Before he ended, before Keating had more than taken a step forward, a lump of rock shivered the little window and crashed into the lamp--it was out for keeps. A howl followed this exhibition of marksmanship, and, following that, a volley of stones smashed against the side of the shack thick and fast as hail--then the onrush of feet. Spirlaw’s revolver cut the black with a long, blinding flash, then another, and another. Screams and shrieks answered him, but it did not halt the Polacks. In a mob they rushed the door. Spirlaw sprang back, trying to close it after him; instead, a dozen hands grasped and half wrenched it from its hinges. “Lie down on the floor, Spirlaw, _quick!_”--it was Keating’s voice, punctuated with a cough. The next instant his gun barked, playing through the doorway like a gatling. From the floor the road boss joined in. The mob wavered, pitched swaying this way and that, then broke and ran, struggling with each other to get out of the line of fire. “Hurrah!” cried Keating. “I guess that will hold them.” “‘Tain’t begun,” was Spirlaw’s grim response. “Where’s them cartridges?” “On the table--got them?” “Yes,” said Spirlaw, after a minute’s groping. “Here, put a box in your pocket.” “What are they up to now?” asked Keating as, in the silence that had fallen, they reloaded and listened. “God knows,” growled Spirlaw; “but I guess we’ll find out quick enough.” As he spoke, from a little distance away, came the splintering crash of woodwork--then silence again. “That’s the storehouse,” Spirlaw snarled. “They’re after the bars an’ anything else they can lay their hands on. Guess they weren’t countin’ on our havin’ anything more than our fists to fight with, guess they weren’t.” Keating’s only reply was a cough. The minutes passed, two, three, five of them. Once outside sounded what might have been the stealthy scuffle of feet or only a storm-sound so construed by the imagination. Then, from the direction of the riverbed, sudden, sharp, came a terrific roar. “My God!” yelled Spirlaw. “There’s the trestle gone--they’ve blown it up! They’re sure to have laid a fuse here, too. Get out of here quick! Fool that I was, I might have known it was the _dynamite_ they were after.” Both men were scrambling for the door as he spoke. They reached it not an instant too soon. The ground behind them lifted, heaved; the walls, the roof of the shack rose, cracked like eggshells, and scattered in flying pieces--and the mighty, deafening detonation of the explosion echoed up and down the gorge, echoed again--and died away. The mob caught sight of them as they ran and, foiled for the moment, sent up a yell of rage--then started in pursuit. “Make for the cut,” shouted Spirlaw. “We can hold them off there behind the rocks.”