Free The Avenger 30 - Black Chariots by Kenneth Robeson

of a cactus.
    The Avenger said, “Okay, go ahead, Smitty.” He and Mac backed away and flattened out on the ground.
    Smitty, adding a baseball-pitcher windup to the procedure, threw the cactus and then ran.
    It was a second before the cactus hit the trip wire that the two-way radio in the Avenger’s belt buckle signaled that someone was trying to contact him.
    Then there was a huge explosion. It shook the castle and the ground around it. The stone stairs, in great broken chunks, went spinning up into the air, and a whole section of brick wall came tumbling down. Smoke and dust rolled over the three of them.
    Seconds went by. There were no further explosions.
    “Geeze, they get bigger and better,” remarked Smitty, getting to his knees. “If there’s one more, it’s going to be a beaut.”
    Benson, standing up, clicked on the radio receiver. “Quiet a minute, Smitty.”
    “. . . pretending this is a radio. I was talking about how we were locked up under the Manzana Oasis in a—” came Cole’s voice.
    That was all. The Avenger tried to contact Cole, but could not.
    “Sounds like he’s in some kind of pickle,” observed Smitty. “I wonder what interrupted him.”
    “We’ll find that out,” said Benson. “But I want to check this castle out first. Smitty, you and Mac get over to the Oasis right now.”
    “How you going to travel?” asked the giant.
    “Don’t worry about that,” said Benson. “Get going. I’ll go through this setup and join you there later.”
    “The lad said ‘we,’ ” mentioned MacMurdie. “Which mot mean Nellie’s in the soup with him.”
    “Yeah, we better get rolling.” Smitty turned away and began walking for a way out of the grounds. “That Jennifer Hamblin dame was staying there, too.”
    “We’ll see ye soon, Richard.” Mac followed the giant.

    The Avenger encountered no further traps. In the basement of the castle he found the real Old Man Guptill.
    The old man was slumped on a dirty cot in a stone-walled storeroom. The room’s wooden door had been padlocked. “It’s about time, dangburn it,” muttered the old man as Benson let himself into the room. “I like my meals regular, you know.”
    “Who are you?”
    “Well, who in blazes do you think I am, you sawed-off idiot? You locked me in here, didn’t you?”
    “No,” said the Avenger. “I’ve come to let you out. Are you Mr. Guptill?”
    “Dang right. I’m Old Man Guptill, the meanest and orneriest galoot in six counties.” He tried to sit up, but fell back against the stone wall. “Leastwise I uster be. You boys ain’t been feeding me right, that’s it.”
    “How long have you been locked in here?”
    “Seems like forever,” said Old Man Guptill slowly. “Let’s see . . . must be a couple months, at least. It was a dadburned surprise, I tell you that. My own guards turning on me. See, it’s danged hard, what with the war, to get any kind of guards. So I kind of had to lower my standards. Dang, was that a mistake!”
    “What can you tell me about the men who did this?”
    “A bunch of goons they are,” said the old man. “Big as heck, ugly as sin, all four of them. Now I used to, before this dangblasted war started, always have twelve guards at least. But now, I was lucky to get even four when the other bunch up and quit me.”
    “And you’ve been down here all the time?”
    “Course I have. They didn’t let me out for no vacations.”
    Benson put an arm around the old man’s shoulders. “Then they’ve had someone impersonating you.” He helped him to sit up.
    “Impersonating me? You mean some galoot’s been posing as Old Man Guptill?”
    “Yes, and giving out orders to a gang of hoods.”
    “My treasure!” said Old Man Guptill. “That’s what they must be after. I told them that from the first. It’s my treasure you want, but I ain’t never going to tell you where it is. And I never did, neither.”
    “Did they try to make you tell them?”
    Scratching at his beard,