Weimer, lured out of the shack by the dimness of the light and the enjoyment of the undertaking, went with the boys and did his share in the "packing" of the sticks unurged. It was he who, with an accession of unusual keenness, planted the charge in a shallow cave with a mass of rock perilously overhanging the entrance. "Ve vant ein noise," he chuckled, "ein pig racket. It shall pe heard in Miners'." A few moments later they had the noise, all they had planned for, and then a noise that no one had foreseen save Weimer, and he had not explained his expectations. While the long fuse was burning, the three spectators had retreated to the middle of the valley and faced about expectantly. There came a fearful detonation which awakened the echoes on every hand and the vast rock with a dozen of its neighbors was lifted like lumps of clay and hurled into the valley amid a cloud of snow and ice. Some of the fragments landed almost at the feet of the spectators. The echoes had not died away before Weimer, yelling, "Ve may not pe out of de vay far," turned and made his clumsy but rapid way on snow-shoes further from the scene of the explosion. The boys were following him blindly and excitedly when, in the clouds fairly over their heads, came a sound that neither had ever heard before, a wrenching, grinding, tearing sound which caused Ross's hair to stir under his cap. "Can th-that be thunder?" he stammered running. Weimer looked over his shoulder at the mountain. "You haf neber an avalanche seen, hein!" he cried, and stopping, faced the other way again. Down into view below the low hanging clouds it swept its terrible way, that avalanche which the trembling of the mountain had caused, the work of the dynamite. With a swift overwhelming rush it crumbled the rocks and, uprooting great trees, bore them easily on its bosom. Into the valley it debouched, carrying with it the wreckage from the mountainside. Ross and Leslie looked at each other with white faces when the roar and grind and rush finally ceased. "Suppose," suggested Ross huskily, "we had set that blast off on old Crosby." Both boys looked at the mountain overhanging the tunnel above their shack, and Ross shivered. "It would have been good-bye to the tunnel and the shack and us too, I guess," muttered Leslie. "I told you," declared Weimer, "vat vould happen, hein? I told you last nicht. Now ein avalanche you haf seen." Neither boy contradicted his first statement. With the last they agreed rather breathlessly, for an avalanche they surely had seen! "I hope," said Ross carelessly as they entered their shack, "that the McKenzies are still in Miners' and that they heard that blast!" CHAPTER XIV A PERILOUS JOURNEY