Collected Fiction, page 151
“Will he fly with a rope on him?” Andy had already made Jim Harry try this, without success. “Nope. But he can be ridden—he’s broken pretty well.”
“Catch me riding him! Not even a trapeze artist would do it. It’d be suicide, man. I’ll talk to the boss about it, but it isn’t much use. Not unless we clipped all the feathers off the wings. People might swallow it then.”
Jim Harry was listening through a knothole, and he started to shake. When the man was gone he accosted his father.
“You wouldn’t do that, would you? Pluck Pegasus’ feathers off—”
“Xah, Andy said absent-mindedly. “Listen, Jim Harry, I want you should see how that horse can run. Not fly—just run. You let him get off the ground and I’ll skin you.”
Jim Harry was only too glad to seize the opportunity of getting on Pegasus’ back again. The horse was fast. He went around the north pasture like greased lightning, his wings folded back and his hoofs spuming the ground. Andy, watching from the rail fence, took off his straw hat and fanned himself. “Okay,” he called at last. “Rub him down and stable him.”
THE next day Andy sent more telegrams, and got a man out to time Pegasus with a stop-watch. The two conferred for some time after that.
Jim Harry caught snatches of the conversation. “More money in it, anyway circuses are dead now faster than Man o’ War ever was but you can’t.”
The two looked stealthily at Jim Harry and moved further away.
All this worried the boy. He went to the stable, where Tom was trying to get near Pegasus, with no success at all.
“He’s ornery,” Tom said. “Needs breaking. I could do it, too.
Jim Harry thought of spurs and whips, and went white. He squabbled a bit with Tom, till the older boy left. Then Jim Harry fed Pegasus sugar and rubbed him down carefully, afterwards mixing him a bran mash and getting fresh rain-water.
The winged horse was drooping. His eye had lost its fire, and the proud neck was no longer arched. Pegasus nudged his nose under Jim Harry’s arm and pushed at him, as though inviting the boy to take a ride.
“Gee, I’d like to. But I can’t. Pop’d skin me. I wish I’d never brought you back here, Pegasus. I’d let you go now, if—But that was no good. Andy would make Jim Harry call the winged horse back, and Pegasus would probably obey his adopted master. Jim Harry remembered Breadloaf and the flight down the winds, and then he sat down in the stall and bawled like a baby. But that did no good, either.
Some weeks passed, and Andy began to look more and more sullen and angry. Tom kept begging him for permission to break Pegasus, till he was sent sprawling under the blow of a hard palm. Sarah didn’t say much, but she made every excuse to keep Jim Harry away from the horse. She knew Pegasus wasn’t good for him. The horse was a freak, and dangerous, and it put ideas into the boy’s head. He was queer enough already.
So one day Andy sent Jim Harry to town with Buck, and for some reason they took a back road that wound through the mountains. The old Ford wheezed and chugged, its worn tires screeching on sharp curves. Buck, a big-shouldered, bad-tempered lout, talked little.
“We got plenty of saddles,” Jim Harry said, squirming about on the broken, springs. “Why get another now? And why do I have to go along?”
“You do what your old man says,” Buck’; grunted, trying to push the brake through the floorboards. To the right the cliff dropped into a sheer abyss. On the left a steep slope mounted. The motor started to boil, and just then they rounded a bend and came in sight of a gnarled dwarf standing beside the road, gripping a twisted stick in his big hands.
Jim Harry recognized the little man. He told Buck to stop, but the hired man just cursed hitch-hikers and went right past. He didn’t go far, though, because the engine went dead and the brakes locked. The dwarf called to Jim Harry.
“It’s a bad thing they’re doing to Pegasus, boy,” he said. “They sent you to town to get you out of the way.”
Jim Harry’s heart went down in his boots. “What are they doing?” he asked.
“Your father’s going to make Pegasus into a race-horse. He’s fast, you know, and there’s more money in that than in circuses. But nobody would let a winged horse run, so Doc West is with your father, and they’re going to operate and take off Pegasus’ wings. That’s why they sent you to town. It’ll kill Pegasus, boy—”
“Shut your trap!” Buck roared, and cursed the dwarf obscenely. He jumped out of the car and ran toward the other, his fist lifted. Jim Harry had seen Buck knock men out with that dangerous hand, and he cried out and tried to scramble out of the Ford. But his overalls had caught on the broken springs.
