Spider (32 page)

The thickets continued and briars snagged at his clothing, tore his hands. He stopped and gave his coat to June Calvert. She thanked him with softening eyes, but his smile was thin.

"It's not chivalry, but wisdom," he said dryly. "You can travel faster with your shoulders protected."

She laughed at him and they went on again, Wentworth crashing through ahead to break a way. There was a hard desperation in his soul. He had to fight to keep from plunging forward at a mad run that would have exhausted him within minutes. A trotting horse travels farther, he reminded himself. God alone knew how much of this tramping there might be, but if he could get hold of a fast plane within the next six or eight hours. . . .

After they left the low shores of the lake, the underbrush was thinner, but the grade was steepening. It took a half hour to reach the crest of the hill, Wentworth discovered with a despairing glance at his watch. Then twelve such hills. . . . But there were the descents and the valleys to cross. Five, six such hills and his margin would be reduced to nothing.

"We'll have to run down this hill," he said shortly. "Jog, don't race."

He set the pace, the half-trot, half-lope that the woods-runners of the Indians had used over these same trails years ago. Half way down the hill, they struck a small path and June cried out in happiness.

"See, a path!" she panted. "Someone must be near!"

"Game trail," Wentworth threw over his shoulder.

But he swung along its course. As long as it went in the direction he wished, it would be swifter traveling. Unconsciously, his pace quickened. At the bottom of the hill, he realized that there were no footsteps behind him and halted. A hundred and fifty yards back, running doggedly at the pace he first had set, was June Calvert. Her red dress had been torn off at the knee and the coat looked strange with the silk robe, but she was plugging steadily along. She looked up, saw Wentworth.

"Go on, go on!" she cried. "I'm all right."

Wentworth waited until she was near, then ran on. The game trail stopped at a small brook in the valley, but another slanted up the hill, Wentworth pushed on, no longer running, but slowly regaining his breath as he pulled the hill. He had hoped from the ridge just passed, that he might detect some signs of human habitation. The hill ahead inspired him anew, but he said nothing. . . . The next valley was empty of hope, too. Wentworth stole a glance at his watch, an hour and a quarter gone. . . .

Doggedly, he held himself back as he loped down toward the valley. The game trail was gone now, wandering off down the valley and the way was constantly impeded by shrubbery. He kept his lips locked against the urge to pant. He could hear June Calvert gasp for breath. But, damn it, there could be no stop, no resting. Within a few hours, the Bat Man would strike. If the
Spider
did not then take his trail, it would be too late to save Nita and those two gallant men who had thrown in their lot with him. It might even be too late to strike at the Bat Man, for if this chance failed, future contacts would depend on luck alone.

These thoughts worked maddeningly in Wentworth's brain as he loped downhill, and labored up the next grade, the third. If this one also proved an empty hope . . . But it would only mean pushing on to the next and a further reduction of the possibility of success. He scarcely dared look at his watch.

It was hot in the woods where the trees choked off all breeze. Black flies and midges danced about his perspiring face and his shirt clung damply to his body. Nor were his shoes fitted to this type of walking. The soles speedily grew slippery on leaves and the fallen needles of pines so that walking became an exhausting labor. At the top of the third hill, June was three hundred yards behind him and he himself was panting through stubbornly resisting lips. Almost he dreaded to peer into the valley beyond and search the opposite slope, but hope urged him on. He looked—it was empty . . . !

June Calvert toiled up to him, glanced and passed on, pushing herself into a labored run. She was panting, too, but there was a stubborn set to her chin. Wentworth loped after her, drew abreast.

"What time?" she gasped.

Wentworth looked reluctantly at his watch. "Half past twelve."

June said nothing and they ran on. At the bottom of the hill, a spring bubbled water into a small brook. Wentworth halted and they drank sparingly and pushed on. The three hours that followed were nightmares of exhausting action. There was no more running down hills and at the crest of each they stopped for long minutes. The heat had increased, and they dared not drink heavily lest cold water bloat them. When they struck a game trail, they followed it, but mostly there was dense underbrush that must be circled or crashed through and in the bottoms, alder bushes made almost impenetrable thickets.

