Текст книги "[Magazine 1966-­07] - The Ghost Riders Affair"

Автор книги: Harry Whittington

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Solo heard Maynard's intake of breath. "By golly, there she is. Hanging around. You reckon she can hear what we say?"

Solo shrugged. "She might have some kind of listening device, but it seems to me that she's reading lips."

Maynard swore. "Looks like we better check into her."

"We'll check her out," Solo agreed. "But we better take things in order of importance." He moved his fingers expertly across Pete's scalp.

"What you mean?" Maynard said, watching him check the cowboy's skull.

"We have more urgent matters," Solo said. "Like Pete's scalp."

"What about Pete's scalp?" Maynard whispered.

Even Mabel Finnish under the cottonwood tree appeared to be holding her breath.

"Yeah." Pete straightened. "What you looking for in my head, Solo?"

"If you fell from your horse, and struck your head hard enough to knock yourself out for three days, Pete," Solo said, "shouldn't there be some kind of knot on your skull?"

Pete Wasson stood up slowly. His eyes were thoughtful.

"How about that?" he whispered. "There ain't no knot on my head. Funny. Nobody thought about that."

"What's going on here?" Marty Nichelson said.

"That's what we've got to find out," Solo told him. "Can you tell me anything about your headache—and some of the things you did in Cripple Bend for three days?"

Marty frowned. "Well, nothing's clear, Solo. But that don't mean I'm lying!"

"Me either," Pete said. "Even if there ain't no knot on my head, I ain't lying."

"And I was in Cripple Bend. That ought to be easy enough to prove. People would of seen me there, wouldn't they?"

"Looks like it," Solo agreed. "Meantime, either one of you object to taking a polygraph test?"

"What's that?" Pete asked cautiously.

"A lie detector," Solo said. "I don't think either one of you is lying purposely, but a test might help you."

Marty and Pete stared at each other. Marty shrugged. "I got no objections. It all happened just like I said. It ain't clear to me, but I ain't lying."

"You got one of them lie detectors?" Pete said.

"We can have one by tomorrow," Solo said. "If neither one of you objects."

"Sure." Pete said. "Marty and me are willing. We ain't trying to hide nothing. If one of them things will help get at the truth, I want to know."

FIVE

Solo parked the Maynard Ranch station wagon outside the City Bar on the single street in the settlement at Cripple Bend. The town was the last lingering trace of the old west, but battered cars baked at the curbs instead of workhorses.

He walked into the bar, found it almost deserted in the middle of the morning.

"What can I do for you?" The voice was musical and warm.

Solo was mildly astonished but pleased to find that the cowtown bartender was a woman. She looked to be in her middle twenties, and enough to drive strong men to drink. Her blond hair was brushed upward on her head, piled there in rich waves. Her eyes were like a sparkling wine, glittering with promises. She wore a pastel dress and a fresh apron.

Solo ordered a beer and sat at the bar, turning it in his fingers.

"You're staying at the Maynard Dude Ranch," the bartender said. "Came from New York. Two suitcases—"

"You don't miss much, do you?"

"April. Name's April Caution." She smiled across the bar. "Small town like this, nobody misses much."

"Guess you'll know Marty Nichelson pretty well, then?

"Marty? Sure. Everybody knows him. Good kid. Been with Carlos Maynard a couple years. Used to take prize money in rodeos until he cracked his hip."

"Hear he was in here and tied on a real binge—"

"Who? Marty?" April straightened, frowning.

Solo nodded, watching her. "That's the talk," he said. "But it's no secret. Marty was talking about it himself. He was telling me about the tree days he spent here in Cripple Bend—most of it here in your place—on a bender. Now I've seen you, I can understand why he stayed for three days."

"There's something wrong here, mister," April Caution said, her face puzzled. She straightened when the door swung open at the street entrance.

Solo glance across his shoulder, but he was not even astonished to see that Mabel Finnish had entered the tavern.

