Читать книгу Moon Riders - Laurence Donovan - Страница 3

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RAY ALLISON heard the little man's scream of agony. The Federal Agent shivered. Though he had steeled himself to remain inactive during this whipping, now that the cries of tortured flesh echoed from the hillside rocks, Allison grunted an oath, gripped his automatic and started down the hill.

Flaring torches were added to the moonlight. Allison saw vague, moving figures. These were oddly like men without faces or heads, only legs and arms that moved about in hooding sacks.

The Moon Riders!

Charley Hawkins--the mild little fellow who kept the small tourist stand at the crossroads--was being whipped. From the piercing tenor of his cries, it was apparent that the whispered reports of the Moon Riders had not been exaggerated, even among the terrorized, superstitious hill folk of White Horse Valley. The mountain folk said the Moon Riders used whips of red-hot wire. The government department had not been able to confirm this. Allison had not intended to permit the torture to proceed beyond the preliminary stage required for evidence.

But at least a score of the Moon Riders had arrived at the bowl in the mountains in cars from which even the license plates had been removed. Allison could see the little man, his scrawny body standing out white against the flare of the pine torches. He had been stripped of all his clothing and set in the middle of the ring.

The fire burning in a pit of rocks and the heating of the lengths of wire to which wooden handles were attached confirmed the reports of the torture. Allison, concealed in the rocks high above the Moon Riders' bowl, had watched, grim-lipped and blazing with anger, as the score of burly figures had pushed Hawkins from one of the cars. For Allison knew he was one man against the small mob of hooded figures. A miscalculation in time had been responsible for these long odds.

Half a dozen more Government Men were due to arrive in White Horse Valley two days later. Previous attacks by the Moon Riders had always been scheduled by the complete full moon. But Charley Hawkins had been seized two nights before this was due.

CHARLEY HAWKINS had received a letter warning him to settle up his affairs and get out of that part of the country. It was this phase of the reign of terror that had brought the attention of the U.S. Government. Another man had been killed just across the State border. This victim had also received a letter through the U.S. mails. It was now time for the government to take action. The Secret Service desired to link that government missive with an actual whipping at the hands of the Moon Riders. Undercover Agent Allison had been assigned to the case.

Allison had learned that Hawkins had been snatched in the night from his roadside shack. The Undercover Agent had followed as rapidly as possible. But the fire had been burning in the Moon Riders' bowl when he got into the rocks above. Charley Hawkins stood there, his skinny body shivering, but his chin uplifted and defiant.

A guttural voice growled from inside one of the hooding sacks.

"You've been havin' truck with folks comin' at night to your den of iniquity, Charley Hawkins! Such as you must be punished according to the sworn ritual!"

"It's a lie!" blazed Hawkins. "The folks who stop by are tourists who want a bite! All of you know that!"

The Fed heard and he knew this to be true. Allison connected in his own mind a possible reason why other persons in White Horse Valley might not want that roadside stand to remain.

He did not consider this long, for there was little more conversation. Even as Allison was condemning himself for not having armed himself with a sub-gun, and was sliding down the rocks with his single automatic, Charley Hawkins leaped high as the hot whip cut viciously around his stomach and back.

The little man then must have gone completely insane. The slashing of the other wires did not stop him. He screamed crazily, "I know you! I know your voice!"

A heated wire snapped around Hawkins' face and seared his lips. He started to fall forward, but he got out the mumbled syllables of a name, a name that did not reach Allison.

The Federal Agent at this instant was trying for a cleft of rocks where he could command all of the group with the automatic. Most of the riders were armed with shotguns. It was a desperate chance at the best, but even for the sake of valuable evidence the Federal Agent could not stomach any more of this torture.

"So, you know me, huh?"

The voice was a rasped guttural from under the drawn hood. The man's face and most of his body were concealed, for the sack was one used for grain, with suitable holes cut in its side.

Charley Hawkins' bleeding, burned mouth opened wide and he screamed directly at the man who had spoken.

