Doc savage 074 the d.., p.1
Doc Savage - 074 - The Derrick Devil, page 1
The Green Death
By Kenneth Robeson
Published February 1937
Doc Savage Magazine #48
by Street & Smith Publications
Table of Contents
I THE FLOWING RED DEVIL
II THE MAN NEEDED
III MURDER IN THE AIR
IV DEATH WITHOUT REASON
V HE WANTED TO HELP
VI THE TRAIL
VII PREPARATION
VIII THE HIGH EYE
IX HIDE-OUT BELOW
X RED MYSTERY
XI SEIZED
XII BLAST TRAP
XIII FLIGHT
XIV MASTERMIND
XV RAID
XVI CAPTIVES
XVII THE TANK TERROR
XVIII TRICKS
XIX LAST DITCH
XX THE BLAZE OF GLORY
I
THE FLOWING RED DEVIL
THE man carried a .30-30 rifle in one hand and two boxes of cartridges, both open, in the other hand. He acted as if ready to drop the cartridges and use the rifle any instant.
The girl had a shotgun.
"I've got a hunch guns ain't a lot of good against this thing!" the man muttered.
"What's the matter, Reservoir?" the girl asked. "Believe in hobgoblins?"
It was too dark to tell much about them, only that the man was tall and skinny, except for his middle, which was big around, making him like a snake that had swallowed an egg. A nice snake, of course.
The girl was about the right size, and if she didn't have a good form, the darkness lied. It was impossible to tell about her coloring.
"I still maintain I saw something coming out of the casing of that wildcat well, Miss Vida," the man muttered. "Reservoir Hill may be old, but he ain't going nuts!"
The girl laughed. It was, somehow, not a very enthusiastic mirth.
"Sam Sands was to watch the well until midnight," she said. "It's eleven. Time you and I were relieving Sam."
Holding the rifle with his finger in the trigger guard, the man shuffled off. The girl took long strides and kept at his side.
Tall, dry grass brushed their field boots. Leaves of scrub oak rustled in the night breeze. Over in the hills somewhere, an owl was making a racket.
They topped the small hill and before them the spidery thin pyramid of an oil well derrick stood reared against the cloudy night sky. A modern pipe derrick, and the drilling rig was evidently a rotary.
The well was not a producer, because the breeze was coming from that direction and it carried, instead of the smell of crude oil, the odors usually found around drilling wells.
"Reservoir" Hill stopped.
The girl waited, but when he did not move or speak, she grew impatient. "Well!"
"We've got the wildcat shut down because our boss driller has disappeared," Reservoir Hill said, slowly.
"Well?" the girl said again, sharply.
"I've got a horrible suspicion," continued Reservoir Hill, "that we've already found our driller!"
THE girl was puzzled. She held her shotgun in the crook of her elbow and eyed her companion. A stray beam of moonlight came through a crack in passing clouds to illuminate the man. He looked as if the ends of him had been squeezed to make him big in the middle.
"What are you driving at, Reservoir?"
"Remember that gummy stuff we found in the gully below the drilling rig? It was near where we found the clothes our driller was wearin'--when he--well, when he disappeared."
"That was just old lube or grease that somebody had scraped out there."
"It wasn't lube," Reservoir Hill said, shuddering.
"No?"
"I know lube oil." Reservoir Hill wet his lips. "I've worked in refineries too many years not to know grease or lube. This stuff looks more like--well--" He fell silent.
"Like what?"
Reservoir Hill gave a large shrug.
"Forget it! When they have been in the oil fields as long as I have, they sometimes got funny!"
The two of them walked toward the drilling rig. It was a complete outfit, even more modern on close examination. Everything was in readiness for the striking of oil, catch dams have been thrown across gullies with fresnos.
It was a steam rig, and the boiler was located far enough away that a possible unexpected outpouring of natural gas from the well would not be likely to reach the boiler fires before they could be extinguished by a supply of water which was kept close at hand. Steam was brought from the boiler to the machinery at the well by pipe.
