dared hope that a decisive victory might be carved by the addition of these telling knife strokes. And yet we were beginning, inevitably, to feel an optimistic glow—when suddenly the unexpected came down upon us like an eclipse, and blacked out all our hopes.
The unexpected something arrived at dawn out of a cloud of pink smoke. It landed with more noise than a volley of falling stones, and when the pink smoke cleared we gazed through our field glasses to behold a very complex spectacle.
There on the sand flat stood an army of fifty Nazi soldiers, and an astonishing lot of mechanized equipment. In command was one burly red-faced German professor whom I had last seen in bed, snoring.
CHAPTER XXXVI
Beyond the McCorkle River
That day cost us.
We tried one lightning attack with a squadron of our best wingmen. It was the only thing to do—to try to grab a couple machine guns and a few rounds of ammunition to keep from being slaughtered before sundown.
For we knew only too well that the German professor would start his death march straight toward the non-winged men from the earth. McCorkle, Wells, Maxie and I—we were the ones who—if allowed to live—would ultimately endanger a Nazi foothold here.
That and the fact that there was a natural kinship between the German and Thunder Splitter—in temperament and purpose and method—these factors were Wells’ cue for his swift action.
Wells called for volunteers for the daring deed. Seventeen wingmen flew to the task. Eight of them came back whole; three others flopped or limped away to safety, more or less riddled by bullets. The remainder were shot to hell by the starchy Nazi soldiers.
But the eight who returned bore one machine gun back. Maxie and the Kid went to work with it and mowed a full fourth of the professor’s force down almost before they knew they were on solid ground.
Then two sturdy little hill-climbing tanks were rolling toward us. It was time to drag ourselves back to a steeper terrain.
No rest for the wicked or the righteous after that. This was our same old war, a miniature version of it, with the added novelty of all the weapons being on one side.
We tried desperate strategies to keep the German and Thunder Splitter apart, but we lost that trick, as Wells had known we would.
Our enemies joined forces and firearms were put in the hands of Thunder Splitter’s huskies. They were regular demons, hog-wild for anything that would
shoot. It was true that they completely lacked the discipline of the thirty Nazis. In general, too, they were less brutal, less likely to choose women and children for targets. But their ability to fly over us with rifles multiplied our dangers ten times over. It was a rare night for us that went by without a burial service.
Nothing but that deeply rooted instinct to survive held us together in the days that followed. We were surely only postponing the inevitable. We dodged, we maneuvered, we gambled madly on our primitive weapons—and somehow accomplished just enough to keep alive that dim ray of hope.
But we were continually on the retreat, wearing ourselves out with night after night of escape to new hiding places, usually to be discovered and attacked before another sunset.
Whenever they gave us a breathing spell we would set up a sort of fake camp half camouflaged. Soon they would blast it to pieces—and then discover we weren’t there. Little strategies of this sort cost them ammunition and lifted our morale. But their supplies seemed unlimited.
Now we were thankful for Wells’ foresight in having us store food and water. Even the women and children of our camps could withstand lots of nerve strain as long as they weren’t forced to go hungry and thirsty.
All the while Orchid Wings and Little Wells, together with a few friends were hiding in the deep caverns of the Green Tooth. Most of our own wingmen believed they had flown far to the northwest. Never was a secret more closely guarded.
At length the murderous German professor hit upon a sure scheme for bringing our resistance to an end. He began poisoning the water pools in the path of our circling retreats. That got us where bullets had failed. Within a week we were almost done in. One by one our stored water jugs were drained to their last hot muddy drops.
Now we were forced to make a break for the larger running springs that couldn’t easily be poisoned . . . and so, eventually we bolted back to the Green Tooth.