A warrior! The man probably never saw for sure it was Doc Savage who had seized the weapon. A block of bronze knuckles belted the man's temple. He went to his spirit hunting grounds as suddenly as Mayan man ever did.

Doc was disappointed. He had hoped to get the snake man or Morning Breeze. The machine gun was one of Doc's own weapons. He tossed it to Renny.

Rapidly, Doc glided among the combatants. His attitude was detached, disinterested. He showed fight only when tackled. Then the consequences were invariably disastrous.

Doc was hunting the man masquerading in the serpent skin. He wanted Morning Breeze, too. Both had warranted his wrath.

Doc perceived shortly that the snake man and Morning Breeze were not taking part in the battle.

With this discovery, Doc slid over and was swallowed by the luxuriant tropical leafage. He had an idea the two leaders were skulking somewhere until they saw the outcome of the battle. Around the scene of the engagement, Doc skirted. No one saw him.

Fully half of the red-fingered men had now perished. The Mayan populace, terribly incensed, were giving no quarter. The sect of warriors was being wiped out forever.

Nowhere about the battlefield could Doc find the two he sought.

He began a second search — and found the trail. The tracks of two men! The mark left by the dragging serpent tail identified them with certainty.

Like a hound on a scent, Doc followed the spoor. Most of the time the tracks were lost to the eye of an ordinary observer. The snake man and Morning Breeze had taken the greatest care to conceal them. They went down rocky gullies. They even waded a distance in the lake edge.

It was plain the pair had fled the moment they saw their cause was lost.

They were seeking to fly from the Valley of the Vanished! Their course was set directly for the entrance trail in the chasm.

Doc suddenly abandoned the tracking process. He had been moving swiftly, but it was like the wind he now traveled. He knew whence they were bound. Straight for the chasm exit, he sped.

The snake man and Morning Breeze beat him there!

The villainous pair had been running. They had perspired. They had left the smell of sweat on rocks they touched with their hands. So precarious was the route that they were continually clutching handholds.

Into the chasm, Doc swung. He traversed fifty yards, then stopped to kick off his high-backed Mayan sandals. He needed a delicate touch on this fearsome trail. The way slanted upward.

A few hundred feet below, the little stream threshed and plunged. So tortuous was his channel that the water became a great, snarling rope of white foam.

Doc caught sight of his quarry. The pair were ahead. They looked back — discovered Doc about the same time he saw them.

Over the bawl of the water through the chasm, Morning Breeze's scream of terror penetrated. It was a piping wail of fear.

The snake man still wore his paraphernalia. Probably there had not been time to take it off. He wheeled at Morning Breeze's shriek.

Evidently they thought Doc had a gun.

Morning Breeze, cowardly soul that he was, sought madly to get past the snake man. There was not room on the trail for that.

Angered, the snake man slugged Morning Breeze with his fist. The Mayan warrior chief fought back. The fellow in the serpent garb struck again.

Morning Breeze was knocked off the trail.

OVER and over spun the squat, vicious Mayan's body. It struck a rock spur. Morning Breeze probably died then. If he did, he was saved the terror of watching the rock-fanged bottom of the abyss reach for him. The foaming river was like slaver on those ravenous stone teeth.

Thus, indirectly, did mere terror of Doc bring death to Morning Breeze.

The snake man continued onward. He had one of Doc's pistol like machine guns. It could be seen hanging at his belt. But he did not try to use it. No doubt he thought he would let Doc get closer.

The chase resumed. Doc did not go as swiftly now. He was unarmed. Wily, he was biding his time. His great brain sought a plan.

A mile was traversed. Better than two more! The chasm walls became a vague bit less steep. The stone was crisscrossed with tiny weather cracks. Most of these were no wider than pencils.

Doc suddenly quitted the trail. He had another plan. Upward, he worked. Where seemingly no possible foothold offered, he clung like a fly. His steel fingers, his mobile and powerful feet, materialized solid support where the eye said there was none.

Doc could make the barest projection support his weight, thanks to his highly developed sense of balance.

The speed he made was astounding. Nearly a thousand feet above the snake man, Doc passed the fellow. He went on. His course was now downward, so as to intercept his quarry.

Doc found the sort of a spot he sought. The trail rounded a sharp angle. A thousand feet below, hundreds above, was almost vertical stone. Doc waited around the angle.

Before long, he heard the hard, rattling breath of the snake man. The fellow was nearly exhausted.

The man was looking back as he came around the angle in the trail, wondering if Doc had come closer.

Doc reached out a great, bronzed steel hand. The long, powerful fingers closed over the snake man's gun belt. They jerked downward. Like an aged string, the gun belt snapped before that tremendous strength. Doc tossed gun and belt into the abyss.

Only when he felt the terrific wrench about his middle did the snake man turn his head and discover Doc. He had thought his Nemesis was behind him.

The man had removed his serpent-head mask. His features were disclosed.

There was a terrible silence for a moment.

Then, coming from everywhere, and yet nowhere, arose a low trilling sound. Like the song of some exotic bird it was, or the sound of wind filtering through pinnacles of ice. It had an amazing quality of ventriloquism.

Even looking directly at Doc's lips, one would not realize from whence the sound emanated.

It was doubtful if Doc even knew he was making the sound. For it was the small, unconscious thing he did in moments of utter concentration. It could mean many things. Just now it was a sign of victory.

The very calmness of the terrible quality in that whistling sound made the snake man tremble from head to foot. The fellow's mouth worked. But words would not come. He took a backward step.

Doc did not move. But his inexorable golden eyes seemed to project themselves toward his quarry. They were merciless. They chilled. They shriveled. They promised awful things.

Those eyes, far better than words could have, told the snake man what he could expect.

He tried to speak again. He tried to make his nerveless legs carry him in flight. He couldn't.

Finally, by a tremendous effort, he did the one thing that could get him away from those terrifying eyes of Doc's.

The snake man jumped off the trail!

Slowly, his body spun on its way to death. The face was a pale, grotesque.

It was the face of Don Rubio Gorro, secretary of state of the republic of Hidalgo.