A lone pistol popped its magazine empty in his direction. The marksman might have been shooting at one of the pale clouds ten thousand feet overhead, for all the result his bullets produced.
Doc dropped lightly into one of the dugouts.
* * *
THE bundle brought by the big bronze man was now opened. First, there came to light some concentrated foods. Next, Long Tom was handed a package of apparatus.
"What's this?" questioned the electrical wizard.
"All you need to make a supersensitive microphonic 'ear'," Doc explained. "Set it up in the center of our fortress. When night comes, the voodoo men will no doubt try to creep up close enough to hurl bombs into our dugouts. But with your apparatus, you can hear them."
Long Tom nodded, then fell to examining his apparatus. He became elated. With this stuff, he could make a microphonic listening and amplifying device that would pick up the buzz of a fly at the distance of half a mile. Scant chance would skulkers stand of creeping upon them now.
Doc Savage busied himself with poor, half-witted Sill Boontown. A kit which he had brought from the plane proved to be a compact set of surgical instruments. It even included hypodermic needles for administering a form of local anaesthetic, a pain-deadener which affected only the part being worked upon.
"He's gonna operate on the kid!" Monk grunted.
"Two bits says the kid is normal as you or me when Doc finishes!" Ham offered.
"You would want to bet on a sure thing!" Monk snorted.
Both Ham and Monk were fully aware of Doc's magical skill in surgery. For it was at this, above all else, that the mighty bronze man excelled.
Surgery had been Doc's first training in life. It had been his most intensive. Although his ability at other lines of endeavor might seem uncanny, his accomplishments with surgery and medicine were far more marvelous.
It was an interested group that watched the delicate operation. Sinewy bronze fingers, steady as steel on a foundation of bedrock, laid back the scalp. A small aperture was opened in the skull.
As Doc had expected, a fragment of bone was pressing upon the brain, paralyzing certain of its functions. The blow on the head two years before had caused the trouble.
The bone fragment was removed. Swiftly, Doc completed the delicate operation. With catgut, which would dissolve of itself about the time the wound was healed, he stitched the scalp in place.
The effects of the anaesthetic wore off.
"How do you feel, sonny?" Doc inquired.
"I got one whopper of de headache!" replied the boy.
His tone showed that he was perfectly sane!
It was magic! Monk, Ham, Renny, Long Tom, Johnny—they all exchanged strange glances. Accustomed as they were to the marvelous things Doc Savage did, and knowing that such a brain operation was not unique in surgery, they were nevertheless awed.
Lost from the outside world, beseiged here in the steaming, festering swamp, volleys of machine-gun slugs storming over them every minute or so, the feat could not but impress them as uncanny.
They scattered to their gun emplacements, wriggling through the shallow trenches they had dug.
Time now dragged. Long Tom finished his microphonic listening device. It was something like the apparatus used by the defenders of London during the Great War to listen for Zeppelins and planes—although far more perfected.
It was well after noon when Doc Savage caught sight of Buck Boontown. The man was directing the seige.
Doc signaled Buck Boontown. It was his intention to inform the swamp man that his son would join him shortly. There was no longer necessity for keeping Sill Boontown here. The lad would not bungle into danger, now that his mental powers were normal. And even had the boy wanted to assist the beseiged man, Doc would not have permitted the lad to oppose his father.
Buck Boontown was suspicious. He thought Doc's wig-wagging was a trick. So he blazed away with a machine gun. His accurate fire caused Doc to duck swiftly.
* * *
BUCK BOONTOWN chortled gleefully at the results of his rapid-fire blast.
"Bien!
Me—I almo' got heem that time!"
He watched the molelike mounds and tiny ridges of dirt the defenders of the hill had thrown up. His blasphemous pleadings to his hideous voodoo deity for another shot went unanswered.
Soon one of the other swamp men wriggled up with a message.
"Gray Spider ees want yo'!" he told Buck Boontown. "He's send message. Yo' ees to go to Castle of the Moccasin!"