Each hill had burgeoned hope of what might lie beyond, but each crest brought disappointment, so that Wentworth scarcely dared to gaze on the scenes below. The seventh hill seemed interminable, its crest was a bare ridge where rocks jostled the clouds. Twice, on the climb, Wentworth halted and June Calvert toiled to where he stood and went past him. The third time, he was just on the edge of the barren ridge that crowned the rise.

He stood there, gathering strength for the last pull, for the disappointment that must meet him from its top and once more June moved up beside him. Not even glancing in his direction, she traveled on heavily. Her stockings long ago had ripped from her legs and the flesh was torn and lacerated by thorns. Her head sagged so that her black hair half-hid her face and she moved with the steadiness, the stiffness of an automaton.

Wentworth watched her mount toward the crest; then he tramped on himself, head hanging, the white birch staff helping him up the grade. He did not look again at June, but abruptly he stopped, his down-gazing eyes seeing June upon her knees, head sagging, hands clasped together before her. He lifted his eyes and saw slow, blue smoke rising from the opposite slope of the hill. Was it already too late? He said nothing, but looked wearily at his watch. It was half-past four. If he could get a plane by six . . . It would take a half hour or more to reach that smoke.

He bent down and raised June to her feet and together, his arm supporting her, they went down the hill. The bottom was incredibly overgrown, but nothing could have stopped Wentworth now. He crashed through like a bull. On the far side, he stopped, peering upward. Laurel grew thickly ahead of him, screening the ground from view, but he could still see the smoke above the trees. What it portended, he did not know since there had been no house visible from the opposite ridge. But surely there were men here. They would be able to speed him on his way.

He turned, waited for June; then he pushed on again toward the laurel. He was looking at the ground when a rasping voice called out.

"You can stop right there, furriner!"

Wentworth glanced up sharply. A rifle muzzle yawned at him through a thick clump of laurel. . . .

Wentworth looked very calmly into the muzzle of the rifle. He had looked into similar eyes of death many times, but it was not that which calmed him now. It was his determination that nothing should stop him.

"Our plane crashed in a lake seven hills back," he said shortly. "I want a horse or some other means of getting to the nearest town. I'll pay for it . . . by check." He mentioned the method of payment as an afterthought. It would be very easy for the hidden man to shoot if he thought there was any chance for loot.

"We ain't got no hawses," he said flatly. "I reckon you better mosey back over them mar seven hills."

June Calvert was at Wentworth's shoulder. "Stop being a damned fool, Lemuel," she said. "We're not going back and you're going to help us to get out."

"Yuh know Lem?" another hidden man asked cautiously.

June Calvert said, "Oh, go to hell!" She walked to the right of the bushes where the rifle was poised. Wentworth was as puzzled as the rifleman obviously was, but he followed June. Two mountaineers came cautiously out of the laurel, tall, lanky, with squinting blue eyes.

"Where'd yuh ever meet up with Lem?" he demanded.

"I reckon I'll let Lem tell you that," June said steadily. "You tell him June Calvert said you were a damn'-sight faster with your rifle than you are with your brains. We want a flivver and we want it quick."

The older mountaineer blinked at June Calvert's words, moved his feet uncomfortably and spat tobacco juice at the bole of a tree.

"Wa'al," he mumbled, "if yuh know Lem, I reckon you be all right. We got a flivver over the hill a piece. You wantin' me to drive it?"

June shook her head, started up the hill. Wentworth followed her lead and the lanky mountaineer stood, with his arms folded over the muzzle of his rifle watching them go.

"Just leave the flivver at Pop Hawkins' store!" he yelled after them. "Tell him I'll be after it directly."

Wentworth felt the weariness drop from his legs. He went up the hill as freshly as he had started hours before. He ranged up beside June, glanced at her curiously. Her lips were curved in a wide smile and she seemed hard put to choke back a laugh.

"You tricked him," Wentworth whispered wonderingly. "How in the world did you do it?"

They topped the hill before June spoke, then she laughed. "I used to teach school in the mountains," she said. "There isn't a family of them that hasn't got a Lemuel in it. If there wasn't one in this family, the chances were that they knew somebody pretty well who had the name. It wasn't half as wide a shot as you might think. They've got a whiskey still on the hill. That's the reason for the rifle."

