Alias-the-Blackbird-Chapter-09

FACE down on moist earth Hammer lay. He heard the Blackbird swinging over in that tight circle, wings 45° to the pond surface, riding the inside rim of an invisible air cone. The quiet engine droned with the steadiness of a bumblebee and scarcely louder, never varying its soporific note.

It was buzz-btizz-buzz—then br-rup! as the black plane came around in its orbit, and buzz-buzz again, circling away. Hammer lay quiet under the withered, crispy leaves of an oak scrub, between a cleft formed by two lichen-covered shore boulders. Water lapped near his feet.

For the instant, he hoped, the Blackbird’s bright eyes had not penetrated to his hiding place, but believed him still in the wrecked plane.

Twice, pinned in the smashed cockpit, he had crouched beneath the withering fire. Blood was running down his cheek to his lips, from a fresh wound or from the pinking he’d taken in the air, he did not know. He tried to wipe his lips and found, with painless surprise, that his right arm failed to move. Something in the shoulder burned. Inert as a log, he lay, scarcely breathing.

He began to crawl. His left leg was like a gravestone cemented to his hip, but he did not mind the hurt of it. A man will give a leg for his life.

Hammer went as a worm goes. His face was pressed against wet soil. He writhed and twisted his muscles. Thus, inch by inch, he crawled into the deeper woods, inch by inch away from the shore, away from the cup of sky where the dark shadow of the blackbird pivoted.

A fourth time the blackbird came around, and the wreck of the HS went up in crimson thunder, roaring, seething and shooting vast fiery sheets to heaven and over the face of the shore.

The blackbird zoomed high above the leaping tentacles of that flame. Three hundred feet above the dark water, the swaying hemlocks, the streaking fire, his deft ship careened with zigzagging wings, doing a devil’s dance on the wind. Suddenly he straightened out, cut his engine, came diving down in a huge dismal silence. And Hammer, lying as motionless as a rock, knew the Blackbird’s eyes were searching for him. The Blackbird had guessed that he’d got away from the plane.

“I see you!” shouted the Blackbird in that vast silence. “I see you!” he screamed in an excess of rage.

Empty words. The Blackbird opened up his droning engine again, for his ship was losing flying speed. Round he circled, and came shadowing quickly along the shore.

Through the woods, slowly and repeatedly, Hammer felt those bright black eyes, those sharp rapacious eyes, searching for him, with a merciless intensity, which, it seemed, would pierce the forest and lay him bare.

He wormed his way along. His breath panted. He was lathered with sweat. Deep in the wood, he got up and tried to run.

Again the Blackbird streaked high, zooming over the forest. He sprayed a rifle clip down at random, a farewell gesture or a threat. The mark was uncannily close to Hammer. Steel glanced from boulders. The forest barked, barked in echo. Unseen over the roof of trees, the black ship drummed away. There was silence.

HAMMER stumbled forth upon a narrow rocky trail. He dropped and lay on the earth a moment, gaining strength. Where there was a trail there would be men. Perhaps even the police officer at Iron Mine—he could not be far away.

A faint hope came to him, as he listened to the deep silence, that the Blackbird had forgotten him. Yet slowly there grew in him the realization of what the Blackbird’s departure must betoken. Somewhere near at hand was the Blackbird’s nest. He was coming down in it. On foot, quick and sly, he would hurry through the woods. Their meeting, Hammer knew, would be far more dreadful than death in the air.

“Help!” Hammer shouted. “Come and help me! Come and help me!”

His voice died away in imperishable solitudes. There was no answer but the whispering of wind in the leafy canopy and the lapping of water on the shore. Where was he stalking, where creeping, that sly Blackbird with the bright eyes? Hammer lifted up his shoulders, scanning the wilderness depths. He had an uncanny sense that the Blackbird was near, was watching his tortuous struggles with malignant and silent laughter, delaying the dreadful hour. Whispers, whispers, whispers in the woods! Leaves rustling, bushes stirring.

“All right, come out! I know you’re there!” gasped Hammer. “Let’s make an end of it!”

