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Updated: June 19, 2025
"It's a high-class burn," he said. "Going to save somebody quite a lot of chopping. But if that breeze whipped round there'd sure be trouble." As the men at work on the lode lived either in tents or rude shelters of bark and logs, this seemed very probable; but Weston was not in the mood to concern himself about the matter then. "How much giant-powder have we got in hand?" he asked.
As we were about ready to leave a friendly miner said: "You can't hook fish in the Colorado in the winter, they won't bite nohow. You'd better take a couple of sticks of my giant-powder along. That will help you get 'em, and it may keep you from starving." Under the circumstances it seemed like a wise precaution and we took his giant-powder, as he had suggested.
Then he rose abruptly. "In one shape or other the trouble you suggested is one we will have to face," he commented. "That's why I'm going to fire a big charge in the blasting heading to-night. You can bring the giant-powder along, Tom." Mattawa appeared to be amazed, and Gordon stared at his comrade curiously.
"It someway makes me think of a thing that occurred near Bullionville. I was called to Giant-Powder Gulch to give a man a decent burial. He had been on a three-days' spree, and then had lain all night in the wet where the horse-trough overflowed, and he died of quick pneumonia. Well, a man there told me the fellow was a stranger to the Gulch.
My nerves were already unstrung, and my trembling fingers unfortunately spilled the burning ember just as the old gentleman was about to stoop over it with his cigar. It fell between his knees, onto the head of the keg, rolled over, and dropped plumb through the bung-hole onto the giant-powder inside. This cured me of my bashfulness for some time, as it was over a week before I came to my senses.
"You can see it all over him. Learned all about mining back east in the cities, and couldn't sink a hole for a stick of giant-powder to save his life. Been down at Vancouver fixing up with the directors what they're going to tell the stockholders. Still, I guess he's not going to run this company's stock up very much." "How's that?" Weston asked. The man lowered his voice confidentially.
It was from them that he had received the greatest kindnesses he could remember. They were cheerful optimists; indomitable grapplers with forest and flood, who did almost incredible things with ax and saw and giant-powder. They lived in lonely ranch houses, tents and rudely flung-up shacks; driving the new roads along the rangeside or risking life and limb in wild-cat adits.
How many sticks of giant-powder have you rammed into this heading? As you know, it's apt to be a little uncertain." Nasmyth laughed as he glanced at the flaring lamp above his head. "There's a hole with a stick in it just at your elbow. I've been filling the holes as we made them. In view of what I expect those folks in the city are arranging, it seemed advisable."
Give him a patch of pine-scrub or a bit of poor soil in a sand-belt and he'd feel it his duty to cultivate it, no matter how much work it cost. Show him good wheat land lying vacant or rocks that block a railroad, and he won't rest till he starts the gang-plow or gets to work with giant-powder. He can't help it; the thing's born in him. Like liquor or gambling, only cleaner!"
This was a significant statement, for it must be explained that although giant-powder, as dynamite is generally called in the west, as a rule merely burns more or less violently when ignited by a flame, it is still a somewhat unstable product, and now and then explodes with appalling results on apparently quite insufficient provocation.
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