The six men stared, transfixed with stupefied horror. The frowning
slopes of the looming range suddenly seemed unearthly in menace, a
mysterious death-trap into which they had almost run. Clark Stannard's
mind was whirling madly. God! what _was_ the invisible force that
invested these mountains and that had struck like lightning?
In Clark's mind like a tolling death-bell rang the words that he
himself had spoken not long before. "The natives say that nobody can
cross those mountains, for any living thing that sets foot upon them is
slain instantly."
Incredibly, horribly, that was a fact. The Mountains of Death were a
deadly barrier that no man could cross.
"Here come the savages!" yelled Ephraim Quell's harsh voice.
Clark spun with the others. The skeleton-painted Amafuka were charging
through the trees toward the little group of petrified white men,
spears leveled, eyes flaming, shouting madly.
"_Kilima Amafuka!_"
"Good gosh!" cried Mike Shinn. "They're tryin' to force us back onto
the slope!"
The Amafuka were pouring out of the jungle in a solid mass, racing to
get within spear-throw of the white men. Clark's voice blared, instinct
for leadership flaring up in this incredible dilemma. His men knelt,
fired their rifles as fast as they could pull trigger. Then Blacky
Cain's submachine gun tore loose with the whir of a striking rattler.
An unseen death lashed among the charging savages and dropped them
in heaps. Others behind the dead tripped on the bodies, and as they
stumbled, soft-nosed rifle bullets slammed into them. The raving
warriors could not stand such punishment, and again recoiled with
shrieks of rage into the jungle.
Clark straightened and looked at his panting, desperate crew. Their
faces powder-grimed, their clothes torn by the flight through the
jungle, they were a wild-looking group. Blacky Cain, a lighted
cigarette dangling from his lips, was glaring at the jungle. The lank
Texan's lips were tightly compressed, his eyes icy with menace.
Clark, even in this desperate moment, felt a surge of pride in his
followers. Disgraced, criminal fugitives they might be, but, by heaven,
they were men! Not on one face was there any panic. They looked as
dangerous as cornered panthers.
"We've got to get out of here," Clark said swiftly. "Those Amafuka will
wait until night and then rush us and finish us."
"Don't know where we can go," said Ephraim Quell nasally. "I don't
hanker to try climbing those mountains, now."
"That's just what the cursed scouts want us to do, damn their black
hearts and hides!" said Mike Shinn wrathfully.
"Climbing the mountains is out of the question," Clark said rapidly.
"God knows what weird force clings to them, but it is deadly. It looks
as if a vast electrical charge invests the mountains and kills anything
that makes contact with it. Our only chance is to march along the base
of the mountains, holding off the Amafuka, until we can find some pass
or gap by which we can pass in through the mountains. I don't think the
Amafuka would follow us to the inside of the range."
As the six adventurers put Clark's plan into effect, the savages
started to boil out of the jungle toward them. But the men halted and
fired a rapid volley that sent the blacks back into the forest. The six
marched on, following the base of the deadly range eastward.
Clark's gaze swept desperately along the frowning peaks and buttresses
in vain search for a pass through them. His heart held a foreboding
chill, for nowhere along the titan barrier could he descry any break
or gap. And as the six pressed on, they glimpsed the ghastly painted
shapes of the Amafuka slipping along in the jungle, keeping pace with
them. For a half-hour the taut march continued. Already the sun was
declining ominously toward the west.
Then the white men stiffened as there came to their ears a dim, distant
roaring sound from ahead, throbbing through the tense silence in
unbroken rhythm. Ephraim Quell looked startled.
"That roar sounds like----" he began.
"Look, there's a pass in the range!" cried Lieutenant Morrow suddenly,
pointing a lean finger.
* * * * *
Clark had already seen, and his heart bounded with hope. A half-mile
ahead the titanic cliffs were broken by a narrow, crack-like split, a
chasm extending inward through their rock mass.
The men pressed forward with quickened pace, taut with expectation and
hope. The dull, unbroken roar from ahead came louder and louder to
their ears. Link Wilson glanced at the shadowy shapes of the Amafuka,
keeping pace with them inside the bordering forest.
"Somethin' wrong here!" muttered the lanky Texan. "They must know we're
headin' for that pass. Why don't they try to stop us?"
"Sure, they've had a taste of our guns and they don't want another
match with us," answered Mike Shinn jubilantly.
But a few minutes later, as the six men came abreast of the chasm-like
pass, they halted with cries of despair.
Across their path lay a river that flowed out of the jungle and into
that chasm. And what a river! A deep, raging body of water a hundred
yards wide that ran with mill-race swiftness between dirt banks
littered with dead trees and debris. A cataract rushed wildly and with
a steady roar, straight into the chasm in the deadly cliffs.
The chasm itself was a mere crack in the frowning range, its walls
going up vertically for thousands of feet. And the raving, roaring
waters flowing into it completely covered its bottom with their foaming
flood.
Clark Stannard, his hopes plummeting to black despair, remembered now
that he had seen this river from the top of the huge banyan when he had
first descried the Mountains of Death. Now it barred their way, trapped
them. They could never swim this mad stream.
"This," said Lieutenant Morrow calmly, "ends our retreat. For good."
"I knew those damned blacks had some object in lettin' us retreat this
way," gritted Link Wilson. "They know they've got us cornered now."
The Amafuka, as the white men halted, had halted also, extending their
line across the way Clark and his band had come, and also through the
jungle to a point farther up the river. They squatted down, a grimly
waiting horde.
"They're waiting for darkness," rasped Blacky Cain. "Then they'll rush
us and rub us out--and we can't get away."
"Sure, it looks like this is the final round, at that," said Mike
Shinn, scratching his red head.
Clark's eyes had been sweeping desperately along the raging river,
following it where it entered the chasm.
"By heaven," he exclaimed, "they may rush us at dark but we won't be
here. We're going to go down this river, through that pass in the
mountains. It's our way inside the range."
They stared incredulously at him. He added swiftly, pointing to where
the wild cataract entered the chasm:
"Look, you can see fish leaping in the water in there inside the chasm.
That means that the bed of the river is not charged with the deadly
force like the rest of the mountains--probably the waters have eroded
down to ordinary rock. And that means we can go down the river, and if
we don't touch the chasm walls, we won't be killed."
"Go down that river?" echoed Mike Shinn. "Are ye crazy, man? No swimmer
could live a minute in that hell-stream."
"We're not going to swim," Clark declared. He pointed at the debris of
dead trees and brush lining the banks. "We can make a raft, by using
some of those vines to tie dead tree logs together."
"That we can," declared Ephraim Quell suddenly. "There's plenty of
stuff there."
"Ride down that river, into those cursed mountains, on a crazy
home-made raft?" gasped Shinn.
"It's our only chance," Clark declared. "We've got to escape the
Amafuka before dark, and we've got to get into the inside of this range
somehow. This gives us a chance to do both things. Quell, you and
Morrow help me with the raft," he ordered. "Blacky, you and Link and
Mike stay up here on guard."
The Yankee captain and the ex-army officer clambered down the dirt bank
with Clark. Rapidly they selected dead trees of suitable size. Then
the hand-axes came out of their belts and they began working furiously
under the broiling late afternoon sun. Chips flew, sweat soaked their
shirts, as they trimmed and shortened the trees.
Desperation, lent by knowledge that death awaited them if they did
not make their escape by dark, drove their muscles to the last ounce
of effort. One by one, the logs were shortened and trimmed and dragged
into the quiet waters of a small eddy. The men started laboring to
fasten them with long, tough vines from the masses of debris. Suddenly
up on the bank, two rifles cracked and the submachine gun whirred
fiercely.
"Here come the savages!" yelled Mike Shinn. "They've seen what we're
doing--they know we're tryin' to get away."
Clark climbed up the bank's top swiftly. Some of the Amafuka had
reached a point where they had glimpsed the raft-building activity, and
were now coming on in wild fury.
"Quell, you and Morrow finish tying together those logs," cried Clark
to the two men below. "The rest of us will hold off the blacks till you
finish--but for God's sake hurry!"
* * * * *
The whole horde of the Amafuka was charging. The natives were mad
with rage as they saw their prey preparing to slip from their grasp,
and their skull-painted faces were hideous masks of fury. Clark threw
himself down between the Texan and Mike Shinn, and the three rifles and
the Thompson gun poured a stream of fire into the savages.
But this time the Amafuka came on! They leaped over their own dead,
their shrill yells wild over the thunder of waters. Blacky Cain dropped
the empty submachine gun, hastily dug in his pack-sack. He fished out
an oval steel object, tugged at it, then flung it forward.
_Crash!_ The thing exploded in the midst of the blacks and flattened a
score of them in bloody heaps. They sucked back in momentary terror.
