ly long.

"Stood plumb on her tail," said the pilot, staring at the wreck. "They
hit us just once, and the left wing crumpled like cardboard. Last I
remember was pulling her up off the trees." He stared at the mass of
twisted metal and the center section where the wing had torn loose; it
stood upright, almost vertical, resting on the crushed tail.

"Funny," said the pilot in the same flat, level tone that seemed the
only voice he had since that last pull on a whipping wheel. "Damn
funny--mostly we get it first up there."

"Come here!" snapped Colonel Culver. "Lend a hand here with Smith;
we've got to carry him. And don't talk so loud--those red devils will
be out here any minute."

* * * * *

Smithy was taking a more active interest in his surroundings when he
sat a week later in the Governor's office.

"There's a detachment moving in there from the south," said the
Governor. "We're going to follow your advice, to some extent at least.
We're sending troops to Tonah Basin. If the top of that dead crater is
closed they will blast it open; then a scouting party's going down.
Call it a reconnaissance, call it suicide--one name's just as good as
the other. Colonel Culver, here, is going. But you know the lay of the
land there; you could be of great help. How about it?"

"Are you asking me?" Smithy inquired.

He stood up, flexed his arms, while he grinned at Colonel Culver.
"Hinges all greased and working! As a flier, Colonel, you're a darn
good first-aid man. I'll say that! When do we start?"

Which explains why Smithy, some time later, hidden under the grotesque
disguise of a gas mask, was one of fifty, similarly attired, who stood
waiting about the black open maw in the great cinder-floored crater of
one of the peaks that surrounded Tonah Basin.

Night. And the big stars that hang so low in the black desert sky
should have been brilliant. They were lost now in the white glare that
streamed upward. The crater was a fortress. Around the circle of the
entire rim, on the inner side of the rough crags, men of the 49th
Field Artillery stood by their guns. Lookouts trailed their telephone
wire to the higher peaks, where they perched as shapeless as huddled
owls; and, like owls, their eyes swept the mountain's slopes and the
desert at its base, where the searchlight crews played long fingers of
light incessantly--and where nothing moved.

But the empty silence of the desert was misleadin