"I know you--I know you--"

Allison's even teeth clicked together. He centered his automatic on the hooded figure who had spoken. Murder was to be read in that muffled guttural. The Federal Agent could see the upward movement of the muzzles of shotguns.

"Stop it, you devils!" shouted Allison, his pistol steadily upon the man he took to be the leader. "Stop it, in the name of--"

Perhaps it was just as well Ray Allison did not complete the sentence "in the name of the law!" He did not finish it for the simple reason of a gun barrel slamming down on the back of his head. The Government Man collapsed.

He was spared seeing Charley Hawkins curl into a knot on the ground and die with his ribs and stomach blasted from his scrawny body.

The Undercover Agent did not know when the topless small cars coasted down the mountain road, leaving him among the rocks. The Moon Riders did not wait to finish off Allison, for his bloody head had the appearance of being completely caved in.

MEN walked through the single dusty street of White Horse Village with lips held tight and eyes slanted upon the faces of all their neighbors. Charley Hawkins had been found this morning.

The mild, little man of the tourist stand had been discovered sitting upright in a chair behind his hamburger counter. Charley Hawkins was minus both his face and his stomach. He was only a bloody carcass, the parts not torn by the shot showing livid welts from burning whips. A printed card was strung by a hempen cord about the man's neck.

WE WILL NOT HAVE SUCH IN

OUR MIDST--THE MOON RIDERS.

There were about fifteen hundred persons living in White Horse Village. John Simpson was the marshal, and Curt Roden was the sheriff's deputy. Simpson and Roden necessarily performed the official rites of the law, which were brief.

The truth was that Curt Roden looked into John Simpson's red face and recalled that Marshal Simpson had been drinking heavily since the beginning of depredations by the Moon Riders. And Marshal Simpson avoided Deputy Curt Roden's piercing gaze, tried to forget that Roden had been regarded as a wild one before he had steadied down and taken this job as deputy sheriff.

It is doubtful if there was a single family that fully trusted any other family. Only one man stood out, his joviality attempting to override the furtiveness of his fellow citizens.

He was Joel Romer, proprietor of the village general store. Postmaster, justice of the peace and mayor, Joel Romer was a bald-headed, constantly perspiring, but constantly laughing fellow with a moonlike face.

"We'll never get at this, every man tryin' to see under his neighbor's hide," Joel Romer said to Marshal Simpson. "Dammit! I'm for callin' in the Feds an' havin' them root out this thing bud an' branch."

None of these men knew about Ray Allison; or that the Moon Riders, believing him dead, had left the Federal Agent on the rocks.

ABOUT the time the fussy village doctor was performing his perfunctory services for the remains of Charley Hawkins, a lean, swarthy fellow with big earrings in his lobes and sleek black hair, plodded along the dusty street.

The man was a wandering Syrian peddler, one who sells everything from tinware to calico prints, to the poorer women in the hill cabins. The Syrian had been peddling merchandise from his rattling auto truck. For several weeks now he had been seen around the village. But today, he was without his familiar, rattling truck.

The Syrian's half-lidded gray eyes observed the fat, good-natured Joel Romer standing in the broad porch of his general store, which was also the village post office. Marshal Simpson and Deputy Sheriff Roden were in the knot of a dozen tightmouthed villagers listening to Romer.

"Put in my own post office, right among the other mail!" proclaimed Joel Romer, his usual laugh missing. "Threatening me! If you don't send for the government men, I'm sendin' myself on account of this bein' in the mail!"

Marshal Simpson did not speak. Deputy Roden was silent. So were the others of the few villagers listening. They glanced at each other and they looked at their postmaster and mayor. The Syrian knew without seeing the letter that Joel Romer had received a threat from the Moon Riders.

The sudden movement away from the store porch indicated none of those listening had any comment they wanted to make publicly. It was dangerous to speak, to express sympathy with a man who had been threatened.