The Danger Trail

by James Oliver Curwood

Without waiting for a reply MacDonald walked swiftly in the direction of a ridge to the right. Already guards had been thrown out on all sides of the mountain and their thrilling warnings of "Fire--Fire--Fire," shouted through megaphones of birch-bark, echoed with ominous meaning through the still wilderness, where for the time all work had ceased. On the top of the ridge half a hundred of the workmen had already assembled, and as Howland and the superintendent came among them they fell back from around a big, flat boulder on which was stationed the electric battery. MacDonald's face was flushed and his eyes snapped like dragonflies as he pointed to a tiny button.

"God, but I can't understand why Thorne doesn't care to see this," he said again. "Think of it, man--seven thousand five hundred pounds of powder and two hundred of dynamite! A touch of this button, a flash along the wire, and the fuse is struck. Then, four or five minutes, and up goes a mountain that has stood here since the world began. Isn't it glorious?" He straightened himself and took off his hat. "Mr. Howland, will you press the button?"

With a strange thrill Howland bent over the battery, his eyes turned to the mass of rock looming sullen and black half a mile away, as if bidding defiance in the face of impending fate. Tremblingly his finger pressed on the little white knob, and a silence like that of death fell on those who watched. One minute--two--three--five passed, while in the bowels of the mountain the fuse was sizzling to its end. Then there came a puff, something like a cloud of dust rising skyward, but without sound; and before its upward belching had ceased a tongue of flame spurted out of its crest--and after that, perhaps two seconds later, came the explosion. There was a rumbling and a jarring, as if the earth were convulsed under foot; volumes of dense black smoke shot upward, shutting the mountain in an impenetrable pall of gloom; and in an instant these rolling, twisting volumes of black became lurid, and an explosion like that of a thousand great guns rent the air. As fast as the eye could follow, sheets of flame shot out of the sea of smoke, climbing higher and higher, in lightning flashes, until the lurid tongues licked the air a quarter of a mile above the startled wilderness. Explosion followed explosion, some of them coming in hollow, reverberating booms, others sounding as if in mid-air. The heavens were filled with hurtling rocks; solid masses of granite ten feet square were thrown a hundred feet away; rocks weighing a ton were hurled still farther, as if they were no more than stones flung by the hand of a giant; chunks that would have crashed from the roof to the basement of a sky-scraper dropped a third and nearly a half a mile away. For three minutes the frightful convulsions continued. Then the lurid lights died out of the pall of smoke, and the pall itself began to settle. Howland felt a grip on his arm. Dumbly he turned and looked into the white, staring face of the superintendent. His ears tingled, every fiber in him seemed unstrung. MacDonald's voice came to him strange and weird.

"What do you think of that, Howland?" The two men gripped hands, and when they looked again they saw dimly through dust and smoke only torn and shattered masses of rock where had been the giant ridge that barred the path of the new road to the bay.

Howland talked but little on their way back to camp. The scene that he had just witnessed affected him strangely; it stirred once more within him all of his old ambition, all of his old enthusiasm, and yet neither found voice in words. He was glad when the dinner was over at Thorne's, and with the going of the mail sledge and the senior engineer there came over him a still deeper sense of joy. Now he was in charge, it was his road from that hour on. He crushed MacDonald's hand in a grip that meant more than words when they parted. In his own cabin he threw off his coat and hat, lighted his pipe, and tried to realize just what this all meant for him. He was in charge--in charge of the greatest railroad building job on earth--he, Jack Howland, who less than twenty years ago was a barefooted, half-starved urchin peddling papers in the streets where he was now famous! And now what was this black thing that had come up to threaten his chances just as he had about won his great fight? He clenched his hands as he thought again of what had already happened--the cowardly attempt on his life, the warnings, and his blood boiled to fever heat. That night--after he had seen Meleese--he would know what to do. But he would not be driven away, as Gregson and Thorne had been driven. He was determined on that.

The gloom of night falls early in the great northern mid-winter, and it was already growing dusk when there came the sound of a voice outside, followed a moment later by a loud knock at the door. At Howland's invitation the door opened and the head and shoulders of a man appeared.

"Something has gone wrong out at the north coyote, sir, and Mr. MacDonald wants you just as fast as you can get out there," he said. "He sent me down for you with a sledge."

"MacDonald told me the thing was ready for firing," said Howland, putting on his hat and coat. "What's the matter?"

"Bad packing, I guess. Heard him swearing about it. He's in a terrible sweat to see you."

Half an hour later the sledge drew up close to the place where Howland had seen a score of men packing bags of powder and dynamite earlier in the day. Half a dozen lanterns were burning among the rocks, but there was no sign of movement or life. The engineer's companion gave a sudden sharp crack of his long whip and in response to it there came a muffled halloo from out of the gloom.