From time to time, runners dispatched back through the long reaches of the cavern of treasure to its termination beneath the Mayan pyramid reported the defenders holding out successfully.
'They have repulsed several attacks,' one messenger brought notice. 'One of the fire-spitting snakes the red-fingered men are using brought hurt to our ruler, King Chaac, though.'
'Is he hurt bad?' Doc demanded.
'In the leg only. He cannot walk about. But otherwise, he is not in bad shape.'
'Who has charge of the defense?' Doc wanted to know.
'Princess Monja.'
Monk, who had overheard, grinned from ear to ear. 'Now there is a girl!'
The bombs were rapidly pushed to completion. Obsidian, glasslike rock flakes were placed in the gold jars. A quantity of the powder was poured in to from a core. The gold, being pure and soft, permitted the jars to be pounded together at the top. The pounding was done carefully.
Fuses offered a problem. Doc solved that by selecting lengths of a tough tropical vine which had a soft core. Using long, hardwood twigs, he poked out the core, leaving a hollow tube. One of these he left extending down into the powder of each bomb.
Making use of his vast fund of knowledge, Doc concocted a slow-burning variety of the gunpowder. He filled the improvised fuses with this, after experiments to see what lengths were proper.
With the first silvery glow of dawn, Doc led the attacking party on the march.
Some of the Mayans were familiar with the trail into the Valley of the Vanished. It seemed these men had been outside a time or two to further friendly relations with surrounding natives, who, though not pure Mayans after the passage of these centuries, were of Mayan ancestry. Hence the friendship with the lost clan.
Through the treacherous entrance to the valley, the grim little cavalcade worked. There was no lookout posted at the chasm path — the first time that had happened in centuries, a Mayan muttered.
Since the lookouts were usually red-fingered warriors, Doc understood how the snake man had been able to come and go, unnoticed.
Without revealing themselves to the besieging warriors, they closed in. The Mayans understood how to light the bombs. They carried smoldering pieces of punklike wood.
At Doc's signal, an even dozen bombs rained upon the red-fingered killers.
Chapter 21. THE GOLDEN DEATH
Thunderous explosion of those twelve bombs was the first warning those of the warrior sect had of the attack.
Doc had apportioned three explosive missiles to each of the four emplaced machine guns. He had instructed his Mayan followers in the art of hurling grenades. Just how well was instantly evident.
All four rapid-fire guns went out of commission at once!
The devilish warriors, rent and torn by the obsidian shrapnel, were tossed high into the air. Many perished instantly, paying in a full measure for their murderous attack on the Mayan citizenry during the ceremonials.
But plenty remained to put up a fierce fight.
And some had the guns which had belonged to Doc and his friends!
With piercing howls, the Mayans fell upon the surviving rascals. They bombed them wherever four or five were together.
Monk had picked up two stout clubs en route. One in either hand, he laid about with terrific results.
Renny needed no more than his great iron fists. Long Tom, Ham, and Johnny stood off and pitched bombs wherever opportunity presented.
Doc, his golden eyes throwing glances seemingly everywhere at once, moved back and forth through the combat. Time after time, red-fingered fiends dropped before his skill and strength without even knowing what manner of blow had downed them.
The great stone likeness of Kukulcan atop the pyramid gave a sudden lurch to one side, uncovering the secret entrance to the mammoth treasure vault of ancient Maya.
Tribesmen poured out. Roaring for vengeance on the red-fingered ones, they flooded down the pyramid stairs. Some fell in their excitement. They bounded up unhurt. Rocks, sticks, anything handy, they seized for the fray.
A spike of steel poked furtively out of a clump of jungle shrubs. It was the snout of a machine gun. It snarled two shots, four — bronze hand closed on the warming barrel. A hand with the strength of alloy steel. It jerked. The gunman, a finger unluckily hung in the trigger guard, was hauled out of the tropical foliage.
A warrior! The man probably never saw for sure it was Doc Savage who had seized the weapon. A block of bronze knuckles belted the man's temple. He went to his spirit hunting grounds as suddenly as Mayan man ever did.
Doc was disappointed. He had hoped to get the snake man or Morning Breeze. The machine gun was one of Doc's own weapons. He tossed it to Renny.
Rapidly, Doc glided among the combatants. His attitude was detached, disinterested. He showed fight only when tackled. Then the consequences were invariably disastrous.
Doc was hunting the man masquerading in the serpent skin. He wanted Morning Breeze, too. Both had warranted his wrath.
Doc perceived shortly that the snake man and Morning Breeze were not taking part in the battle.
With this discovery, Doc slid over and was swallowed by the luxuriant tropical leafage. He had an idea the two leaders were skulking somewhere until they saw the outcome of the battle. Around the scene of the engagement, Doc skirted. No one saw him.
Fully half of the red-fingered men had now perished. The Mayan populace, terribly incensed, were giving no quarter. The sect of warriors was being wiped out forever.
Nowhere about the battlefield could Doc find the two he sought.
He began a second search — and found the trail. The tracks of two men! The mark left by the dragging serpent tail identified them with certainty.
Like a hound on a scent, Doc followed the spoor. Most of the time the tracks were lost to the eye of an ordinary observer. The snake man and Morning Breeze had taken the greatest care to conceal them. They went down rocky gullies. They even waded a distance in the lake edge.
It was plain the pair had fled the moment they saw their cause was lost.
They were seeking to fly from the Valley of the Vanished! Their course was set directly for the entrance trail in the chasm.
Doc suddenly abandoned the tracking process. He had been moving swiftly, but it was like the wind he now traveled. He knew whence they were bound. Straight for the chasm exit, he sped.
The snake man and Morning Breeze beat him there!
The villainous pair had been running. They had perspired. They had left the smell of sweat on rocks they touched with their hands. So precarious was the route that they were continually clutching handholds.
Into the chasm, Doc swung. He traversed fifty yards, then stopped to kick off his high-backed Mayan sandals. He needed a delicate touch on this fearsome trail. The way slanted upward.
A few hundred feet below, the little stream threshed and plunged. So tortuous was his channel that the water became a great, snarling rope of white foam.
Doc caught sight of his quarry. The pair were ahead. They looked back — discovered Doc about the same time he saw them.
Over the bawl of the water through the chasm, Morning Breeze's scream of terror penetrated. It was a piping wail of fear.
The snake man still wore his paraphernalia. Probably there had not been time to take it off. He wheeled at Morning Breeze's shriek.
Evidently they thought Doc had a gun.
Morning Breeze, cowardly soul that he was, sought madly to get past the snake man. There was not room
