"What is it?" she cried to him. "I heard shots! Oh, what is it?"
"Go back! Go back!" he bawled. "I only cut that fuse for three minutes."
Molly wheeled the horse and fled. Racey ran to where a windfall lay near the edge of the cleft and some forty yards from the stringer. Behind the windfall he lay down, levered a cartridge into the chamber, and trained his rifle on the bridge head.
The galloping horsemen were not a hundred paces from the stringer when the dynamite let go with a soul-satisfying roar. Rocks, earth, chunks and splinters of wood flew up in advance of a rolling cloud of smoke that obscured the cleft from rim to rim.
A crash at the bottom of the narrow cañon told Racey what had happened to that part of the stringer the dynamite had not destroyed.
Racey lowered the hammer of his rifle to the safety notch just as the posse began to approach the spot where the bridge had been. It approached on foot by ones and twos and from tree to tree. Racey could not see any one, but he could see the tree branches move here and there.
"I guess," muttered Racey, as he crawfished away from the windfall, "I guess that settles the cat-hop."
* * * * *
The sun was near its rising the following day when Racey and Molly, their one horse staggering with fatigue, reached the Cross-in-a-box. Racey had walked all the distance he was humanly able to walk, but even so the horse had carried double the better part of twenty miles. It had earned a rest.
So had Racey's feet.