“At the worst,” he said resolutely, “we might hold the fort here, and send for help. Some of the other stockmen, learning that we had Mendoza cooped up, would rush assistance; and in time we might clean out the pass.”
“Bully!” cried Bob, impulsively.
“That’s true,” the Colonel remarked, “but lots of things could happen before that same help arrived, which would mean several days at least. And when dealing with Mendoza, you never can be sure that you can put your finger on him when you think you’ve got him. Perhaps he might manage to slip out of that cabin to-night; and then there would be warm times around here.”
“One thing’s sure,” Scotty declared, with a shake of his head, “they must ’a had a fierce lot of dynamite under that pass. You never did see such a piled-up lot o’ rocks in your born days. I had to rub my eyes, and pinch myself, to believe there ever had been an opening there, through which we came into this here valley, an’ all that stock, too.”
“Mendoza always had a reputation for doing things to the limit,” remarked the stockman. “He knew that it would be useless damaging the pass only a little; so he made the mine a big one. I never heard anything like that detonation before. But we’ll all try and think up some way of beating the rustler at his own game.”
“If we only had the stuff,” remarked Bob, “perhaps we might clean out the pass the same way he filled it!”
“By an explosion, you mean?” said Frank. “Well, I reckon that would only make bad worse, and do no good; for there isn’t any pass there now under the rocks, if what Scotty tells us is true.”
“What the Colonel said goes with me,” remarked the foreman.
“You mean about holding the fort here, and sending for help?” asked the stockman.
“Yep, that’s the idea, sir,” replied Bart. “We might set to work and make prisoners of the rustlers,