Thunder Jim Wade

by Henry Kuttner

  Svendson felt a surge of hopelessness. The story was fantastic, almost unbelievable, and he had no way of proving its truth. Yet unless he could get help, there would be red slaughter unleashed in that lost valley. He was the only man with the key to the door—and no one would believe the door existed.

  “I want to send a message to Juneau. Territorial headquarters. They’ll send up men to investigate.”

  “You don’t want to do that, Sourdough,” the trader soothed. “It’ll just get you in trouble. You’re sick. Wait a few days—”

  Svendson’s haggard old face twisted. There must be a way. It was true enough—his story would be greeted with the same disbelief in Juneau. Or in Washington, D. C., for that matter. But there must be someone who would believe—someone who could help—

  His eyes lit up suddenly. Of course! There was such a man—a man who had devoted his life to crusading against crime and evil in the far places of the world, a man whose wide experience had showed him that the incredible often exists.

  Thunder Jim Wade! The life of that man was a grim, relentless crusade against just such unscrupulous schemes as this promised to be. Wade would listen, Wade would investigate.

  “Listen, MacDougall,” Svendson said. “You’ve got some furs of mine. I brought ’em in last month. Came to about six hundred bucks, didn’t they?”

  The trader nodded. “Sure. Want the money?”

  “I’m sending a message—a message to Thunder Jim Wade—and paying for it. You can’t stop me from doing that.”

  MacDougall made a wry face. “Nobody’s trying to stop you from doing anything. But—”

  Svendson struggled up, wincing at the pain in his bandaged left arm. “Okay. It’ll be a long message. But I can pay for it. Take it down, Rudy.”

  The telegraph operator shrugged and found pencil and pad. “Have it your own way, you bullheaded old idiot. You’re just wasting your dust.”

  The trapper grinned sourly as he began to dictate. “Send it to Juneau. Wade’s got a man there. He’s got representatives all over the world. They take messages and forward them to him in his hideout—wherever that is. Now—”

  * * * * *

  The message crackled out across the ether to Juneau. There, a tall, keen-eyed man studied it carefully, and then went to a curiously-shaped radio concealed behind a panel in the rear of his curio shop. A tight-beam signal raced across the ocean to a receiving set in Thunder Jim Wade’s hideout, known only to Wade himself and to his two assistants, Dirk Marat and Red Argyle. A scrambler device automatically coded the long message, and a similar gadget unscrambled it on arrival. Wade’s Juneau agent added a few comments of his own.

  “Worth investigating, I think. I’ve checked up from this end as far as possible, and I’ve found some vague references to a group of Tsarist Russian refugees who fled into Alaska during the reign of Catherine the Great. Inuit legends mention horned men, too—possibly a reference to Norse helmets. Most important, I’ve located an old government report from a pilot who said he’d sighted some sort of a city in a valley in those mountains. Nobody paid any attention then. But the description checks with Svendson’s yarn.”

  Wade couldn’t afford to waste time following up every call he received. Most of these could be taken care of easily by regular authorities. But in this case, he realized that no one would listen to the wild story of a known eccentric. And after spending an hour checking through his vast library of charts, historical data, and odd information, he made his decision.

  The Thunderbug, Wade’s super-convertible plane, swept northward across the Pacific. Once again Thunder Jim was answering a call for help.

  HANDLING the controls with deft ease, he didn’t look extraordinary. He seemed to be merely a bronzed, well-built, good-looking chap who might have been a college football player, with a pleasant grin and a deceptively casual appearance. But on second glance one saw the iron beneath that tanned face, the little wrinkles around the eyes, the strength to the hard jaw. Part of Wade’s past had been spent in the jungle—and when necessary he could use that training.

  His eyes, though, were the real tip-off on the man. Velvety black, deep enough to be hypnotic, sometimes they would glaze over with a layer of ice, cold and deadly. The men who saw Wade’s eyes turn into black glacial ice very seldom lived to speak of it. For, while ruthless criminals could often evade man-made laws, Wade’s code was somewhat different—the relentless law of the jungle from which he had come, avenging and merciless to those who had no mercy.

