Devine remembered that there was no lid to the iron box in which they kept the detonators, and that they were intended to be ignited by the sparking of a fuse. He stood some little distance from the shack, and it did not occur to him that, as one person could carry the box readily, he was serving no purpose in waiting. Indeed, he was only conscious of a suspense that made it impossible for him to go away. He did not know how long he waited, but in the meanwhile the smoke whirled lower, and he could see nothing for a moment or two. Then it lifted, and the shack stood out in the midst of a lurid blaze. There was a horrible crackling, and Weston suddenly sprang into sight, black against the brightness, with the iron box, which had deer-hide straps attached to it, slung upon his back. The sparks rained about him, but he plunged through the midst of them, while the box banged against him. Then Devine turned and ran.
They reached the mouth of the adit safely, and when they crawled into it, Weston sat down and gasped heavily for a while before he turned to the others and pointed to the two bags of giant-powder lying on the floor. His duck jacket was burned in patches, and there were several red spots, apparently where sparks had fallen, on his blackened face and hands.
“Haven’t you sense enough to take that open lamp farther away from those bags?” he asked.
There was a roar of hoarse laughter as his companions recognized the incongruity of the question; and Weston blinked at them, as though puzzled by it, until a light broke in on him.
“Perhaps it wasn’t quite in keeping with the other thing, boys,” he admitted. “Give me some tobacco, one of you. Mine seems to have gone, and I feel I’d like to sit quiet a minute or two.”
The hand he thrust into his pocket came out through the bottom of it, for the lower part of the jacket was torn and burned; but one of the others produced a plug of tobacco, and when he had lighted his pipe Weston leaned back somewhat limply against the side of the adit.
“Well,” he said, “I suppose it was rather a crazy trick, but if we’d been sensible we’d certainly have let the Grenfell Consolidated fall into the hands of those city men.”
Then he turned to the storekeeper with a deprecatory gesture.
“I’m sorry, Saunders, but you would try to hold me. You ought to have known that you can’t reason with a man in the mood that I was in then.”
Saunders grinned. “I wouldn’t worry about the thing. If there isn’t a club handy the next time you feel like doing anything of that kind I’m going to leave you severely alone.”