Another hurtling steel object exploded amidst them.
"I thought those two pineapples would come in handy if I brought 'em
along," Blacky Cain laughed wolfishly.
"Hurry, Quell!" called Clark down to the two laboring men below.
"They'll rush us again in a moment. They're coming now!"
The Amafuka were diabolical in their rage. Again they charged forward,
spears glinting thick in the sun, plumed heads bent low as their wild
yells split the air.
Clark Stannard knew with sinking heart that they couldn't be stopped
this time. Blacky Cain, his lips curled back in a mirthless grin, had
drawn his heavy automatic.
"Raft's ready!" yelled Ephraim Quell suddenly.
"Come on!" shouted Clark to the other three.
They scrambled down the bank. There in the eddy floated the crude raft
of heavy logs, lashed precariously together with tough lianas. Morrow
stood on it with two long poles, ready to push off, and Ephraim Quell
was at a big, crude steering-oar he had affixed in an upright crotch at
the rear.
Mike Shinn and the Texan leaped onto it, followed by the snarling
gangster and Clark. Then Clark grabbed one of the long poles and he
and Morrow pushed frantically. The heavy, clumsy raft swung out with
maddening slowness toward the raging current.
The Amafuka burst into view along the bank in a solid wave. Their
screeches ripped the air as they saw their prey escaping. Their spears
flew in a deadly shower toward the raft. But the raft had swung into
the wild rush of the main current.
Instantly the raging waters gripped the clumsy craft and whirled it
around so suddenly that the men were flung down onto the rough logs.
Spinning, tossing, the raft was borne with nightmare speed down the
wild current toward the opening of the narrow chasm.
"Quell, head her around!" cried Clark over the surging roar. "If we
crash into the walls of the chasm, it's death!"
Ephraim Quell was straining at his big, crude steering-oar to swing the
craft around in the current, to bring it front-foremost. His bony form
tensed, his face crimsoned, as he fought the current.
The long raft's bow came slowly around. The yelling Amafuka on the bank
had already dropped far back, and now the craft was rushing and dipping
over the foaming waters, right into the chasm in the looming range.
To Clark Stannard, kneeling precariously on the rough logs at the
front, it was as though they had been suddenly transported out of the
hot sunlight into another world--a world of weird twilight, of dull,
thunderous, bellowing sound.
On either side of them, the dark, jagged sides of the chasm soared
upward out of sight, stupendous rock walls through which the river ran
with nightmare speed. Its deafening roar reverberated hollowly between
those walls like the bawling and bantering of hoarse, titanic voices.
On they rushed, through the unearthly, shadowy twilight, at breakneck
speed.
The chasm, and the river in it, turned sharply not far ahead. The raft,
slow to turn even in the swift current, was flung toward the rock wall
that it was death for any life to touch.
"Fend off!" screamed Clark to Morrow, kneeling and thrusting furiously
with his long pole toward the rock wall. Morrow did the same, while
Quell fought frantically with his oar to help them.
Their poles hit the rock wall--and white flashes of fire-like force
leaped from the rock and burned and scorched the ends of the poles.
Clark and the ex-army officer were almost thrown off the raft by the
thrust against their poles. But they clung to it, and the raft veered
from the menacing wall, whirled round the turn in the chasm.
On and on--a nightmare, crazy rush through the deadly walls, borne on
the raving, foaming flood. Again they had to thrust wildly to keep
the raft from scraping along the rock side. Clark glimpsed Shinn and
Link Wilson and Blacky Cain crouching at the center of the raft--the
prizefighter's battered face stupefied, the Texan's eyes narrowed to
slits, Blacky's harsh visage wearing its fighting snarl.
"Raft's beginning to come apart!" yelled Ephraim Quell over the din of
waters, pointing wildly with one hand.
The hastily-lashed vines that tied the logs together were beginning
to loosen under the battering of the current. The raft threatened to
disintegrate under them.
"It'll last a little longer!" Clark cried. "We must be nearly through
the range by now!"
He knew that already, so tremendous the speed of this unthinkable
current, they had rushed for miles into the heart of the Mountains of
Death. And they were still dipping and racing forward, still riding
the foam-maned waters down the twilight length of that narrow, titanic
canyon.
The waters roared louder. Clark Stannard glimpsed that ahead the river
dropped in a long, steeper grade at the bottom of the chasm, a rapid
of breathtaking incline, down which the waters rushed as though with
wings. And the raft was almost at the head of that rapid.