  When people thought of Thunder Jim Wade, they also thought of his two side-kicks, Dirk Marat and Red Argyle. The men were entirely unlike, except in unswerving courage and loyalty to Wade. Red resembled some loose-limbed, awkward hired man, huge and wide-shouldered, with a craggy, rather ugly face, and a flaming thatch of unruly red hair. He wasn’t the lout he sometimes pretended to be. A shrewd, clever brain lay under that crimson mop of hair, and incredible deftness was in Red Argyle’s gnarled, massive hands. It seemed incredible that anyone with fingers so large could be deft enough to take a watch apart and repair it with an expert jeweler’s skill. Yes—Argyle had his talents!

  So did Dirk Marat. He was a cat-like, slim little man, with a smooth, blond skull-cap of hair, and incongruously black eyebrows. He looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world to darken his handsome, youthful face. It was good camouflage. There was a sharp, vicious little knife in a sheathe between Marat’s shoulder-blades, and his uncanny marksmanship with it had sometimes proved very handy when guns would have been too noisy.

  That made three—but the Thunderbug was the fourth. It was a vehicle that left modern scientists baffled. The uninitiated thought that Wade possessed a fast plane, a light land tank, and a small submarine. It wasn’t true. He owned and had built the Thunderbug, with its amazingly powerful motors and its hull of a secret alloy; and the Thunderbug could fly, move on land, or go under water with equal facility. It was the fourth member of the group, and as famous as any of the others.

  “Personally,” Marat remarked, “I think it’s a wild goose chase. If we find a lost city up here, I’ll be plenty surprised.”

  WADE shook his head. “Parkand, our Juneau agent, is a good man. He checked up carefully. I’m willing to take his word that there is something behind Svendson’s yarn—something too fantastic for the regular authorities to believe.”

  “But a lost city!” Marat’s dark eyebrows, incongruous under his smooth cap of blond hair, shot up. “Maybe in Gobi, or around Tanganyika, but not in Alaska.”

  “Alaska’s a big place,” Jim Wade pointed out. “The northern portion of it is pretty much uncharted. There are plenty of blank spaces on the maps there. One flyer said he did see a city in those ranges, but he’d been blown off his course. The air currents are treacherous. Most planes stay away from the place. It’s off regular routes, anyway.”

  Red Argyle shifted his shoulders uneasily. “What I’m wondering about is that Devil’s Glacier. Svendson’s message didn’t explain that at all.”

  “Except that his partner, Trefz, said there was a treasure in it somewhere.” Wade yawned. “Take over, Red, will you? I want a cigarette.”

  Argyle slid into the pilot’s seat and adjusted the dual controls. “Think we can get into that valley by air?”

  “We can try. Dunno. But we’ll drop in at the trading post first and pick up Svendson. He knows the way and we don’t. It’s a funny set-up. It isn’t one lost city—there are two of ’em. One’s Norse, the other peopled by descendants of Russian refugees who scrammed into Alaska a few hundred years ago.”

  “And now they can’t get out,” Marat supplied skeptically. “Poisonous volcanic gas spouted up all of a sudden in the tunnel. The mountains are too high and too steep to climb. So Svendson and Trefz wander in with gasmasks. They get acquainted with the Norse gang, and Trefz gets in trouble somehow. So he tells Svendson they are clearing out, going over to the Russians—”

  “That’s the point,” Red Argyle
growled. “Trefz tried to steal something from the Norse tribe, and they caught him. He got away, but he’s still after that treasure, whatever it is. His idea—according to Svendson—is to promise the Russians he’ll take ’em out of the valley if they’ll help him conquer the Norse. Wonder how he got along there?”

  Marat grinned, but Wade nodded thoughtfully. “They wouldn’t know anything about gas-masks, of course. If Trefz promised to help them escape, they might agree to fight the Norse for him. But it’s all guesswork till we get on the scene. I want to talk to Svendson.”

  But that was something they couldn’t do until they arrived in Alaska. Even the fast Thunderbug had its limitations—it couldn’t fly faster than thought.

