Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/259

Rh "We can only play that trick once, Red," answered Sheridan. "And we may have to blast our way out at the last. I hope they don't return the compliment in kind and fill in the entrance."

"I hardly think so," said Quong. *'They would have to take too much time to tunnel in for the gold. They hold all the cards. They can afford to wait, but not too long."

It was bitterly cold. Hunger gnawed and thirst attacked them savagely, intensifying the frosty temperature. Hard labor had lowered their vitality. They held council, discussed a rush and abandoned it in face of the steady lit and the narrowness of the entrance fissure. They would be shot down one by one as they emerged. Yet to remain inactive became a condition hard to bear.

Then a hissing missile came rocketing down the tunnel. Sheridan, watching for something of the kind, fired at the arm that had been exposed and then dodged back behind the cave wall, shouting warning to the rest, who broke for the cover of the tunnel back of the blasted rock curtain. Hsu Fu had tried hoisting them with their own petards. In the cavern the exploding gases of the nitro-glycerine broke loose in yellow flame, filling the place with choking, acrid odors, torment to their throats, compressing the air to battering rams, roaring up to roof and walls, turning the space into a miniature hell. While they were still half dazed, the passage was filled with charging men. Pistols barked, the red spit of the shots breaking the blur of the dynamite haze.