"Oui!"
smirked Buck Boontown. "Me—I go plantee queeck."
The swamp man was flattered. Although by far the most intelligent of the debased clan of humans who had resided in this great morass so many generations they had reverted to a state of near savagery, Buck Boontown was, nevertheless, far from a smart man.
He fawned like a big dog under the attentions of the Gray Spider. Sacrй!Now there was a man for you! Or so Buck Boontown thought. The money that the Gray Spider paid his swamp men minions was not a minor inducement, either. A city gunman would have sneered at the smallness of the sums, but to these swamp dwellers, each pittance was a little fortune.
As he plowed through the tangled morass, Buck Boontown treated himself to flights of imagination. He was saving his money. Already he had quite a sum hidden in a fruit jar in the swamp. He would hoard more. He might even get enough to go to the great and marvelous city of New Orleans and spend the rest of his days. He had heard of the wonders of that metropolis, but had never been there. Indeed, he had never been out of this great swamp in his lifetime.
And the swamp was but a few hours' drive by speedy car from New Orleans!
Mile after mile, Buck Boontown covered. He kept a straight course, weaving aside only for pools and slime which he could not leap.
He was entering the most remote section of the swamp. Even the folk who lived in the great morass seldom came here. The region was forbidden to all but the inner circle of the Cult of the Moccasin. It held the Castle of the Moccasin—the headquarters of the king of the voodoo cult. The lair of the Gray Spider!
Buck Boontown climbed a cypress to make sure of his bearings.
Not a mile distant lay the Castle of the Moccasin!
* * *
NO doubt airplane pilots flying over the vast swamp and bayou district had noted the peculiar knot of trees and shrubs projecting over the surrounding territory. Probably they mistook it for a tiny clump of very tall trees.
Should they have chanced to fly low, they would have seen that these trees, strangely enough, were growing out of a great, boxlike knob which was covered completely by vines.
It had never occurred to any one that the knob was in reality a huge stone building, the roof and walls of which were cunningly camouflaged with growing vegetation.
Buck Boontown neared the strange, concealed castle of a structure.
He was challenged by a heavily armed guard, and permitted to pass. Soon he met a second guard.
It was well nigh impenetrable to the casual wayfarer, this Castle of the Moccasin. Years had been spent in its building. Labor had been furnished by the members of the voodoo cult.
The Gray Spider's campaign of wholesale looting of the great lumber companies of the South was no snap-of-the-finger scheme. It had been years in the conceiving and preparation.
Buck Boontown was admitted to the Castle of the Moccasin through a secret door.
The passage into which he came was stone-walled. Electric bulbs lighted the way. The air inside, contrasting greatly with the malodorous and steaming vapor of the swamp, was clean and pure. Buck Boontown knew nothing of such things as air-conditioning machines, so he attributed the sweetness of the atmosphere to some magic about the presence of the Gray Spider.
He entered a large room. The color scheme looked like it had been conceived by a futuristic artist who had gone crazy among his paint pots. Streaks and spots and daubs of green, red, blue, yellow, white, aluminum, gold—it all made neither sense
nor beauty. Concealed colored lights dancing off and on added to the garish effect.
The whole thing was deliberately conceived to impress the near-barbaric minds of the swamp dwellers who worshiped the heathen deities of voodoo.
In the center sat a throne of gold—gold paint on a wooden foundation, although Buck Boontown didn't know it. To him, the throne alone represented limitless wealth.
The Gray Spider occupied the throne. He wore robe and mask. The repulsive, ash-colored tarantula crawled continually over one of his hands.
"Vat yo' want?" asked Buck Boontown in an awed whisper.
The Gray Spider mouthed a few low, meaningless sounds before he answered. This was merely to add to the supernatural atmosphere created by his weird surroundings.
"You are becoming one of my most trusted and efficient servants," he told Buck Boontown.
"Oui!"
mumbled the swamp man, highly pleased. "Tank yo'!"
