Gordon Smith shook off his father's restraining hand and took one quick forward step. His face, even through the tan of the desert sun, was unnaturally pale.

"Election be dammed!" he exploded. "Dean Rawson has been captured by those red devils--he's down there, the whitest white man I ever met!

I've been to the sheriff; now I've come to you! Do you mean to tell me there isn't any power in this state to back me up when--"

He stopped. There was a tremble in his voice he could not control.

"Good boy," said Governor Drake softly. "Now I know it's the truth.

Yes, you'll be backed up, plenty, but for the present it will be strictly unofficial. Now pull in your horns and listen.

"You know the lay of the land. I want your help. Go out to Field Three; there'll be a man there waiting for you. Don't call him 'Colonel'--he's also strictly unofficial to-day. The sheriff and his posse will be there at Seven Palms inside an hour; I want you to be there, too, about five thousand feet up.

"Tell Colonel Culver--I mean Mr. Culver--your story; tell him everything you know. He'll be in charge of operations if we have to send in troops; he'll give you that private and unofficial backing I spoke of if we don't.

"Now get down there; keep your eye on the sheriff's crowd and see everything that happens!"

But Smithy's parting remark was to his father; it was a continuation of the subject they had been discussing before.

"You can buy at your own price," he said. "They've got rights to the whole basin. But they've quit; I'm not treating them to a double-cross."

And he added as he went out of the room: "Buy it for me if you don't want it yourself."

It was a two-place, open-c.o.c.kpit plane that Smithy found had been set aside for him. Dual control--the stick in the forward c.o.c.kpit carried the firing grip that controlled the slim blue machine guns firing through the propeller. Behind the rear c.o.c.kpit a strange, unwieldy, double-ended weapon was recessed and streamlined into the fuselage.

The scout seemed quite able to protect itself in an emergency.

Beside the plane a tall, slender man in civilian attire was waiting.

He stuck out his hand, while the gray eyes in his lean, tanned face scanned Smithy swiftly.

"I'm Culver. Understand I'm to be your pa.s.senger to-day. How about it--can you fly the ship? Seven hundred and fifty DeGrosse motor--retractable landing gear, of course. She hits four-fifty at top speed--snappy--quick on the trigger."

Smithy shook his head dubiously. "Four-fifty--I'm not accustomed to that. But you can take the stick, Mr. Culver, if I get in a hurry and jump out and run on ahead. You see I'm used to my own ship, an _a.s.segai_--special job--does five hundred when I'm pressed for time."

The lean face of Mr. Culver creased into a smile. "You qualify," he said. "But keep your hands off the dead mule."

At an inquiring glance he pointed to the heavy, half-hidden weapon that Smithy had noticed. "Can't kick," he explained, "--hence 'dead mule.' It's the new Rickert recoilless; throws little sh.e.l.ls the size of your thumb--but they raise h.e.l.l when they hit."

"Sounds interesting." Smithy climbed into the rear c.o.c.kpit and strapped himself in. "Show me how it works, then I won't do it."

A pistol grip moved under Culver's reaching hand and the strange weapon sprang from concealment like something alive. The pistol grip moved sideways, and the gun swung out and down, its muzzle almost touching the ground. Smithy was suddenly aware that a crystal above his instrument board was reflecting that same bit of sun-baked earth.

A dot of black hung stationary at the crystal's center.

"That's your target." Culver's voice held all the pride of a child with a new toy, but he released the grip, and the ungainly gun swung smoothly back to its hiding place.

He settled himself in the forward c.o.c.kpit. "You will find a helmet there," he said. "It's phone-equipped; you can tell me all about that wild nightmare of yours while we jog along."

The white beam from the despatcher's tower had been on them while they talked. Other planes were waiting on the field. Smithy smiled as he settled the helmet over his head. "For a strictly unofficial flight,"

he thought, "we're getting darned good service."

He taxied past a hangar where uniformed men pointedly paid them no attention. He swung the ship to the line as Airboard regulations required.

