Читать книгу The Flaming Falcons: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 3
ОглавлениеTHE MYSTERIOUS FARM
Hobo Jones was a rather pleasant young man who found it necessary to sleep in haystacks, and this was what really started the whole thing. If Hobo Jones had not wanted to sleep in a haystack in a God-forsaken part of Arizona, quite a string of incredible events might not have happened, and a number of persons would have been spared the unpleasant experience of having their hair stand on end, Hobo Jones among them.
Hobo Jones supposed himself to be a bum. His pockets were empty. He had no job. He had—since Mom and Pop died of the flu on the rented farm last winter—no home. That made him a bum, didn’t it? He was twenty-four years old.
True, he could go on relief. He could get on the WPA, or the PWA, whichever it was—he had them mixed—and make something out of himself. At least, make twelve dollars or so a week, which was twelve dollars or so more than he was making. But he wouldn’t. Not much, he wouldn’t.
Hobo Jones was a rugged individualist, and he was going to stick to it. He was going to keep moving, and sometime, somewhere, he was going to find himself a job. He understood clearly that he might belong in the class labeled blockheads, because there was no stigma attached to the WPA or the PWA, whichever it was. He knew some pretty swell guys who were on those jobs. They were all right.
Hobo Jones was a large sunburned young man who could lift the front ends of most automobiles. He had a big, perpetual grin. He had a thatch of corn-husk-colored hair that a mother mouse looking for a nest would have adored. He was nice to children and dogs, and both frequently followed him.
As Hobo Jones walked down a road in Arizona, he noticed it was getting dark, and almost simultaneously, he perceived a haystack.
“There,” he remarked cheerfully, “is my hotel.”
Which was very unfortunate.
Hobo Jones was ever afterward somewhat uncertain about exactly what did happen during the next few moments. Not that his eyes didn’t clearly see, and his body painfully feel, what occurred. But the trouble was, his brain refused to accept it as reasonable. Hobo Jones was a very reasonable, level-headed young man. It was hard for him to believe such events as began occurring.
There was nothing extraordinary about the haystack, except that as he drew closer, it began to look more like a strawstack. So much the better. Straw didn’t have seeds that got down your neck and scratched, the way this Arizona hay did. It was just a strawstack.
The strawstack stood in a dense thicket of mesquite and yucca and assorted varieties of cacti, so Hobo Jones was surprised he had noticed it. Truthfully, he was surprised he had seen anything, because he hadn’t observed a house in miles. As a matter of fact, he was beginning to suspect that he had gotten off the road to Flagstaff, and was gandering off into the desert.
Hobo Jones came to a high wire fence. This seemed to surround the strawstack. The fence was of woven wire, but that didn’t surprise him, because you probably had to use woven wire to keep herds of Arizona jackrabbits away from strawstacks.
Hobo Jones was feeling good at finding the strawstack, so when he saw a long piece of two-by-four lying on the ground, he picked it up on impulse. He decided to vault the fence, using the two-by-four for a pole. It was just coltish playfulness—Hobo Jones was full of that.
He took a run, vaulted—and didn’t make it over. He lit on his feet on the top wire. Things happened. Sparks, mostly. Green ones, that sounded like spitting tomcats. He would have sworn some of the sparks were a yard long. They seemed to run up his trouser legs.
Hobo Jones landed flat on his back inside the fence.
“I’ve been electrocuted!” he thought.
The fall had knocked his breath out. He was tingling all over from electricity. He was surprised. Other than this, he found upon gaining his feet, he was as good as before, except for his dignity, which was distinctly not the same.
He scowled at the electrified fence.
“Well, I got over the thing, anyway,” he reflected.
An electrified fence was not exactly the usual item to be found on the Arizona desert, so Hobo Jones looked around to see why and wherefore. He noticed that the fence seemed rather extensive, obviously including more than a mere strawstack. He walked to the top of a small hill on which the strawstack stood, and looked.
A cultivated field was before him. It was little more than handkerchief size. About an acre, inclosed by the electrified fence.
Something grew in the field. Some vegetable, weed or plant, that was unlike anything Hobo Jones had seen before. The stuff resembled cactus somewhat, only it was yellowish, about the color of a frog’s stomach, and it couldn’t be conventional cactus because it had no thorns.
“Maybe it’s good to eat,” Hobo Jones mused, and he ambled forward.
The yellow vegetable was as tough as could be, but he finally got one off the plant, set his teeth in it, then found it necessary to take out his pocket knife and scrape his teeth. The interior of the mysterious fruit was a whitish-yellow gummy substance that had the tenacity of glue, and also about the same taste as would be expected of glue made out of a very long dead horse.
“Ugh! Phew!” said Hobo Jones. “Yah-h-h!”
He turned around, and there stood a naked man.
There wasn’t any swimming hole close. The surrounding country was as dry as a fish’s nightmare. It was no logical place for a man who was sans apparel.
This naked man was a long brown collection of sinew and bones, and distinctly not lovely. He had eyes as black as ink-bottle corks. Remarkably enough, his teeth were also black instead of white.
“Uh,” said Hobo Jones. “Er—hello.”
The brown naked man smiled, showing all his black teeth. He bent over, picked up a handful of the sand which composed most of the soil hereabouts.
“Wooley-gooley-guh,” he said—or so it sounded—and pointed at the fistful of sand.
He obviously wanted Hobo Jones to look at the sand. He walked over, wearing a big, sociable smile, so Hobo Jones, just to be pleasant, bent over and looked.
