"No, give me the revolver," cried Pauline.
She did not wait for his protest, but drew from hilt coat pocket the pistol he had wrested from Wallace.
For an instant he looked at her with mingled admiration, love and fear. He opened the little window of the hut, aimed and fired three shots at the group of six men who were running down the cliff path.
"Into the tool house," ordered Balthazar, stopping only for a glance at one of his fellows who had fallen. The five gained the workmen's hut and burst the door open. Immediately from the air hole and the wide chinks in the sagging walls came a blaze of shots.
A small white dog ran down the path into the quarry, but no one saw it.
Balthazar was searching the tool-house. "Ha!" he exclaimed suddenly. "That is what we want!" He lifted from the floor a box of blasting powder. But the next instant he dropped it and sprawled, cursing, beside the half-spilled contents. Another man, shot through the body, had fallen over his leader.
Balthazar quickly recovered himself. He whisked about the hut and found a coil of fuse. The shots were still dinning in his ears while he fashioned, with the powder and the box and the fuse, a bomb powerful enough to have shattered tons of imbedded stone.
"Stop shooting," he commanded. "Here's a better way!"
As he suddenly threw open the door and dashed out, he nearly fell over the dog whining in terror. But Balthazar kept on. In a better business—with a heart in him—he would have been counted among the bravest of men. Running a swaying, zigzag course, in the very face of the fire of Harry and Pauline, he reached the hunter's hut and dropped the bomb beside it.
He did not try to return. With the long fuse in his hand he moved into shelter behind the hut, struck a match, lighted the fuse, and fled toward the river.