To this Lennon could make no answer. He turned again to stare at the big still. Fuel had been placed in the firebox, ready for lighting. Carmena knelt down before it and dipped her hand into the Indian basket. One after the other, she laid out the six sticks of dynamite and the caps and fuses that she had saved from Lennon's prospecting outfit. She looked up at him, gravely expectant. "You said you'd help us, Jack. I want this whole thing fixed so it will never make another drop of poison." "At once?" "No. They'd be sure we did it, and I figure---- Can you fix it so it will go off a quarter minute after the fire is lighted?" "Oh-h, Mena!" cried Elsie. "What you going to do? You know Dad always lights the fire." "Never fear, Blossom. I'll take good care of Dad. If Jack does what I want, there'll be no more of the nasty tizwin to make Dad cross and sick." Lennon found himself regarding the girl with rekindled admiration for her ingenuity and daring. "So this is why you saved the dynamite?" he remarked. "Will it not be dangerous--I mean, to anger that man Slade, you know?" "Anything to save Dad---- If you're afraid, just tell me how to fix it. I'll do the work and take all blame--if it fails. You can go back with Elsie and be able to swear you didn't have a hand in it." The girl's tone was as contemptuous as when, at their first meeting on the trail, she had jeered him into cutting across the desert with her. He looked the still over with a professional eye. The chimney stones were laid in mud plaster. But the stones of the firebox, or furnace, were loose. On one side they extended out in a rough platform that held the water-cooled vat of the condensation worm. From the two-foot space between the furnace hole and the vat Lennon began to pull out the stones. He was able to make a hole down to the solid stone floor. A crack gave opening enough to thrust the stiff fuse from the firebox into the hole. To make certain of results, Lennon used three pieces of fuse, which were attached with caps to the sticks of dynamite, in the bottom of the hole. He then put the stones back in their places. The ends of the fuses were hidden by the tinder of the fuel in the firebox. When Lennon stood up and dusted off his hands, no slightest sign was left to betray that the charge of dynamite had been planted. "There you are," he said. "The fuses are cut for fifteen seconds, and they will start burning as soon as the tinder is fired." "You're sure the boiler will be blown up?" queried Carmena. "Your dynamite is out from under it, and there's all the rock in the way." Lennon smiled at her ignorance of explosives. "The stones will double the destruction. After that charge detonates, there will be a hole in the floor, a good deal of shattered stone, and some splinters and shreds of metal. Everything in the room will be smashed. Is that satisfactory?"