The man had finished the doughnut. He took his feet off the box rim and let his chair come down on its front legs with a thump. Still holding his coffee mug in one hand, he reached for a poker with the other, shoved aside the stove lid and shook down the fire.
A shower of brilliant sparks flew out of the chimney above the boys’ heads, immediately followed by a burst of thick acrid black smoke. The wind twisted it down onto them in a choking cloud.
They buried their faces in their arms, trying to protect themselves against the cabin wall.
Ken choked back a cough, his head pounding with the effort. Then he felt Sandy, close beside him, heave convulsively in the first stages of a vast sneeze.
Sandy’s head jerked back, his mouth uncontrollably open.
Ken clamped a swift hand over it. “Quiet!” he begged, in a frenzied whisper.
Sandy made a final effort. The sneeze came, but only as a slight snort muffled by the whipping wind. The thunderous noise Ken had dreaded didn’t occur.
“O.K.” Sandy straightened. “I’m all right now. But let’s move, huh?”
“Might as well,” Ken agreed reluctantly.
He was convinced that the package lying in there on the bunk contained something far more significant than two cartons of cigarettes. But he had no proof for his belief, and he could think of no way of finding such proof.