Rawson smiled good-naturedly. "No," he agreed, "I don't believe it. But it's a good, handy name. All right, Smithy, jump in! Here, let me give you a lift; you're still woozy." Rawson found his passenger uncommunicative. Not but what Smithy talked freely of everything but himself, but it was of himself that Rawson wanted to know. "Drop me at the first town," said Smithy. "You're going north: I'm south-bound--looking for a job down in Los. I won't take any more short cuts; I was two days on this last one. I'll stick to the road." They were through the mountains that ringed in the fiery pit of Tonah Basin. Smooth sand lay ahead; only the shallow marks that his own tires had ploughed needed to be followed. Dean Rawson turned and looked with fair appraisal at the man he had saved. "Drifter?" he asked himself silently. "Road bum? He doesn't look the part; there's something about him...." Aloud he inquired: "What's your line? What do you know?" And the young man answered frankly: "Not a thing!" * * * * * Dean sensed failure, inefficiency. He resented it in this youngster who had fought so gamely with death. His voice was harsh with a curious sense of his own disappointment as he asked: "Found the going too hard for you up north, did you? Well, it won't be any easier--" But Smithy had interrupted with a weak movement of his hand. "Not too hard," he said laconically; "too damn soft! I don't know what I'm looking for--pretty dumb: got a lot to learn!--but it'll be a job that needs to take a good licking!" "'Too damn soft!'" Dean was thinking. "And he tackled the desert alone!" There was a lot here he did not understand. But the look in the eyes of Smithy that met his own searching gaze and returned it squarely if a bit whimsically--that was something he _could_ understand. Dean Rawson was a judge of men. The sudden impulse that moved him was founded upon certainty. "You've found that job," he said. "The desert almost got you a little while ago--now it's due to take that licking you were talking about. I'm going to teach it to lie down and roll over and jump through hoops. Fact is, my job is to get it into harness and put it to work. I'll be working right out there in the Basin where I found you. It will be only about two degrees cooler than hell. If that sounds good to you, Smithy, stick around." He warmed oddly to the look in the younger man's deep-set, dark eyes, as Smithy replied: "Try to put me out, Rawson--just try to put me out!" CHAPTER II _Gold!_ "Ten miles down, drillers! Hell-bound, and proud of it! Ten miles down, drillers! 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."