"N-73" was painted on the monoplane's low wings that seemed sc.r.a.ping the ground. "N-73 Clear!" the despatcher's voice radioed into Smithy's ears. Then the seven-hundred-and-fifty-horsepower DeGrosse let loose its voice as Smithy gunned her down the field.

Whatever doubts Colonel Culver may have had of Smithy's ability were dissipated as they made their way cautiously through the free-flying area under five thousand. Everywhere were mail planes, express and pa.s.senger ships taking off for the transcontinental day run, and private planes scattering to the smaller landing areas among the flashing lights of the flat-topped business blocks. Among them Smithy threaded his way toward the green-lighted transfer zone, where he spiraled upward.

At ten thousand he was on his course. He set the gyro-control which would fly the ship more surely than any human hands, and the air-speed indicator crept up to the four hundred and fifty miles an hour that Culver had promised. Not till then did he give the man in the forward c.o.c.kpit the details of his "nightmare."

He had not finished answering the other's incredulous questions when he throttled down to slow cruising speed and nosed the ship toward a distant expanse of sage-blurred sand.

Outside the restricted metropolitan area he had already dropped out of the chill wind that struck them at ten thousand. Behind them and off to the right was the gray rampart of the Sierra. Ahead a rough circle of darker hills enclosed the great bowl he had learned to know as Tonah Basin.

Some feeling of unreality in his own experiences must have crept into his mind; unconsciously he had been questioning his own sanity. Now, at sight of the sandy waste where he and Rawson had labored, with the dark slopes of desolate craters looming ahead and a blot of burned wreckage directly below to mark the site of their camp, the horrible reality of it gripped him again.

He could not speak at first. The air of the five-thousand level was not uncomfortably warm, but Smithy was feeling again the baking heat of that desert land; again he was with Rawson in the volcanic crater; Dean was calling to him, warning him....

A sharp question from Culver was repeated twice before Smithy could reply.

He side-slipped in above the crater's ragged rim, heedless of down-drafts--the power of the DeGrosse motor would pull them out of anything in a ten-thousand-foot vertical climb if need arose. Smithy was pointing toward a confusion of shining black rock.

"Over there," he told Culver. Then he was shouting into the telephone transmitter. "It's open," he said. "That's where Dean went down--and there they are! Look, man, there--there!"

CHAPTER XIV

_Emergency Order_

The throat of the old volcano was a pit of blackness in the midst of gray ash and the red-yellow of cinders. Beside it were other flecks of color: red, moving bodies; metal, that twinkled brightly under the desert sun--and in an instant they were gone. Nor did Smithy, throwing the thundering plane close over that place, know how near he had pa.s.sed to sudden, invisible death. Rugged pinnacles of rock were ahead. The plane under Smithy's hands vaulted over them and roared on above the desert.

"Did you see them?" Smithy was shouting.

The man in the forward c.o.c.kpit turned to face his pilot. "I am apologizing, Smith, for all the things I have been thinking and haven't said. We've got a job on our hands. Now let's find that fool sheriff who thinks he's hunting for drunken Indians. We must warn him."

Smithy wondered at the wisps of blue smoke still rising from the ruins of Seven Palms as he drove in above it. It seemed years since he had left the Basin, yet the wreckage of this little town, only five miles outside, still smoldered.

Colonel Culver was shouting to him. "East," he said. "Swing east.

There's fighting over there." Then, in his usual cool tone: "I'll take the ship, Smith. Give then a burst or two from up here--perhaps the sheriff can use a little help."

Across the yellow sand ran a desert road. Ten miles away black smoke clouds were lifting. Smithy knew there had been a little settlement there. A dozen houses, perhaps, and a gasoline station. At half that distance the clear sunlight showed moving objects on the sand: automobiles, smaller dots that were running them. They came suddenly to sharp visibility as the plane drew near. Tiny bursts of white meant rifle fire.