“Is anybody hurt?” gasped Hashknife, scratching a match and holding it above his head. Nanah was sitting against the wall, her eyes goggling out of an impassive face. Marion had got to her feet and was reaching for something to steady herself with, while Jimmy had backed against the wall, his arms outspread against it, his feet braced.
“What was it?” whispered Marion, staring wide-eyed at Hashknife.
“Somebody dynamited us, I reckon.” He strode to the door and flung it open, while the others crowded close behind him. Where once had stood the adobe bunk-house, there was only a pile of adobe bricks, twisted timbers. The patio was a mass of adobe. On the porch of the ranch-house was the splintered door, torn from its hinges and flung across the patio.
Hashknife ran across the yard, vaulted across the débris and went out through a gaping hole in the patio wall, heading for the stables. Through some freak of dynamite explosion, the force seemed to have been in the opposite direction to the stables, with the result that none of the stock was injured, and the stable still intact.
It did not take Hashknife long to find that nothing had been injured in the stable. A decidedly feminine shriek from the patio sent him running back through the broken wall, where he almost ran into Apollo, the ancient burro.
“He was under that pile of stuff,” yelled Sleepy. “Rised up like a darned ghost and almost scared Marion to death.”
Marion was laughing foolishly, almost hysterically.
“—— good thing I see man,” declared Nanah solemnly.
“You bet it was!” agreed Hashknife warmly. “If yuh didn’t see that man, we’d be in bad shape now, Nanah. Good gosh! Can yuh imagine what would ’a’ happened to us, if we’d ’a’ been in that bunk-house?”
“Yeah, and we’d better look a little out,” said Sleepy nervously. “The little sidewinder that touched off that blast will prob’ly want to see if he done a good job.”