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
he 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 passed 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 cockpit 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.