CHAPTER IV
_The Light in the Crater_
"Of course it wasn't blood!" said Smithy explosively. "But try to tellthe men that. See how far you get. 'Devils!' That's been their talksince yesterday when Riley got smeared up--and now that the bailer'sgone we can't prove a thing."
Again he was pacing restlessly back and forth in the little boardshack that was Rawson's field head-quarters. Rawson, seated by thewindow, was looking at tables of comparative melting points. Heglanced up sharply.
"You haven't found it yet?" he questioned. "A forty-foot bailer! Nowthat's a nice easy little thing to mislay."
Riley had followed the excited Smithy into the room; he stood silentlyby the door until he caught Rawson's questioning glance.
"Forty feet or forty inches," he said, "'tis gone! 'Twas there by thederrick last night, and this marnin'--"
"That's fine," Rawson interrupted with heavy sarcasm. "I haven'tenough down below ground to keep my mind occupied--I need a fewmysteries up top. Now do you really expect me to believe that a thinglike that bailer has been carried off?"
This time it was Smithy who interrupted. "You can just practisebelieving on that, Dean," he said. "When you get so you can believe aforty-foot bailer can vanish into thin air, then you'll be ready forwhat I've got. This is what I came in to tell you: that one truckloadof steel grillage beams for the turbine footings--they were put outwhere we surveyed for the first power house--dumped on the sand...."
"Well?" questioned Rawson, as Smithy paused. His look was daringSmithy to say what he knew was coming.
"Five tons of steel beams," said Smithy softly, "gone--just like that!Just a hollow in the sand!"
* * * * *
The big figure of the Irish foreman was still beside the door. Rawsonsaw one clumsy hand make the sign of the Cross; then Riley held thathand before him and stared at it in horror. "Divils' blood," hewhispered. "And I dipped my hands in it. Saints protect us all!"
"That will be all of that!" Dean Rawson's usually quiet voice was asfull of crackling emphasis as if it had been charged with electricalenergy. "If anyone thinks that I have gone this far, just to be scaredout by some dirty sabotage....
"I see it all. I don't know how they did it, but it's all come sincethe gold was found. Someone else wants it. They think they can scareoff the men, maybe take a pot-shot at me, come back here and clean uplater on, pull up gold by the pailful, I suppose--"
Riley leaped forward and banged his big fist down on the table. "Rightye are!" he shouted, until loitering men in the open "street" outsidestared curiously. "Divils they are, but they're the kind of divils weknow how to handle. And now I'll tell ye somethin' else, sir: I knowwhere they are hidin'.
"There was no work for anyone last night, but I'm used to bein' up. Icouldn't sleep. I was wanderin' around, thinkin' of nothin' at all outof the way, and I thought I saw some shadows, like it might be men,way off on the sand. Then later over to the old ghost town, d'ye mind!I saw a light, a queer, green sort of light. Sure, a fool I wascallin' meself at the time, but now I believe it."
* * * * *
Dean Rawson had crossed the room while the man was still speaking. Hedragged a wooden case from beneath his cot and smashed at the lid with awrecking bar. Then he reached inside and drew forth a blue-black .45.
He tossed the pistol to Riley. "Know how to use one of these?" heasked. The manner in which the big Irishman snapped open the sideejection was sufficient answer. Dean handed another gun to Smithy,then pulled out more and laid them on his cot together with a littlepile of cartridge boxes.
"You're all right, Riley," he said. "Just keep your head. Don't letyour damned superstitions run away with you, and I wouldn't ask for abetter man to stand alongside of in a scrap."
The foreman beamed with pleasure: Rawson went on in crisp sentences:
"Take these guns. Take plenty of ammunition. Pick five or six men youknow you can depend on. Mount guard around this camp to-night. I'llpost an order saying you're in charge--and I'm telling you now to usethose guns on anything you see.
"Smithy," he said to the other man who had been quietly listening,"you and I are going to start for town. Only Riley will know thatwe're gone for the night. We'll have a little listening post of ourown up here in the hills."
