Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 076 - The Flaming Falcons

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THE FLAMING FALCONS
A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
Scanned and Proofed
by Tom Stephens
? Chapter I. THE MYSTERIOUS FARM
? Chapter II. A GIRL HUNTING MOONDOGS
? Chapter III. UGLY BIRD BLAZING
? Chapter IV. UGLY BIRD FOLLOWING
? Chapter V. DEATH FLIES EAST
? Chapter VI. THE UNUSUAL MAN
? Chapter VII. HOBO JONES MAKES A CATCH
? Chapter VIII. FIELD EMPTY
? Chapter IX. THE ANGEL FRUITS
? Chapter X. THE SLY MAN
? Chapter XI. PACIFIC TROUBLE
? Chapter XII. A FALCON HUNTING
? Chapter XIII. TRICKS AND TRAPS
? Chapter XIV. THE JUNGLE AND BAD LUCK
? Chapter XV. BIRD BATTLE
? Chapter XVI. SINISTER RUIN
? Chapter XVII. DEVIL BIRDS
? Chapter XVIII. WEIRD FIGHT
? Chapter XIX. RAIDERS
? Chapter XX. THE BIRDS THAT KILLED
Chapter I. THE 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 block-heads, 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 named 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.
Chapter II. A GIRL HUNTING MOONDOGS
THE skull-colored bird was such a ghastly looking thing that Hobo Jones emitted a bleat of horror. It
was that bad. It was—well, the most hideous apparition it had ever been Jones’ ill fortune to see.
The thing was about the size of a small goat. It was almost the same color as a goat, for that matter, and
for a moment, Hobo Jones thought it might be a goat. But a goat wouldn’t be sitting perched on the back
of a chair in a corner. This thing was a bird. It was foul-looking.
Hobo Jones had seen buzzards, and hitherto considered them the vilest-looking things on earth—but a
buzzard was as attractive as a love bird along this hobgoblin.
"Shoo!" Hobo Jones gulped involuntarily. "Shoo! Go away!"
The thing batted its eyes at him. It had eyes that were like little blisters full of blood, but the rest of it was
all one color—the hue of the skulls in doctors’ offices.
To top everything off, the bird smelled. It had an odor of indescribable vileness.
Longing for the open places seized Jones. He made a dash for the door, got it open, and piled outside. It
was dark, so dark that he stopped as if he had run up against a solid.
Turning around, he slammed the door. He didn’t want that bird, whatever it was, following him.
The first impulse of Hobo Jones was to get out of the vicinity without delay, but then he decided to stick
around. He hooked more sweat off his forehead with a finger. There was a dead man inside the shack
camouflaged as a strawstack, and a hell hag of a bird, and Hobo Jones’ stomach had a feeling as if it had
been given a dead cat by accident.
Why not telephone a sheriff? Good idea. Hobo Jones went looking for a telephone. There had plainly not
been one inside the strawstack shack. The electrified fence should have a gate, and there might be a
telephone at that point, so he searched for a gate.
It did not seem quite so dark, now that his eyes had accustomed themselves to the darkness. About a
third of the stars were going to show, but the other two thirds of the sky was full of clouds that were as
black as polecats.
Totally unexpectedly, he got a whack on the head with a piece of devil’s-walking-stick.
ONE does not walk across Arizona in a day, and so Hobo Jones had spent enough time in the State to
become familiar with its vegetation, which to his observation was predominantly cactus, so he knew that
devil’s-walking-stick was a species of cactus, which grew up in a cluster from a common root-cluster,
like young willows. These long shoots of cactus had thorns every half inch or so, and ranchers and
Mexicans cut them off, stuck them in the ground in a row, and they grew and became cactus fences.
Hobo Jones fell down. A piece of devil’s-walking-stick has some of the qualities of a length of water
pipe. The thorns had been cut off this one.
Clutching dazedly, Jones got hold of the shillalah that had laid him low. He twisted. He was surprised at
how easily he took it away from the wielder. He instantly reversed it, and took a whack at the adjacent
darkness, which proved futile. He tried again.
"Ouch!" said a voice.
Hobo Jones started to land another wallop, but didn’t.
"You’re a woman," Hobo Jones said.
