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"That's quite easy," said the storekeeper, with a smile. "I'll supply you with pork and flour, drills and giant-powder, at bed-rock figure, while you get in your assessment work, and while you live on your ranches afterward until you make a deal. All I ask is that you won't sell until the Grenfell's floated, and that you'll give us first call then.
He rammed the giant-powder into the holes with reckless haste, and, though the cheapest fuses are seldom to be relied on, he allowed his companions scanty time to get out of the mine when he lighted them. It was the same the next day, and for most of the next three weeks.
But you can't rip up those hills with giant-powder where you feel inclined, or set to work to root out some miles of forest. The Government encourages that kind of thing here." "And that's the charm?" "Yes; I suppose it is." "I'd better explain," Carroll interposed.
Gordon once or twice had been conscious of the same fierce desire. He could sympathize with Nasmyth, but, after all, he wished he would not bang the giant-powder about in that unceremonious fashion. "Leave the magazine yonder, and we'll bring it along," he cried.
One had to enter it before gaining admission to the smaller shed in which they kept the giant-powder. "You're not going in again? We've got one bag," he said. "The other one is still inside," was the hoarse reply. Saunders did not waste his breath in expostulation, but grappled with him, and he had rent part of Weston's jacket off his back in the effort to detain him when Devine came running up.
After that he lighted the fuse, and, clambering down the slope of rock, saw Gordon. "We'll get out of this. It's a short fuse," he said. Gordon, who was acquainted with the action of giant-powder, had no desire to stay, and they floundered as fast as possible over the driftwood and masses of shattered rock until Nasmyth drew his companion behind a towering fir.
Mattawa placed the giant-powder in the holes, and they crawled back, trailing a couple of thin wires after them, until they reached the strip of shingle near the gully, when Nasmyth made the connection with the firing-plug. A streak of vivid flame leapt out of the rock, and the detonation was followed by the roar of the river pouring through the newly opened gap.
"Boys, you'll get the last holes filled with giant-powder as quick as you can, and couple up the firing battery. We'll lift that rock right out when you're ready." He turned again to Laura. "I'm not sure you understand all that you have done," he said. "For one thing, I think, you have saved us from being beaten when what we have fought for was almost in our hand."
The mining speculators he called upon received him coldly, and although he had a warmer welcome from the manufacturers of giant-powder and rock-boring machines, they demanded prompt payment for their goods. When Thirlwell stated that this was impossible they told him to come again.
Devine did not stop to sympathize with his astonishment, but ran back to the shack, and Weston flung him a partly-filled flour-bag as he approached it. It fell close beside a glowing fragment, and the surveyor felt a little shiver run through him as he whipped it up, for he had some knowledge of the vagaries of giant-powder.
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