At the crest, Wentworth swept the valley beyond with a quick glance. It was fully five miles across and far down toward the north was the smoke of a small town. But, best of all, there was a narrow, rutted road only a few hundred feet down. They went toward it rapidly.

"It was a very clever trick, June," Wentworth said. "I owe you one for that."

"You owe me nothing," June said sharply. "I was as much in danger as you were. What time is it?"

It was five minutes after five and Wentworth's lips drew tight and hard against his teeth as he hurried toward the ancient Ford that was parked in the middle of the road below. Wentworth had to crank it, but once started, the motor ran smoothly. He backed up a sharp embankment, wrenched the wheels about and sent it bounding down the steep hill.

The road twisted and wound between trees and rocks and bulging roots of trees. There were two ruts and between them grass grew. A more modern car would have scraped off its crank case in the first mile, but the high-wheeled Ford bounded as lightly as a goat from bump to bump and they made incredibly good time. Once a creek, which they forded, splashed water as high as the carburetor and almost stalled the engine, but it caught again and hurled them joyously down the valley.

Five miles of that and the road swung into a wider, dirt highway in which two cars could pass by running one wheel into the ditch. Three miles more and they came to a town of a dozen shacks with a general store labeled: "P. J. Hawkins, Merchandise, Groceries, Dry Goods, Seeds, Plows, etc." Wentworth jerked to a halt before it and went inside.

The town was Hawkinsville, Penn., and the railroad was twenty miles straight down the valley. Pop Hawkins wasn't sure whether there was an airport there, but there might be one at Pittsburgh. He said
Pittsburgh
as some people whisper
Heaven
! Yep, one of the boys did hire his car out sometimes. He went to the porch.

"Lem!" he shouted. "Lem Conley!"

June, from the auto, winked at Wentworth. It was ten minutes before this Lemuel backed a wheezy Dodge from the stable and sent them rolling down the valley at a mad thirty-five miles an hour. Ordinarily, Wentworth would have enjoyed this out of the way corner of the world, but there was no time for dalliance. It was close to six o'clock. . . .

It was seven, and the sun was slanting toward the hills, when the Dodge wheezed up to the railway station of Dry Town. There would be no more trains that night. Airplanes? Well, now, over the hill there in Goochland County, they was having a fair and a fellow did some dad-fool stunts up in the air. . . . No, 'twasn't fur, no more'n ten miles.

Wentworth almost despaired. He was dubious of the plane, too. Ships used for stunting would not be the racing type he would need if he were to reach Chicago before the Bat Man loosed his hordes upon Michigan City. But there was still a chance.

The Dodge labored up roads that seemed perpendicular, finally crested the mountain and swooped down into Goochland with bolts rattling like castanets. The aviator at the fair wheeled out an old Waco that would make ninety miles an hour in a pinch. . . .

The red ball of the sun was balanced on the horizon and they took off into its eye. A half hour later, they set down at Pittsburgh and Wentworth chartered a fast Boeing, the only speedy job available on the field. Two hours from Chicago. . . . and it was already deep twilight. How long before the Bat Man would release his murdering hordes?

Wentworth blindly watched the dark landscape sliding beneath the plane, the yellow lights of homes prick out. Those windows would be dark with death soon if the Bat Man were not overpowered. Michigan City was the only hope of contact with him, and yet—did Wentworth have the right to risk the lives, nay to sacrifice lives, at the amusement park tonight so that he could meet once more with the Bat Man if he was not already too late. It was true that many hundreds would die if he did not find and kill the man, but was he justified? Was he not thinking more of the urgency of rescuing Nita and Jackson and Ram Singh, than of those thousands at the park tonight?

Wentworth's lips twitched, became ironically twisted. He got heavily to his feet and walked through the cabin to the cockpit. There was only one pilot on this chartered trip and Wentworth dropped into the copilot's seat.

"Radio or wireless?" he questioned.

"Only wireless is working," the pilot yelled above the engine roar, "but I can send for you if you wish, sir."