er,"
fuse and caps were kept under a huge, black boulder between the tunnel
portal and the dugout. On the third day he also gathered wood and
helped himself to two sticks of dynamite, three caps and eighteen
inches of fuse. Not enough to be missed unless they checked their
supply more carefully than Casey believed they did; but enough for
Casey's purpose nevertheless.

That night, while the moon shone in through the dingy window at the
head of his bunk and gave him a little light to work by, Casey sat up
in bed and snored softly and with a soothing rhythm while he cut a
stick of dynamite in two, capped five inches of fuse for each piece
working awkwardly with his one good hand and pinching the caps tight
with his teeth, which might have sent him with a bang into Kingdom
Come--and very carefully worked the caps into the powder until no more
than three inches of fuse protruded from the end of the half stick. It
would have been less dangerous to land with a yell in the middle of the
floor and fight the three men with one bare hand, but Casey's courage
never turned a hair.

Still snoring mildly, he held up to the moonlight two deadly weapons
and surveyed them with much satisfaction. They would not be so quick,
as fiction would have them, but if his aim was accurate in throwing,
they would be deadly enough. Moreover, he could count with a good deal
of certainty upon a certain degree of terror which the sight of them in
his hand would produce.

When Casey Ryan cooked breakfast next morning, he carried two
half-sticks of loaded dynamite under his hand in the sling. Can you
wonder that even he shied at standing over the stove cooking hot cakes
and complained that his broken hand pained him a lot and that the heat
made it worse? But a shrewd observer would have noticed on his face
the expression of a cat that has been shut in the pantry over night.

Joe volunteered to take another look at the hand and see if blood
poison was "setting in"; but Casey said it didn't feel like blood
poison. He had knocked it against the bunk edge in his sleep, he
declared. He'd dose 'er with iodine after a while, and she'd be all
right.

Joe let it go at that, being preoccupied with other matters at which
Casey could only guess. He conferred with Paw outside the dugout after
breakfast, called Hank away from the dish-washing and the three set off
toward the tunnel with a brisker air than usually accompanied them to
work. Casey watche