Doc Savage - 025 - The Devil's Playground Read online

  The The Devil's Playground

  By Kenneth Robeson

  Published January 1941

  by Street & Smith Publications

  Table of Contents

  I PIG-IRON

  II PIG-IRON'S MESSAGE

  III FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE

  IV DOUBLE DISASTER

  V A TRAP FOR DOC

  VI A WORTHLESS GOAL

  VII THE MISCHIEF MAKER

  VIII THE WAR DANCE

  IX THE GENTLE GHOST

  X MICHABOU WARNS DOC

  XI A TOMB FOR DOC

  XII DEATH FOR ALL

  XIII JOHNNY IS KIDNAPPED

  XIV MICHABOU RETURNS

  XV BENEATH THE LAKE

  XVI THE BEARDED MEN

  XVII AN EX-MOURNER

  XVIII ALMOST A ROMANCE

  I

  PIG-IRON

  PIG-IRON HELLER had always considered himself a hot-shot salesman. He was trying his best now to prove it.

  Pig-iron was trying to sell himself the idea that there was no such thing as the Indian drums of death. He didn't fool himself much. And he didn't fool anyone else in the North Woods at all.

  Outside in the darkening night, the drums sounded vaguely like the harmless muttering of the summer storm. Pig-iron Heller stalked up and down in his residence-office and glared out at the awesome night.

  Great, brooding thunderheads massed in the sky, blacked out the moon and stars. The wind dropped to an ominous whisper. A grim tenseness covered the North Woods.

  Pig-iron spat savagely at a brass cuspidor. Then the old iron hunter whirled, narrowed his gimlet eyes at the big bull of a man who stood in his office. Old Pig-iron, owner of Deep Cut mill and mines, had made and lost fortunes in this north country.

  "Get out, damn you! Go on. Get out. You're paid off. Get off my property."

  Pig-iron's voice dripped with contempt that seemed somehow forced. The big bull of a man who stood before him shuffled uncertainly on his feet. It took almost as much nerve to defy old Pig-iron Heller as it would have to defy the drums.

  The bull of a man's name was Mattson Kovisti, a mine worker and ex-lumberjack. There was a silence in the office as both he and Pig-iron listened to the mutter of the distant drums--or thunder, if you believed that was what it really was. Pig-iron squalled suddenly in a voice that held more determination than belief.

  "There ain't no such thing as the Devil's Tomahawks," the old man screamed. "It's just a damned Injun legend."

  Mattson Kovisti shuddered. He knew that rumbling noise was not thunder. And he wanted to be a long way from there. A half-breed had translated that rumbling sound for him.

  "Go away, paleface," the drums beat into the night. "You are not wanted here, paleface. Go, or the Tomahawks of the Lost Ones--the Devil's Tomahawks--will claim you."

  Sweat dripped from Mattson's face as he thought of those awful words. Mattson Kovisti had seen one victim of the Devil's Tomahawks. He did not want to see another. Mattson had got his pay. Johnny Pinetree was waiting outside for Mattson Kovisti. The barrel-chested Finn had Johnny's pay also. The half-breed was afraid of old Pig-iron Heller. So he waited outside.

  "Johnny Pinetree has an idea," Kovisti offered. "He thinks Doc Savage ought to know about the Devil's Tomahawks. He--"

  Pig-iron Heller just about exploded. He ranted and he cursed. He didn't want any outsider prying into his affairs. Pig-iron was a dyed-in-the-wool individualist who had always fought his own battles. He was now trying to make a mistaken investment pay, through a rising price of finished steel for a war-born commerce.

  Pig-iron's doctor had told him he was dying of a heart ailment. The old war horse didn't believe the medico. But he had sent for his daughter, Iris. And he had sent for Marquette Heller, his nephew by adoption.

  Pig-iron's eyes narrowed slightly as he thought of Marquette. But he forgot him immediately to berate Kovisti, who was running away.

  "I don't give a damn what Doc Sav--" Pig-iron began.

  Then he stopped. The sound, not unlike thunder, became suddenly more distinct. It also assumed a steady, pounding tempo. Mattson Kovisti edged toward the door. His eyes were wide with terror.

  Then came the smell. It was not the clean scent of ozone that comes with thunder and lightning.

