Some twenty or thirty feet above the chaparral, and forty or fifty feet to the left of it, was a ledge of rock standing straight out from the sloping gulch wall. A mass of loose bowlders overhung the ledge.
This was the spot toward which the colonel and Jode were climbing. Observing this, Darrel quietly forced his way upward along one side of the patch of mesquite. At the upper edge of the chaparral he found a rift in the slope. It was like a trench, deep enough to hide a man, and ran straight toward the crest of the gulch wall.
Still watching and hoping for an opportunity to speak a few words in private with the colonel, Darrel crawled into the trench and made his way to a point that was on a level with the top of the ledge. When he finally halted and peered over the edge of the rift, he found that some thirty feet of rough ground separated him from the colonel and Jode.
The colonel was on his knees, carefully opening the parcel he had brought with him. A small coil of fuse and a couple of sticks of dynamite were presently taken from the package.
“There were three sticks here when I wrapped up the package in Gold Hill,” said the colonel, lifting his eyes to Jode’s. “What’s become of the rest of the dynamite?”
“Are you sure?” Jode answered. “Some one must have taken out one of the sticks.”
“Of course I may be mistaken,” muttered the colonel.
Cutting off a length of fuse, he trimmed it with a pocket knife; then, taking a cap from his pocket, he pushed it over the trimmed end. Next, he picked up one of the sticks of giant powder, slit it lengthwise on four sides, and dropped it into a hole that had been drilled in the shelf. The other stick was pushed down on the first, and both were gently tamped down on the cap, which was in the bottom of the hole.
“Now, clear out, Jode,” said the colonel. “It’s only a two-minute length of fuse, and I shall have to scramble for safety when I touch it off.”
Jode jumped from the ledge and hurried to get away among a lot of bowlders at a safe distance. The colonel lighted a match, touched it to the fuse, and Darrel flattened himself out in the bottom of the rift.