Alias-the-Blackbird-Chapter-03

CAPTAIN HAMMER lay still a long time after the Gold Beetle had crashed. He was prone in the darkness of the forward gangway, a space not much bigger than a coffin.

The great ship, stalling, nose up, as Hammer pushed back the wheel yoke, had poised with treetops brushing her keel, then dropped flat as a pancake. She broke through snapping tree limbs, crashing with shock after shock. Her splintering tail struck the ground first, taking the brunt of the blow, and was immediately shivered to kindling. Then, after a breathless and immeasurable instant, her hull slapped down, with a commotion that shook the forest. Caught in the blind gangway, Hammer saw nothing. There was the sound of shrieking blasphemies; everything about him burst apart, with a roar like dynamite. Then the silence tumbled on him.

Fire was roaring, and the hot sheets of it were scorching his face, when he could observe things again. He was being dragged by the ankles over rocky ground. His shoulders scraped; his head bumped.

“Let go, you fool!” he croaked. “Leg’s broken.”

He lay supine, twitching, with poisoned darts of pain shooting through his body and centering in his head. A huge man, with blackened face, knelt beside him, hoisting him by the shoulders to a sitting position. Hammer dimly recognized his rescuer as the trooper who had been with the cargo in the cabin of the Gold Beetle. The big fellow spat blood, and wiped his lips with a torn gray sleeve.

“Your goose was nearly cooked,” he mumbled briefly.

Twenty paces away, jumbled in a splintered heap, the Beetle was disappearing in sheets of flame that withered the leaves of the trees above. The trooper wiped black, oily soot from his face. His mouth had been mashed, teeth broken.

“What—” muttered Hammer.

He sat upright, fingering his left shin bone.

“Pulled the other guys out first,” the trooper mumbled. “Thought you was a goner, too. Better not look. Poor Happy Rose, my buddy, wheel post drove clean through him.”

“Tank caught fire?” asked Hammer, thinking more clearly.

Blackbird, blackbird, where had it flown? Blackbird hadn’t got him yet!

“Didn’t catch by herself,” the trooper mouthed. “That demon came back. Lifted the money boxes out, one by one, and me laying like a dead man. He got it, sir. I’m sorry.”

“Never mind that,” said Hammer impatiently.

“I woke up to see him tossing matches into the spilling gasoline,” said the trooper. “Couldn’t get my gun.”

He wiped a sleeve across his trembling mouth again. He was swaying on his knees.

“Where’s his ship?” demanded Hammer swiftly. “Where did he come down? He’s somewhere around here now. Keep your eyes open, and watch out for the Blackbird!”

The big trooper’s face had grown pale as lard. His head wobbled. He made a futile gesture to lift hand to lips.

“Can’t do nothing, sir,” he gasped. “Feel tired—”

He had tugged loose his pistol. He thrust it at arm’s length. His hand described an unsteady circle as he banged away. Lead crashed through crisp, sore foliage overhead, through splintering saplings, against rocks on the ground, summoning help, summoning Cedar Rudd, who heard the crazy shooting as he stood with Officer Amsel, by the Iron Mine police cabin in the grassy glade nearby.