"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 141 - Satan Black" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

SATAN BLACK
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
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? Chapter I
? Chapter II
? Chapter III
? Chapter IV
? Chapter V
? Chapter VI
? Chapter VII
? Chapter VIII
? Chapter IX
? Chapter X
? Chapter XI
? Chapter XII
? Chapter XIII
Scanned and Proofed
by Tom Stephens
Originally published in Doc Savage Magazine September 1944



Chapter I
The bronze man finally found a piece of rope. He had a worse time locating one than he had expected,
and toward the last he searched with a haste that was near frenzy.

The rope was three-quarter-inch stuff about fifteen feet long, and it smelled of the anti-rust off the tools
and the pipe. He found it on the fourth pipe-truck which he searched, although he had supposed there
would be rope on every truck. Rope and chain were necessities on the big multi-ton pipe-trucks, one
would think.

He clutched the rope, and he ran for the loaded pipe-truck that had broken an axle that afternoon. He
ran desperately.

Early summer darkness lay over Arkansas, warm and amiable, and there was enough breeze to bring a
slight odor, but not an unpleasant one, of the slough to the south.

The river was farther east. One couldn't say the river was a sound, but it was distinctly a presence and a
fierce power. It wasn't a fierce-looking river. It was referred to more often as a ribbon of mud. Yet it
was no ribbon, because a ribbon is something soft, something for a lady. This river was something for
garfish that tasted of carrion, mud-cats, water-dogs; it was a repelling river, unlovely to look at and
heart-breaking to deal with. It was a nasty, muddy, sulking presence in the eastern darkness.
The bronze man with his rope reached the pipe-truck with the snapped axle. He crawled under it. He
knew exactly the spot he wanted, not under the truck itself, but under the pipe-trailer, beneath the mighty
lengths of twenty-four-inch oil pipeline river-casing. This stuff wasn't the land casing, which was heavy
enough; it was the special river casing.