Mabel didn't speak to him. She went to a table near the bar and sat down.

April said, "Just a minute. We'll kick this around, as soon as I wait on the lady."

"Why don't you come up to the bar, Miss Finnish?" Solo asked. "You won't be as comfortable, but you can hear better."

Mabel Finnish's lovely face flushed, but she did not answer. She ordered a daiquiri. April mixed the rum drink, delivered it and then came back to the bar, sat on a stool facing Solo.

"I been thinking this thing over, about Marty," she said. "When was he supposed to have tied one on in here?"

"About a week and a half ago," Solo said.

April shook her head. "Oh, no. Not in here. Marty hasn't been in here in over a month."

Solo sat a moment, staring at a wet place on the bar. "But there's been a lot of talk about Marty's being in here. Hasn't anybody from the ranch been in to check on it?"

April shrugged. "What's to check? I tell you Marty hasn't been in here in weeks."

Solo sighed. "Any other tavern in Cripple Bend where he could have been on a prolonged drunk?"

April smiled. "No other place in town to buy liquor. Nearest bar is in the next settlement, and that's over seventy miles away. No. If Marty was on a drunk, he'd have been in here—only I can tell you, he hasn't been in."

A few minutes later, Solo walked out of the City Bar. He paused on the board walk, stared both ways along the sleepy street. Then he glance over his shoulder at Mabel, drinking alone at the table inside the tavern.

He strode along the walk, going past the ranch station wagon. He walked beyond the feed store, then stepped around the corner, pressed himself against the adobe wall, waiting.

It was a short wait. He heard Mabel's bootheels clattering on the boards as she half ran in pursuit. She slowed, then stopped, looking around puzzled, a few feet from where Solo stood.

Solo stepped out upon the walk immediately behind Mabel. He caught her arm.

Mabel heeled around. Solo fixed her with an unyielding smile. "Looking for anyone we know, Mabel?"

"Let me go."

"I let you go, but you don't go. Why? Do you find me that fascinating, Miss Finnish?"

Mabel shivered slightly. "I don't find you fascinating at all."

"You disappoint me. I had such high regard for your taste. Tell me, if I'm not your type, why do you follow me around?"

She winced, looked helplessly both ways along the sun-stricken street. "Maybe you just happen to go all the same places I must go."

"An interesting theory. Maybe you can tell me why you want to go all these places where I so inconveniently show up—just ahead of you."

"Need I remind you, Mr. Solo? It's a free country. I can go where I like?"

He continued to smile, coldly. "And let me remind you. Freedom and life are being threatened here. It's no game. I won't play by any rules that will please you. I might even get rough. Now, shall we try again? What are you doing here?"

"Because I heard that one thousand of Mr. Maynard's cattle disappeared without a trace."

"Are you interested in cattle? Or disappearances?"

Mabel's head tilted slightly. "Like everyone else, I heard that two huge trains also disappeared without a trace."

Solo stopped smiling. He shook his head, puzzled. "And that's why you came here?"

She met his gave levelly. "Doesn't the name Finnish mean anything to you, Mr. Solo?"

Solo frowned, filtering the name through his mind. There was the faintest stirring of recall. He shook his head. "Should it?"

"Leonard Finnish," she said. "He was a geologist known all over the world. He was my grandfather. He disappeared without leaving a trace."

"On one of those trains?"

She shook her head. "My grandfather disappeared five years ago."

"Here in the Sawtooth mountains?"

"No. Grandfather vanished while on a geology expedition in Death Valley, in California."

Solo nodded, remembering. "Yes. He was exploring some subterranean caverns in Death Valley, but that's fifteen hundred miles from here."

"Yes. And five years ago. Still, he did vanish without a trace. Just as the cattle and the trains disappeared. Is it so wild that I'd look for my grandfather here—try to learn all I can about these disappearances? You're here. Yet those trains disappeared in Indiana, didn't they, Mr. Solo?"

