The Mexican looked down at the sword he was using for a walking stick. It was stained with sticky red, and even now the flies were commencing to drone about it.
“What is this?” he asked in his thick, suspicious voice, and raised it to his eyes. Then he flung it far down the canon. It clattered upon the rocks. He crossed himself, looked at me with eyes which were showing a glint of expression, an expression of wonderment.
“It is nothing,” I said. “Come.”
“Where is the other man, the Señor Bender?”
“He has remained behind. Come.”
We struck the shoulder of the mountain, zigzagged to the plain. The sun came up and tinted us with its reddish rays. Far off in the distance I saw a cloud of dust and knew that it was an automobile.
I followed the course of the road, figured where we might intersect it, and ran down the sloping plain, shouting at the Mexican to hurry.
He ran with a heavy-footed pace which covered the ground but slowly. We would have missed it, but the automobile driver saw us and waited while we covered the last half mile. He was a bronzed rancher who was inclined to be suspicious, but he gave us a lift.
I had taken the things from the pockets of my coat, taken off my coat, and rolled the treasure stuff into a ball within the coat. The rancher looked at it suspiciously, but I offered no explanation. He took us to Gallup, and from there we caught a train to Los Angeles.
I had purchased a suitcase for my treasure stuff.
At Los Angeles I secured a car from a friend, and drove the Mexican back to Mexicali.
I deemed it better to transfer a portion of the gold into money and pay him his half in coin. It amounted to more than twelve thousand dollars at the prices I was able to get. Many of the things were museum pieces, even without an authentic history. And I gave no history.
But I did not pay him until I had him back in his ’dobe, and was ready to leave. His women folks commented on the wounds on his face, on the scratch marks which stretched from forehead to chin.
“Where is the evil one?” asked the old woman, when there had been mutually evasive comments on the wounds of the man.
“He remained behind.”
She rocked back and forth on her chair and crooned some charm, or perhaps it was a curse. The words were unintelligible.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“He was evil, very evil,” she said at length.
“He was a devil-man,” said the fat woman.
The Mexican spoke simply.
“He made me very sleepy,” he said.
I made no comments. The children came trooping in and climbed all over me. I gave them a peso apiece. Then, when I was ready to go, I took an envelope from my pocket and handed it to the Mexican.
“Señor,” I said, “I have the honor to wish you good day, and to express regrets at the parting and appreciation for the association.”
He muttered some formal courtesy. It was the fat woman who opened the envelope and saw the crisp five-hundred-dollar bills that were in it. I heard her scream as I left the door.
From the sidewalk I could hear her voice through the open window. She was explaining the amount of the money to the more stolid and ignorant husband. The old woman was keeping up a shrill chattering of words and phrases which had almost no meaning, although once or twice I caught the expression “Devil Man.”
I have no explanation. I have given you the facts as they happened; but to understand them you must be able to visualize the eyes of the man as I saw them there in that Mexicali dance hall, aluminium-colored eyes that had pupils that were mere pin-points.
If you had seen those eyes, the story would have seemed but the natural sequence of events, rather than something bizarre. Strange things happen on the border desert; strange whispers seep through the ear-aching silence of the desert spaces.
But never again have I seen a man with eyes like those — only the once. And that is enough. Emilio Bender lies asleep in a cave of death beneath a mesa in New Mexico. Perhaps, if there is anything in the Buddhist law of reincarnation and repayment, some hypnotist of three hundred years hence will disturb his rest and summon him back to the land of the living.
Personally, I do not know.
The Sky’s the Limit
Chapter 1
The Mysterious Inclosure
Click Kendall realized that there was something almost impersonal in the antagonism of the man before him.
“Do I understand you refuse to make any statement?”
That question had been effective with many another tough customer. But this man answered it with a single explosive word.
“Yes.”
Click Kendall played his trump card. With a happy smile suffusing his features he whipped a notebook from his pocket.
“Then I shall quote you as saying that!” he exclaimed, and wrote meaningless words rapidly. “I have your permission to quote you as having used those words! Now your further plans are to—”
But the man at the gate did not weaken. His black, glittering eyes looked directly at Click Kendall, yet seemed focused upon some distant point.
“You may quote me as having said that you had better withdraw your foot from that gate!”
The words were a monotone of calm irritation.
Click Kendall hastily jerked back his foot. The gate slammed shut. The sound of a lock clicking into place terminated the interview with conclusive finality.
Kendall sighed, turned, walked a few steps, then looked back.
The sun illuminated an unpainted board fence, ten feet high, surmounted by a triple barrier of barbed wire. What lay behind that fence could only be surmised. It stretched for a hundred yards without so much as a knothole, and the cracks had been covered with strips of batten.
Climbing into his battered flivver, Kendall gave one last, longing look at the fence, yellow in its unpainted newness, then wrestled with the steering wheel as the car jolted over the dusty highway.
He had failed, and the editor of the Bugle wouldn’t take kindly to that failure. He had been ordered to find out, and he was returning as ignorant as when he started.
Professor Wagner was a nut, to be sure, but there was a good story in him and—
Click snapped to abrupt attention.
His car, jouncing around a curve in the road, rattled full upon a scene of conflict.
A low-hung touring car was crowding a roadster to one side of the road. Three pairs of hands, stretched out from the touring car, were literally lifting a struggling figure from behind the steering wheel of the roadster.
Even as Click gasped his incredulous astonishment, the figure was jerked clear. The roadster careened, skidded, and headed directly toward him. The touring car ripped into a tearing charge that billowed a vortex of swirling dust behind.
Click dodged the roadster, tried to jerk the wheel in time to avoid a collision with the touring car. Failed. A jar tingled his shoulders. Metal ripped. He was rattled around the inside of his flivver like a bit of popping corn in a popper.
His swimming eyes saw a kaleidoscope of scenery circulating about him, then steadied as the cars came to a stop. The flivver had locked front fenders and hubcaps with the touring car, bringing it to a stop, half twisted about on the road.
The driver of that car was standing up. The two figures in the back seat were struggling with their captive, and Click saw that that captive was a woman.
For a swift fraction of a second he watched her kicking legs, fluttering skirts, heard her screams. Then he realized that the arm of the driver was extended, pointing something directly at his body.