Jim Harry’s help wasn’t needed, though. The dwarf just lifted his crooked stick and hit Buck with it. It didn’t look like a hard blow; yet Buck collapsed in a heap, knocked cold as an iceberg.
“He isn’t dead,” the dwarf said. “Just stunned. But you’d better be getting back home, boy. The car will work now, I guess.
I told you not to let Pegasus stay on the ground long. He belongs to the sky.”
Jim Harry had slid over under the wheel and was trying to start the motor. It caught easily enough. The brakes weren’t locked any more, either. Jim Harry turned the car around with some difficulty on the narrow road, and went kiting back home hell-for-leather.
It was a wonder he didn’t kill himself. The funny part was that he got through the mountains all right, and nothing happened till he was home. A crude plank bridge lay across the irrigation ditch that bounded the road; at the best of fifties it was pretty shaky. Jim Harry swerved too quickly, and the left front tire hit something and blew out. The Ford turned and went right over the edge of the bridge. It wasn’t much of a drop, and there was only a trickle of water in the ditch, but somehow the car seemed to turn over and fold up like an accordion. Jim Harry was knocked out for a minute or so. Agony brought him back to life.
He was lying in the wreck, and his right foot was one throbbing bundle of pain. It seemed to be pinned under the car, and, in fact, it had been mashed between metal and a rock that lay buried in the mud If the car hadn’t settled and slid away a bit Jim Harry might have stayed there till help came. And apparently nobody had heard the crash, because a horse was screaming in the stable.
JIM HARRY smelled something burning His foot was free now and he tried to get up. But he couldn’t, so he squirmed along in the mud and somehow scrambled up the sloping side of the ditch. Then he looked at his foot, trailing along behind him.
Well, it wasn’t a font any more. No surgeon could help it. Jim Harry might eventually learn to use a crutch pretty well, though. But you’ll remember the wanderlust that was in his feet, and it’s no great wonder that Jim Harry felt like going back into the ditch and smashing his skull open against a bit of jagged metal that was sticking up there.
Instead, he screamed.
The outcry from the barn ceased suddenly. Then there was a trumpeting, furious noise. Have you ever heard a horse shriek? It’s like nothing else on God’s earth. Pegasus shrieked, and the men within the barn began to yell, too. There was the sound of wood being smashed, and the trample of swift hoofs. The stable’s door burst open; for a second the rearing figure of the winged horse was outlined, white and rampant, hoofs flying, nostrils red and inflamed.
A man was yelling in agony; another was cursing luridly.
Pegasus, trailing broken thongs and a snapped chain, thundered down the meadow. His wings spread, and he cried out in pain. Blood dappled one mighty pinion.
He rose, circled, and swept down toward Jim Harry. Lightly as a feather he alighted beside the prostrate boy. His neck arched; he nudged Jim Harry’s face with his velvety muzzle. The youngster reached up to put his arms around the strong neck.
Men came running. “Hold him! What’s happened? Hold on to him!”
Jim Harry looked into the eyes of Pegasus, and man and horse understood each other. The boy rose, lifting himself by gripping the long mane; he gritted his teeth to keep from crying in agony. And Pegasus knelt, so that Jim Harry could mount upon the broad back. There was no rein, but it was not needed.
The running men were very close when Pegasus spurned the earth. Up he went, favoring one wing a little, but seeming to find new strength as he mounted. Jim Harry held on to the mane. He looked down and saw the farm getting smaller and smaller. And he saw Breadloaf to the east, and the Sierras to the east beyond it.
“Higher, he whispered. “Higher, Pegasus.”
He could see beyond the Sierras. He could see the Pacific. The sharp wind cooled his burning, crushed foot. On each side the great wings rose and fell steadily, rhythmically.
“Higher—”
Pegasus threw back his head and answered. Up they went, riding the winds, and how the farm was invisible and Breadloaf was dwindling; and the Valley no longer seemed immense.
Then, queerly enough, the gnarled old dwarf was talking, though Jim Harry couldn’t see him anywhere.
“Remember what I told you, boy. Pegasus will be your feet and take you away and away; he’ll be your eyes and see wonderful things. But don’t let him stay long on the ground.”
