grunting like a grampus, a threat in every grunt.

It was a long, low, windowless building, and halfway up its length was
the door--Noodles had known the door to be unlocked at nights for the
purpose of loading rush material for the bridge gangs in the mountains
to go out by the early morning freight west at 4.10--and his hope lay
in the door being open now. The place was full to the ceiling with
boxes, bales, casks, barrels and kegs, and amongst them in the
darkness, being of small dimensions himself, he could soon lose Regan.
He reached the door, snatched at the latch--the door was unlocked--and
with an uplift immeasurable upon his young soul, that gave vent to
itself in a hoot of derision, Noodles flung himself inside.

Regan, still panting earnestly, the beads on his brow now embryonic
fountain-heads that sent trickling streams down his face, lurched,
pretty well winded, through the door five yards behind Noodles--and
then Regan stopped--and the thought of Noodles was swept from Regan's
mind in a flash.

The smell of smoke was in his nostrils, and like a white, misty cloud
in the darkness it hung around him--and through it, up toward the far
end of the shed, a fire showed yellow and ugly, that with a curious,
hissing, sibilant sound flared suddenly bright, then died to yellow
ugliness again.

Grim-faced now, his jaws clamped hard, Regan sprang forward toward the
upper end of the shed. What was afire, he did not know, nor what had
caused it--though the latter, probably, by a match dropped maybe hours
ago by a careless Polack, that had caught and set something smoldering,
and that was now breaking into flame. All Regan knew, all Regan
thought of then, was the--_powder_. There were fifty kegs of giant
blasting powder massed together there somewhere ahead, and just beyond
where the fire was flinging out its challenge to him--enough to wreck
not only the shed, but half the railroad property in Big Cloud as well.

Up the little handcar tracks between the high-piled stores Regan
ran--and halted where a spurt of flame, ending in a vicious puff of
smoke, shot out beside him, low down on the ground. It was light
enough now, and in a glance the master mechanic caught the black grains
of powder strewing the floor where a broken keg had been rolled along.
A little alleyway had been left here running to the wall, and the fire
itself was bursting from a case in the rear and bottom tier of stores
on one side of this; on