Solo smiled, released her arm. "Checkmate."

SIX

Solo set up the polygraph machine in Maynard's ranch house den. He was checking it out when the door was thrown open and Maynard burst into the room.

The rancher's sun-tanned face was gray. His eyes were distended. He said, "Solo. The bunkhouse. You better come. Quick."

Maynard turned on his heel and Solo followed. The few dude ranchers remaining on the place eyed them silently, coldly as they passed. These people stood up, tense, watchful.

They found the same chilled reception at the bunkhouse. The ranch hands were taut, eyes bleak and troubled.

Maynard thrust open the bunkhouse door and Solo followed him inside it.

Inside the room, Solo slowed, stopped, staring at the men on the bunks.

"Pete and Marty," Maynard said. "They got violently ill last night. Mabel Finnish drove into Cripple Bend to fetch Doc Cullin, but I don't think she'll make it."

Maynard was right. Marty died before Doc Cullin arrived, and there was nothing the medic could do to save Pete.

Maynard caught the doctor's arm. "Why? What caused them to die like that, Doc?"

Cullin shook his head. "I don't know, Carlos. There are no physical signs of any kind. We'll just have to wait for the autopsy."

That evening Solo was working on his daily report when there was a knock at his door in the upstairs of the ranch house. He said, "Come in."

The door opened and Doctor Cullin entered. "Maynard said I should give you the results of the autopsy report, Mr. Solo. Autopsy shows the presence of a nerve gas in the lungs of both men. Death was caused by strangulation; that nerve gas had been in them for some days slowly choking them."

Solo gazed at the doctor, then stared beyond him at Mabel Finnish, standing gray-faced in his doorway.

ACT II: INCIDENT OF THE MISSING CASTLE

The train hurtled downward into the belly of the earth. The stifling darkness shrouded the car where Illya braced himself against the plunging descent.

Breathing was difficult, movement almost impossible. It seemed to Illya as the train lowered that his body became heavier with increased tug of gravity.

Suddenly there was the creaking of giant chains and winches. The train trembled as the huge lift settled into a brilliantly illumined cavern and came to rest.

Illya ran to the windows. Beyond the train, fluorescent lighting made the high-domed caverns brighter than sunlight. Yet Illya knew they were miles beneath the surface of the earth.

He checked the small sender attached to his lapel. Its transistors were in perfect order, its continual flow of bleeps flared unchecked—into the solid rock surrounding him. The small instrument was useless.

From outside the sealed car Illya heard the sounds of men running, shouting.

He wheeled around from the windows. From his jacket he took the components of his machine pistol, working swiftly. He tried to force his fingers to react more swiftly, but there was a languid heaviness to all his movements.

He set the barrel of the pistol into its stock, screwing it into place. But even as he worked he knew he would not work swiftly enough.

There was a whispered sound, as if some magnetic seal had been released. Doors at each end of the custom-built car swung open, suddenly freed.

The gush of machine-driven air filled the car. Illya straightened, feeling unexplained panic.

He took a backward step as the first warmth rushed over him. It enveloped him like some invisible cloak, striking him down to his knees as if it were a physical blow.

Stunned, Illya twisted half around under the unseen impact. He caught at a seat, but fell to his knees. The machine pistol was driven from his grasp, hurled to the floor some feet from him.

Striking on his knees, Illya stared at the gun, concentrating upon it, scrambling toward it.

"He's here! Take him!"

Illya's head jerked up. Men rushed into the car through the opened doors. The gusts of heated gas seemed to have ebbed.

Staring at the men rushing toward him, Illya grasped out for the machine pistol. In horror he saw his hand strike the gun and lie helpless upon it.

Lift it. Pick it up. Lift it. His mind sent frantic messages to his hand, but his fingers remained stiff, straight.

He could not close them.

Helplessly, sprawled like a bug on the car flooring, Illya stared upward incredulously at the men surrounding him.