“I won’t,” Jim Harry promised.
“Never come down again, Pegasus. Go on up—”
The wind was bitterly cold. The sky was darkening to purple. Faintly a few stars appeared. The earth revolved, with a slow and majestic motion, incredibly far beneath the hoofs of Pegasus.
The fingers of Jim Harry tightened on the horse’s mane. Then, slowly, gradually, they began to loosen their grip.
DR. CYCLOPS
A Scientist Vested with Unearthly Powers Achieves the Master Secret of Lilliputian Life!
CHAPTER I
Camp in the Jungle
BILL STOCKTON stood in the compound gate, watching Pedro driving the mules down to the river pasture. The swarthy half-breed’s face was split by a broad grin; he twirled his black mustache and sang loudly of a cantina in Buenos Aires, thousands of miles to the east.
“How the devil does he do it?” Stockton moaned, shaking the perspiration out of his eyes. “I can hardly drag myself around in this heat.
And that guy actually sings—”
Yet it wasn’t only the heat, Stockton knew. There was more to it than that. A feeling of sombre menace—hung heavy above this wilderness encampment. During the weeks of jungle travel from the Andes, through tropical swamp and pest-infested jungle, the feeling had grown stronger. It was in the humid, sticky air. It was in the sickly-sweet, choking perfume of the great orchids that grew outside the stockade. Most of all, it was in the actions of Dr. Thorkel.
“He’s supposed to be the greatest scientific wizard of the age,” Stockton thought skeptically. “But for my money he’s nuts. Sends a message to the Royal Academy demanding the services of a biologist and a mineralogist, and then asks us to look into a microscope. That’s all. Won’t even let us get inside that mud house of his!”
There was reason for Stockton’s bitterness. He had been literally forced into this adventure. Hardy, the mineralogist, had been taken ill at Lima, and Dr. Bulfinch, his colleague, had sought vainly for a substitute. None was available. None, that is, save for a certain beachcomber who was going rapidly to hell with the aid of a native girl, bad gin, and rubber checks.
Bulfinch’s assistant, Dr. Mary Phillips, had solved the problem. She had bought up the bad checks, threatened Stockton with jail if he refused to come along. Under the circumstances, the one-time mineralogist had shrugged and acceded. Now he was wondering if he had made a mistake.
There was menace here. Stockton sensed it, with the psychic keenness of a professional adventurer. Secrecy was all around him. Why was the mine yard generally kept locked, if the mine actually was worthless, as Thorkel contended? Why had Thorkel seemed so excited when Stockton had mentioned the iron crystals, crystals Thorkel had been unable to see because of his weak vision?
Then, too, there was the matter of the Dicotylinae—certain bones Mary Phillips had found. They were the bones of a native wild pig, but the molar surfaces had proved it a species of midget swine entirely unknown to science—four inches long at maturity. That was odd.
Finally, only an hour ago, Thorkel had blandly said good-bye, only twenty-three hours after the arrival of his guests. Bulfinch had, Stockton mused with a chuckle, thrown a fit. The goatish face had gone gray; the unkempt Vandyke had bristled.
“Are you attempting to intimate that you summoned me—Dr. Rupert Bulfinch—ten thousand miles just to look into a microscope?” he had roared.
“Correct,” Thorkel had answered, and went back to his mud house.
SO far, so good. But there was trouble ahead. Neither Bulfinch nor Mary would think of leaving, even though that meant defiance of Thorkel. And Thorkel, Stockton felt, was a dangerous customer, coldblooded and unscrupulous. His round face, with its bristling mustache and bald dome, could settle into grim, deadly lines.
Moreover, from the first a quiet, unspoken sort of conflict had arisen between Thorkel and Baker, the guide who had accompanied the party from the Andes. Stockton shrugged and gave it up.
Dr. Bulfinch came up behind Stockton and touched his arm. There was repressed excitement in the biologist’s goatish face.
“Come along,” he said softly. “I’ve found something.”
Stockton followed Bulfinch into a nearby tent. Mary Phillips was there, mounting the bones of the midget pig. She was, Stockton thought, much too pretty to be biologist. A wealth of red-gold hair cascaded over her shoulders, and she had a face that belonged on the silver screen rather than in the lab. She also had a hell of a temper. “Hello, beautiful,” said Stockton. “Oh, shut up,” the girl murmured. “What’s the matter, Dr. Bulfinch?”