And oil field scouts, fellows who know their business, would have said that here was a wildcat drilling outfit which knew what it was doing.
Hill stopped, inhaled until his chest was almost half as big as his stomach, and blasted a yell.
"Sam!" he howled. "Sam! Where are you?"
Echoes came gobbling back from the red oak carpeted hills.
"Tsk! Tsk!" the girl clucked. "You must think Sam's over by Ponca City or somewhere!"
They waited. Night breeze seemed to have suddenly stopped rustling the red oak leaves, but it might have been a freak of the night.
Reservoir Hill growled, "Well! Didn't answer, did he?"
The girl had become concerned.
"Sam can't be asleep! Your yell must have made half the Indian warriors in the Osage sit up in their graves!"
They ran forward, guns ready. The man, Reservoir Hill, produced a big, shiny flashlight which gave poor light and not much of it. The light immediately found shiny substance on the ground.
Reservoir Hill stared. His throat made a rasping noise more eloquent than any other sound could have been.
"Them's Sam's clothes, ain't they?" he croaked.
THE male clothing--hat, shirt, coat, trousers, socks, heavy oil field shoes--lay exactly in a position they would occupy if the former wearer had lain down on his back and his body had become nonexistent.
The shirt was inside the coat, with the shirt sleeves down inside the coat sleeves in a natural manner. The socks were even inside the shoes.
"Ah-h-h!"
Reservoir Hill growled. He sounded as if trying to bolster his own courage.
The girl eyed him curiously. "Why are you scared? This is a practical joke! It's too silly to be anything else!"
"Humph!" Reservoir Hill, to avoid the question, walked forward with his flashlight.
He took only a few paces before he wrenched to a rigid halt. His throat made its queer noise.
The girl ran forward, stood at his side and stared at what he had found.
"Some one had dumped more of that queer-looking grease," she said.
Reservoir Hill wet his lips. "Listen! Our boss driller disappeared! We can't find him anywhere! But we find this gummy stuff!"
"I still say it's grease!'
"I haven't been working with crude oil and things for nothing, all my life," growled Reservoir Hill. "And I know this ain't grease!"
"What is it then?"
"Ain't quite ready to say what I think it is!" Reservoir Hill mumbled.
"Why not?"
"Don't like to scare women when there maybe ain't no need!"
"I was brought up on Indian massacre stories," the girl said, dryly. She was calm enough to make it seem as if she had been, too.
Reservoir Hill skulked forward. Silhouetted against the glare of his own flashlight beam, he was like a caricature of an old Indian fighter on the trail of a hostile redskin. He threw his light over toward the derrick.
He lifted his .30-30 and flame and noise came out of its muzzle.
The girl ran forward. "What is it?"
"Going into the well casing!" Reservoir Hill shrieked. "Throw my flashlight on the durn thing!"
The girl grabbed his flashlight, pointed its poor light in the direction of the derrick floor and the drilling casing which stuck upward in the center. The light was extremely weak.
"Battery about gone!" she complained. "I can't see--!"
Then she saw. Maybe she had been brought up on tales of Indian massacres, but the scream she poured out now would have done justice to the most easily frightened maid.
THE thing going into the oil well casing had substantial reality to it, that was certain. It was not transparent, like a jelly. It flowed as some jellies will melt and flow when dropped on a hot stove. It was going into the sixteen-inch casing.
Color of the flowing mass was red.
"Whatever it is, we'll stop it!" The girl's shotgun banged hugely, banged again. Louder than the .30-30, it did not have as ugly a sound.
But the translucent red mass disappeared down the casing.
The girl and Reservoir Hill dashed forward, weapons ready. There was no sign of the red mass on the derrick floor.
Reservoir Hill touched the steel casing pipe. He wrenched his hand back, leaped to one side, grabbed up a fistful of waste and scrubbed his palm furiously.
"There's gooey stuff on the casing!" he howled.
The girl looked closely. The "gooey stuff" was there. She did not touch it.
