"Vat for you dig mit all dot vork? It vill dake you poys a day und a half to git up unter dot shack. Vy not go in und raise dot floor und find dem sticks unter?"
Leslie tossed up his cap. "Three cheers for Uncle Jake!" he shouted. "That’s the very thing to do. We’ll get around to that signal blast sooner. Come on, Ross!"
It was Leslie who led this time, axe in hand, while Ross followed with hammer and shovel. The trail to the tunnel had been unused for days and was so deeply drifted that the boys had difficulty in getting up to the dump even with the aid of the shovel. Once on top they were obliged to shovel their way slowly into the tool house.
"Now," exclaimed Ross when they were fairly in, "now for work with these floor boards!"
Leslie, with many grunts, fell to clearing away the snow from the floor, while Ross pulled the big box in which the dynamite had been stored from the center of the shack into one corner.
"See here, Ross," cried Leslie excitedly as he bent to the last shovelful of snow. "We don’t need axe nor hammer. The McKenzies have done the work for us. The floor has been taken up and just laid back again without being spiked down. That box held the planks down pretty firmly, you see."
The floor consisted of halves of tree trunks, flat above and rounded on the under side. Eagerly Ross and Leslie raised the central plank and both cried out simultaneously, for the dynamite filled the space beneath up to the level of the floor.
"And to think!" muttered Ross, "that I have not thought of this before–didn’t think of it when I saw Sandy peering up here."
Leslie sat back on his heels and mopped his face. "Pretty cute of ’em to think of a thing like this," he conceded. "I should have taken the sticks as far away as I could have carried them had I been doing it, and considered that the farther I went the better for my plans."
"It’s Sandy," declared Ross. "Steele has told me a dozen times that he’s the brains of the clan."