The biologist thrust a rock sample at Stockton.
“Test this.”
The younger man’s eyes widened.
“This isn’t—hell, it can’t be!”
“You’ve seen pitcheblende before,” Bulfinch said with heavy sarcasm.
“Where’d you get it?” Stockton asked, excited.
“Baker found it near the mine shaft. It’s uranium ore,” he said quietly, “and it’s a hundred times richer than any deposit ever discovered. No wonder Thorkel wants to get rid of us!”
Mentally Stockton added, “And I’ll bet he wouldn’t stop at murder to shut us up!”
“Good God!” Bulfinch whispered. “Radium! Think of the medical benefits of such a find—the help it can give to science!”
There was an interruption. A black streak shot into the tent, followed by a gaunt, disreputable dog, barking wildly. The two circled a table and fled outside again. There was the sound of a scuffle.
Hastily Stockton raised the tent-flap. Pedro, Thorkel’s man-of-all-work, was holding the dog, while a cat retreated hastily into the distance.
The half-breed looked up with a flash of white teeth. “I am sorry. This foolish Paco—” He pulled the dog’s tail. “He does not know he can never catch Satanas. He just wants to play, though. Since Pinto went away, he is lonesome.”
“Yeah?” Stockton asked, eying the man. “Who was Pinto?”
“My little mule. Ah, Pinto was smart. But not smart enough, I suppose.” Pedro shrugged expressively. “Poor mule.”
A MAN came out of the gathering twilight—a tall, rangy figure, with a hard-bitten, harsh face—a Puritan gone to seed.
“Hello, Baker,” Stockton grunted. “Bulfinch told you about the radium?” Baker said, without preamble. “It’s valuable, eh?”
“Yeah. Plenty valuable.” Stockton’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve been wondering about that. Wondering why you were so anxious to come along when you could have sent a native. Maybe you’d heard about this radium mine, eh?” Baker’s harsh face did not change, but he sent a glance of sheer black hatred toward the house.
“I don’t blame you,” he said under his breath. “It does look screwy. But—listen, Bill, I had a good reason for wanting to come here. If I’d come alone, Thorkel would have been suspicious—shot me on sight, maybe. I’d have had no chance at all to investigate—”
“Investigate what?” Stockton asked impatiently.
“I used to know a little native girl. Nice kid. Mira, her name was. I—well, I thought a lot of her. One day she went off to act as Thorkel’s housekeeper. And that was the last I ever heard of the girl.”
“She isn’t here now,” Stockton said. “Unless she’s in the house.”
Baker shook his head. “I’ve been talking to Pedro. He says Mira was here—and disappeared. Like Pinto, his albino mule.”
The swift tropic night had fallen.
A bright moon silvered the compound.
And suddenly the two men heard the faint, shrill neigh of a horse, from the direction of Thorkel’s house.
Simultaneously the figure of Pedro appeared, running from behind a tent. He cried, “Pinto! My mule Pinto is in the house. He has come back!”
Before the half-breed could reach the door of the house, it opened abruptly. Thorkel appeared. In the moonlight his bald head and gleaming, thick-lensed spectacles looked oddly inhuman.
“Well, Pedro?” he asked quietly, in a sneering voice.
The other jerked to a halt. He moistened his lips.
“It is Pinto, Senor—” he whispered.
“You are imagining things,” Thorkel said, with cold emphasis. “Go back to your work. Do you think I’d keep a mule in the house?”
A new voice broke in.
“Just what do you keep in there, Doctor?”
It was Bulfinch. The biologist emerged from the tent and approached, a lean, gaunt figure in the moonlight. Mary was behind him. Baker and Stockton joined the group. Thorkel held the door closed behind him.
“That is nothing to you,” he said, icily.
“On the contrary,” Bulfinch snapped, “as I told you, I intend to remain here until I have received an explanation.”
“And as I told you,” Thorkel said, almost whispering, “you do so at your own peril. I will not tolerate interference or prying. My secrets are my own. I warn you: I shall protect those secrets!”