"I now have a most important task for you to perform."
"Oui!
I do heem fo' yo'!" At the moment, ignorant Buck Boontown was so impressed he would have laid down his life at a mere word from the sinister devil who held sway over him.
The Gray Spider now produced a chamois poke of the type used by stores to deliver their cash to the banks. This was weighty with silver coin.
It held exactly one hundred dollars!
Buck Boontown clutched the poke eagerly. In common with most barbaric folk, a pile of silver coins gave him a bigger kick than ten times the sum in crisp bank notes.
"This is your reward," said the Gray Spider. "It is your pay for what you are to do. Later, if you serve me properly this time, there will be other tasks for you—and more rewards such as this!"
Buck Boontown could only mumble his gratitude.
The Gray Spider held up the hand on which the hideous tarantula constantly crawled.
In answer to the signal, two swamp men now carried in a box the size of a small trunk.
"Do you know what these are?" asked the Gray Spider.
Buck Boontown stared at the box contents. He seemed puzzled and disappointed.
"Flies!" he muttered. "Dey ees plain beeg o' flies!"
* * *
THE swamp man's disappointment gave the Gray Spider great delight. An explosive chuckle fluttered the silk folds of his mask.
"They look perfectly harmless, eh?"
"Oui!
Dey like a bite a man. But dey no do heem any harm."
A fresh guest of hideous mirth emanated from the Gray Spider.
"There's where you're wrong, swamp boy!" he declared. "These are very special flies. If one of them should bite you, it'd kill you instantly."
Buck Boontown looked as if he found this hard to believe.
"These look like ordinary swamp flies because they were just that—before I got hold of them," the Gray Spider explained. "I have sprayed a very powerful poison upon them. The bodies of the flies have absorbed this poison, which has no effect on them. But their bites are now highly venomous. They will bring instant death to a man."
"
Sacrй!"Buck Boontown gulped.
The Gray Spider leered. "Making these flies poisonous is a very special secret of mine. It took me a long time to figure out a way of doing it. But I'm telling you, it works!
"Furthermore, I have starved these flies until they're famished. They live by sucking blood. They'll go after any living thing that's handy when they're let out of that box. And whatever they bite will die!
"You are to release them near the bronze devil and his five men."
Buck Boontown wrinkled his forehead. "Oui! But won't de flies bite and keel me, too?"
"You'll set a clockwork so it'll open the lid," explained the master fiend. "You merely take the box near the bronze man's trenches and dugouts, and set the clockwork to open the box at dawn. Then you have all the swamp men clear of the vicinity. The poison flies will do the job for us. You savvy?"
"Oui!"
Buck Boontown agreed.
He received detailed instructions on how to operate the clockwork. Then he departed from the Castle of the Moccasin, carrying the box of venomous flies on his back.
The journey back to where Doc Savage and his five men were beseiged was a tedious one. It took Buck Boontown until long past midnight.
He exchanged a word with his men, telling them to quit the vicinity.
"Yo' keed, Sill, ees come back," offered the one to whom he talked. "Hees wit' yo' wife."
Buck Boontown was overjoyed at this news.
He quickly placed the box of deadly flies. He set the clockwork. At the hour of dawn, the venomous insects would be freed.
Doc Savage and his men would not suspect the innocent swamp flies of being poisoned. They would be bitten by the famished horrors. And death would come!
Buck Boontown hurried away to meet his wife. He wanted to see his son, Sill, whom he loved deeply. Poor, unfortunate Sill! Perhaps, some day, when they went to the wondrous New Orleans to live, a great doctor could do something for Sill.
The swamp man did not know that he had just sentenced to death the man who had already, by his magical skill, made Sill a normal youth.
* * *
Chapter XVI. THE PAY-OFF
BUCK BOONTOWN paused several times to question such retreating swamp men as he encountered. He made sure all were getting away. None had been missed in spreading the word to quit the vicinity.
Doc Savage and his five men, Buck Boontown was assured, did not suspect a general exodus was under way.