  It was a dead smell of the grave. It carried the suggestion of freshly-turned earth, of the shrouds in which the dead are buried. There was something intangibly menacing about the odor.

  Mattson Kovisti screamed. He dived toward the door. Old Pig-iron staggered toward a couch that was partly made up as a bed. The excitement was bad for the old man's heart. He sank wearily down on the couch-bed. Idly, he picked up a newspaper. Then his eyes riveted queerly on one paragraph. Carefully, he tore it from the paper.

  Mattson Kovisti ran. He fled with a terror unashamed.

  "Johnny Pinetree!" he yelled. "Johnny! Where are you?"

  There was no answer from the half-breed. Lightning flashed and showed great stretches of second-growth spruce and pine. The land was like a dead thing itself. The soul of the land was gone, had vanished with the great lumber companies. Broadax and crosscut saw had eaten up the soul of the North Woods. Fierce tongues of forest fire had blackened the ravished body that had held it.

  The soul was gone. And now, after peace for a hundred years, the Devil's Tomahawks had returned.

  Mattson Kovisti panted as he ran. He knew the legends of the Tomahawks, the avenging spirits of braves who had been tricked into death by the advancing white man. When the Tomahawks avenged, the spirits of the braves rested more easily in the happy hunting ground.

  So it had been arranged by the great Michabou, the Manitou and maker of all things. Michabou, who created the world from a grain of sand brought him by the sturdy muskrat, had made it that way to protect his red-skinned descendants from invaders.

  That was the legend told years ago in the skin tepees and birch-bark huts of the Ojibways, the Chippewas and the Tahquamenons. It was, of course, something no sensible person believed. It was impossible that such things could occur.

  It was impossible, for example, that a man could die of a hundred brutal slashes from a hundred tomahawks in half a dozen seconds. It was impossible that such a thing could befall a man entirely surrounded by his friends; happen in a soft cranberry bog marsh without an unexplained footprint approaching the victim!

  Of course that was impossible. But Mattson Kovisti had seen it happen.

  "Johnny Pinetree!" Mattson called frantically, "I've got your pay. Where are you?"

  "Here me, Mattson," the half-breed's voice called from the darkness ahead. "Come."

  Just as Kovisti plunged ahead, the tempo of the drums increased to a staggering crescendo. There was a vivid flash of lightning. A moaning in the trees became a long-drawn wail of a war whoop. Then Kovisti heard the scream.

  It was a scream of terror and of death. Kovisti recognized the half-breed's voice. The scream ended on a horrid gurgle of despair. Mattson Kovisti was drawn as if by a magnet. Lightning flashed again. He saw Johnny Pinetree--or what was left of him.

  The half-breed was brutally slashed in death. Deep gashes covered his whole body. Suddenly Mattson Kovisti screamed in newborn terror. The cadence of the drums had not decreased.

  Instead, the drums of death seemed beating to a new crescendo of terror. That meant their work was not yet done! New death must come to the North Woods before the Devil's Tomahawks could return to the happy hunting ground with the spirits of the braves!

  A BUBBLING cry burst from Kovisti's lips. He felt pretty sure those drums were beating now for him. Mattson ran like an animal that knows it has to get away. He was lik
e the lynx trapped in the spring freshet; like the deer fleeing the licking tongues of forest fire.

  He pounded down the only road there was in the North Woods. It was a winding, two-rutted path that eventually reached Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, the city of the locks. He ran, crashing, like a frightened moose. Only one thought beat into his brain. That was to get far, far away from the terror that stalked the North Woods.

  There was froth at the corners of Kovisti's mouth as he ran. His heart pounded so strongly within his chest, his pulses hammered so powerfully at his temples, that Kovisti did not at first hear the other sound in the air. It was a steady, droning roar that gradually became louder than the drums themselves. Finally, Mattson heard it, realized that a modern airplane was circling for a landing.

  Lightning flashed again, showed Kovisti a big, high-winged monoplane. The Finn's eyes flickered oddly. Fear was leaving those eyes now. A cold, hard determination replaced it for the moment.

  He watched the bright landing lights flash on. The plane came into a tiny landing field, maintained for Pig-iron Heller's planes.

