"I'm not smart at handling hot stoves, and there's mighty little else in the place," Harry answered with a laugh. "I wouldn't bid a dollar for Webster's pans and crockery, and he made the table and the two chairs. Still, I don't know any reason why we shouldn't sling them out."
Just then the smoke rolled down about the boys in a blinding cloud; there was a great snapping and crackling, and a shower of blazing fragments drove them back thirty or forty yards across the clearing. Presently the smoke thinned, and a row of stripped trunks behind the house was outlined against a tremendous sheet of flame. Frank took off his hat and shook a few red embers from the crown of it.
"When we were getting those rags I noticed a keg behind them," he said.
"A keg?" said Harry sharply.
"A little keg. It looked thick and strongly made."
The red light struck full upon Harry's face, and Frank saw that consternation was stamped upon it.
"Then," he said, "it's full of coarse, tree-splitting powder. Some of the ranchers use it for blowing out stumps. Did you notice whether it had been opened?"
"The head seemed loose and one of the hoops had been started."
"Sure!" said Harry with dismay in his voice. Then he broke out in quick anger: "It's just the kind of thing Webster would leave lying around near his stove, without taking the trouble to head it up again. He'll have some detonators lying loose, too—I've heard he uses giant powder. We've got to bring them out."
They looked at each other with set faces while the sparks whirled about the house, and both were conscious of an almost uncontrollable impulse to vacate the clearing with the greatest possible speed. It was to their credit that they mastered it, and in a moment or two Harry spoke again: