about it!”
With a snarling oath, he slammed the receiver on the hook.
As he did so, I pushed open the screen door and stepped inside. Talkso caught the squeak of the door, and whirled about like a cat.
“I guess the sheriff was right, Talkso,” I said cordially, over the sights of my shotgun. “Hoist your hands—thank you; that’s the way it’s done in the films. So the sheriff’s coming out here, eh? Good thing. He can take you back with him, unless we come to terms.”
Talkso stood perfectly motionless, his hands slightly raised. The surprise of my appearance had confounded him; but now passionate rage convulsed his swarthy features, and in the snaky blackness of his eyes flicked a scornful hatred. The contempt expressed in his eyes rendered me uneasy.
“You!” he uttered, flinging the word at me in almost inarticulate fury. “What d’you think you’re doing, anyway?”
“I don’t think,” I assured him. “I’m perfectly confident about it, my friend. By the way, did you fire a shot at my car the other day, mistaking me for Balliol?”
“I wish to hell the bullet had got you!” he foamed.
“You’re a charitable cuss. And since then, you’ve given me a lot of tire trouble, to say the least. What’s the idea, anyhow? What’s back of the feud between you and Balliol?”
He seemed to take no notice of the question.
“You poor fool!” he said scornfully. “I could have killed you any time in the past day or two—”
“Well, you didn’t,” I chipped in. “Come ahead and loosen up! Let’s have an explanation!”
To my horror, I realized that he was coming at me; he had the silky, invisible movement of a snake. To blast the life out of his with that shotgun was impossible. He seemed to be leaning forward, leaning toward me, farther and farther—and then he was in the air and on me.
He gripped me and the gun together, and we struggled for it. I was ready enough to drop the gun and slam into him with my fists, but I saw no use in letting him perforate me with my own gun. So I hung on, and we fought it out by arm-power.
In the middle of it, we lost balance and went to the floor—and the shotgun went off with a deafening explosion, between us.
I realized quickly enough that I was not hurt, and rolled backward, leaping to my feet. Both barrels had exploded, sending both charges into the telephone, which hung wrecked and useless against the wall. Talkso was not hurt either. First thing I knew, he was up and coming at me with a yell, brandishing the shotgun like a club.
According to jiu-jitsu experts, the easiest thing in the world is to lay out a man bearing down on you with a club. As it happens, I am not a jiu-jitsu expert.
Talkso had been an easy mark in the road by McGray’s, but he was something else now. He shoved the butt of the gun into my stomach, and when I doubled over, he slammed me over the skull with the barrel. Then he swung up the gun for a finishing stroke.
By this time I was just beginning to realize that it was me for swift action or the count, and I came out of my dream. To be candid, it was only in books that two men get into a hot mix-up and follow the Queensberry rules with meticulous chivalry; in a real scrap of real men, it’s hit hardest with anything that will count!
I followed the most natural rules, and being backed against the stove, I went for Talkso with an iron skillet that was handy. I ducked the gun in a hurry, and to even matters I dropped the skillet and began to finish off his education.
He knew something about fighting, and he tried to fight, but that skillet had him groggy from the start. In about two minutes he was trying to get through the door, so I let him out—and hopped right after him. I caught him by the pump, and laid him out finely.
When he came to himself, I had him tied wrists and ankles with dust-cloths from the car, and was wasting good mineral water pumping over his torso. In spite of all my kindness, however, he would do nothing except splutter curses at me, so finally I tired of trying.
“Very well, then, lie there and talk to yourself!” I stated in disgust. “When the sheriff gets here, maybe we’ll learn a few things.”
I was dead right about that, too!
CHAPTER X
I Build a Wall
On the morning after my encounter with John Talkso, I was working like a beaver on the skull wall in front of my house. I had been working there since dawn.
In front of the wall, I had a solid framework of staked boards, edge to edge, six inches from the wall’s face. The end spaces were closed with other boards. From the shore I had toted barrow-loads of sand until my palms were blistered, and from the barn behind the house I had brought a couple of sacks of cement which had lain there unmolested. For lack of a mixing bed I was utilizing a depression in the rock at the head of the path. Boulders of all sizes were handy, and with these I had partially filled the space in front of the wall, enclosed by the boards.
I mixed my concrete rapidly and after four or five batches had been shoveled into the gap, my work was done. The former face of the wall, together with the protruding skulls, was nicely buried behind six inches of concrete.
I was lighting my pipe and vastly admiring my handiwork, when I heard a voice.
“Mercy! What on earth is the matter with your telephone? Here I’ve walked all the was over here just to see if the pterodactyl had eaten you up—”
It was Martha J. Balliol, flushed and laughing.
“Hurray!” I exclaimed. “I’ve been building a wall—sure, the phone is wrecked! But I have a few things to show you; important things, too! Come up to the veranda and sit down while I explain.”
“But are you a mason?”
“No,” I said. “I’m a pterodactyl—and I can prove it.”
When she was sitting in one of my porch chairs, which I placed in the middle of the veranda floor, I excused myself and got the bucket and basket which John Talkso had left behind after departing on the previous afternoon.
“Now shut your eyes, Miss Balliol! Promise not to peep.”
“Cross my heart,” she returned gaily.
I slowly crossed the floor to her, then stepped away a pace or two.
“Open!”
Her wondering gaze fell upon the concrete floor. From the door of the living room to the side of her chair extended a line of fresh, muddy pterodactyl tracks! She almost jumped, then her blue eyes went to me.
“Exhibit A!” I said, holding up the bucket of muddy water, and in the other hand the plaster-of-Paris cast which had made the tracks. “John Talkso was here yesterday. So was the sheriff. Talkso left these things behind—and he’s not coming back.”
Her face sobered.
“What do you mean, Mr. Desmond?”
“Well,” I explained, “this Talkso was an educated chap. He knew what a pterodactyl was, you see—and he knew that other men knew! Then he left some other things. Typical of them was a set of twelve pieces of round, crimson glass; these, placed in the eyes of those skulls, made a fine crimson effect when seen from the lake. You get the idea?”
Her eyes widened.
“Talkso? That man? But what about my brother—”
“I’m coming to that. Between the sheriff and Talkso, we got the whole thing straightened out yesterday afternoon.”
After telling her something of what had happened, I explained.
“Your brother, Miss Balliol, had peculiar notions of what to do with Indian relics. In building this house, he uncovered the so-called graves of the former chiefs of the Indian tribe which