“I’ll be gettin’ the willies av I lay here much longer widout slape,” he confided to his pillow. “Mebbe a turn down the track wid me dujeen wud do the thrick.” He got up, lighted his pipe and strode off into the semi-gloom of the railroad track. He went aimlessly, paying little attention to objects around him. He passed the tents wherein the laborers lay—and smiled as heavy snores smote his ears. “They slape a heap harder than they worruk, bedad!” he observed, grinning. “Nothin’ c’ud trouble a ginney’s conscience, annyway,” he scoffed. “But, accordin’ to that they must be a heap on me own!” Which observation sent his thoughts to Corrigan. “Begob, there’s a man! A domned rogue, if iver they was one!”
He passed the tents, smoking thoughtfully. He paused when he came to the small buildings scattered about at quite a distance from the tents, then left the tracks and made his way through the deep alkali dust toward them.
“Whativer wud Corrigan be askin’ about the dynamite for? ‘How much do ye kape av it?’ he was askin’. As if it was anny av his business!”
He stopped puffing at his pipe and stood rigid, watching with bulging eyes, for he saw the door of the dynamite shed move outward several inches, as though someone inside had shoved it. It closed again, slowly, and Carson was convinced that he had been seen. He was no coward, but a cold sweat broke out on him and his knees doubled weakly. For any man who would visit the dynamite shed around midnight, in this stealthy manner, must be in a desperate frame of mind, and Carson’s virile imagination drew lurid pictures of a gun duel in which a stray shot penetrated the wall of the shed. He shivered at the roar of the explosion that followed; he even drew a gruesome picture of stretchers and mangled flesh that brought a groan out of him.
But in spite of his mental stress he lunged forward, boldly, though his breath wheezed from his lungs in great gasps. His body lagged, but his will was indomitable, once he quit looking at the pictures of his imagination. He was at the door of the shed in a dozen strides.
The lock had been forced; the hasp was hanging, suspended from a twisted staple. Carson had no pistol—it would have been useless, anyway.
Carson hesitated, vacillating between two courses. Should he return for help, or should he secrete himself somewhere and watch? The utter foolhardiness of attempting the capture of the prowler single handed assailed him, and he decided on retreat. He took one step, and then stood rigid in his tracks, for a voice filtered thinly through the doorway, hoarse, vibrant:
“Don’t forget the fuses.”
Carson’s lips formed the word: “Trevison!”
Carson’s breath came easier; his thoughts became more coherent, his recollection vivid; his sympathies leaped like living things. When his thoughts dwelt upon the scene at the butte during Trevison’s visit while the mining machinery was being erected—the trap that Corrigan had prepared for the man—a grim smile wreathed his face, for he strongly suspected what was meant by Trevison’s visit to the dynamite shed.