Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/164

 The minutes passed, two, three, five of them. Once outside sounded what might have been the stealthy scuffle of feet or only a storm-sound so construed by the imagination. Then, from the direction of the river-bed, sudden, sharp, came a terrific roar.

"My God!" yelled Spirlaw. "There's the trestle gone—they've blown it up! They're sure to have laid a fuse here, too. Get out of here quick! Fool that I was, I might have known it was the dynamite they were after."

Both men were scrambling for the door as he spoke. They reached it not an instant too soon. The ground behind them lifted, heaved; the walls, the roof of the shack rose, cracked like eggshells, and scattered in flying pieces—and the mighty, deafening detonation of the explosion echoed up and down the gorge, echoed again—and died away.

The mob caught sight of them as they ran and, foiled for the moment, sent up a yell of rage—then started in pursuit.

"Make for the cut," shouted Spirlaw. "We can hold them off there behind the rocks."

Keating had no breath for words. Panting, sick, his head swimming, a fleck of blood upon his lips, he struggled after the giant form of the road boss; while, behind, coming ever closer, ringing in his ears, were the wild cries of the maddened Polacks. The splash of water revived him a little as they plunged along the old right of way where the river, flooded by the storm, had again claimed its own. The worst of it was up to his armpits. A grip on his shoulder and a pull from