Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/359

Rh He started away. His last words echoed in the girl's consciousness, hammering at some hidden idea—

Explosion!—"Black Joe!" her voice was shrill and he wheeled. "If it goes up like an explosion, can't an explosion stop it?"

"Huh? What's—"

"Dynamite, Joe! Dynamite!"

"Oh, God help you, Miss Helen! God help you," he cried, with a new excitement, the stimulus of a fresh hope in his voice.

A car was there, its owner begging for an errand. He had brought men from Pancake, men who had scorned and scoffed at Foraker's Folly, but fire closes breaches, belittles differences and those he brought were now at work; this man awaited the girl's word.

"Take Joe!" she said to him. "Push him, Joe!"

The man sprang into his seat, glad to obey her orders.

Across the pole bridge they tore, past the big house, on to a dugout in the river bank. Boxes of dynamite were tossed into the car, a coil of fine wire thrown in and, holding a box of percussion caps high, Joe swore as he ordered the other to drive back.

Helen left her post for she could do no good there. Men were wearing out, they were deserting sneaking away under cover of the smoke and she kept among those who remained, a soaked handkerchief over her mouth. The roar of the oncoming fire increased; it commenced to mutter again and the back-fire, feeling the pull of that hot draft, leaped and ate toward its kind—

A sucking sound, a flapping, like an immense flag in a heavy puff of wind, a long-drawn wo-o-o-sh, and a great eddy of fire and smoke was sucked upward and scattered.