by Don Wilcox
“Yippeeee!”
It came from away off in the distance. It echoed through the walls musically.
“Yippeeee!” It came again.
“Ye gods, the gal’s in trouble,” Allan said under his breath, and he sprinted again, leaping the black rocks in his path. He couldn’t help thinking how a drunken Gallagher might behave at the sight of Sue Carson.
He was hearing things again as soon as he turned the next bend. It was Yippee’s voice, and the song was interspersed with an occasional yippee, just as if her audience demanded that she color it up with a few trademarks along the way. There was song enough bouncing through these walls to fill Carnegie Hall.
A moment later Allan discovered that the audience consisted of one entranced listener.
Shaggy, sagging Gallagher was leaning against the wall, head forward, eyes bugging in drunken appreciation, a frozen slap-happy smile on his grizzled face.
Yippee was giving him a song and dance worthy of a hundred-thousand dollar audience. It was a knife dance!
Allan paused in the shadows, fascinated. The girl swung the knife around in swirls and figure eights and rickrack, parabolas and crosshatch. At frequent intervals she would skip toward Gallagher and slice the air in front of him as if she meant to divide a button on his uniform. That would tickle Gallagher, and he would laugh like a schoolboy at the circus.
She started backing away, as if to ease her way out of his presence while he was guffawing.
He didn’t like that part of the program, however. He stepped forward.
“Hey, come back! Show ain’t over yet.”
“Show’s over,” Yippee sang out, interrupting her song. “Next performance tomorrow.”
“You promised me a double feature, sweetheart. Come on, now!” His hands began to knot into fists and he stalked toward her.
“One more song,” she said.· “Keep your seat. The show isn’t over.”
“That’s better,” he grumbled.
“I’ll sing you the one I did for the governor’s rally. It’s called Keep the Flag Flying. Here goes—”
“I don’t want that stuff. How ‘bout Let Me Call You Sweetheart?” That menacing look was coming her way again. “That’s what I want. Sweetheart, huh? Hewzabout it? Here, you gimme the knife so, you kin sing nice. Huh?”
But Sue went into her song making good use of the knife. It became the bow at work over an invisible violin. Her rendition, Allan thought, was probably the most unique Let-Me-Call-You-Sweetheart in history.
Allan couldn’t refrain from joining in on the last bar, like the hero of a comic opera walking in on the stage at the last moment when the maiden in -distress believes that all is lost, He cupped his hands and sang out, “I’m in lo-o-ove with you-u-u-u!”
Sue didn’t quite hit the ceiling. She didn’t quite throw the knife, but almost. She swung about and came running to Allan like a lost lamb. Her eyes shone with such a funny smile that he thought she was going to cry.
“Here!” she said breathless. “Take the knife. It goes with the song.”
“Keep it, pal, you’re doing fine.”
“I was at the end of my rope; honest. You’ve saved me!” she whispered tensely.
“Baloney,” Allan chuckled. Don’t try to make me believe you were frightened of that heap of rags.” Then he shot a stern eye at Gallagher. “Gallagher!”
“Sir?” The drunken man must have thought he was seeing things. He sobered a little. With an unsteady hand he gave a polite swipe to his tousled hair. “You call me, sir? I wasn’t doin’ nothin’ captain. The gal offered to sing me a song, sir. I wasn’t doin’ nothin’.”
“That’s enough, Gallagher,”
“Yes sir.”
“Report for duty at once, Gallagher.”
The flustered fellow saluted. “Yes sir. Where do I report, sir?”
“Right here. Step ahead of us, Gallagher. We need food. Go find some food for us. Don’t say a word to anyone. Understand? Have the food at your post in twenty minutes.”
“I’ll try, sir.”
Gallagher turned and made a heroic effort to march away in a single direction. He looked back to give Sue Carson a sad and hungry look, and then squared his shoulders and stumped off through the tunnel.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Then they were alone—Allan and Sue. Allan was suddenly quite aware that they were alone. It was a situation he wasn’t quite ready for. But he knew it was wonderfully good to have her with him again. He’d been far more worried than he had allowed Jimmy to know.
