Chapter VII

37

STRANGE FISH

He lifted hat and coat a little above the rim of the ditch and a bullet went through it instantly, so close to his fingers that he dropped the coat in terror.

“Who was that shot at?” Monk asked.

Doc loosened the tightness in his throat by swallowing.

“Me,” he said.

“Good God!”

“Keep down.”

“Maybe if we yelled at whoever it is—”

“It wouldn't be smart to believe any kind of an answer we got,” Doc said.

Monk said that damned if he knew what to do.

“You stay there,” Doc told him.

Doc went down the ditch, crawling with his elbows. The ditch was crooked, and the earth was crumbling and dusty. It got into his pockets and down his neck and into his shoes.

It was hot. The Oklahoma sun was suddenly an intolerable blazing furnace door.

He came to the end of the ditch. It simply ended in a flat bottom, petered out on a meadow on which there was no bush, rock or grass clump large enough to conceal him. He could go no farther.

He waited. Five minutes, ten, and fifteen. There was no sound, movement, nothing to be seen, of the enemy.

Doc put his hat up again on the coat. Monk and Ham did various things to draw attention. None of it got any results.

Then there was engine sound in the distance. An automobile. Or a truck. Truck, Doc concluded.

DOC SAVAGE left the ditch cautiously. Nothing happened. He called, and Monk and Ham joined him.

“I don't get this,” Monk said. “Why did whoever it was go away?”

“Listen,” Doc said.

The truck was laboring, having tough going. Doc walked up a sharp hill slope, reached the top of the hill, and found that he could see the truck.

There was a stretch of brakes country in front of them. Rough. Washes and hills, gullies and cut−banks, pimple−shaped little red−oak−covered hills. Country that was impassable for an automobile or a truck.

The truck had stopped beyond this section. Five men got out, three out of the front seat, and two out of the back of the truck. They stood and looked about, shading their eyes.