He pushed aside a bush; but no skulking, armed figure was behind it. He had been deceived. He found a lean springy maple sapling with smooth trunk. With a stone he cracked it off and broke the forked branches from it. He set the fork beneath his armpit like a crutch. Slowly he hobbled. A step. A pause for breath, while he counted five. Another step.

He must make haste, put all his strength to this. Where was the Blackbird? Hope surged fiercely in him again. Yet every muscle of his body was straining, and exhaustion was gathering on him like a palsy. Where was the Blackbird? He came to a branching of the path; there was a trail ahead, a trail to the left. The latter, though he could not know it, led up over the saddle of the Ridge, across four miles of steep mountain going to Bitter Lake.

Hammer paused, not knowing which to choose. Guided by an evil star, he moved ahead, taking the short straight trail to Amsel’s cabin beside the clearing of Iron Mine.

Again, in the graying twilight, the Blackbird came buzzing over, skimming the forest top. He had not yet come to ground. Hammer pressed back against the trunk of a tree while the Blackbird swept by.

Hammer found the Iron Mine police cabin quite unawares, after a slow, creeping trek that had seemed everlasting. Yet the distance from the shore of the pond had been less than a half mile—as the crow flies, as the blackbird flies.

He beheld the cabin roof as he came through the forest. A faint tracery of smoke was coiling from the chimney. He croaked a hoarse cry. He tried to hasten, swinging along unsparingly, straining and half sobbing. He could see the slab front of it now, and shadows creeping on smooth grass before the door. Through the evening stillness came the cheerful tinkle of the telephone bell, ringing—

ting—ta-ta-ta—ting—ta-ta-ta!

“Hello, there!” Hammer croaked. “Anybody home?”

No answer.

“Hello, Officer!” he called. “Lend me a hand. Officer!”

No answer. Shadows lay motionless in front of the cabin door. The chimney smoke coiled in a pallid wisp. If there was a living man about, he was silent as a bird.

Ting—ta-ta-ta! The telephone within the dark cabin rang again. Ting—ta-ta-ta! Like a snake’s warning.

“Are you there, Officer?” panted Hammer.

Suddenly he was very tired. A faint trembling came over him, the climax of fatigue. He was safe now. He wanted to lie down and rest.

“I’m a friend of Sergeant Rudd, Officer!” he said. “Hammer—the man you went to fetch the surgeon for. Are you awake?”

He hobbled to the threshold of the open door, and swung across it into the graying cabin. He remembered vaguely the look of it, as he had seen it in half-consciousness. No one was there now.

Katydids were chirping through the blackening wilderness. All through the vast whispering woods they were creaking. Crickety-crick! Crickety-crickety! Crickety-crick! Suddenly Hammer felt afraid. An oppression, a closeness of air creeping over this place, such as he had noted before, seemed to stifle him. He did not like it. No, he did not like it.

He swung himself to the clamoring telephone, in haste to summon help. The instrument’s irritant crackle dinned against his ear. He jammed the hook up and down. Faintly a voice broke in upon him, the voice of Cedar Rudd at Bitter Lake, four miles away.

“Hello, hello!” Cedar was calling. “Hello Iron Mine! Where the devil have you been? I’ve been trying for you the past hour! Hello, hello! What’s all the trouble over there? Why haven’t you reported? Damn it, man, can’t you obey orders? Don’t you know your business yet? Hello, Iron Mine? Hello!”

“This is Hammer at Iron Mine! Can you hear me? Can you hear me, Sergeant?”

“Hello, what’s happened to Hammer? I can’t hear you!”

“This is Hammer at Iron Mine!”

“Hello, hello! Hammer? Where is that damned patrol officer?” Cedar roared. “Yes, I can hear you now. Thank God, you’re safe! How did you get there? I saw the Blackbird over the Ridge. I tried to wing him. But you’re safe now?”

“I’m safe at the police cabin!” cried Hammer.

“Good!” cried Cedar. “I’ve been stirring up a hornet’s nest at headquarters. Every man we have has been thrown around the Iron Mine District. They’re beating through the woods. They’ll reach you in an hour.”

