"Stay in there if yuh want to!" a voice shouted outside. "Burn up, or take lead! It's all the same to us!"
The heat-tortured Scotty staggered to his feet and groped toward one of the plunging, screaming horses.
"Lead is the easiest way," he choked. "They'll get me, but I'm goin' to try and ride this hoss out o' here!"
"Wait a minute!" Kid Wolf cried. "All get yo' hosses ready and make the break when I say the word. But not until!"
Gritting their teeth, they prepared to endure the baking heat for a few minutes more. They did not know what Kid Wolf was going to do, but they had faith that he would do something. And they knew, as things stood, that they could not hope for anything but death if they tried to escape now.
The stable was a mass of flames. The walls were crumbling and falling in. The Texan gave his final orders.
"If any of us get through," he gasped, "we'll meet on the Chisholm
Trail—below heah. Ride hard, with heads low—when I say the word!"
Then Kid Wolf played his trump card. Upon leaving the store itself, he had taken a small keg with him—a powder keg. Until now, none of the others had noticed it. Holding it in his two hands, he darted through the door into the open! Bits of burning wood were all about him; flames licked at his boots as he stood upright, the keg over his head.
"Scattah!" he shouted at the astonished Hardy gang. "I'm blowin' us all to kingdom come!"
The Texan made a glorious picture as he stood there, framed in red and yellow. Fire was under his feet and on every side. The glow of it illuminated his face, which was stained with powder smoke and blackened by the flames. His eyes shone joyously, and a laugh of defiance and recklessness was on his lips as he swung the poised keg aloft.