, rolling over a moment later to lie with arms
and legs outspread.

"God!" said Ford, between his set teeth; "they saw who they were--they
couldn't help seeing! And there was no excuse for killing those poor
devils!"

But there was no time for reprisals, if any could have been made. When
Brissac rejoined the two in the forward vestibule, the stiff-bodied
snake with its tin head and trailing horn was crossing the second rail
of the intervening siding.

"We've got to think pretty swiftly," suggested Adair, still cool and
unruffled. "I might be able to hit that tin thing at this short
distance, but I suppose that would only precipitate matters. What do you
say?"

Ford could not say, and Brissac seemed to have become suddenly petrified
with horror. He was staring at the lettering on the box-car
opposite--the one under whose trucks the dynamiters were hiding.

"Look!" he gasped; "it's the car of explosives, and they don't know it!"
Then he darted back into the Nadia's kitchen, returning quickly with a
huge carving-knife rummaged from the pantry shelves. "Stand back and
give me room," he begged; and they saw him lean out to send the
carving-knife whistling through the air: saw it sever the head from the
stiff-bodied snake--the head and the trailing horn as well.

"Good man!" applauded Adair, dragging the assistant engineer back to
safety before any of the sharpshooters had marked him down. "Where did
you learn that trick?"

"It is my one little accomplishment," confessed the Louisianian. "An old
Chickasaw chief taught me when I was a boy in the bayou country."

The peril was over for the moment. The severed pole was withdrawn, and
for what seemed like an endless interval the attack paused. The three
besieged men kept watch as they might, creeping from window to window.
Out under the blue glare of the commissary arc-light the body of the
negro porter lay as it had fallen. Once, Ford thought he heard groans
from the black shadow where the fat cook had disappeared, but he could
not be sure. On the other side of the private car, and half-way between
it and the forty-thousand-pound load of high explosives, the petard
oyster-tin lay undisturbed, with the carving-knife sticking in the sand
beside it.

"What will they try next?" queried Adair, when the suspense was again
growing intolerable.

"It is simple enough, if they happen to think of it," was Ford's
rejoinder. "A few sticks of dynamite in a plugged gas-pipe: cut y