His eyes widened. These men looked as if they were like him—or once had been. But all had undergone some strange metamorphosis down here. They were alike in body, with the roundness of moles or fat underground rats. They moved with their heads bent forward, peering through thick-lensed glasses as if life below surface was steadily destroying their sense of sight. Most appalling of all was the doughy pallor of their faces, their bodies—beings who lived shut away from the memory of sunlight.

Illya struggled frantically on the flooring. He managed to lift his weighted, slowly-responding body to his knees. But he could rise no further.

Illya hung there, supported on leaden arms, head drooping between his shoulders. He panted through parted lips, aware suddenly that he was breathing something that was not oxygen—this warm gas was slowly paralyzing his muscles and his body.

He tried to speak, tried to cry out.

It was like a nightmare. He was unable to make a sound.

He reached out one more time for the machine pistol and almost sprawled on his face.

Deep, guttural laughter spewed down over him.

One of the mole men reached down, took up the machine pistol, examining it with interest.

It took an eternity, but Illya managed to lift his head. The men stood, peering squint-eyed through their thick glasses at him, their faces pulled into savage caricatures of something they remembered as laughter.

The laughter raked at him and Illya tried to cry out. He could not force a sound past his lips. His throat felt swollen, closed. He tried to brace himself, but had no muscular coordination. The warm thick pressure of that strange sick-sweet gas closed upon him like an occluding fog.

He toppled helplessly upon the floor, suffocating and paralyzed, the sound of the weird, wicked laughter raging in his ears.

And then the warmth darkened around him, shutting out everything except that laughter, and this spun like enraged hornets inside his mind.

TWO

The unbroken, whispered clatter of his wrist-watch alarm awakened Solo an hour before dawn.

For a moment he lay unmoving, protected from the chilled Wyoming darkness, from all the unknown that lay ahead of him.

From the corral below he heard movement and subdued voices of men calling to each other. Wind riffled the curtains at the windows.

Solo yawned, throwing back the covers.

A shard rap sounded at his door. Maynard's whispered voice came through the facing. "Your horse and pack are ready, Mr. Solo."

"Thanks," Solo said. "I'll be right down."

He swung out of bed, snapped on the small bed-lamp. He slipped his legs into corduroy trousers, and then stood up, donning a heavy shirt.

The whispering, dry-hinge creak of his balcony door, brought him wheeling around.

The door pushed slowly open, Solo caught up his gun, but dropped it when he recognized Mabel Finnish. She moved in from his balcony.

He stared at her. She was dressed for the trail in slacks, heavy jacket and riding boots.

"I'm going with you," she said.

"What makes you think I'm going anywhere?"

"Let's not waste time, Mr. Solo. You're riding alone up into the Sawtooth ranges looking for some trace of those missing cattle, and I'm going with you."

"Nobody but Maynard knew my plan. How did you find it out?"

She gave him a faint smile. "I may as well tell you the whole truth—"

"That will be refreshing."

"I have a small listening device. I hear what I must. It's like a hearing aid, only concealed, and much more powerful. I'm sorry to force myself upon you like this, Mr. Solo, but I have no choice."

"I could think of several—"

"I must find my grandfather. That's all that matters to me. I have to know what you say, what you learn about the disappearance of those cattle, just as I must go with you."

"I'm sorry. That's impossible."

Mabel seemed not even to hear him. "I can be of help to you."

"I don't need your help."

"I've been on those trails."

"I have maps of the ranges. I know where the cattle were last seen. No, I'm sorry, Mabel. It's too dangerous. I don't have to tell you that Pete and Marty died because they were up there. They were attacked by some kind of nerve gas and it was fatal. I can't expose you to such danger."

Her head lifted. "I'm not afraid."

Solo's jaw was taut. "Well, I've sense enough to be afraid for you."

"You don't understand, Mr. Solo. You're wasting time. I'm going with you."

"Then you're bigger and stronger than you look."