"Here we go!" cried Mike Shinn, eyes blazing.
* * * * *
The raft seemed to poise a moment at the very brink of that incredibly
slanting rapid. Then with a wild, sickening swoop, it flashed down the
current with dizzying speed.
Dark walls of rock flashing past, wild roar of maddened waters in
their ears, a giddy sensation of falling like that in a diving
airplane--these were Clark's chaotic, numbed sensations.
He glimpsed Quell working futilely with his steering-oar, trying to
steady the raft, and glimpsed the liana lashings bursting and breaking
rapidly. Down, down, they rushed--and ahead Clark suddenly glimpsed the
end of the chasm, saw sunlight beyond it.
The raft flashed forward like a winged thing, shooting down the last
of that sickening water-slant, and plunged suddenly out of the weird,
roaring twilight of the chasm into hot sunlight and open air. Before
them stretched a vast space.
"We're _through_!" yelled Lieutenant Morrow. "We're through the
mountains--inside the range."
"Good God, look at that!" cried Mike Shinn wildly, pointing westward.
"A city!"
Clark Stannard's senses seemed to reel. There stretched before him in
the blazing, waning sunlight the space that lay inside the ring of the
Mountains of Death--a circle of mingled forest and plain, fully fifty
miles across, ringed round by the vast, deadly range. Straight into
this prisoned land the raving river flowed with unabated speed.
And over there, miles away to the west, close to the inside wall of the
looming mountains, rose a crimson city--a fantastic city of blood-red
domes and roofs and streets, belted round with a high, scarlet wall.
Incredible red city of this fantastic, hidden realm! Clark wondered
fleetingly, did that city hold the legended Lake of Life?
"Here goes the raft!" bawled Ephraim Quell. "We'll have to swim for it!"
He managed by frenzied effort to steer the disintegrating raft almost
to the bank of the raving river. But now the logs were giving way,
spreading under them, as the last lashing came apart.
"Grab your packs--let the rifles and bandoliers go!" Clark yelled to
his men.
_Crash!_ Almost on his word, the raft struck a hidden rock. Instantly
the few remaining lashings burst, and as the logs flew apart under
them, they were all thrown into the crazy current.
_5. The Crimson City_
The only thing that saved Clark Stannard and his companions was the
fact that the rock on which the raft had split was near the shore. Had
the raft broken up in the middle of that wild, foaming flood, they must
inevitably have been drowned. As it was, Clark rose out of the waters,
one hand gripping his heavy pack, and found that a few convulsive
strokes brought him to water in which he could stand.
Quell and Lieutenant Morrow had reached the same safety, and Link
Wilson was fighting to their side. But Blacky Cain would have been
swept past in the current had not Mike Shinn reached and grabbed his
collar. The prizefighter exerted his tremendous strength, drew the
gangster into the shallower, quieter water. He stood up, spitting and
sputtering disgustedly. Then they climbed up onto the bank, flung down
their soaked packs, and for a few minutes stood gasping for breath.
Clark stared westward at that weird city which he had glimpsed in the
tense moment when the raft first emerged from the chasm. From here
he could see only the crimson tips of the few high domes and towers
in it, lent an additional blood-like brilliance by the glinting red
sunset. The others were staring too, a dripping, desperate little band.
"A city, here inside the Mountains of Death!" Clark muttered. "Who'd
have dreamed it? It means there must be people here----"
"Yeah, and maybe those people won't exactly welcome us with the glad
hand," said Blacky Cain grimly. "We've got our pistols and a few
hundred shells for them in the packs, and that's all."
Clark's hopes were suddenly soaring. They had done what had seemed so
impossible, had penetrated the seemingly impassable barrier of the
deadly mountains. If the shining lake really existed in here they would
find it somehow. And he felt now that some sort of lake must exist in
here, for the legend of the Mountains of Death was already verified.
"It's jest come to my mind," Ephraim Quell's nasal voice twanged, "that
we're in here where we were trying to get, but that there ain't any way
out. We can't climb over those mountains and we can't float _up_ that
plaguy river."
"Gosh, that's so, isn't it?" said Mike Shinn, scratching his red head.
"I never thought of that."
"We'll worry about getting out when the time comes," Clark said
sharply. "Our object right now is to find where the shining lake lies.
I think we'll first reconnoiter that red city, and if its people look
friendly, we can enter it and ask about the Lake of Life."