"If you don’t mind, I’d as soon you didn’t hit me again," the feminine voice said.
"I won’t," said Hobo Jones, "I’m chivalrous." He reached out, got hold of a rather nice ankle, and gave it
a jerk. The ankle owner sat down. "You just sit there," requested Jones. "I’ve got a match somewhere. I
want to look at you."
He found the match and struck it and inspected his assailant.
"Gosh!" he said.
The match burned his fingers and went out and left him with a disturbing vision of glorious brown eyes, a
perfect little snub nose, lips too delicious for words, and a number of other features that were equally
entrancing. She wore riding boots, laced breeches, and a sky-blue sweater which fitted the curves
interestingly.
He felt of his jaw, which was furred with a week’s whiskers, somewhat cemented together by Arizona
alkali dust. "I guess I look like an ape that they had sicked the dogs on."
"That about describes it."
"I’m a pretty good fellow, though," said Jones, "when you get to know me better."
"Heaven forbid. Now, if you’ll just excuse me—"
She started to get up. Jones jerked her ankle again. She sat down with a bump.
"After all," he remarked, "you hit me a beauty over the head with that stick, and I think that gives me the
right to ask some questions. First, who are you?"
"All right. My name is Fiesta."
"And now, Fiesta, what were you doing out here in the dark night?"
"I was hunting moondogs."
AFTER more deliberation, Hobo Jones asked, "Do you mind describing and defining a moondog for
me?"
"Of course not," said Fiesta. "First, moondogs only come out when there is no moon. You would think
they would come out when there was a moon, but they don’t. Only when there isn’t. And—let me
see—oh, yes, moondogs have large bushy tails, and the tails are full of sparks like—well—like a
cigarette lighter that isn’t working. And moondogs always walk backward. Never forward. That’s
because—"
"I see," said Jones. "Hunting moondog is kind of like snipe hunting. You’re a sassy pumpkins. Do you
know what is going on around here?"
"No."
"Can you stand something pretty grisly?"
Fiesta was slow replying. "Well, I didn’t scream when I saw you a moment ago, did I?" she asked. Then
she added, more contritely, "I don’t personally guarantee my nerve, although I have been told that it is
very brassy."
"Come on," said Jones.
They walked through the darkness toward the strawstack, and Jones, recalling the devil-devil bird that he
had left sitting in the shack, carried along the heavy cactus cane. They stuck themselves on cactus thorns.
Yucca seeds rattled like rattlesnakes, and gave them bad scares. Small creatures, lizards probably,
scampered away from under their feet, and also sounded like rattlesnakes. Jones decided he didn’t like
Arizona desert at night.
"Why, this is only a strawstack," Fiesta said.
She sounded as if she really thought that was all it was, Jones reflected.
"There’s a dead man in here," he said. "Can you stand looking at him?"
Fiesta gasped. She was silent. "I—I’ll try," she said. Jones shoved open the door, and there was
everything just as he had left it, dead brown man sitting on the chair dressed in a breechcloth, and
hideous bird sitting on the back of another chair in a corner. The odor of the horror-bird was stronger in
the place, Jones decided.
Fiesta saw the bird. "Ugh!" she said. "How awful!"
"That thing is some rooster," Jones admitted. "Have any idea what it is?"
"No. I never saw anything like it before."
"And I never saw any moondogs, either."
Fiesta shuddered. "There—there is not such a thing—as a moondog" she said.
"Then what were you doing prowling around in the darkness?"
"Oh, now—please! Fiesta sounded ill through and through. "I can’t . . . can’t answer that."
Suddenly, Hobo Jones remembered a point that might be important. There had been no odor of the evil
bird when the brown man had first dragged him into the shack. Therefore, the bird must have come in
afterward.
"You know what?" he said.
"What?" Fiesta gasped.
"I’m going to take this club"—Jones shook the long piece of devil’s-walking-stick purposefully—"and
knock the tar out of that bird, whatever it is. I don’t like the looks of the thing."
Fiesta shuddered again, more violently.
"I’m all for it," she said. "Go ahead."
At this point, the ugly bird turned into an incredible sheet of white flame and a cloud of smoke, and
vanished.
Chapter III. UGLY BIRD BLAZING
IT did not happen as instantaneously as it could be told, but filled an interval of several seconds, during
which there were several bloodcurdling sidelights to the incident.
