r
leave my rifle."

Molly laid the Winchester on the grass beside him, mounted the horse,
and departed reluctantly. She did not like to leave Racey now. She
had burned out her "mad". She rode away chin on shoulder. The cedars
swallowed her up.

Racey with careful caution stuffed the dynamite down the hole and into
the offset. Then he shovelled in the earth with his hands and tamped
it down with a rock.

Was that the clack of a hoof on stone? Faint and far away another
hoof clacked. He reached up to his hatband for a match. There were
no matches in his hatband. Feverishly he searched his pockets. Not a
match--not a match anywhere!

He whipped out his sixshooter, held the muzzle close to the end of the
fuse and fired. He had to fire three times before the fuse began to
sparkle and spit.

Clearly it came to his ears, the unmistakable thudding of galloping
hoofs on turf. The posse was riding for the bridge full tilt. He
picked up his rifle and dodged in among the trees along the trail.
Forty yards from the mined stringer he met Molly riding back with a
scared face.

"What is it?" she cried to him. "I heard shots! Oh, what is it?"

"Go back! Go back!" he bawled. "I only cut that fuse for three
minutes."

Molly wheeled the horse and fled. Racey ran to where a windfall lay
near the edge of the cleft and some forty yards from the stringer.
Behind the windfall he lay down, levered a cartridge into the chamber,
and trained his rifle on the bridge head.

The galloping horsemen were not a hundred paces from the stringer when
the dynamite let go with a soul-satisfying roar. Rocks, earth, chunks
and splinters of wood flew up in advance of a rolling cloud of smoke
that obscured the cleft from rim to rim.

A crash at the bottom of the narrow canon told Racey what had happened
to that part of the stringer the dynamite had not destroyed.

Racey lowered the hammer of his rifle to the safety notch just as
the posse began to approach the spot where the bridge had been. It
approached on foot by ones and twos and from tree to tree. Racey could
not see any one, but he could see the tree branches move here and
there.

"I guess," muttered Racey, as he crawfished away from the windfall, "I
guess that settles the cat-hop."

* * * * *

The sun was near its rising the following day when Racey and Molly,
their one horse staggering with fatigue, reached the Cross-in-a-box.
Racey had walked all the di