ehind. Here were branching
passages, great cavelike rooms--a world within a world, in all truth.
Throughout it, demoniac figures were hurrying, driving thousands of
giant yellow slaves where the light shone sparkling from innumerable
heaps of metal weapons--flame-throwers and others, the nature of which
Rawson could not determine. And everywhere was the shouting and hurry
as of a nation in the throes of war.

His speculations ended abruptly. They were approaching a room, a vast
open place. High on the farther wall was a recess in the rock in which
tongues of flame licked hungrily upward. The heat of the fires struck
down in a ceaseless hot blast. Close to the fires, unmindful of the
heat, a barbaric figure assumed grotesque and horrible postures, while
its voice rose in echoing shrillness.

Below were crowding red ones who prostrated themselves on the rocky
floor.

"Fire worshipers!" The explanatory thought flashed through Dean
Rawson's mind. "Here was one of their holy places, a place of
sacrifice, perhaps, and he was being taken there, helpless, a
captive!"

CHAPTER X

_Plumb Loco_

The sheriff of Cocos County was reacting exactly as Rawson had
anticipated. Smithy stood before him, a disheveled Smithy, grimy of
face and hands. He had made his way to the highway and caught a ride
to the nearest town, and now that he had found Jack Downer, sheriff,
that gentleman leaned back in his old chair behind the battered desk
and regarded the younger man with amused tolerance.

"Now, that's right interesting, what you say," he admitted. "Tonah
Basin, and the old crater, and red devils settin' fire to everything.
I've heard some wild ones since this Prohibition went into effect and
some of the boys started makin' their own, but yours sure beats 'em
all. Guess likely I'll have to take a run up Tonah way and see what
kind of cactus liquor they're makin'."

"Meaning I'm drunk or a liar." Smithy's voice was hot with sudden
anger, but the sheriff regarded him imperturbably.

"Well, I'd let you off on one count, son. You do look sort of sober."

Smithy disregarded the plain implication and fought down the anger
that possessed him.

"May I use your phone, Mr. Downer?" he asked.

He called the office of Erickson and his associates in Los Angeles and
told, as well as he could for the constant interruptions from his
listener, the story of what had occurred. And Mr. Erickson at the
other end of the line, although he