_Red Drops_
The flat-roofed shack of yellow boards that was Dean Rawson's "office"
had a second canopy roof built above it and extending out on all sides
like a wooden umbrella. Thick pitch fried almost audibly from the fir
boards when the sun drove straight from overhead, but beneath their
shelter the heat was more bearable.
By an open window, where a hot breeze stirred sluggishly, Rawson sat
in silent contemplation of the camp. His face was as copper-colored as
an Apache's and as motionless. His eyes were fixed unwaveringly upon a
distant derrick and the blasted stub of a big drill that hung unmoving
above the concrete floor.
But the man's eyes did not consciously record the details of that
scene. He saw nothing of the derrick or of the heat waves that made
the steel seem writhingly alive; he was looking at something far more
distant, something many miles away, something vague and mysterious,
hidden miles beneath the surface of the earth.
"Heat," he said at last, as if talking in a dream. "Heat, terrific
temperatures--but I can't make it out; I can't see it!"
The younger, broad-shouldered man, whose khaki shirt, thrown open at
the neck showed a chest tanned to the black-brown of his face, stopped
his restless pacing back and forth in the hot room.
"Yes?" he asked with a touch of irritation in his tone. "There's
plenty of heat there--heat enough to melt off the shaft of that
high-temp alloy! What the devil's the use of wondering about the heat,
Dean? What gets me is this: the shaft has been plugged again. Now,
what kind of...."
* * * * *
Dean Rawson's face had not moved a muscle during the other's outburst.
His eyes were still fixed on that place that was so far away, yet
which he tried to bring close in his mind, close enough to see, to
comprehend the mystery that should be so plain.
"Lava wouldn't do it!" he said softly. "No melted stone would melt the
Krieger alloy, unless it was under pressure, which this was not.
There was no blast coming out of our shaft. Yet we dipped into that
gold; we stuck the drill right down into it. But what did we go into
the next time? What did we dip into?"
He swung quickly, violently, toward Smithy who was facing him from the
middle of the room. He aimed one finger at him as if it were a pistol,
and his words cracked out as sharply as if they came from a gun:
"That tube you sent down--that piece of casing! How was it burned?
Were there straggling ends, frozen gobs of metal? Did it look like an
old-fashioned molasses candy bar that's been melted? Did it?"
"Why, no," said Smithy. "It hadn't dripped any; it was cut off nice
and clean."
"Cut!" Rawson almost shouted the word. "You said it, Smithy. So was
the shaft of the drill. And if you ever saw a piece of this alloy
being melted you know that it's as gummy as a pot of old paint. It was
cut, Smithy! Dipping into that melted gold threw us off the track; we
were thinking of ramming the drill down into a mess of lava. But we
didn't. It was cut off by a blast of flame so much hotter than lava
that melted rock would seem cold!"
"And that helps us a lot, doesn't it," asked Smithy, scornfully, "when
the flame melts the end of the shaft shut as fast as we open it?"
Dean Rawson's lean, muscular hands took Smithy's broad shoulders and
spun the younger man around. "Cheer up," Dean told him. "We've got it
licked. Why it doesn't blow out of that shaft like hell out for noon
is more than I can see; but the heat's there! We've won!"
"But--" Smithy began. Rawson sent him spinning toward the door in a
good-natured showing of strength that his assistant had not yet
guessed.
"Soup!" he ordered. "Break out the nitroglycerine, Smithy. Get that
Swede, Hanson, on the job; he's a shooter. He knows his stuff. We'll
blow open the bottom end of our shaft so it'll never go shut!"
* * * * *
Hanson knew his stuff and did it. But he met Rawson's inquiring eyes
with a puzzled shake of his head when the open mouth of the
twenty-inch bore gave faint echo of the deep explosion and followed
after a time with only a feeble puff of air.
"Like a cannon, she should have gone," Hanson stated. "And she yoost
go _phht_!"
"It's open down below," said Rawson briefly. "This is a different kind
of a well from the kind you've been shooting."
To the waiting Riley he said: "Hook a bailer onto that cable and send
it down. See what you can tell about the hole."
Again ten miles of cable hissed smoothly down the gaping throat. Then
it slowed.
"Fifty-two-seven," said Riley, "and she's open. Seven twenty-five!
Seven fifty, and we're on bottom!"
"Up," Rawson ordered, "if there's anything left of the bailer. It's
probably melted into scrap."
But strangely it was not. It hung from the dangling cable spinning
lazily until Riley stepped in to check its motion.
There was a check valve in the bottom--a door that opened inwardly, to
take in water and fragments of rock when need arose. Riley,
disregarding the possible heat of the twirling bailer, reached for it
with bare hands. He drew them back, then held them before him--and a
hundred watching eyes saw what had been unseen before: the slow
dropping of red liquid from the bailer's end. The same drops were
falling from Riley's hands that had touched that end.
"Blood!" The word came from the foreman's throat in one horrified
gasp. It ran in a whispering echo from one to another of the watching
crew. From far across the hot sands came the rattle of a truck that
brought the first of many loads of cement and steel for Rawson's
buildings. Its driver was singing lustily:
"Hark to what I say:
You're pokin' through the crust of hell
And braggin' too damn loud of it,
For, when you get to hell, you'll find
The devil there to pay!"
But Rawson, looking dazedly into Smithy's eyes, said only: "It's
cold--the bailer's cold. There's no heat there."