Doc stared at them, not realizing what they were intent on. The first of the yellow-skinned people passed him.
Doc now observed King Chaac had exerted pressure on the large Kukulcan idol beside the water tank that was always flowing. The idol had levered back. Revealed was a large cavity! Well-worn stone steps stretched downward into darkness!
Into this opening the column of Mayans dived. Like well-trained soldiers they sped up the side of the pyramid. But they seemed as surprised as the white men at sight of the opening.
Doc glanced askance at the elderly Mayan sovereign.
"Of all my people, only I knew of this hidden door," explained King Chaac.
The machine guns of the red-fingered warriors were silent. The orderly retreat up the pyramid side must have them puzzled. And no doubt they thought they had wrought enough havoc with their weapons to bring the Mayans to terms.
Doc watched the gun emplacements close — his sharp eye had located each one. He saw the red-fingered devils show themselves.
He saw one other man — a fellow masquerading in a repulsive snakeskin costume. Colored feathers were arrayed down the back of the hideous serpent outfit.
This revolting figure seemed to be directing the whole thing. He even gave Morning Breeze orders. Doc, catching the man's voice faintly, knew by the accent he was no Mayan.
Suddenly the machine guns went into operation again.
But they had waited too long. Practically all the Mayans were inside the pyramid. Even as the hail of metal started anew, the last of the golden-skinned people ducked into the wide, secret door.
King Chaac and Princess Monja now descended. Doc and his five friends followed.
The Mayan ruler showed them slits in the masonry. Through these, it was possible to observe whether any one was coming up the steps.
Even as they looked, some of the red-fingered warriors ran to the foot of the pyramid and started up the stairs.
"If we just had our guns!" Renny groaned, his puritanical face genuinely forlorn. But Doc and his men had left their weapons in their store house.
"Watch!" commanded King Chaac. He called a low order to some of his men far down the darkened passage into the depths of the pyramid.
Great, round rocks were passed up and chucked outside. The dornicks bounded down the steps. The warriors were battered back. They picked themselves up and fled.
"They cannot get to us here," said King Chaac.
Doc Savage listened to the shouting voice of the man in the snake masquerade. The tones reached them faintly.
Doc identified the coarse voice! The snake man was the slayer of the elder Savage, and the prime mover in the planned Hidalgo revolution. It was the voice Doc had heard in that hotel room in the Hidalgo capital city, Blanco Grande.
Doc knew now why he had found no trace of the killer during the past week. The man had been away from the Valley of the Vanished, getting the machine guns.
"How about food supplies?" Doc asked.
Reluctantly, King Chaac admitted: "There is no food."
"Then we're penned up," Doc pointed out. "There is plenty of water, I presume?"
"Plenty. The stream that supplies the pool atop the pyramid — we have access to it."
"That helps," Doc admitted. "Your people may be able to hold out a few days. My men and myself, accustomed to hardship, might beat that. But we've got to do something."
Suddenly Doc bounded upward to the lip of the opening in the pyramid top. He glanced quickly about. He decided to take a chance. It was a chance so slim only a man of Doc's unique powers could wrench success from it.
"No one shall try to follow me!" he warned.
Then, with a swift spring, he was out of the passage that dived down into the innards of the golden pyramid.
So unexpected was Doc's appearance that a moment elapsed before the clumsy red-fingered machine gunners could turn a stream of lead on the pyramid top and the tiny temple there. By the time metal did storm, Doc had bounded off the top.
He did not select the stairs. He had a better means of descent. The steep, glass-smooth side of the pyramid! The gold-bearing ore of which the great structure was made was hard. The ages it had stood there had not weathered away enough of the soft gold to roughen the original sleekness much.
Leaning well back, Doc coasted downward on his heels. His leap had given him great momentum.
Twenty feet, and he spun over and over expertly. Thus, he flashed to one side several yards. It was well he did. Machine-gun bullets clouted into the course he had been following, and screamed off into space.
Rich gold ore, broken loose, clattered down the pyramid. But Doc left it far behind. Mere sliding speed was not enough. He jumped outward, did it again, until he traveled faster than a falling object.
He hit the foot of the pyramid at a speed that would have shattered the body of an ordinary man. Tremendous muscles of sprung steel cushioned Doc's landing. He never as much as lost his balance. Like a whippet, he was away.
Into a low depression, he sank. Hungry lead slugs rattled like hail — but always a yard or two behind Doc. The speed of his movements was too tremendous for inexperienced marksmen. Even an expert shot at moving objects would have had trouble getting a bead on that bronze, corded form.
The depression let Doc into low bushes. And from that moment he was lost to the murderers with the machine guns.
To the red-fingered warriors, it was incredible! They clucked among themselves, and looked about wildly for the flashing thing of bronze that was Doc. They did not find it.
Their leader, the repulsive figure masqueraded in snakeskin and feathers, was more perturbed than the others. He cowered among them. He kept very close to a machine gun, as though he expected that great, bronzed Nemesis of his kind to spring upon him from thin air.
Great was the snake man's terror of Doc Savage.
Chapter 19. THE BRONZE MASTER
Doc Savage sped for the stone city. It lay only a few rods away. He haunted low tropical vegetation to the first stone-paved street. Among the houses he glided.
So quiet was his going that wild tropical birds perched on the projecting stone roofs of the houses were unfrightened by his passage; no more scared than had he been the bronze reflection of some cloud overhead.
Doc was making for the building which had been his headquarters. In it, he had left his machine guns, rifles, pistols, and the remarkable gas that was Monk's invention.
He wanted those weapons. With them, the fifty or so warriors could be defeated in short order. Armed equally, the men of Morning Breeze could not stand against Doc and his five veteran fighters. So Doc had taken tremendous chances to get guns.
The headquarters house appeared ahead. Low, replete with stone carving, it was no more elaborate than the other Mayan homes. It seemed deserted.
The door, which could be closed solidly with a pivoted stone slab, but which was ordinarily only curtained, gaped invitingly. Doc paused and listened.
Back toward the pyramid, a machine gun snarled out a dozen shots. He heard nothing else.
Doc pushed back the curtain and slid into the stone house.
No enemies were there.
Doc went across the room, seeming to glide on ice, so effortlessly did he move. He tried the door of the room in which they had placed their arms.
He perceived suddenly that Long Tom's electric burglar alarm had been expertly put out of commission.
No Mayan knew enough to do that!
"The man in the snakeskin!" Doc decided. "He did it!"
The room door gave before a shove by a great bronze arm. Doc had expected what he saw when he looked in.
The weapons were gone!
A faint sound came from the street.