  Marat was wrong. This wasn’t a wild-goose chase, and Wade knew it. For one thing, Thunder Jim was an expert psychologist, and he knew men. Usually he could tell at a glance whether or not a summons was important. This particular one had the earmarks of truth. If so, it was the sort of case Wade handled. A ruthless and unscrupulous man, seeking to embroil others in bloody conflict for his own profit—the jet eyes went suddenly cold. For a second, Thunder Jim’s face was an impassive, stone mask. He was anxious—very anxious—to meet Ben Trefz.

  North they went steadily, skirting Mt. McKinley and crossing the Endicott range. The sun held steady at the horizon. It was the Long Day of the Arctic, where refracted light from below the horizon always keeps it from being completely dark. Wade used the de-icers when they ran into a brief storm, but this didn’t last long. The airtight cabin of the Thunderbug kept its warmth well.

  The three had spelled each other at the controls, snatching naps occasionally, and were far from exhausted when the plane slanted down toward the trading post on the river. At this point the river was broad, forming a little bay of almost still water, so Wade pumped out the pontoons and set the Thunderbug down with a splattering of spray. Gently the plane nosed in toward the wharf.

  A cluster of rough buildings loomed some distance away. A group of natives came running down the slope toward them.

  Wade stretched his cramped muscles and opened the door. He jumped out lightly to the wharf, catching the rope Argyle tossed to him.

  “Looks like a welcoming committee,” he grinned—and then saw Red’s face change. Abruptly the big man catapulted himself out of the plane. His huge frame crashed into Wade and sent the latter sprawling as a bullet snarled and splashed upon the Thunderbug’s hull!

  Chapter III

  Attack and Repulse

  WADE’S trained muscles reacted instinctively. He rolled over in a tight ball, bounced up, and crouched, a gun appearing as though by magic in each hand. But he didn’t fire. Instead, he barked a sharp command to Argyle, who had his own gun out from its shoulder holster.

  “Hold it, Red! Dirk—”

  Marat was at the door of the cabin plane, a vicious little pearl-handled automatic held ready. A bullet sang past, badly aimed.

  “Back in the ship,” Wade said sharply. “Quick!”

  For all his bulk, Argyle moved lithely as a cat. Wade was at his heels, slamming and locking the door behind him. Through the bullet-proof port he could see those strange figures running toward him, and he could confirm what he already suspected. They were natives, a ragged, unkempt crew—and drunk!

  Wade grinned crookedly. “No use mowing down those poor beggars. They’re on a spree.”

  Marat’s eyes were bright. He licked his lips.

  “Yeah? I think I can guess who gave ’em the hootchenoo.”

  “Trefz, you mean? Maybe. But that’s all the more reason for not harming these natives. They’re drunk, Dirk.”

  Argyle was staring through the glass. “Look up there.”

  Wade complied. At the top of the slope, men were emerging from the log buildings—natives, and some whites. They had started down toward the river when bullets from the attacking gang made them dodge back into the cabins.

  “No help there,” Marat said.

  “Their bullets won’t hurt us in here,” Wade told him, and then went tensely alert. The dark figures were on the wharf now, carrying burdens that seemed unpleasantly familiar.

  “Okay,” Dirk remarked. “So they’ve got dynamite. Looks like I was wrong. This isn’t a wild-goose chase, after all. If they set off that stuff against the hull, we’ll know it!”

  He was right, Wade realized. Not even the super-tough alloy of the Thunderbug could resist the concussion of dynamite against it. And by this time the liquor-crazed natives were swarming all over the plane, trying to find a way of entering it.

  Wade gripped Marat’s hand as it lifted with the automatic. “Hold it, Dirk. Try the juice.”

  Argyle was already at a control board, his hand hovering over a switch. He hesitated and then turned down the current. “How about the dynamite?”

  “It’s on the wharf. Knife it, Red.”

  Argyle’s huge hand brought down the switch. Simultaneously the Thunderbug was bathed in a crackling curtain of white fire. Wade had used this trick before—shooting juice through the conducting metal of the hull—and it served him well now. He could hear the screams of the natives as they were ripped from their perches and sent hurtling into the water, where they swam frantically away, in a desperate attempt to escape this agonizing miracle of shaman-magic.

  The pontoons were insulated, riding high on the water, so there were no complications. The natives, crazed now with fear as well as liquor, scattered like fleas. Most of them made for the river and swam for the opposite bank. One, Wade saw, paused to bend over the dynamite on the wharf and search for a match.