“How’d you get here, Sue?”
“It wasn’t impossible. I’m used to travelling, you know.”
“Well, I’m sure surprised to see you.” Allan swallowed in the middle of his sentence and felt awkward over it. He whistled a few notes, trying to be casual. Then discovering he had echoed the last line of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” he broke off abruptly. He repeated, “I sure am surprised.”
“Pleasantly, I hope.”
“Sure.” He gave her a wink. She smiled, and he quickly decided to march her back to the Red Room without lagging along the way. He was in danger of liking that smile too well. The softly glowing rocks overhead made her prettier than he had ever seen her before. But when had he ever really noticed her before? All the way across the Atlantic and Western Africa he’d been too intent on his purpose to allow his interest to go astray.
“We’ll march right back to the Red Room,” he said.
“Time out,” she said. “My poor achin’ dogs.”
She stopped to shake the rock dust out of her shoes. He sat down beside her. She wiggled her stockinged toes and gave a relieved, “Ah!”
“Don’t tell me you came all the way up this mountain on foot.”
“Sure did.”
“My stars. It’s a good thing your New York agent doesn’t know about this.”
She looked up quizzically. “You mean about my sitting here with you?”
“Well, I thought maybe he—”
“Oh, he’s twice my age, and bald, and strictly business.”
Allan hadn’t meant that at all. Still it was worth knowing. He winked at her again and dropped a pebble in her shoe, which she promptly removed and tried to put in the collar of his shirt. He caught her and held it on a pretext of self-defense.
“What I mean is,” he resumed, “I thought you’d be on your way back to America before this time. Did someone show you the trail, or how did you find your way?”
“Buni’s with me.”
“Buni? Where is he?”
“Back that way. With his tribe. We heard them singing a death dirge and found them right away. Sheer luck. It’s a wonder we didn’t lose ourselves in some bottomless crevice. I think the gods must watch over that little rascal. Anyway he’s a dear. I’ll have to go back and report to him before I stray off. I promised.”
Allan agreed. This was the best of news. One of his biggest worries of the past hour had been the fate of the tribe. From all indications, they had penned themselves up in a niche for temporary safety. But in a matter of time they would be starved out or driven out by violence. They were on Sully’s waiting list.
“This is a break. You’ve no idea what this means.” He rose and gestured as if conferring honors upon her. “Step right up, Miss Carson, and claim your prize. An orchid for the little lady in the red, white and blue dress, ladies and gentlemen!”
“Why all the fanfare?” she asked as he helped her to her feet.
“Simply because this means there’s a way out for the Bunjojops. What you and Buni have done will mean the difference between life and death to Koo-Jop and all his people.”
“Really. Is it that serious?”
“I’ll tell you all about it shortly. You’d better lead me back to Koo-Jop. It’s urgent that I have a word with him. But first—” He stood, looking at her, fascinated by the light that danced in her eyes. He was holding her hands lightly.
“First?” she echoed.
&nb
sp; “First, tell me. Why did you come?”
She gave a little mischievous shrug. “Shall I beat around the bush about it, or do you want a direct answer?”
“Direct.”
“Okay, Captain.” She bent toward him and kissed him. “There.”
He nodded slightly and said nothing. Afterward he wondered why he hadn‘t complained that her answer was too brief. But it was an answer. One worth thinking over. There would be time to think it over later. Just now he obeyed an urge to return the kiss. He drew her into his arms and held her closely, and his lips brushed over her cheeks and sought her lips. His arms tightened, and for the passing moment he knew that no trembling mountains would dare to intrude.
Presently she said, quietly, “We had better go and find Koo-Jop.”
“Yes.”
“He’ll want to see you.”
“Sure.” He held her, and her breath was warm against his face.
“I promised Buni—”
“We’ll go now,” he said. “Lead the way.”