"That's the stuff," nodded Blacky Cain approvingly. "Always case a
joint carefully before you try a job there."
They started across the grassy plain dotted with clumps of brush and
trees, heading toward the red city and the blazing sunset. Clark's eyes
swept puzzledly around the inside of the great ring-like range, as they
advanced. It looked like a vast crater, now that they were inside it.
It looked--the thought startled him--like one of the giant craters on
the moon, formed long ago by the impact of colossal meteors.
"Someone comin'!" hissed Link Wilson suddenly. "Over there!"
His keen ears had perceived a movement. Clark whispered a command, and
he and his men crouched low in a thicket of brush. Their automatics
were in their hands. Then they heard the unmistakable sharp thud of
horses' hooves. The lank Texan's eyes brightened at that sound.
The rushing of hoofbeats came closer, then slower. Peering from the
brush, Clark saw that a band of a dozen men had ridden up from the
east. Now they had halted in the brush, a hundred yards away, and were
dismounting from their horses.
They were white-skinned men, Clark saw. They wore cap-like black metal
helmets and short tunics of woven black metal-mesh, and had long swords
at their belts. He heard Mike Shinn gasp in surprize at sight of them.
"Don't show yourselves," Clark warned. "They don't look friendly to me."
"Nor me either," muttered the ex-prizefighter. "Lookit the size of the
toad-stickers they're wearin'."
A slender young fellow who seemed the leader of the black-armored men
was giving orders in a low, authoritative voice. The band split up. Two
remained holding the horses while the rest moved stealthily through the
brush, parallel with Clark's hiding-place, toward the west.
It came to Clark that these black-armored men were spying on the red
city, for all their attention was directed on the distant towers and
domes that blazed crimson in the sunset. They had their swords in their
hands, and their extreme caution betokened strong desire on their part
to remain undiscovered by the inhabitants of the red city. It flashed
over Clark that these must be men of a different city or people. He
decided quickly that the best part for his band was to lie low.
But Clark's intentions were all over-turned in a moment. The
black-armored ones suddenly became aware of their presence. One had
cast a cautious glance toward their hiding-place, then at sight of a
waving bush had uttered a low cry. Instantly all of them spun around.
Their slender young leader rapped out a sharp command. They came in a
silent deadly rush toward Clark and his men, swords raised, white faces
grim. Concealment was no longer possible, and Clark and his five men
leaped up.
"Fire, men!" Clark exclaimed.
Their pistols blazed a stream of flame into the middle of the charging
group, Link Wilson's big forty-five booming over the sharper rattle of
the automatics. Five of the black-armored attackers fell, one of them
being the slender young leader. The others halted aghast, obviously
never having witnessed the effect of firearms before.
Then they made off in a wild, scrambling run for their horses, leaving
their five dead behind them. Blacky Cain raised his gun to fire after
them, but Clark struck it down.
"No, no more shooting! That repulsed them, and we'll need all the
ammunition we have."
"Look at 'em go!" cried Mike Shinn gleefully. "Knocked out in the first
round!"
* * * * *
Clark was not feeling so elated--they had repulsed the attack, but
they had also been discovered. His brown face grim, he strode forward
to examine the dead men. He turned one over. His face was a white,
aquiline one with long thin nose and thin lips. His sword was of fine
steel, well worked. The black armor was bronze, somehow tinted.
"Here's one that's still alive," said Lieutenant Morrow suddenly. He
was bending over the young leader who had fallen. Clark saw as he came
up that a bullet had merely grazed his temple, stunning him.
"Put him out of his misery," rasped Blacky Cain, raising his gun.
"None of that," Clark said sharply. "We may be able to get information
from this fellow about the Lake of Life."
He pulled the black bronze helmet off the unconscious youth's head.
Then he stared in stupefied surprize. From under the helmet fell a
thick torrent of silky, blue-black hair that dropped down around the
pale, unconscious face.
"Good grief, it's a dame!" stuttered Shinn.
"Yeah, a regular gun-moll," said Blacky Cain, surprized. "She was
leading the others when they charged us."
The girl's breast rose and fell under her woven black metal tunic. Then
her eyes opened. Deep blue eyes they were, not static and serene but
flashing with electric sparks like stormy summer skies. Her features
were small, chiseled, stamped with a fiery, challenging force. As she
looked up at Clark, remembrance came to her and she struggled to rise,
her white face flaming with wrath, feeling wildly for the sword that
had dropped from her hand.
