Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/258

240 trained on the entrance to make a first-class target of it, showed the confident vigilance of the Chinese, waiting for the defenders to make their move. Sheridan's bullet, whistling sharp to the scalp of the one peeper had made them chary of exposure.

"Keep talkin," Jackson called back. "If you shut off they'll think we're up to something." He lit a match, applied it to the teased-out braids of the fuse. At the same instant Sheridan shouted to him.

"Hold on a minute. Red." His first swift endorsement of Jackson's plan had cooled. They had not brought in all their dynamite. There was enough left in the little camp to blast down the entrance. It was foolish to suggest such a weapon to the invaders. Undoubtedly they had raided the camp already.

But it was too late. Red had swung back his arm, with the fuse sparking like a firework, and hurled the bomb, whirling down the passage in a sputtering are to explode just outside with an air-rending detonation. Immediate damage showed in the dimming of the light, then came the shrill jabbering of startled Chinamen, the sound of a starting engine and the disappearance of the rays. But they reappeared promptly, half their previous strength. Sheridan figured they had backed off one machine to a safer place beyond damage from other bombs, but where the headlights could still play upon the Chapel entrance. The second machine he hoped had been put out of commission.

Red came back to the main cave exultant.

"Made scrap iron of one car," he said.