“Just a few steps back. You’ll hear their singing as soon as we round, the bend. They were chanting and praying.”
“Then we shouldn’t interrupt them yet.” He caught her hands again. “We could sit a little while.”
“Shall we?”
“Aren’t there some more pebbles in your shoes?”
“I think there are,” she said.
“I’ve lots of things to tell you,” he said, sitting down beside her. “Things have happened since we dropped from your plane.”
He told his adventures, swiftly, sketchily, allowing her to fill the gaps with little gasps of wonderment.
The eighty were still alive! The fortune teller must have had some inside information. How they had beat death was a mystery. They had withstood bullets. They had fallen over cliffs. And they had come through whole. Only the name “Scravvzek” explained it.
“The Scravvzek power had them well in hand before that seeming tragedy ever occurred, I’m convinced,” Allan said. The invisible hands that could shake mountain walls could certainly catch falling bodies or heal wounded flesh.
As Allan went on with his story, Sue grew alarmed.
“Then they haven’t accepted you as their captain!”
“Far from it.”
“And though you came to rescue them, they’re not cooperating?”
“They don’t cooperate. They murder.”
“After what happened, they’ll be searching for you.”
“Like bloodhounds.”
“Then what are you going to do? Can you do anything for them? Or are they hopeless?”
“They’re pretty far gone,” Allan admitted. “I had hoped I could make them over somehow. But this thing has got an awful grip on them. And some of them were never the type to have faith in a captain. Sully, for example. Actually, I haven’t done anything so far but antagonize them. They talk about winning honors from the Scravvzek. All the ambition they contain is evil.”
Sue Carson shook her head. She had known plenty of disillusionment, privately, in her jobs of ballyhooing for some political rings. She saw no future in Allan’s undertaking.
“Is there any reason you shouldn’t shake the dust of this place off your feet?”
Allan unconsciously clenched his fists. There were reasons as important as life itself, he replied. The fortune teller had hinted it. Now he saw it plainly. The strange powers of this insidious force were at work on a world scale. The servants of the Scravvzek believed that men of this world were bent on destroying themselves. The Scravvzek power would help them succeed.
“It’s a dangerous thing to meddle with,” he admitted, and a wave of perspiration came to his forehead as he recalled his encounter. “What it is can’t be told. It can be seen only in part. It seems to be a monstrous something with eyes of fire. And fingers of fire. But after you watch it a few minutes you know it’s lots more than that. It’s mostly invisible. The strangest thing is that it has to have a human being to do its talking. It holds someone in its giant fingers, and slips a big ball of fire over the person’s head, and then its voice comes through in the words of its spokesman.”
“I don’t know how you can fight a thing like that.”
Allan didn’t have a very satisfactory answer.
“You must have a lot of faith in yourself even to try.”
“I had faith that I’d find a plane to take me over to Africa,” Allan said. “And look what a miracle came to my rescue. You.”
“I happened to have a plane. That’s simple. But I don’t have a pull with the Scravvzek.”
“But someone might.”
“Who?”
“Doc Pakkerman. Jimmy’s old hero from Maple City. He’s the one the Scravvzek used for a mouthpiece. When last seen, he was shoving off for the Black River, somewhere over that way,” Allan said, struggling to regain his sense of directions. “And there was a big hint that he hangs around some larger world of caves, beyond this ‘doorstep.’ As I get it there must be a lot more of this underground world beyond the river. Some where there’s an instrument they call the ‘mirror of the world’ where a lot can be learned about what people are doing.”
“I’ve heard about it!” Sue was suddenly enthusiastic.
“What do you know of it?”
“Buni and I gathered some dope at another native village. They said this Scravvzek has been a well-known legend in these parts for centuries. And they spoke of the mirrors. Well, Captain, how soon do we start?”
Allan tapped his fist against her shoulder. “I’d be a heel to let you walk into any such danger. It’s already open season on me, remember.”
“How soon do we start?”
