“They’re running!” said one of the crew. “They must be on the run!”
“You bet they’re running,” agreed the old man. “The Three C’s hasn’t got money enough to hire men, to stand up in front of what’s tromping down toward Skulltree! Heavier and heavier on his heels!”
Measuredly slow, inexorably persistent, progressed the footsteps of the giant blasts.
Latisan’s men needed no eye-proof in order to understand the method.
The drive master was hurling the dynamite sticks far in advance of himself and to right and to left, making his own location a puzzling matter. The men had seen him bomb incipient jams in that fashion, lighting short fuses and heaving the explosive to a safe distance.
The blasts were nearer and still nearer, and more frequent; the ground quaked under their feet; in the intervening silences they heard the whine and the rustle of upthrown litter in the air, the patterings and plops of debris raining into the spaces of the deadwater.
Behind the attack was the menace of the bodefully unseen—the lawlessness of the fantastically unprecedented.
“I don’t blame the fellers with the guns, if they have quit,” commented Vittum. “They might as well try to lick the lightning in a thundercloud.”