Chapter XI

67

STRANGE FISH

Chapter XII

DOC SAVAGE left Johnny Toms in his cabin, advising him to get some sleep. Doc walked to the house. He found Monk and Ham, who were standing guard together.

“What the dickens!” Monk exclaimed. “I thought you were asleep!”

“I've been fishing,” Doc said dryly.

“Catch anything?”

“Enough.”

“Eh?”

“I think,” Doc said, “that we can now proceed to light the fuse. I think the dynamite is all in place and ready to be exploded.”

Monk said, “Blazes!” softly. He stood up suddenly. Then he sat down again. “You mean you've got—”

“Heads and tails of it,” Doc said.

“I was wondering,” Monk said, “if it had a head or a tail. I haven't been able to see any. What are you going to do?”

“Light the fuse.”

“How?”

“With a telephone call,” Doc said. “It isn't an ordinary phone call, and we may have trouble getting it through.

In fact, I doubt if we could get it through at all. But the Army command office in Washington might, so we will ask them to do it.”

Ham said, “The phone is right inside this door.”

“And probably tapped,” Doc told him. “No. We'll talk from a neighbor's house, one on a different line.”

They went out quietly into the yard and found one of the cowboys who was standing watch. The cowboy told them the nearest telephone was about five miles away, along a side road, a farmer named Creely. He described the location of Creely's place, and said that Creely was half Indian and knew what was going on on the ranch, and would help them.

Doc took a S−slash−S station wagon. Monk and Ham were consumed by curiosity, and wanted to go along.

He did not object. They started asking questions.

Doc gave meaningless answers to their first questions. Then he stopped answering them entirely. Monk and Ham became disgusted, and fell silent. They weren't irritated. Just resigned. They had run into this reticence on Doc's part before.

Doc was embarrassed. As a matter of fact, something was happening to him that frequently happened. He was ashamed of his plan. The thing was wild. It was so wild he didn't want to discuss it, not wishing to sound silly.