He gripped her, but it was like struggling with a wildcat. Her supple,
chain-encased body twisted with mad frenzy, naked arms and legs
thrashing, her bare knee digging into his stomach. Her blazing eyes
raged at him without a spark of fear, only hate and fury, as he grabbed
her wrists and held her.
"Stop it!" Clark said roughly. "No one's going to hurt you."
The girl could not understand his English, of course. But she hissed
snarling words that, to his amazement, he _could_ partly understand.
They were in a language that seemed much akin to Arabic, which he knew;
not the same at all, but so similar that that tongue might have been an
ancestor to Arabic in the dim past.
"Dogs of Reds!" she hissed. "What magic did you use to slay my men?
Give me my sword, and I'll face it!"
"There was no magic," Clark told her in Arabic. "We killed your men
because you tried to kill us. We are not Reds."
She understood, though his modern Arabic must have had a strange sound
to her ears. But her fighting, tigress face did not relax; her chiseled
nostrils flared with fury.
"You seek to trick me with lies!" she raged. "Even now your hearts are
glad that you can take me prisoner to Thargo. Well will he reward you
for using your magic to capture Lurain, daughter of Kimor."
"What the devil is she ravin' about?" Mike Shinn asked eagerly. "You
seem to get it, chief."
"She thinks we belong to that crimson city," Clark said rapidly,
holding the struggling girl. "Undoubtedly she and the other
black-armored ones are from a race or city enemy to the red city."
Then he turned back to the raging girl and told her emphatically,
"Lurain, listen to the truth. We are not of the red city or of this
land at all. We are men from outside the mountains."
"Lie upon lie!" snarled Lurain. "All men know that no living thing can
cross those mountains, whose very touch is death. Though you wield
strange weapons and wear strange garb, I know you are Thargo's dogs,
seeking like your evil master to do the thing unholy, to drink of the
forbidden lake."
"The lake?" cried Clark Stannard, his heart leaping excitedly. "You
mean the Lake of Life? Where does it lie? Is it in the red city?"
"You know well where the lake lies, blasphemer," said Lurain, staring
in cold, bitter hate. "These many generations have you and your
forebears sought to win to it and drink its forbidden waters."
"By heaven, the Lake of Life--some kind of lake at least--does exist
here!" Clark told the others excitedly. "And this girl knows where. If
we can find out----"
Link Wilson's guns leaped suddenly into his hands. They all spun
around. From the west, the sound of many galloping horses came to their
ears. Lurain's blue eyes blazed in soaring hope.
"The men we routed must have come back with others!" Clark cried.
"Quick, into the brush."
"Too late," twanged Ephraim Quell.
For these horsemen were already in sight of them, a full hundred,
galloping in a solid troop from the direction of the crimson city. And
these men wore _red_ armor, instead of black. At first sight of them,
the hope died in Lurain's face.
The Red horsemen dashed up and at a shouted order from their leader,
split into a thin line that encircled Clark and his band. Then they sat
their horses, their swords raised ominously.
"Shall we give it to them?" snarled Blacky.
"Not yet," Clark commanded swiftly. "There are too many of them for us
to rout, this time. Wait--they're not attacking."
* * * * *
The leader of the Red horsemen had dismounted and was approaching. He
was a man of about thirty years, with a smooth white face and cunning
eyes. As his gaze fell on the girl in Clark's grasp, exultation leaped
into his eyes. Wonder and doubt replaced it as he stared at the grim,
tense little band of six adventurers.
"Who be you, stranger?" he asked in the same vague Arabic tongue the
girl had used. "You are not of our city of K'Lamm; that I know. Neither
can you be of Dordona, or you would not have slain these Blacks that
lie here."
"How do you know we killed them?"
"We know," said the Red leader firmly. "Guards on our city wall heard
strange, sharp sounds from this spot and saw Black spies riding away in
terror from you. That is why we came out to investigate.
"I am Dral, third captain in the army of the great king Thargo," he
added. "Tell me, strangers, from whence came you? And how did you kill
these Blacks, when you have no swords?"
"We come from beyond the mountains," Clark said in hard tones. "We
killed the Blacks with the weapons in our hands."
Dral glanced at the pistols and his smile became mocking. "Truly, those
do not look like weapons."
"Yet they are, and terrible ones," Clark said grimly. "Watch!"