There were other marks on the casing. Shiny streaks left by lead! Big streaks made by the .30-30 slugs, and small ones where the shotgun slugs had hit.
The girl said, hoarsely, "Our bullets hit everywhere!"
"Hah!" Reservoir Hill took the flashlight out of her hand, and turned it on the derrick floor. "Look! A trail of the gooey stuff!"
The girl said, "Let's follow it."
They followed it
Then the smeared path continued on to the clothes lying on the ground.
"It goes right to Sam Sand's duds!" Reservoir Hill dropped to a knee, explored briefly, then gulped, "Vida!"
"What?" asked the girl.
"The gooey stuff is all over Sam's clothes!"
There was rustling of leaves and crackling of dry twigs in the red oak thicket near by. This sound proved to be made by two men, who soon galloped up.
Reservoir Hill used his weak flashlight to identify the newcomers.
"Ah-h-h!" he grunted. "Andershott and Cugg! Practically nobody!"
II
THE MAN NEEDED
ENOCH ANDERSHOTT was a man who strove for the effect of a rugged pioneer. He was big. His ruggedness stuck out all over him. His clothes were calculated to enhance the rugged aspect. Tweeds. He had a small mouth wrapped around a big cigar. His red face was redder because of running, and his breathing was a wish-wish-wish series of noises.
"Give me those guns!" he yelled. "Your bullets almost hit our cabin! Such carelessness is inexcusable!"
Which was typical of Enoch Andershott, who was always trying to browbeat some one.
Alonzo Cugg had big eyes with a permanent scare deep in them, and a way of holding his hands as if ready to sprint. No one knew of any reason why he had ever been scared of any one or why he should be. He seemed about one hundred and thirty pounds of skin over wires, and was about two shades lighter than a khaki shirt.
A big black dog came out of the red oak brush, making no noise. The dog was nearly pony size and had bloodshot eyes. The canine lifted a whiskered black lip off nicotine yellow fangs that were more than an inch long.
"Heel, Whitey!" ordered Enoch Andershott arrogantly.
The black dog skulked to Andershott's heels. There was no white whatever on the dog.
Enoch Andershott and Alonzo Cugg owned an adjacent oil lease. They had scouted the Sam Sands-Vida Carlaw-Reservoir Hill drilling wildcat and a geologist had told them that the way the strata was running, there might be an oil dome under this region, a few thousand feet under the old production. So Andershott and Cugg were here in person, keeping an eye on things.
The oil blue book listed both as millionaires.
"You might have shot us!" Enoch Andershott yelled.
"You got a cellar over there you can get in?" suggested Reservoir Hill sourly.
No one said anything for a while.
"What was happening?" Andershott growled.
"At risk of being called crazy," said the girl, "I'm going to tell you.
"Our driller, Ben Hogan, disappeared last night. We'd shut down drilling when a broken gear we'd ordered hadn't come. Ben Hogan took a walk. We never saw him again. We found his clothes. There's no reason why he should walk off naked--"
"You're forgetting that gummy stuff!" interposed Reservoir Hill.
"We found some stuff that looked like jelly or lube or something on the ground," explained the girl. "To-night, Reservoir Hill wanted to post a watch at the well. Sam Sands had first part of the night."
THE girl fell silent, looked at the dog. The dog's eyes were luminous green and almost awful in the weak flashlight's glow.
"We came out to relieve Sam Sands, found his clothing, saw a red object going into the oil well, and shot at it," the girl finished.
"We found another gob of that gummy stuff and it ain't lube oil!" added Reservoir Hill.
Enoch Andershott asked, "Miss Carlaw, were you here last night when your driller disappeared?"
"No."
"Then you just have this man Reservoir Hill's word for it?"
"Bless my children!" growled Reservoir Hill. "I'm gonna pat your wrist for that!"
Reservoir Hill started forward, and the big black dog came walking, stiff-legged, from behind Enoch Andershott. The dog made, deep inside himself, sounds like something dying. His fangs curved inward like a snake.