"I'm big enough and strong enough, Mr. Solo."

He grinned. "And lovely enough. I'm truly sorry I can't take you with me."

"I told you." Her voice became deadly. "You'll take me, or you won't go."

He laughed, turning slowly. "How do you plan to stop me?"

For the first time Solo saw the gun in Mabel's hand. He saw something else, too. Her grip was steady. Her finger was firm on the trigger. She knew how to use that small firearm, and she would not hesitate to do it.

Her voice mocked him. "Now do you understand why I'll go with you? I won't hesitate to shoot you."

"What will that buy you?"

"That's it, Mr. Solo. It won't buy either of us anything. That's why I hope you'll be smart enough to take me. I know the mission you're on is urgent to you. But my search is even more urgent to me. I'm sorry, Mr. Solo, but I'm desperate—"

"Enough to shoot me?"

He watched her, but the gun in her hand did not waver.

She nodded. "I'm desperate enough to do anything that will help me to learn the truth about my grandfather. I know his disappearance is somehow related to all this. I've got to find out."

"If I find your grandfather, I'll bring him back. I promise that."

The muzzle of her gun tilted slightly. "That's not good enough, Mr. Solo. I go with you or nobody goes. That's up to you now."

Solo chewed at his lip a moment studying her, and that unwavering gun in her fist. He shrugged his shoulders, giving her a reluctant grin of capitulation. "I've been wondering all along how to beg you to ride out with me, Miss Finnish."

Mabel sighed out heavily. "You're very wise, Mr. Solo."

He lifted his hands deprecatingly. "It's really very easy to be wise, Miss Finnish, with a gun staring you in the face."

THREE

They climbed steadily into the blue-hazed heights of the Sawtooths, the silences deepening through the morning, noon.

There were no longer even any trails on these lava-scarred mesas. The uncharted wilds had been tortured into ridges and ravines by countless suns and mountain winds.

They reached a treeless escarpment by midafternoon. Solo halted the horses.

Shifting in his saddle, he gazed downward along the way they'd come. It was as if they were the only human beings in the breathless world of sand-scarred boulders.

Their horses slipped, fighting for footing on the slate outcroppings.

Far below them sprawled waterless plains, vast and uninhabited; above them reared inaccessible plateaus, crags jutting against the sky, massive ranges lost inside monstrous mountains, trackless and forgotten.

Solo shivered slightly. He glanced at Mabel. "I never really knew what the word desolate truly meant until today."

"The silence is unbelievable," she said. "Not even a bird, or an animal."

He sighed. "What are you really doing up here, Mabel?"

She frowned. "I told you. I'm looking for my grandfather."

"I know. It just doesn't add up."

"Nevertheless, it's true."

"Is it? I keep asking myself, why should a young, beautiful girl like you spend her life looking for a man who has been missing for five years?"

"That man is my grandfather, Mr. Solo."

"But he must be dead. They would have found some trace of him."

"Have they found any trace of your trains, Mr. Solo?"

He frowned. "But you. So young. Looks like you'd marry, have a family—"

"It's more important to me to find my grandfather. I know he's alive. He was a very great man, Mr. Solo. I never met another man worth taking me from the search for him."

Solo smiled despite himself. "You're a strange girl."

"It's a strange world, Mr. Solo." She prodded her horse and moved away.

Solo rode slowly. He could not explain why, but felt himself growing taut.

He stiffened in the saddle, searched the boulders and the cliffs around him, moving his gaze slowly, peering. He found nothing, yet the feeling increased that they had ridden into trouble.

There was a sudden, subtle shift in the atmosphere. It was nothing he could explain, yet it was there. The sun was unchanged, undiminished, cresting far to the west of them. The brilliant haze lay across rocks and outcroppings, but there was a difference between this plateau and the land below them.

Troubled, Solo was aware of a faint, but persistent ache in his temples. A headache! Hadn't this been the sign Pete and Marty both noticed first up here?