  THUNDER JIM was already at the door, and he moved fast, slamming it open as a gun jumped into his hand. The native was crouching, snapping the match on his thumb-nail. Flame spurted, and the man bent to a fuse.

  Wade’s gun jolted against his palm. The match-flame went out. For a moment the native was frozen with incredulity, not realizing what had happened. Good marksmanship was one thing. But this was a matter of sorcery!

  The native yelled and scuttled away. Wade halted Argyle as he plunged to follow.

  “Let him go, Red. He’s not responsible. Svendson will tell us what we want to know.”

  Argyle grumbled, but obeyed, devoting his attention to dropping the dynamite carefully in the river, after ripping out the fuses. “Coarse powder,” he remarked. “Made for blasting. Wonder where it came from?”

  “From my storeroom,” a new voice broke in. “They must have sneaked in some time today and stolen it. My name’s MacDougall. I’m the trader here.”

  Wade let his gaze rove over the stocky, barrel-chested man who had reached the wharf, two other whites and a dozen natives at his heels.

  “My name’s Wade. I came to see Svendson. Is he here?”

  MacDougall shook his head. “Thunder Jim Wade, eh? I’ve heard of you. No, Svendson’s gone. Lighted out of here yesterday.”

  Wade’s eyes were suddenly hard. “Kidnaped?”

  “Nothing like that. He kept talking about a lot of guns and stuff he had cached in his cabin—said Trefz might get his hands on them. He was pretty feverish, so we figured we’d better lock him in. But he must have climbed out through the roof. We found a hole in the corner of it.” The trader rubbed his jaw. “Looks like Svendson wasn’t quite so delirious as he seemed.”

  “Yeah….” Wade stared across the river. “Maybe I should have asked those natives a few questions.”

  MacDougall said, “They’re from upriver. I know a few of them. Harmless, unless they’re full of gin. They must have been hiding here, waiting for you. But they’ll scatter like rabbits now.” He fished in a pocket. “Svendson left a message for you.”

  Wade took the sheet of wrapping paper, folded and crumpled. There was a brief message on it, and a crude map. The message said:

  “I have a lot of guns in my cabin and don’t want Trefz to get hold of them. You’ll find me there or else in the valley. See map.”

  MacDougall was staring
over Jim Wade’s shoulder.

  “Funny. Maybe I shouldn’t have acted so leary. You think old Svendson really did run into—what he said?”

  “That’s what I mean to find out,” Wade said grimly. “Why did Svendson keep so many guns, anyway?”

  THE trader shrugged. “He’s cracked. I can tell you that, for sure. Always talking about enemies invading Alaska. He bought a lot of old guns and a couple of gas masks. And some bombs, I think. Even tried to dig a bomb shelter back of his cabin. Screwy, but it was his own business. He had an armory of second-hand guns up there with him.”

  MacDougall squinted at the sky. “Come up to my place and have a drink. I’ll tell you what I can.”

  “Okay. Lock the plane, Red.”

  Argyle adjusted the controls that would automatically guard the Thunderbug against attack.

  “I’ll stick around, in case our friends come back,” he said.

  “They won’t,” MacDougall remarked, but Red shook his head stubbornly. He remained on the wharf.

  The others climbed the slope.

  Wade learned little that he did not already know. Ben Trefz was an ugly customer, sure. Yet that was only opinion. There was nothing really definite, nothing known about the Russian’s past. As for Svendson—when such a crackpot told the truth, nobody would believe him, naturally enough.

  His cabin? It was indicated on the map he had left. There was an unfrozen lake near it where the Thunderbug could land. MacDougall went over the map with Wade, amplifying and explaining. Finally Thunder Jim was satisfied.

  “Thanks. We’ll head for the cabin and see what we can find out.”

  He left the trader scratching his head, muttering something about lost cities. MacDougall was still skeptical. He stood in the doorway of the trading-post, watching the Thunderbug take off from the surface of the river like some mighty ebony condor, slanting up sharply toward the south.

  “The whole thing’s crazy,” he said at last to the telegraph operator. “But if Thunder Jim Wade’s following it up—well, I don’t know. Come in and let’s finish the bottle.”