  Mattson Kovisti was suddenly smitten by the sort of impulse that makes a man fight for a cause in which he believes. It was the sudden strength that makes a fellow willing to sacrifice his own welfare to spread truth where that truth is sorely needed.

  "If they leave that plane," Kovisti muttered, "I'll get to Doc Savage!"

  The Finn's barrel chest filled out. His head came erect. Mattson had once been a mechanic at the Sault Ste. Marie airport. He'd once taken one of the ten-passenger Boeings used on that northern route for a trial hop. Mattson now determined that he would go to the one person who might really be able to help stop the Devil's Tomahawks!

  Kovisti uttered a cry of hope as he plunged toward the tiny airfield. The thought of Doc Savage gave him newborn strength. Even in the fastness of the North Woods, the name of the man newspapers termed a physical phenomenon and a mental marvel was one to strike hope in the heart of an honest man; terror to a crook. Mattson Kovisti knew more of the bronze giant than most woodsmen. The huge Finn had spent many long winters in northern lumber camps. In the winter nights the jack in the bunkhouse can either read or take part in the long-winded arguments that go on endlessly. The Finns are not a talkative race. They either sleep or read.

  A bunkhouse in the spring will yield an amazing pile of dog-eared magazines. They are dog-eared because every page has been read and reread a dozen times or more. It was not at all strange that Mattson Kovisti knew a lot about Doc Savage.

  His reading had informed him that Clark Savage, Jr., was a man of herculean strength and mental prowess that was a constant source of amazement to scientists. He knew that the man of bronze, as Doc was often called, had been trained from childhood to engage in one of the strangest careers that had ever befallen any man.

  He knew that Doc Savage and his five aids had gone to the four corners of the earth to right the wrongs that evildoers perpetrated on innocent victims. He had read that the bronze man never accepted pay for these things; that he had a strange source of almost illimitable wealth which he used solely to benefit mankind.

  And, Mattson Kovisti was certain that the thing from which he fled was evil enough to be worth the bronze man's time and trouble.

  THE plane's motor spluttered jerkily as the pilot brought it down to a bumpy landing. The landing lights flared against high, whitewashed rocks that marked one edge of the landing field. The whitewashed rocks reflected the light, throwing a pale illumination over the whole field.

  Three figures got out of the plane. The first one was a rotund, sleek-looking man. Mattson Kovisti didn't recognize him. In the dim light, he looked well dressed and prosperous. The second figure brought a gasp from Mattson Kovisti's lips. A pert hat scarcely concealed the bright blondness of the girl's hair. Her figure was trim in a neat business suit. Mattson did not need to strain his eyes in the dim light to examine her features.

  The childlike beauty and sharp, mature wit of Iris Heller were not unknown to the workers employed by the old iron hunter. Iris was the daughter of old Pig-iron Heller, the daughter he said he did not want saddled with the responsibility of fighting the sinister force that was raging through the North Woods.

  Mattson Kovisti's lips spread into a smile. To this girl, he was sure he could pour out the things he believed, the things he feared. The Finn saw the tall figure of a man in flying clothes clamber out behind Iris Heller. The three apparently were the only occupants of the plane.

  Kovisti started impulsively toward the plane. Then two things happened to halt him. Iris spoke. Her voice was bitter, harsh. It was unlike the gay tones he had known when she visited the wilderness of Deep Cut Mine.

  "I'll change his mind," Iris snapped sharply. "He'll not leave this thing to Mark. Mind my words, N. Nate, I'll get the right to take over."

  "Now, now, Miss Heller," an oily voice purred from the fat man. "Perhaps your dad knows best. Perhaps--"

  Iris Heller stamped a dainty foot.

  "Perhaps nothing!" she said irritably. "Marquette Heller didn't even answer his summons. The Indians have got dad terrorized."

  The girl's blue eyes flashed in the reflected brilliance of the landing lights.

  "The Indians aren't going to frighten me, N. Nathan Nathanialson," she said grimly. "And nobody is going to stop me from fighting beside my dad."

  Mattson Kovisti groaned. He was well out into the clearing. At the sound of the name of N. Nathan Nathanialson, the big Finn dived for a dark clump of cranberry bushes. Now he recognized the fat man. N. Nate was Pig-iron Heller's attorney.