But Rawson postponed their going. More material was arriving; onecasting in particular needed all the men and Rawson's supervision toplace it on the sand where an erection crew could swing it into placeat some later date. And then, when he and Smithy had driven away fromcamp with the distant city as their announced destination, Rawsonstill did not go directly to the mountain grade. He swung off insteadwhere rolling sand-hills blocked all view from the camp, and he headedthe car into a gusty wind that brought whirling clouds of dust; theyalmost obscured the crumbling walls at the volcano's base.
The ghost towns that are found here and there in the forsakenwilderness of the West are depressing to one who walks their emptystreets. Little Rhyolite was no exception. In gray, ghostly walls,empty windows stared steadily, disconcertingly like sockets of deadeyes in tattered, weatherbeaten skulls.
* * * * *
Dean and Smithy walked among the roofless ruins. Lizards, the color ofthe cold, gray walls, slipped from sight on silent, clinging feet.Once a sidewinder, almost invisible against the sand, looped away fromthe intruders with smooth deliberation.
"No marks here," said Rawson at last. "Even an Indian can't read signin this ashy sand when the wind has dusted it off."
He turned his head from a whirl of fine ash where the wind, sweepingaround a wall of stone, was scouring at a sand dune's sloping side.
"Dean," said Smithy, "old Riley may have been looking for bansheeswhen he saw these lights. Superstitious old cuss, Riley! Maybe therewasn't anything here. But, Dean, there's some confoundedly funnythings happening around here."
"Are you telling me?" Rawson asked grimly. "But we want to rememberone thing," he added: "We've punched a hole in the ground, and we'vegot into a place that is hot enough to melt Krieger alloy one minuteand is stone cold the next. That's disturbing enough, but we don'twant to get that mixed up with what's happening up top. There's dirtywork going on--"
He stopped. His eyes, that had never ceased to search for some mark ofspecial meaning, had come to rest upon an object half hidden in thesand. He stooped and picked it up.
"Now what the devil is this?" Smithy began. But Rawson was staring atthe smooth lava block that was in his hand. It was tapered; it waspierced through with a straight, smooth hole, and its base was roundand ringed as if it had been held in a clamp.
"That," he said at last, "was brought in from outside. Outside,Smithy--get that."
* * * * *
Dean Rawson's face was wreathed in a sudden smile of pure pleasure. "No, Idon't know what the darn thing is," he admitted. "And I don't care. But Iknow that someone, or some bunch of someones--outsiders--are trying tohorn in. I might even go so far as to say that I suspect the powermonopoly gentlemen. I think they have started in on us, plan to run offour men, interfere in every way and drive me out of the field with theboring a failure. Smithy, I begin to think I'm going to enjoy this job!"
Again the hot wind, only beginning to cool with the setting of thesun, swept around the building where they stood and tore at the hillof sand. "Come on," said Rawson. "It's getting dark. We'll get up toour lookout--"
"Hold on!" called Smithy sharply.
Rawson turned. Smithy was rubbing his eyes when the whirl ofwind-borne sand had passed; he was staring at the sand dunes.
"I'm seeing things, I guess," he said. "I thought for a minute therewas a hole there, and the sand was slipping. I'm getting as bad asRiley."
The two went back through the gathering shadows to their waiting car.And Smithy's involuntary shiver told Rawson that he was not the onlyone to feel a sense of relief at the sound of the exhaust a
s their cartook them away from the dead bones of a dead city in a barren,trackless waste.
* * * * *
The shoulder of rock, where the mountain road swung out, gave acomprehensive view of camp and desert and the encircling mountains.Above in a vault of black was the dazzling array of stars as thedesert lands know them; so low they were, the ragged, broken tops ofthe three ancient craters seemed touching the warm velvet of the skyon which the stars were hung. Beyond their smooth slopes a spreadingglow gave promise of the rising moon.
Rawson headed the car downgrade in readiness for a quick return; heran it close to the inner wall of rock out of which the road had beencarved, then seated himself on the outer rim without thought of thethousand-foot sheer drop beneath his dangling legs. With a glass hewas sweeping the foreground where the scattered lights of the campwere like vagrant reflections of the stars thrown back to them fromthe dead sea of sand.
"Riley's on the job," he told Smithy when he passed over the glasslater on. "And I've got my pocket portable." He took the little radioreceiver from his pocket as he spoke. "Riley will signal me from myoffice if he sees anything."
