_The Ring_
[Illustration: _One of them pointed at the shaft Rawson had drilled._]
[Sidenote: Town after town is fired by the emerging Red Ones as Rawson
lies helpless, a prisoner, far down in their home within the earth.]
"Smithy," Rawson had called him when he found the youngster fighting
gamely with death in the heat of Tonah Basin. And Gordon Smith was the
name on the company records. Yet he remained always "Smithy" to
Rawson, and the name, which Rawson never ceased to believe was
assumed, became a mark of the affection which can spring up between
man and man.
And now Smithy stood like a rigid carven statue in the midst of a
barren sandy waste in the vast cup of a towering volcano top--sand
that was in reality coarse pumice and ash. This was a place of death,
a place where raging fires had left nothing for plant or animal life.
And, over all, the desert stars shone down coldly and added to the
desolation with their own pale light.
Smithy had seen Rawson pull himself to the top of the great
square-edged rock. Sensing that danger of some sort was threatening,
he had started to run to the aid of the struggling man. Then came
Rawson's cry.
"Back!" he shouted. "Get back, Smithy! I'm coming--"
But he did not come; and Smithy, halted by the command, was frozen to
sudden, panic-stricken immobility by that which followed.
He saw the leaping things, like grotesque yellow giants. They came
from the sand; then red ones leaped up from the open throat that had
suddenly formed. They held flame throwers, the red ones; and the green
lines of fire melted the rock from beneath Rawson's feet. All in the
one second's time, it was done, and Rawson's body, his arms wide
flung, was hurtling downward into the waiting throat and the
threatening red glow from within. Then the carriers of the flame
throwers vanished again into the pit, and there was left only a huddle
of giant figures that tore at the loose sand and ash with their hands.
They threw the material in a continuous stream; the air was full of
cascading sand. To Smithy they were suddenly inhuman--they were almost
animals; men like moles. And they and their companions had captured
Dean Rawson--sent him to his death. Slowly the watching man raised
himself from the crouched position that had kept him hidden.
They were through with their work, these great yellow-skinned naked
men--or mole-men. Six of them--Smithy counted them slowly before he
took aim--and two were armed with flame-throwers.
Smithy rested his arm across the little hummock of gritty ash that
had sheltered him and sent six flashes of flame through the night
toward the cluster of bodies.
* * * * *
He made no attempt to aim at each individual--the shapes were too
shadowy for that. And he had no knowledge of what other weapons they
might have. One thing was sure: he must take no chances on facing the
red ones single-handed. He rammed his empty pistol back into its
holster as he turned and ran--ran with every ounce of energy he
possessed to drive his flying feet across the crater floor, out
through the cleft in the rocks and down the steep mountainside.
He was stunned by the suddenness of the catastrophe that had overtaken
them. The horror of Dean Rawson's going; the fearful reality of those
"devils from hell" that old Riley had seen--it was all too staggering,
too numbing, for easy acceptance. Time was required for the truth to
sink in; and through the balance of the night Smithy had plenty of
time to think.
He dared not go back to the camp where ripping flashes of green light
told him the enemy was at work. And then, even had it been possible to
creep up on them in the darkness, that one chance vanished as the
desert about the camp sprang into view. One after another the
buildings burst into flame, and Smithy was thankful for the
concealment of the vast, empty desert.
* * * * *
The embers were still glowing when he dared go near. This enemy, it
seemed, worked only at night, and Smithy waited only for the sun to
show above distant purple ranges. It had been their enemy once, that
fiercely hot sun; they had fought against the heat--but never had the
sun wrought such destruction as this.
Smithy looked from haggard, hopeless eyes upon the wreckage of
Rawson's camp. For the men who had worked there, this had meant only a
job; to Smithy it had been a fight against the desert which had
defeated him once. But to Rawson it meant the fruit of years of
effort, the goal of his dreams brought almost within his reach.
Smithy looked at the smoldering heaps of gray where an idle wind
puffed playfully at fluffy ash or fanned a bed of coals to flame.
Twisted steel of the wrecked derrick was still further distorted; the
enemy had ripped it to pieces with his stabbing flames. Even the
unused materials, the steel and cement that had been neatly stacked
for future use--the flames had been turned on it all.
And Smithy, though his voice broke almost boyishly from his repressed
emotion, spoke aloud in solemn promise:
"It's too late to help you, Dean. I'll go back to town, report to the
men who were back of you, and then.... They're going to pay, Dean!
Whoever--whatever--they are, they're going to pay!"
He turned away toward the mountains and the ribbon of road that wound
off toward the canyon. Then, at some recollection, he swung back.
"The cable's still down--he would have wanted it left all shipshape,"
he whispered.
Where the derrick had stood was the mouth of the twenty-inch casing.
The cable that ran from it was entangled with the wreckage of the
derrick, but it had not been cut. Smithy set doggedly to work.
* * * * *
A little gin-pole and light tackle allowed him to erect a heavier
tripod of steel beams; it hoisted the big sheave block into place, and
gave Smithy's two hands the strength of twenty to rig a temporary
hoist. The juice was still on the main feed line, and the hoisting
motors hummed at his touch. The ten miles of cable wound slowly onto
the drums.
"It's nonsense, I suppose," he told himself silently. But something
drove him to do this last thing--to leave it all as Rawson would have
had it.
The long bailer came out at last; there was just room to hoist it
clear and let it drop back upon the drilling floor. A glint of gold
flashed in the sunlight as Smithy let the long metal tube down, and he
broke into voluble cursing at sight of the bit of metal that was
caught near the bailer's top.
The gold had started it all! That first finding of the gold on the big
drill had begun it.... He crossed swiftly to the gleaming thing that
seemed somehow to symbolize his loss.
He stooped to reach for it, intending to throw it as far as he could.
Instead he stood in an awkward stooping attitude--stood so while the
long uncounted minutes passed....
His eyes that stared and stared in disbelief seemed suddenly to have
turned traitor. They were telling him that they saw a ring--a
cameo--jammed solidly into the shackle at the bailer's end. And that
ring, when last he had seen it, had been on Dean Rawson's hand! Dean
had caught it; he had hooked it over a lever in this very place--and
now, from ten miles down inside the solid earth, it had returned. It
meant--it meant....
But the stocky, broad-shouldered youngster known as Smithy dared not
think what it meant. Nor had he time to follow the thought; he was too
busily engaged in running at suicidal speed across the hot sand toward
barren mountains where a ribbon of road showed through quivering air.