  On N. Nate's last trip to the North Woods, Kovisti had seen him in unexplained huddles with renegade Indians from the copper regions. He had seen furtive movements of the fat man as he emerged from sod-and-bark hovels that housed half-breeds addicted too much to moonshine whiskey.

  Kovisti burrowed deep into the concealment of the bush. It was then that the second thing occurred which warned him not to make his presence known.

  The beating of the drums rolled down from the sky. The motor of the plane was shut off. There was a second or so of silence. And then there were the drums, the Indian drums of death.

  Their pulsing beat was now close to the ground. It had no direction. It engulfed the clearing in which the plane had stopped.

  II

  PIG-IRON'S MESSAGE

  IRIS HELLER heard the drums. She whipped a small compact automatic from her handbag, strode quickly toward the edge of the clearing. It was undoubtedly chance that brought her within half a dozen yards of the copse in which Mattson Kovisti burrowed for concealment.

  Behind her strode the gaunt pilot. Behind the pilot, fat N. Nathan Nathanialson puffed like an overworked locomotive.

  "Slow down, Miss Heller," he complained. "I ain't the antelope I used to be."

  Iris Heller slowed down. But N. Nate's plea apparently had little to do with it. The powerful flashlight in her left hand flicked on. The girl was as tense as a young Indian on the hunt. The flashlight swept methodically over a copse twenty yards ahead of her. In its reflection her firm jaw showed grimly. Slowly, she brought up the automatic.

  There was a scrambling noise ahead of them. The automatic blasted. But it had a short barrel, not made for shooting at any distance. Running like a young deer, a reddish figure leaped from the copse and tore into the thickening stand of scrub pine at the edge of the cranberry bog.

  N. Nathan Nathanialson squalled like a child who had suddenly met up with an ogre. The pilot, who apparently had no part in the proceedings aside from being an air chauffeur, gasped aloud.

  The figure that tore through the underbrush was a tall, rangy Indian. The red man's face was daubed with the war paint of the Ojibways tribe. Brave's feathers decorated the sleek black hair. The fleeing redskin was barefoot, clad only in loincloth. An arrow quiver and a stone tomahawk hung from a thong over his heavy-muscled shoulders.

  As the redskin disappeared he screamed a war wh
oop of defiance. As if in answer, the drums of death crashed forth in a new crescendo of wrath. Iris Heller and the gaunt pilot stood side by side, staring into the tangle of underbrush. Then the girl whirled.

  The pilot froze in his tracks as if he had suddenly been turned into stone. Back behind them, toward the airfield, there came another awesome, chilling war whoop. It rose to a pitch of frenzy, then died slowly into the night.

  The scream that followed brought a cry of horror from Iris Heller. It was a scream of agony and terror. A man's voice lifted in a piteous plea for mercy. The voice screamed, then died on a bubbling, gurgling note of despair. Iris Heller blasted into the darkness with her automatic.

  Iris' voice came again then. It was tense, tight with an unwillingness to believe.

  "N. Nate!" the girl cried. "N. Nate! Where are you?"

  There was silence for a moment. It was broken now only by the receding mutter of the drums. It was as if the things had now accomplished their awful purpose and were drifting off into the recesses of the other world where the long-dead braves of the Ojibway tribe dwelt with the master spirit of Michabou.

  There was an odor in the air. Both Iris and the pilot noticed that. It was the earthlike smell of the grave that had made Kovisti scream before he had heard the plane.

  Then the lightning flashed again. N. Nathan Nathanialson was nowhere to be seen. He had apparently vanished. The drumbeat in the sky rippled in a brief roll. It was like a hollow, awesome chuckle from the gods of evil. Iris Heller gasped.

  "The Devil's Tomahawks!" she breathed. "Why, I hadn't really believed in--"

  An oath from the pilot interrupted her. The flash of lightning had not shown N. Nate by the cranberry bush where he had halted, panting. But it had showed something else to the pilot. His plane was his first concern, which was quite natural. It was his livelihood.

  The flash revealed an indistinct figure racing toward the plane. The pilot let out a roar of indignation and tore after the apparent thief. But the runner had too much of a start. The man plunged into the cabin and the growl of the inertia starter hummed into the air. The motor was still warm. It kicked over with a stuttering bark, that stepped up quickly into a powerful roar.