The moon had cleared the mountains; its flood of light poured acrosstheir rugged heights and filled the bowl of Tonah Basin as some masterof a great theatrical switchboard might have flooded a dark stage withmagic illumination, half concealing, transforming whatever things ittouched.
All the hard brilliance of sunlit sands was gone. The rolling duneswere softly mellow; the more distant mountains were dream-peaks. Halfreal, they seemed, and half imagined in a veil of haze. Even thebuildings, the scattered piles of material, the gaunt skeleton of thederrick--their stark blackness of outline and clear-cut shadow weregone; the whole land was drenched in the mystery and magic of a desertmoon.
* * * * *
Rawson and the man beside him were silent. Even a mind perplexed byunanswerable problems must pause before the witchery of nature'ssofter moods.
"If Riley were here," said Smithy softly at last, "he wouldn't beseeing any devils. Fairies, pixies, the 'little people'--he'd beseeing them dancing."
Rawson shot his companion a sidelong, appraising glance. He had neverpenetrated before to this sub-stratum of Smithy's nature. He hadnever, in fact, felt that he knew much about Smithy, whose past wasstill the one topic that was never mentioned. He saw his thick mop ofblack hair and the profile of his face as Smithy stared fixedly downtoward the sleeping camp. It was a matter of a minute or so before heknew that the head was outlined against an aura of red light.
Smithy was seated at his right. Off beyond him the three extinctcraters made a dark background where the moonlight had not yet reachedto their inner slopes. Smithy's head was directly in line with thelargest crater's irregularly broken top; and about it was the faintesttinge of red.
For a moment the light flamed close; it seemed to be hovering aboutthe head of the silent, seated man. Then Rawson moved, looked past,and found a true perspective for the phenomenon. One rugged cleft inthe rim of the crater's cup made a peephole for seeing within. It wasplainly red--the light came from inside the age-old throat.
* * * * *
"It's alive!" Rawson whispered in quick consternation. Almost heexpected to see billowing clouds of smoke, the fearful pyrotechnics ofvolcanic eruption.
He sensed more than saw that Smithy had not turned his head. "Look!"he was shouting by now. "Wake up, Smithy! Good Lord!"
He stopped, open-mouthed. The red glow had meant volcanic fires; tohave it change abruptly to a green radiance was disconcerting.
Green--pale green. Only through the gap, like a space where a toothwas missing in the giant jaw, could Dean Rawson see the changed light.Only from this one point could the view be had--there would be nothingvisible from the camp below. And as quickly as it had come allthought of volcanic fires left him; he knew with quick certainty thatthis was something that concerned him, that threatened, and that waslinked up with the other threatening, mysterious happenings of therecent nights and days.
Still Smithy had not turned. Rawson felt one quick flash of annoyanceat his helper's dullness--or indifference; then he knew that Smithy'sdark-haired head was reached forward, that he was bending at aprecarious angle to stare below him into the valley. Then:
"They're there!" said Smithy in a hushed voice, as if someone orsomething on that desert floor far below might hear and take alarm."Look, Dean. Where's your glass? What are they?"
* * * * *
His cautious whispering was unnecessary. Below them a thin line oflight pierced the darkness; another; then three more in quicksuccession before the sharp crack of pistol fire came to the men athousand feet above. Rawson had snatched up his binoculars.
"To the left," Smithy was directing. "Off there, by the big casting.Great Scott! what's that light?"
Rawson got it in the glass--a single flash of green that cut theblackness with an almost audible hiss. It was gone in an instant whilea man's voice screamed once in fear and agony, one scream that brokelike brittle steel in the same instant that it began.
Dean found the big casting in the circle of his glass. There wereblack figures moving near it; they were indistinct. He changed thefocus--they were gone before he could get their images sharp.
But the casting! Plainly he saw its great bulk that many men hadworked to ease down to the sand. It was outlined clearly now until itsedge became a blur, until the sand rolled in upon it, and its blackmass became a circle that shrank and shrank and vanished utterly atthe last.
"It's gone!" Rawson shouted. "It sank into the sand! I saw it...."
He was running for the car. A clamor of voices was coming from below;the sound died under the thunder of the car's exhaust as Rawson gaveit the gun and sent the big machine leaping toward the waiting curves.