Prowers moved about making his preparations. The dynamite and the fuses already made ready were put in a gunny-sack. The tools were packed. Beneath his coat Jake put on a gaberdine vest, for it was possible that the weather might turn cold.
Presently both men were ready. The cattleman blew out the light and they passed from the cabin into the starry night.
They did not go direct to the dam. Prowers had in him too much of the fox for that. He would not leave tracks in the snow that might later take him to the penitentiary. Their footsteps followed the beaten trail that ran from the cabin to a road meandering down into Paradise Valley by the line of least resistance.
Half a mile from the point where they struck it, another road deflected from this one, leading to Merrick’s camp at the Sweetwater Dam. Into this they turned. The snow had been beaten down by scores of passing feet. The top crust did not break beneath their weights, so that no evidence would be left written there as to who had made this midnight trip of destruction.
Cig’s eye took in the ghostly white hills and he shivered. “Gawd, what a dump!” he groaned. His vocabulary was as limited as his emotions. He could never get used to the barren grandeur of the Rockies. They awed and oppressed him. They were too stark and clean for him. He struggled with a sense of doom. In cities he never thought of death, but premonitions of it had several times shaken his ratlike courage since he had been here. Twice he had dreamed that he was being buried in these hills and had wakened in a cold sweat of horror. He made up his mind to “beat it” for the Pacific coast at once.
They came down into the bowl where the dam was, skirting the edge of the timber to attract as little attention as possible in case a watchman should be on his beat. No sign of life disturbed the stillness. They crept to the tents and made a hurried survey. In one of them a man lay on a cot asleep. He was fully dressed. His arms were outflung and he was breathing stertorously. A bottle, one third full, stood on a small table close to the cot.
“Like I said, dead to the world,” Prowers commented.
He turned away. Cig swiftly snatched the bottle and slipped it inside his coat. He wanted a drink or two pretty badly, and, like enough, Prowers wouldn’t let him have them if he knew.
The two men crossed the dam-head to the gates.
“It’ll be here,” the cowman said as he put down the gunny-sack.