"Heel, Whitey!" said Enoch Andershott.
The dog stopped, but did not cover the fangs with lips.
Nobody spoke. Alarm in Alonzo Cugg's eyes had increased; his hands were more than ever in position for running.
"If there's more reckless shooting," said Enoch Andershott shrilly, "we'll call the sheriff!"
That seemed what they had come over to say. They walked away.
There was considerable crashing of brush when they went away, as if Enoch Andershott were smashing his path through instead of making any effort to go around.
"He does everything alike!" growled Reservoir Hill. "Just bulls through!"
The girl murmured, "You don't like him?"
"He flimflammed me out of my first stake," growled Reservoir Hill. "I had a lease over by Bartlesville, years ago. Enoch Andershott, a young man then, was my driller. He came into Bartlesville one night and told me the tools were lost in the hole.
"I didn't have money enough to run a fishing job. I was disgusted. He knew that. Andershott bought me out through another guy for a song. You know what I found out the next day, Viddy?"
"What?"
"My well had hit oil!"
"I'm sorry," the girl said sympathetically.
"So was I."
On a lease to the north, pumping started up and walking beams squeaked. The sound had an unnatural quality.
The girl and Reservoir Hill poked about with the poor flashlight. They found nothing. Then they walked toward the house.
THE house was one of those oil field things. Wood and corrugated tin. Inside, it was beaver-boarded, and no paint had been used. Floors were bare. Living-room furniture consisted of a table and ten kitchen chairs.
On the table was a deck of cards and an ash tray half full of ashes and cigarette butts. The girl accidentally upset the ash tray when she put her shotgun on the table. Reservoir Hill helped her in cleaning up the mess.
"Wish you'd try to get along with Enoch Andershott," the girl said. "Since he and Cugg have the lease adjoining us."
"We'll be all right!" Hill grunted. "Unless I meet him in a dark cañon when nobody is looking!"
They threw the ash tray mess outdoors.
"Reservoir!" the girl said.
"Huh?"
"Why are you so worried over the disappearance of our driller and Sam?"
Reservoir Hill went to the door and expectorated into the darkness. He had not laid his rifle down. He said, without looking at the girl, "Viddy, did you ever hear of that Indian legend about the papoose that was warned by his mamma not to dig holes in the tepee floor?"
"First time I knew you were interested in native folklore, Reservoir," the girl smiled.
"The papoose dug the hole in the tepee floor, anyway," said Reservoir. "An earth devil that lives in the center of the world sent his mean, red spirit up through the hole and grabbed the little papoose and ate him all up, except his grease, which would fry and sputter in the hot place at the center of the earth."
Reservoir Hill gave the girl a chance to speak, but she didn't seem able to think of anything.
"There's other legends about earth devils who send red spirits up to get men."
"Nonsense!" snapped the girl, "Indians have legends about everything!"
"Not everything!" Reservoir corrected. "And where there's smoke, there's sometimes fire."
"You actually believe such an insane theory?" the girl asked.
"'Now look," Reservoir grinned wryly. "Don't be so tough on your old partner."
The girl got up and paced. "But it's impossible! It's too ridiculous!"
She paced some more, stopped, reached for the cards, and absently turned over the top one. It was a king.
"Reservoir!" she said suddenly. "Did you ever hear of Doc Savage?"
RESERVOIR HILL sat in the chair, tilted it against the wall and balanced the rifle across his knees.
"I guess there ain't many who ain't heard of that fellow. Once I heard that fellow was going to stop his plane for fuel in Tulsa, and I drove up from Okmulgee, hell-bent for election just to see him. Me, who wouldn't cross the road to see Adam eat the apple."
"Did you see Doc Savage?"
"Nope, He had come and gone."
"But you know Savage's reputation, don't you?" Reservoir Hill eyed his rifle. "I know that he has invented a type of drilling bit that I think is gonna come into general use. I've also heard that a lot of geologists use his theories."