Something else nagged at Solo. Then he remembered. Mabel had said it. There were no birds, no animals, not even a lizard or a mouse.

He was aware that Mabel had shifted in her saddle and stared back at him, a faint smile twisting her lovely mouth. "What's wrong, Solo?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. I only know that something is wrong."

"It's your imagination."

"Perhaps." Solo reached up, messaging his temples. "Why don't we stop for coffee?"

Mabel laughed, but agreed. They swung down, ground-tied their horses.

Mabel sat on a small boulder. She watched Solo gather grease-wood sticks and start a small fire between two smooth stones. He placed the smoked coffee pot on it; soon the aroma of coffee obscured everything else.

Solo hunkered beside the fire. His eyes ached now, but he remained alert, watchful. He was troubled, though there were no sounds except the crackle of the fire, the bubble of the boiling coffee water, the snuffling of the tethered horses.

"You're scared, Solo." Mabel's voice raked at him.

He glanced up. "Sometimes you have to be smart enough to be scared. Did you know that's how man learned to exist in this world—by being scared first?"

"What scares you up here?" she inquired.

He shook his head. "Everything. Nothing. I've the unshakable feeling that we're being watched."

"Watched?" She laughed. "By whom? By what?"

"I don't know." Solo stared into the fire. "Mabel, something is wrong—and has been for the past hour or so."

Mabel laughed, watching him pour steaming black coffee into tin cups. "It's just your nerves."

He shrugged. "Maybe."

She laughed louder. "Do your corns ache when it rains, Solo?"

He stared at her, frowning. From his vest pocket he removed a small aspirin-sized tin box. He opened it, took out two small purple capsules.

"What's that, Solo?"

He offered her one of the capsules. "It's an antidotes for nerve gas."

"Nerve gas?"

"We may walk into it at any minute, Mabel. Maybe we have already."

She shook her head.

He shrugged, said nothing. She refused to take the capsule. He closed his fist, holding it.

She watched him take a purple capsule, wash it down with the coffee.

"It isn't that I'm not grateful," she said, "but I don't believe we're going to find anything like that up here."

"I hope you're right." Suddenly Solo stiffened.

Mabel stared at him. "What's the matter now?"

Solo came upward slightly, staring past her. "Didn't you hear that?"

She jerked her head around. "I didn't hear anything."

"There it is again," Solo said.

While Mabel was turned, staring across her shoulder, he reached out, opened his fist and dropped the purple capsule into her tin coffee cup.

She turned back, frowning. "You're cracking up, Solo. I didn't hear anything."

Solo sighed and shrugged. He sat back, relaxed, watching her drink down her coffee.

FOUR

"How much further are we climbing before we make camp?" Mabel asked an hour later as they rode falteringly upward.

Solo check the sun.

"Not much longer," he said. "No sense taking a chance riding. A horse can break a leg."

"You worry like a mother hen," Mabel taunted. She prodded her horse, riding suddenly swiftly ahead.

She screamed, throwing her arms up before her face. She twisted, falling from the saddle.

Solo urged his mount forward, but it was as if he rode into an invisible wall. Something struck him and he was driven from his saddle.

Solo went sprawling outward, face first. It was not as though he fell, rather as if he were being thrust downward with terrible force by unseen hands.

The two horses reared, squealing. They tried to run forward, but their way was blocked by this invisible wall. But when they wheeled about, in panic, they were unable to run downhill, either.

Solo struck the ground hard. He felt the savage bite of lava spikes. He rolled along the shale shelf, trying to set himself. He was helpless.

He turned, seeing Mabel huddled on rock outcroppings.

"Mabel!"

He yelled her name again, but she did not answer. She didn't move. He lifted himself slowly to his hands and knees, feeling as if he were fighting incredible downward thrust. He fought against this pressure, lunging upward.

He cried out in agony.

It was as if his head struck solid stone. He shuddered, staggering to his knees, rolled helplessly over upon his back.

