Free Collection 1986 - Night Over The Solomons (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Page B

trailed back into position, and Mora had his camera ready to shoot the continuous strip of 35 mm film that would make an unbroken record of the flight path. At five hundred feet, the amphibian swept back over the jungle and settled down to steady flying. Pointing the ship due north toward the far distant Amazon, Turk held the speed at one hundred fifty miles an hour.
    Below them the green jungle unrolled, broken by wide savannas and occasionally by the upthrust of ancient mountain ranges. Leaning back in his seat, Turk glanced around, his eyes less on the jungle than the sky, for it was from the sky that trouble was most likely to come. Remembering the sudden dive of the mysterious plane on the preceding day, he thought of Sid Bordie, the Petex muscle man. It would be like Sid to try something like that. He was tough, but he was also a bluffer, and he always believed other men were more easily frightened than himself.
    For two hours they flew north and then started back for their base, flying a route a quarter of a mile west of the first course. Turk glanced over his shoulder as they flew in toward the lake.
    “Everything okay?”
    “Couldn’t be better!” Dick yelled in answer.
    Landing the ship, Turk taxied to the shore. He saw Buck Rodd come strolling down to the beach.
    “Everything quiet here,” Buck said. “I didn’t look around any. Mostly too busy.”
    On foot then, Turk walked swiftly up the slight hill through the tall grass, eager to stretch his legs. Surprisingly, the air was cool. Despite the latitude, they were fairly high here, and now, in the late afternoon, the heat was already slipping away.
    He struck straight for the edge of the jungle. There was less underbrush than he had expected and, following a route that paralleled the jungle’s edge, he headed toward the spur of the mountain where they had believed they had seen the tower.
    As he walked, he saw no tracks, no marks of any man or woman. Yet despite the tower, if such it was, his mind was more curious about the girl’s voice, singing “Home on the Range.” It was absurd, of course. Had he heard the song alone, he would have been convinced he had only imagined it.
    The route led up to the mountainside, and soon he was out of the jungle and making his way through sparse brush and scattered boulders. Then he stopped abruptly. Before him in the path there was a track.
    He knelt, studying it. The foot was moccasin- or sandal-clad, small and well shaped. The stride was even and firm, as of someone of light weight and not too tall. He had a feeling the track was not many hours, perhaps not even many minutes old.
    More slowly, he walked along. Once his hand went to his shoulder holster for the reassuring grip of the gun. A flyer in the East Indies and South America before the war, and in Siberia, China, and Japan during the war, Turk was no stranger to danger, but he knew that actually, it was always new. A man never became accustomed to it.
    The tracks proceeded down the path ahead of him, and then he came around a boulder and stood on the edge of the ridge, and before him was the tower. There was no doubt. It was a tower.

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    T URK MADDEN HALTED, stirred by a strange uneasiness. It was that peculiar feeling known to those who come first to ancient ruins. The feeling of being watched, of walking upon hallowed ground, of intruding.
    It was late evening and the sun was down. The mountains had taken on the darkness of night, and the green of the jungle had turned to deep purple and black. Outlines were vague toward the lake shore, although even from here he could see the single star that marked their campfire.
    Turk stood there, waiting, every sense alert, a big man, well over six feet, and his broad, powerful shoulders heavy with muscle under the woolen shirt.
    The tower was black with age, worn smooth by wind and rain. It stood on a small plateau of grass among fallen stones, gloomy, ancient, alone. Yet there was a faint path down the slight