"At dawn, dey weel die!" the swamp man leered.
He went on. The women and children of the voodoo clan had been moved to a spot a mile distant. He reached the place.
Every one was gone.
He spent twenty minutes learning the women and children had moved on a couple of miles. He tramped after them.
Somewhere in the distance, a rooster was crowing in a swamp henhouse. The hooting of owls had died. The eastern sky was showing ruddy color. Already, the higher clouds were being tinted like patches of gore by the first rays of the sun.
Dawn was not far off.
Buck Boontown joined his wife and son.
"How ees de keed?" he asked his wife.
"I'm all right, dad," said Sill Boontown.
Something in the lad's tone gave the swamp man an inkling of the truth. A great elation came into his wizened face. The shining happiness in his wife's features convinced him that what he had hoped for had come to pass.
The story quickly came out. Sill Boontown told of the operation which had worked such a miraculous cure.
Finishing, the youth produced several folded bank notes.
"De bronze man geeve me dese," he explained.
"What fo'?"
"Hees say fo' me to pay my way t'rough school een New Orleans with de money," replied the boy.
Buck Boontown looked at the denominations of the bills. He totaled their sum laboriously. The amount his son held exceeded by many times the pittance the Gray Spider had handed out for having murder done!
Remorse seized Buck Boontown.
This mighty bronze man who pursued the Gray Spider was not the devil he had been painted! He did not mean to slay all the worshippers of voodoo—for it was such a bloodcurdling lie that the Gray Spider had spread.
The bronze man had given Buck Boontown back his son—magically returned to normalcy.
Moreover, he had furnished the boy with money to educate himself, to visit the wondrous city of New Orleans. He had given a sum greater than Buck Boontown had ever expected to save!
These thoughts formed a dizzying maelstrom in the swamp man's head. And towering black and ghastly over it all was the knowledge that his hand was sending death to the giant bronze man.
Buck Boontown was not rotten at heart. His surroundings had made him ignorant and cruel. Raised in a civilized community, he would unquestionably have been respectable.
With a loud moan, Bu
ck Boontown whirled and ran. He knew what he must do!
He made directly for the mound where Doc Savage and his five men were beseiged.
The swamp man hoped to get there in time to stop the escape of the flies, the bite of which would be fatal. His was indeed a race with death.
* * *
BUCK BOONTOWN threw away his machine gun. He also discarded a revolver. He was getting rid of all excess weight.
He sloughed through lakes of slime that he would ordinarily have gone around. Jabbing, scratching thorn thickets failed to turn him. He took perilous chances with a muddy bayou infested by 'gators.
The sun was nearly in view. Light of a beginning day seeped into the clammy, moist jungle.
It was almost the exact hour set for the opening of the box which held the poisonous insects.
Buck Boontown sought in vain to put on more speed. He rolled from side to side with exhaustion. Each tremendous, explosive breath blew a spray of crimson off his lips, for he had bitten through his tongue.
The mound where Doc and his five men were beseiged came into view.
Buck Boontown veered to the right. He saw the box which held the venomous flies. Horror gripped him anew.
He was too late!
The box lid was opening!
The swamp man did not slacken his headlong pace—he even managed to go a little faster. He pounced upon the box. A scant dozen of the poisoned flies had as yet escaped.
Buck Boontown knew the price he was going to pay for what he was doing. He did not hesitate. His was a man's code, for all the fact that he had fallen under the hideous spell of voodoo. Doc Savage had returned sanity to his son—therefore he would save the giant bronze man from this death trap.
One of the venomous flies bit him even as he closed the box lid. He hardly faltered. He secured the lid. Then he sat down on the box.
Deliberately, he let the famished, deadly flies settle upon him and begin drawing his blood.
Then he mashed them, one at a time!
After the destruction of the last devilish insect which had escaped, Buck Boontown got off the box.
Doc and his five men watched the swamp man's staggering approach.
"What ails the guy?" Monk muttered.
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