Monk looked, and perceived what he had not before noted in the moonlight. The two ropes, thin but extremely strong, were tied to a couple of the stout shrubs surrounding the paved circle. The ends of the ropes dangled in the well. The Mayans, too, had missed seeing them.
"Doc and Renny slid down into the well before the warriors got here," Long Tom continued. "Renny held a big rock in his arms. He tied the rope end around his waist to support him."
Long Tom laughed softly — but not very heartily. "When the red-fingered men tossed me in, Renny dropped the rock to make it sound like I had hit bottom. And — "
"And Doc simply swung out and caught them, one at a time, as they came down," Renny chimed in. "Then they clung to the sides of the well. That was not much of a job, because the sides are very rough, some blocks sticking out enough for a man to sit on in comfort."
"You looked like you were crying when you stuck your mug into the pit," Johnny chided Monk. "Did you really hate to see me go that much?"
"Aw-w, fooey on you!" Monk grinned.
Doc came back, appearing with the silent unexpectedness of an apparition.
"Why didn't you and Renny pitch in and clean up on the warriors when you saw them grab Long Tom?" Monk asked.
"Because I reasoned he'd be thrown into the sacrificial well alive," Doc replied. "That is the customary manner of sacrificing offerings. And I wanted the red-fingered devils to think Long Tom, Johnny, and Ham are dead. I've got an idea to pull."
"What?"
"The warriors are our immediate trouble here," Doc explained. "If we can convince them we are really supernatural beings, we'll have half the battle won. Then we can concentrate on trapping this man who is behind the Hidalgo revolution scheme."
"Sure," Monk agreed. "But how to convince them is the catch." He rubbed his big knuckles. "I'm in favor of glomming onto Morning Breeze and the rest of them, and have an old-fashioned lynching party. That'd fix it."
"And have the rest of the Mayans on top of us," Doc pointed out. "No. I'm going to convince those superstitious fighters I am an extra sort of a guy. I'll run such a whizzer on them that they won't dare to listen to Morning Breeze telling them we're ordinary men!"
Doc paused dramatically, then revealed his plan. "I'm going to bring Long Tom, Johnny, and Ham to life for the warrior sect's benefit!"
Monk digested that. "How?"
"Watch us," Doc suggested, "and you'll catch on."
Working rapidly, Doc pried up paving stones in a line to the thickest part of the surrounding jungle. In the soft earth beneath, he dug a narrow trench.
He had brought with him from the plane a coil of stout piano wire. No greater in diameter than a match, it had a strength sufficient to support several men. This he laid in the trench, afterward replacing the paving stones, careful no evidence remained of their having been disturbed.
The end of the piano wire he ran into the sacrificial well, and straight across and out the other side. To a dead-man-stick anchor some yards beyond he secured the end, uprooting other paving blocks and replacing them so the whole work would go unnoticed.
Directly below the well mouth he rigged a sort of saddle on the wire.
"Catch on?" he asked.
Monk did. "Sure. I hide out there in the brush and give the wire a big pull when you pass the word. Long Tom, Johnny, and Ham take turns sitting in that saddle arrangement. When I pull the wire tight, they will be tossed out of the well. Just like an arrow is thrown from a bow."
"Or a rock from a kid's bean shooter," Doc agreed. "One more little detail."
Inside the well, close to the anchored end, Doc cut the wire. He tied the end in a loop. The other end he secured to that in such a manner that, by yanking on an ordinary twine string which Doc attached, the last man thrown out by the ingenious catapult could separate the wire.
"And you pull in the end, saddle and all," Doc pointed out to Monk. "That gets rid of the evidence, in case anybody is suspicious enough to look into the well."
Johnny, Long Tom, and Ham climbed down into the well, to spend the rest of the night roosting on the jutting ends of the huge rocks which formed the masonry walls.
"Don't get drowsy and fall off!" Monk chided.
"Not much danger!" Long Tom shuddered. "Just you don't let the end of that wire slip out of your hands while I'm in the saddle!"
Monk leered delightedly at his old roasting mate, Ham. "Now, there is an idea!" he chuckled with mock threat. "I've got the ugliest face in the world, have I?"
To which Ham grinned: "You're a raving beauty until I get out of that saddle, Monk!"
A fair degree of daylight came long before the sun actually could be seen from the floor of the Valley of the Vanished, due to the tremendous depth of the chasm.
With the first flush of luminance, Doc was in conference with old King Chaac, benign sovereign of the lost clan of Maya.
The elderly ruler was very enraged when he heard Morning Breeze and his red-fingered men had consigned three of Doc's friends to the sacrificial well during the night.
Doc had neglected to mention that his three men were still quite alive.
"The time has come for a firm hand!" the Mayan chief said in his surprisingly good English. "In the past the people have put the warrior sect in its place when their depredations became unbearable.
"Morning Breeze has been working for a long time, slowly undermining my authority. Not satisfied with being chief of the fighting men, which is not such an honorable post, he desires to rule. It is also no secret that he wishes my daughter in marriage! I shall call together men and seize Morning Breeze and those next him in authority. They shall follow your men into the sacrificial well!"
Likable old King Chaac, Doc reflected, had waited a little too long before putting a firm hand upon Morning Breeze.
"Your people are under the spell of Morning Breeze's eloquence," Doc pointed out. "To lay hands on him would cause an uprising."
The Mayan winced a little at the blunt statement that his power had ebbed. Reluctantly he agreed.
"I have let Morning Breeze go too far, hoping to avert violence," he admitted. Then he looked wryly at Doc. "I should have been more alert. Our warriors have never been considered members of an honorable profession. It is not like your country, where soldiers are fine men. We Mayans are by nature a peaceable folk. To us war is a low thing."
He shrugged. "Those of our men who are inclined to violence naturally turn to the warrior sect. Many lazy men join the fighting group because the warriors do no labor. Too, petty criminals are sentenced to join the red-fingered ones. The fighting guild are a class apart. No upstanding Mayan would think of taking one of them into his home."
"But they seem to have more influence than that now," Doc smiled.
"They do," King Chaac admitted. "The red-fingered men fight off invaders from the Valley of the Vanished. Otherwise their sect would have been abolished hundreds of years ago."
Doc now broached the subject of his visit. "I have a plan which will dwarf the influence of the red-fingered sect."
Renewed energy flowed into the elderly Mayan sovereign at Doc's statement. He looked at this bronze Apollo of a man before him, and seemed to gather confidence.