The Mouse in the Mountain by Norbert Davis (best books to read in your 20s .TXT) 📕

after the trouble is gone. I would wait, if I were you."

"Are you proposing to stop us by force?" Patricia Van Osdel demanded.

"Not I, senorita. I never stand between fools and their follies. I have warned you. That is the end of my responsibility. Now you may do as you please."

"We will!" Patricia Van Osdel snapped. "Bartolome, drive on! Drive on!"

The soldiers swung the warning board aside, and the bus rumbled slowly past it and picked up speed. Patricia Van Osdel's thin face was flushed, and she was breathing rapidly.

Henshaw cleared his throat. "Say, who was that tough-looking monkey?"

"Major Nacio," Bartolome answered soberly. "A very great bandit chaser. A supremely superb fighter."

"Well, that don't give him any right to try to scare us. Where does he get that trouble talk? He's just tryin' to show off his authority, that's all."

"Soldiers are always fools," said Greg.

"What army do you belong to?" Doan asked.

"Greg is going to join the United States Army just as soon as we return from this trip!" Patricia Van Osdel snapped. "Aren't you, Greg?"

"No," said Greg.

"And besides," said Patricia Van Osdel, ignoring the answer, "just why aren't you in service, Mr. Doan?"

"Aw, they wouldn't let him in the army," Henshaw said. "They got rules against admitting detectives and immoral characters like that."

"It's not true!" Janet protested.

"It certainly is," Mrs. Henshaw informed her. "They wouldn't let our boys be submitted to any influences like that."

Janet poked Doan in the ribs. "Why don't you answer them?"

"I wouldn't lower myself," said Doan disdainfully. "Anyway, Carstairs is in the army."

"What?" Janet said, amazed.

"Yes, he is," Doan assured her. "He trains dogs to help defend airfields and things. He's on furlough now."

"How does he train them?" Janet asked curiously.

"I'm his assistant and interpreter and orderly. I tell him what the other dogs are supposed to do, and he does it a few times while they watch. Then I tell them to do it, and if they don't, Carstairs reasons with them."

"How?" Janet inquired.

"Show her," Doan ordered.

Carstairs mumbled sleepily.

"We didn't like that," Doan told him. "Again."

Carstairs didn't open his eyes, but he made a noise like a buzz saw hitting a nail in a log. Janet jumped and jerked her hands away from his head.

"That was better," Doan said. "Go to sleep again, but no snoring." Carstairs yawned stickily and wiggled his head into a more comfortable position on Janet's lap.

Chapter 4

 

IT WAS JUST AFTER NOON NOW, AND THE sun was a hot, brassy disc in the thin blue bowl of the sky. The bus rumbled laboriously around a hairpin turn at the summit of a straight,' mile-long climb and paused there, puffing.

"Now," said Bartolome. "This is the scenery nearly supreme. Have the goodness to admire it."

Azela Valley spread out below them--an incredibly enormous raw-red gash with nothing green in it to hide the jagged rock formations, with nothing alive anywhere, nothing moving except the tireless heat waves. It stretched endlessly down, down and away from them, like the landscape of a new world that was as yet only half-formed. As their eyes traveled over it, trying to comprehend its immensity, the red shaded slowly into bluish rust and then into dull, flat brown in the distance. On beyond, still further away, mountains rose steep and serrated and savage against the horizon.

"Wow!" said Henshaw softly.

Doan said to Janet: "Your lieutenant--Perona--came across that?"

She nodded, her eyes wide. "Yes. He walked most of the way. His horse was lame."

"Was he wearing armor, too?"

"Yes."

"What a man," said Doan.

"It looks like a city dump," said Henshaw. "Multiplied by seven hundred million. What lives there, Barty?"

"Rattlesnakes," said Bartolome.

"They can have it," said Henshaw.

"It is one hundred and fifty miles with no road and no water," said Bartolome, "to Santa Lucia on the other side of those mountains."

"I don't want to go there," Henshaw told him. "Where's Los Altos?"

"It approaches," said Bartolome, releasing the brake. The road wove in and out along the mountain top, and the valley followed it, unending and unchanging, stalking them with sinister patience, until suddenly they turned inward between narrow, massive rock walls. Shadows folded down over them darkly.

The road straightened and tilted down like a long, smooth chute. Bartolome kept dabbing at the foot brake, but the bus gathered speed until the wind whistled breathlessly past the windows and Doan could hear a queer, light singing in his ears. "Hey, Barty!" Henshaw said, alarmed.

"Quiet, please," said Bartolome.

The moan of the tires grew higher and higher, and then abruptly the cut opened away from them, bringing the sun in a bright flood, and the road stretched as straight and clean as a tight-wire with nothing on either side of it.

"Yeow!" Mortimer yelled suddenly.

The brakes groaned dismally, and the thick, hot smell of the linings came up into the bus. The tires caught and slid, screaming like souls in torment, and the bus rocked and slewed and suddenly stopped.

"Now observe," said Bartolome.

There was a choked silence for a long time.

Henshaw coughed finally. "What's holdin' this road up here where it is?"

"Is not a road," said Bartolome. "Is a bridge. Kindly get out and exclaim in appreciation."