Allan came back to a consciousness of passing time. The Bunjojops must be contacted. Gallagher was probably waiting with food. Jimmy was no doubt growing impatient, waiting at the glide-walk.
“My stars! Poor Jimmy! He’ll wonder what’s happened.”
“I’m anxious to see him,” Sue said.
“Sure Guess I’ve sort of monopolized you here. We’ll go back to him as soon as we’ve contacted Koo-Jop,”
A few minutes later, after they had exchanged words with Koo-Jop and Buni, they hiked along to their other destinations. Allan thought of Jimmy, and how surprised he would be to see Yippee again.
“Jimmy’ll be wondering why you came back too,” Allan said.
“Will he?”
“He’ll probably ask you, just like I did.”
Sue didn’t comment.
“Will you beat around the bush,” Allan asked, “or give him a direct answer?”
Sue kept walking. Allan strode along at her side, trying to read her expression.
“I suppose,” Allan continued, “that you’ll have to tell him just like you told me.”
“Why?”
“Well, you don’t have to, as far as I’m concerned,” Allan said with rather too much conviction. “But you’re so darned fair that I suppose you will.”
Sue Carson laughed and said lightly, “I guess anyone likes a direct answer now and then. Sure, I’ll—”
Half an hour later Sue greeted Jimmy with a kiss, delivered as enthusiastically as if there had been cameras. Jimmy blushed and rolled his eyes comically toward Allan and emitted a string of oh-golly-goshes that did justice to the occasion.” As they mounted the glide-walk, Allan and Jimmy knew they were the two luckiest men in the continent, to have such a girl as Sue Carson for a third partner.
CHAPTER XXIX
The glide-walk moved along silently through the pitch-black tunnel. Allan listened to Sue and Jimmy conversing in whispers. It was like watching a thermometer rise under a stream of sunshine, to see how Jimmy’s spirit lifted. Sue was the tonic he needed. Even his stubbed toe felt better.
As Sue told him the good news about Buni finding the tribe, Jimmy acted as if a burden had slipped from his back. Allan knew he had been worried over the fate of the Bunjojops. During the Scravvzek earthquake Jimmy had f
requently spoken of them, locked as they were within a crowded corner of the canyon.
“Then they can get out?” Jimmy asked. “They’ll make their escape through the passage that Buni found?”
“That’s what we hope,” Allan said. “Sue and I drove the point home with Buni just before we left. And Koo-Jop too. But the poor old chief was too melancholy to say much. We advised them to build stone steps up to the ceiling and get themselves out as fast as possible. They’d have no trouble by-passing Gallagher. And Buni could lead them over his own trail out of the mountain and back to the village.”
“That’s good. That’s darned good,” Jimmy said. “Buni and Sue deserve medals for this.”
Sue laughed. “The Captain has already awarded me an orchid .. I’m getting lots of awards today.”
Jimmy remarked that he hadn’t seen the orchid; and where would one find an orchid down in this lost land? Sue had to admit the orchid hadn’t been delivered. “But I’ll see that the captain makes his promise good if we get back to New York.”
“Did you say if?” Jimmy echoed.
They rode along in silence, huddled close together. The tunnel was pitch black. The glide-walk curved gently, with hardly a sound from the track beneath.
“Someone say something,” Sue said. “I don’t like conversations that end on if.”
“What’s wrong with if?”
“It’s a worry word. It sounds like we all three know we’ll never get back alive.”
“Things like that do happen,” Jimmy said with a shrug.
Allan changed the subject. “I’m afraid Koo-Jop won’t get his people out. They’re in a double trap. One of stones. One of grief. They may stay there for hours while the bereaved women weep.”
“It’s too bad,” Sue said. “Such an unfair thing. It must have stunned them.”
“Those long-winded rituals could be their downfall. They’re afraid of offending the tribal god that has taken care of them. But if they don’t get out, they’ll put their god to a lot more trouble. Allan grew philosophical. “Tribal gods are necessary and all that. But there are times when men ought to depend on their own two legs and leave the praying until later.”