A big, red-winged bird had just alighted on a near-by bush. Clark
raised his pistol and fired. The bird fell to the ground.
At the report, Dral and his men recoiled, and the horses plunged and
reared wildly. Dral's eyes were wide, not mocking now, when he came
back to face Clark.
"Truly, they _are_ weapons of power," he muttered, swift, inscrutable
thoughts racing excitedly behind his eyes. Then with greatly increased
respect in his manner, he informed Clark, "Thargo, king of K'Lamm,
would welcome you, strangers. Indeed, he would welcome anyone who
captured for us, as you did, this wildcat daughter of our old enemy,
Kimor."
His gaze flickered with hate toward Lurain's contemptuous face as he
spoke. Clark did not like that look.
"We did not capture the girl for you or Thargo," Clark said sharply.
"She is _our_ prisoner, not yours."
"We could take her from you, strangers," said Dral, flushing in anger.
"Remember the bird that just died," Clark told him pointedly. "Are you
sure you could take her from us?"
Again doubt and other stronger emotions struggled in Dral's cunning
eyes. Clark could see clearly that the man was fearful of the pistols,
but that he was utterly determined to take Lurain a prisoner to his
lord. Presently he smiled and said smoothly:
"Be it so; the girl is your prisoner. Will you come with us--and your
prisoner--into K'Lamm?"
It was Clark's turn to feel doubt. Somehow, he did not want to take the
girl, snarling, fierce little tigress though she was, into the city of
her deadly enemies. But he knew that he could not release her either,
now that the Red warriors were on the scene.
As long as she was his prisoner, Clark felt, he could guard her safely.
And he wanted very much to see this Thargo who ruled the crimson city
K'Lamm. It seemed that his only hope of reaching the mysterious Lake of
Life lay in the Red warriors.
"Will Thargo be willing to help me win to the Lake of Life?" he asked
Dral bluntly.
Sudden triumph flashed into Dral's eyes at the question. But the Red
captain said quickly:
"Thargo desires above all things to attain the shining waters of the
lake. For ages, indeed, we of K'Lamm have sought to drink of those
waters of immortality, and have only been prevented by the dogs of
Blacks, the people of rotting Dordona."
"Aye," broke in Lurain fiercely, "and never will you blasphemers reach
the sacred lake while one man is alive in Dordona. And even though we
all die, the Guardians will keep you from it."
Clark began to understand. Dordona was the city of the Blacks,
somewhere inside this giant crater. And the Lake of Life was either at
or near Dordona, for the Blacks had apparently constituted themselves
the defenders of the sacred waters.
That decided Clark. There was, obviously, no hope of reaching the
lake by going to the Black city. And if these warriors of K'Lamm
wanted the same thing as he did, to reach the lake, he would string
along with them, for the time being, at least. Even though they too
seemed to believe in the superstition that the lake's waters conferred
immortality, they might make good allies.
"We go to K'Lamm with you," Clark told Dral curtly. "But remember--the
girl is our own prisoner."
"It is so agreed, strangers," Dral said in quick assent, though his
eyes hid a gleam.
He shouted an order, and horses were brought forward, their riders
mounting behind other warriors. The girl's hands were bound and she was
placed in the saddle in front of Clark Stannard.
* * * * *
Link Wilson uttered a long sigh as he vaulted lightly into the queer,
high-pommeled saddle of his mount.
"Sure feels good to fork a horse again," the lank Texan said, his eyes
alight.
Clark told them briefly what had happened, and of his decision. Blacky
Cain nodded his predatory face in agreement.
"Looks like we're heading into the hangout of the local big-shot," the
gangster rasped; "but what the hell--if he gets tough, we can always
shoot our way out."
"Forward!" cried Dral.
With wild yells, the whole troop of Red warriors urged their horses
forward. Clark and his five men rode in the van with Dral, heading
straight west toward the crimson towers and roofs.
Lurain rode stiff and unbending in front of Clark, and the glimpses he
got of her chiseled white face showed it proud, fierce and unwavering.
The girl knew she was on the way into the stronghold of her bitterest
enemies, but she showed no sign of fear. She might have been a queen
riding to a triumph, so straight and proud she sat. Involuntary respect
for the little wildcat stirred in Clark Stannard, even though he was
still savagely angry at her merciless attempt to kill them.