“An hour?” said Hammer.

“An hour—it shouldn’t be more,” said Cedar. “Where’s the Iron Mine officer?”

“I don’t know him! I haven’t seen him!” cried Hammer.

“Look around for him, Captain Hammer. I’m afraid of foul play.”

“What sort of a man is he?”

The voice of Cedar Rudd was fading out. Hammer did not quite catch the answer, if there was any. Rattling the hook up and down, he clung to the telephone as to a lifeline. No word came through.

Far away over the hills he thought he heard the sound of rifle fire, a shadow of a sound, a light drumming sound, borne on the gusty wind. Br-rup—rup-rup! It might have been only the sound of sere tree twigs, tapping and stirring on the cabin roof, as the wind moved.

“Hello, hello, Rudd! Is the Blackbird after you?”

He would not relinquish the telephone. He could scarcely breathe. That dismal suffocation still oppressed him. He cast his eyes around. No one was in the cabin, surely. His glance turned to an open window.

For a moment he stared, seeing nothing, as a man does when his thoughts are otherwhere. Then gradually his eyes focused. The look of the scene before him was beaten into his brain. From where he was standing, he had a clear view of the surrounding terrain. Hills lifted up to the sky. There were deep woods around. At the bottom of the hills, straight before the cabin window, stretched an open glade, nine hundred feet or more long, extending to a tangled cliff. Hammer could not mistake the look of it.

The glade was as level as still water. Walls of tall trees sheltered it from cross winds. It seemed to Hammer, standing there stiff with growing horror and amazement, that he could discern the tracks of an airplane’s wheels running up and down the glade. Yes, he could descry the faint acrid odor of dead gasoline. Not all the pungency of pines could quite drown it out, nor all the fresh winds of heaven quite wash it away.

The Blackbird’s lair! Like a blind rabbit into a rattler’s hole, he’d plunged headlong into it—into the nest of the Blackbird, caught and betrayed.

The receiver against Hammer’s ear burst into crackling commotion, a racket like static electricity. Hammer called and called again, with sharp breathless cries, gripping the mouthpiece in locked fist.

The voice of Cedar suddenly broke in on him.

“Blackbird just flew over! Heading back over the Ridge! Tell the Officer—”

“In the name of heaven, Rudd, here’s where the Blackbird hides! Here at Iron Mine! Can you understand me? Can you understand me?”

Came the faint voice of Cedar Rudd, like the voice of a man from Mars, dim and cold and tiny, almost indistinguishable. It was astral distances away and remote beyond all helping.

“Can’t get yod—locate Amsel? Blackbird peppered me—I gave it to him—over the Ridge—”

Over the forest Hammer heard a quiet buzzing. It silenced, giving place to a sharp thin whine—the harp strumming of great wings, streaking down above the cabin roof.

He banged his fist on the telephone box, shouting over and over. He could raise no response. A dismal shadow streaked past the window, skimming swiftly to the sleek floor of the glade. Now it rolled upon the grass. Deft, narrow blackbird wings—and the Blackbird sitting above them, like a man within a coffin!

“Rudd! Rudd! The Blackbird’s landed!”

Swiftly Hammer looked about him. There was no weapon, no place to hide, no place to run, had he been capable of running. He had nothing but his fists, and one of them was stiff and crippled by a flesh wound in the shoulder. A last desperate hope was in him, and it was his only hope, that the Iron Mine officer, prowling through the woods, might observe the Blackbird descending and rush back to the cabin.

The voice of Cedar Rudd boomed suddenly, then faded to a whisper, to a cobweb rustling.

“Can’t you find Officer Amsel?”

Something clicked in Hammer’s mind. It was like a bright flash before his eyes. He could hope no more.

“Amsel!” he mouthed, his voice failing.

Suddenly he broke into loud, wild laughter. “Amsel!” he choked. “Does he call himself that? Amsel! That means—Blackbird!”

The faint voice of Cedar Rudd did not come again.

There was a darting shadow at the cabin door, and Hammer heeled about, back to the wall, to face it manfully.

“Damn your black eyes!” he shouted.