First, there was the sheet of flame, so utterly white as to be searing to the eyes, and hot enough that the
heat could be felt on the face, even at that distance. The flame enveloped the whole bird. It was like
old-fashioned photographic flashlight powder burning.
Secondly, there were the sounds of the girl as it went up in flame. The noise lasted only a moment, but it
was quite impressive—it was several minutes before Hobo Jones’ hair felt as if it had stopped standing
on end.
Third, there was the smoke, a spurting cloud of it that jumped upward and swirled around the ceiling of
the room, then came drifting toward the door, and poured outside, dense and black, looking so much as
if it was alive that Jones made several wild wallops at the stuff with the long piece of
devil’s-walking-stick.
"Great grief!" he said.
He realized that Fiesta was no longer at his side. She had departed in haste. Hobo Jones raced after her,
overtook her, and got her by the arm.
"What’s the idea," he asked, "of turning race horse?"
"I’m scared," said Fiesta.
"Did you see what I saw back there?" asked Jones.
"I saw a big gray bird as hideous as a witch’s chicken, and I saw the bird turn into fire and smoke. Is that
what you mean?"
"Thanks," said Hobo Jones. "I was beginning to doubt my sanity."
At this point it was apparent that the shack inside the strawstack had caught fire, since smoke was
pouring from the doorway, and this was reddened by the flicker of flames. Jones ran back, practically
dragging a dubious Fiesta, and discovered that the wall was smoldering. Fortunately, there was a bucket
of water in one corner, and he sloshed this judiciously over the flames, extinguishing them. He peered at
the charred boards.
"That was sure a hot flame that bird turned into," he muttered.
Of the witch’s chicken, as Fiesta had termed the bird, there was not a trace that Jones could find,
although it was true some of the ashes scattered about might be the remains of the thing.
"Good riddance," said Jones. He gnawed his lower lip nervously. "However, I would just as soon it had
not vanished just the way it did."
"What is your name?" asked Fiesta.
"Hobo Jones. I forgot to tell you."
"Mr. Hobo Jones, does what happened make sense to you?"
"No."
"Me, neither," said Fiesta. "What do we do next?"
Jones considered. "I’m going to have a look at the basement," he decided.
There was a trapdoor in the floor, below this some steps, and then a rectangular concrete room which
held some boxes of canned food, and a nationally known brand of motor-generator which was coupled
to a Diesel motor that was running in efficient silence, and a tank of fuel for the motor, but nothing else.
"This must supply current for the electrified fence," said Fiesta.
"By the way," Jones remarked, "you were inside the electrified fence when I found you. How come?"
"I crossed with two long wooden stepladders, which I set up on either side of the fence," Fiesta said
meekly.
"Good. If things keep on the way they are, I think we shall leave in great haste by that route." Jones
pondered.
"However," he added, "there is one thing I wish you to see before we go—the patch of sticky fruit," said
Jones.
AS nearly as Hobo Jones could tell, the small field of strange yellow, thornless-cactuslike vegetables
were as much a mystery to Fiesta as they had been to himself. He struck some matches so Fiesta could
see the plants, and he tore one open and let her get the pulpy insides on her fingers, so she could see
what sticky stuff it was.
Then they progressed through the semidarkness until they found Fiesta’s two stepladders, and by
climbing one of these and descending the other, it was a simple matter to negotiate the electrified fence
without discomfort.
Jones said, "I was hoping there was a telephone around here. It might save a long walk, particularly as I
don’t know which direction to go to find a sheriff."
"You’re going to a sheriff?" Fiesta asked.
"Of course."
Hobo Jones thought that Fiesta seemed pleased by this information, and that thereafter she treated him
with a little more warmth.
摘要：

THEFLAMINGFALCONSADocSavageAdventureByKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2001BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.comScannedandProofedbyTomStephens?ChapterI.THEMYSTERIOUSFARM?ChapterII.AGIRLHUNTINGMOONDOGS?ChapterIII.UGLYBIRDBLAZING?ChapterIV.UGLYBIRDFOLLOWING?ChapterV.DEATHFLIESEAST?ChapterVI.THEUNUSU...

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