Now they galloped, with thunder of thudding hoofs, the Red warriors
bending eagerly forward in their saddles. Link Wilson rode like a
centaur, the Texan drinking in the wind, his reckless face lit with
pleasure. Blacky Cain rode joltingly with harsh face fixed on the city
ahead, and Quell and Mike Shinn and Lieutenant Morrow were behind.
Full before them in the dying blaze of the red sunset lay the great
Red City, crimson roofs and domes and walls standing out in blinding,
blood-like splendor. Gardens and pasturing herds lay outside its walls.
Somewhere in here, Clark thought, was Thargo, the king who desired
like himself to attain to the mysterious Lake of Life. He must be
careful--careful!
Then they were right to the city, thundering in a rushing troop through
its wide-open red metal gates, the hooves of their steeds clashing now
on a red stone pavement, riding with their prisoner and their fierce
escort, right into the crimson city K'Lamm.
_6. The King of K'Lamm_
The city K'Lamm was circular in outline and more than two miles in
diameter, surrounded by a forty-foot wall. The wall and buildings and
cobbled streets were all of quarried stone, stained bright red by
some secret of pigmentation. The buildings were mostly flat-roofed,
one-story ones, shops and stalls and dwellings. The inhabitants were
swarming excitedly out of them as the cavalcade rode down the street.
Clark saw that at least half the men wore the crimson armor and the
long swords--it was a strongly military population. The helmeted
warriors, the simple architecture and weapons, all looked medieval to
Clark, as though the civilization of this isolated, prisoned people had
not progressed further than the Middle Ages of the outside world. There
were many women, wearing extremely scanty white tunics that came only
to their knees and left half their white breasts bare.
"Say, there's some good-lookin' dames in this burg," said Mike Shinn,
the prizefighter's eyes sweeping the crowd.
"And there are a lot of hard-looking warriors here too," Clark reminded
him grimly. "Hands off, Mike."
"What the devil, we could put the blast on this mob easy," sneered
Blacky Cain. "There isn't a gat in the whole crowd."
The men and women of K'Lamm seemed inspired with savage fury as they
saw the girl prisoner in black armor, in front of Clark.
"Death to Lurain of Dordona!" they yelled, shaking swords and fists in
imprecation. "Death and torture for the Dordonan wench!"
Lurain looked neither to right nor left. Again that strong, unwilling
respect for the girl stirred in Clark Stannard.
"You are still _our_ prisoner," he leaned forward to tell her. "They
shall not take you from us."
"I do not fear them--nor you," snarled Lurain without turning. "The day
comes when this Red spawn go to their doom."
At the end of the broad avenue down which they rode loomed the largest
building in the city. It was an hexagonal scarlet tower, blunt
and truncated, a hundred feet high, a squat, ugly structure. They
dismounted in front of it, and the Red captain Dral strode to them.
"The king Thargo has been already informed of your coming and anxiously
awaits you," he informed Clark smoothly.
"Lead the way," Clark said curtly. "Our prisoner goes with us." And as
they started forward he muttered to his men, "Keep close together and
don't make a move unless we're attacked."
They followed Dral into the building, past red-armored guards and down
corridors. Dral clanked in the lead, Clark following with the girl, her
dark head high, his five men rolling belligerently along and staring
about with frank curiosity.
They emerged into a large, round banqueting-hall with red stone walls,
lit by shafts of sunset from slit-like windows. All around it were
tables, empty now except for one raised on a dais. There alone sat a
man in the red helmet and armor, a great jewel blazing on his breast.
Behind him hovered a wrinkled-faced, withered old man with sly eyes.
"The strangers and the captive, great king," announced Dral as he
paused and bowed to the sitting man. The man stood up.
"You are welcome, strangers," Thargo told Clark. "Yes, more than
welcome, when you bring as captive Lurain of Dordona."
Thargo, king of K'Lamm, was a big man. Well over six feet he towered,
and his shoulders were as broad as Mike Shinn's. His shining red armor
well set off that towering, great-thewed figure.
There was power in his face, not only the arrogant consciousness of
utter authority, but hard power innate in the man himself. It was in
the square, merciless mouth, in the flaring nostrils, strongest of all
in the black, penetrating eyes behind which little devil-lights of
mockery and amused contempt seemed to dance.
"Be ready for trouble," Clark muttered to his men. "It may pop right
this minute."
For Dral, the Red captain, was now making a respectful report to his
lord. And Thargo stiffened as he heard.
"So you claim the Black girl as your prisoner?" he said to Clark, his
eyes narrowing.