Next instant, the sand had been slapped into his eyes. And he was flat on his back. And a wild cat was on his chest.
Hobo Jones had been in fights before, particularly of late, but in these scraps he had just stood on his feet and popped the other fellow one on the jaw, then popped him one again if he got up, which he usually didn’t. This was different. The brown man was as tough as leather shoestring. He moved like chain lightning. Every place he took hold of Hobo Jones it hurt. The brown man was master of some kind of heathen science. He also had surprise on his side.
Loud howls of pain and rage came from Hobo Jones. He drove his fists like pistons. Some of the blows landed, making his opponent give forth piping bleats of agony. They rolled over and over. Hobo Jones got some of the blinding sand out of his eyes; he began to see what he wanted to hit.
It might have had a very different outcome, except that their volcanic gyrations carried them across the sand to a spot where the naked brown man, who could see the better, got his hand upon a large dark Arizona rock. He struck Hobo Jones’ skull with this, and the rock proved much the harder.
When Hobo Jones opened his eyes and shook the stars out of his head, he saw that he was beside the strawstack. He was being tied hand and foot with quarter-inch rope. The naked brown man was at the moment finishing the tying.
The brown man stood up and dusted the sand off his arms, off his shoulders, and the rest of himself. From the way the sand stuck to the naked brown skin, Hobo Jones decided the fellow was greased all over, which helped explain why he had been so hard to hold.
The brown fellow picked up a piece of white cloth which was lying on the ground, and wrapped it around his hips with an expertness that showed he had dressed that way many times before.
“Help!” Hobo Jones howled, as loud as he could. “Help! Murder! Sheriff!”
He didn’t figure it would do any harm.
The brown man came over. He stuck his thumbs in Hobo Jones’ eyes. He poured sand in Hobo Jones’ mouth.
“Woo-gluhoo,” he said, approximately.
“Listen, my heathen acquaintance,” said Hobo Jones, “I don’t understand a word you say. Let me go! I’ll gladly find me another strawstack.”
So the brown man, not as naked now, dragged Hobo Jones inside the strawstack.
It was quite a thing, that strawstack, for it was a strawstack only as far as appearance went, being in reality a two-room shack made out of two-by-fours and boards, fitted with electric lights and electric stove and electric refrigerator, and furnished well enough for comfort, with the straw on the outside, in the shape of a conventional strawstack. There was a faint sound, somewhat like that of a bumblebee which had accidentally landed on a piece of flypaper, and this came from under the floorboards, so it was not unreasonable to suppose that there was a motor-generator down there, and that this furnished current for the electrified fence.
Hobo Jones was becoming puzzled.
“Say,” he said, “what kind of a setup is this, anyway?”
He got no answer.
“We’re fifty miles from nowhere,” added Hobo Jones.
He still got no answer.
“All right, all right,” he said. “Have it your own way.”
He was seized, dragged into the other room, which had no furniture whatever, but was separated from the first room by a stout door, and deposited upon the floor. The brown man went out, slamming the door and locking it.
Hobo Jones was left alone.
He started to think about the affair, then checked himself. He had a hunch he couldn’t make sense out of it, and would only get himself dizzy. And maybe scared, too. Thinking was the stuff that got you scared, wasn’t it?—at least, Hobo Jones had discovered that when you didn’t stop to think, you didn’t have time to get scared.
More sensible thing to do was investigate the ropes that secured him. He knew something about ropes, because he had tied many a knot in halter ropes back on the farm, and he had once sent away for a book on how the stage magicians escaped from rope bonds and strait jackets, although unluckily he didn’t recall much that had been in the book. He went to work. He skinned his wrists. He cracked his knuckles. He made his arms hurt.
Then he heard the squeal in the next room. It was a piping kind of squeal, shrill, like a stepped-on rat.
Following the squeal, something heavy fell on the floor.
Hobo Jones lay very still and listened, but the wham-banging of his own heart was the loudest thing around there. He began to work with the ropes again. He got them off. He untied his ankles, then he stood up. The circulation was dead in his feet, so that they felt as if they might be cut off at the ankles. He did a species of clog dance, wincing. Then he went to the door.
The door was locked.
“Open!” said Hobo Jones loudly.
This got no results. He beat on the door, with no better satisfaction.
Backing to the far side of the room he took a running jump and landed with both feet on the door. It ripped open. He alighted on his back on the floor in the other room—and wished he hadn’t done it just that way. It had looked all right one time when he’d seen it in the movies. But he’d nearly broken his neck.
The brown man sat in a chair. He did not look up. A splintered fragment of the door fell across his bare feet, and he did not move. His head was tilted forward as if he was dozing, only it wasn’t likely that he was dozing.
“Hey!” said Hobo Jones.
Getting no response, he walked over and peered closely at the brown man. The fellow didn’t look right. Distinctly not.
Hobo Jones picked up the brown man’s wrist and held it, and pretty soon it dawned on him that the brown man was dead.
“Whew!” said Hobo Jones, and dropped the wrist.
It was his first contact with a dead man, and he suddenly had the almighty hope that it would be his last. He went hot and cold. Sweat broke out.
“Gee!” he said.
He wanted to take another look at the dead man to see what could possibly have killed him, but he couldn’t bear to do it, and anyway, he knew that there was no mark on the corpse that would indicate a demise as a result of external violence.
“Gosh!” said Hobo Jones, and felt the need of the clean desert air.
He had started for the door when he saw the skull-colored bird.
