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The sooner you gits out of 'em, the better it'll be fer you." Layson stood dumbfounded for a moment. Then he would have said some further word, but the mountaineer, his arm pressed tight against that old game-sack, stalked down the trail. Suddenly Layson understood. "Jealous, by Jove!" he said. "Jealous of little Madge!"
The mountaineer's slow mind had been at work with his great problem and he had quite determined that he would take some action, definite and unmistakable, without delay. He had leaned his ever-present rifle up against a stump, had laid the old game-sack, still burdened with the stolen dynamite, upon the ground, close to it, and was prepared to talk the matter out, to one end or the other.
He made a move as if to catch her arm; she darted by him, running straight toward the old game-sack. That burden in the game-sack had been a constant horror to him ever since he had first stolen it down at the railroad workings.
He sprang toward her with the mighty impulse of desperate muscles spurred by a panic-stricken mind and caught her, roughly, just before her foot would have touched and spurned the game-sack. "Stop!" he cried, in desperation. She was amazed that he should take so great a liberty. She stopped, perforce, but, after she had stopped, she stood there trembling with hot anger.
The thought then flashed into his mind of the dreadful contents of his old game-sack. "Th' bomb," he said. "Th' dynamighty bomb that I was savin' for th' revenuers! Let that finish out th' man as set 'em onto me!"
"Joe Lorey," she exclaimed, "you dare!" Now he was all humility as he let his hand fall from her arm. "It was for your sake, Madge," said he. "A stumble on that sack it mout have sent us both to Kingdom Come!" She looked at him incredulously, then down at the sack. "That old game-sack? Why, Joe, you're plumb distracted!" "I'm in my senses, yet, I tell you," he persisted.
The dynamite which he had stolen and which nestled in his game-sack comforted him, although he did not know how he would use it.
Many times, as he worked through the narrow trails, jumped from stepping-stone to stepping-stone in crossing mountain-streams, pulled himself up steep and rocky slopes by clutching swaying branches, or rough-angled boulders, he let his left hand slip down to the side of the old game-sack, where, through the soft leather, he could plainly feel the smooth, terrific cylinder.
The girl stepped up to the falconer, and with a quick turn of her wrist transferred her falcon to the hoop, where it quickly sidled off and nestled among its mates, who shook their hooded heads and ruffled their feathers till the belled jesses tinkled again. The other man stepped forward and bowing respectfully took up the hare and dropped it into the game-sack.
"T'other day I went down where they're blastin' for th' railroad. I see 'em usin' dynamighty, down thar, an' I watched my chance an', when it come, I slipped one o' th' bombs into that game-sack. Ef you'd chanced to kick it " She was impressed. "Dynamighty bombs? Dellaw! What's dynamighty bombs?" "It's a giant powder, a million times stronger nor mine."
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