For one more moment the mountain side skidded around him, the boulders and the clouds changing places, like skittering bats.

He fought against the darkness that blacked out everything. He pushed upward, but could not rise. But this time when he fell, he went plunging downward into darkness where he was conscious of nothing, not even the pain.

Solo had no idea how long he was unconscious.

He forced his eyes open, conscious of the lancing pain, the throbbing in his temples. It was deep dusk, almost full dark, or else an impairment of vision laid an occluding fog on everything.

He tilted his head, saw that Mabel had not stirred. The horses had fallen, and they lay still on the rocks.

He moved his eyes, searching. Nothing appeared to have altered. The incredible emptiness reached outward in every direction. Ghost Riders, he thought. He tried to drive the mindless idea from his brain. He could not do it. He was convinced that he was surrounded by menacing beings, yet he could not see them. They threw him on the ground, and they held him helplessly when he attempted to rise.

He struggled again to get to his knees, but though there were no ties on him, no ropes, or chains, it was as if he were bound.

The nerve gas.

Stunned, Solo lay helplessly on his back, staring at the darkening sky. He and Mabel had ridden into an invisible wall—odorless, colorless nerve gas, clouds and banks of it. Both Pete and Marty must have ridden up the mountains to this place. This gas was what the two cowpokes had inhaled—the fatal fumes.

It had left them confused, dazed. In the case of Marty, victim of hallucinations—he had died believing he spent three days on a prolonged drunk in the bar at Cripple Bend.

Solo struggled against the invisible bonds immobilizing him.

He stared, eyes wide, trying to find some clouding of that gas. There was nothing visible, but it was there.

If those two cowpunchers had ridden into this bank of nerve gas it had to be piped from some underground storage tanks. And these had to be somewhere nearby—a cave, a well, an abandoned shaft. Something! The answer was that simple, if only he could find it.

Sweating, Solo fought to push himself upward. If he uncovered the cave or shaft from which the gas emanated, he'd have taken a giant step toward answering the riddle of those missing cattle, perhaps a step toward finding those vanished trains and Illya Kuryakin.

He lay, sweating, and his mind raced, though his body was immobile.

Hallucination.

This was the answer. He saw clearly now how this nerve gas had made it possible to move one thousand head of cattle as if they vanished without leaving a trace. No traces would be seen by men who were brainwashed.

Those two cowpunchers had believed anything suggested to them, while they lay unconscious from the first effects of the gas. Suggestion! While they were unconscious, Marty had believed that he'd grown disgusted with tracking and spent three days drinking in Cripple Bend. Pete believed he had fallen from his horse and had lain unconscious.

This meant there was not only strong currents of nerve gas from storage tanks up here, there were men, hidden like vultures—not ghosts, or ghost riders, but men executing some plan of unspeakable evil.

Had those men been here while he lay unconscious? What suggestions had been planted in his mind—and Mabel's?

Would he be able to think clearly because he had taken a nerve gas antidote? Or would he see what some unseen men had suggested he would see once he could move and walk again?

He pushed up to his knees, and then stopped, shaking his head incredulously.

At first, Solo was afraid to believe his eyes, fearful suddenly that he was experiencing visions as after effects of the nerve gas.

A ninety-foot slate wall in the face of the mountain near them moved slowly like a sliding panel.

Shaking his head, Solo remained on his knees, staring. The opening in the mountain was hangar-sized, and the lighted cavern beyond it was huge, shadowed—a place to swallow a thousand cattle easily.

His heart battered at this rib cage. Whether he lived to tell it or not, he'd solved the riddle of how those cattle had vanished and why the searchers found no traces left behind them.

A dozen men rushed through the opening in the side of the mountain.

They took a few steps, then slowed, paused, stopped for an instant.

Watching them, Solo wondered if they'd banged into the invisible wall of gas.

They inched forward, and he saw they were almost bat blind in the natural light of the outside world!