They got out slowly and stiffly, reluctant to leave the island of comparative safety that was the bus. Carstairs sat down and looked bored and put upon. Mortimer went crawling to the edge of the road and peered over.

"Hey!" he said in a strangled voice. "There ain't nothin' under us but air!"

"That's just what I was afraid of," said Henshaw. "Let's get the hell out of here."

"Observe," Bartolome repeated. "One long span unsupported except at either end."

They could see it more in perspective now, and it was still like a tight-wire strung across space that was a canyon so deep that the sunlight could not penetrate it and the shadows grew darker and darker in its depths until they blended into a thick, formless haze that had no bottom. The steel supports underneath the anchoring pillars were intertwined like spiderwebs and looked as delicately fragile. The wind was a hot, smooth rush in their faces.

"The Canyon of Black Shadow," said Bartolome proudly. "By the bridge, two minutes across. Before the bridge, by mule trail, three days to get down, one day to rest, three days to get up the other side--total one week."

"Did Perona cross this, too?" Doan asked.

Janet nodded, staring down into the shadows. "Yes. The first time he saw it he didn't believe his guides when they said it could be crossed, and he didn't want to risk his men; so he went down and up the other side alone and then came back to get the others."

"I'd like to have met him," said Doan.

He found a big white rock that someone had left as a marker and heaved it over the side. It glistened in the sunlight and slid down smoothly into the shadow and was gone. Everyone waited, listening.

There was no sound.

"That stone," said Bartolome severely, "was a possession of the government."

"I'll go right down and bring it back," Doan promised. "Lend me your parachute."

"I wanna go home!" Mortimer wailed.

"Where's Los Altos, Barty?" Henshaw demanded.

"There," said Bartolome.

They could see it high above them on the other side of the canyon, red roofs and white walls, neat and dainty in the clear air, clinging to what looked like the barren side of a cliff.

"Let's go," said Henshaw.

They climbed back into the bus, and it rumbled on across the threadlike span and commenced to climb on a road that was much narrower and more twisting than the new highway. Bartolome blew his horn at each curve.

"Burros," he explained. "They are often walking in the road and violating the traffic."

The road slanted up a rock ledge, followed its crooked, steeple-like summit for a while, dipped down and turned again, and they were in Los Altos.

The street was narrow and paved raggedly with dark rock. It was like one tread of a steep stairway, with houses going on above it and on down below. The walls of the houses were not quite so white and neat, seen more closely. They were blank, aged faces with cracks like jagged wrinkles in them and narrow, iron-barred windows for eyes and iron-studded doors for mouths.

There was no one in sight. The bus rolled along, rumbling vacantly, to the point where the street widened into the market square. It was empty.

"Is this a ghost town?" Henshaw asked.

Bartolome's mouth was open. He stopped the bus at the curb and got out and looked around. He put his hands over his eyes, took them away, and looked again. The marketplace was still empty. He got in the car and blew the horn loudly and repeatedly. It made noise, but nothing else happened. He got out of the bus again.

"There is no one here," he said in a small, unbelieving voice. "It is unreasonable."

The passengers climbed out of the bus one by one and stood in the street close together, staring uneasily.

"What do you suppose it is?" Janet whispered to Doan.

"I don't know," Doan said. "But I've got a feeling it's something we won't like."

There was a ragged, blunt report that echoed dully. Instantly afterwards a man spun out of a narrow alleyway across the square. It was Garcia approaching his destination. He still had his shiny revolver in his hand, but he wasn't so well in control of the situation any more. He was breathing in great, sobbing gasps, and he stopped and tried to steady himself and fired twice back into the alleyway.

"Revolution!" Henshaw said shakily.

"Revolutions are forbidden," Bartolome said in a numb, incredulous voice.

Garcia turned and ran toward them. His mouth was wide open with the agony of breathing, and his eyes were glazed blearily. He didn't see the bus or its passengers until he was no more than thirty paces from them.

He half tripped, then, and staggered sideways, but the shiny revolver flipped up in his hand and roared again. The bullet popped metallically against the side of the bus. There was a sudden chorus of yells and a thin, bubbling scream from Mrs. Henshaw.

Doan put his left hand against Janet's shoulder and pushed hard. With his right hand he drew a short, stubby-barreled revolver from under his coat. He produced it as casually as a man would take out a cigarette lighter. He kneed Carstairs out of the way and walked steadily toward Garcia.

"Drop that gun," he said conversationally. "Now."

Garcia fired at him. The bullet went over Doan's head and hit a wall somewhere and bounced off in a whooping ricochet. Doan shot at him, and Garcia sat down suddenly on the pavement, looking blandly incredulous. He stared at Doan, his teeth white and jagged under his stringy mustache, and then he raised his right hand slowly.

Doan's second bullet hit him in the mouth. Garcia fell backwards, and his head made a wet, thick sound as it hit the ground. He didn't move again. Carstairs growled softly from behind Doan.

"I know," Doan said. He was leaning forward tensely, watching the alley from which Garcia had appeared.

A second man jumped out into sight and dropped instantly on one knee. He was carrying a Luger automatic with a long, thin barrel.

"Alto ahi!" he called sharply. "Manos arriba!"

"Same to you," said Doan.

They stared at each other for long dragging seconds. The