"Oh, I brought a bunch of keys along. What are you laughing at? I thought one might fit." "Keys for a safe! Say, don't you know you don't open safes with keys? They've got combinations, safes have." "I didn't know it. How could I? I never saw a safe in my life till I saw this one to-night. I thought they had locks like any other ordinary--Oh, I think you're horrid to laugh!" "I'm not laughing. Lean over, and I'll show you.... There, I ain't laughing, am I?" "Not now, but you were.... Not another one, Racey. Sit back where you belong, will you? You can hold my hand if you like. But I wasn't such a fool as you seem to think, Racey. I brought an extra key along in case the others didn't fit." "Extra key?" "Surely--seven sticks of dynamite, caps, and fuse. Chuck had a lot he was using for blowing stumps, so I borrowed some from his barn. He didn't know I took it." "I should hope not," Racey declared, fervently. "You leave dynamite alone, do you hear? Where is it now?" "Oh, I left it on the floor in Tweezy's house when I found I didn't need it any longer." "Thank God!" breathed Racey, whose hair had begun to rise at the bare idea of the explosives still being somewhere on her person. "What was yore motive in hold in' up Jack Harpe and Jakey Pooley?" "Was that who they were? I couldn't see their faces. Well, when I had broken the lock and opened the back window and crawled through, I went into the front room where I thought likely the safe would be, and I was just going to strike a match when I heard a snap at the front window as the lock broke. Maybe I wasn't good and scared. I paddled into the other front room by mistake. Got turned around in the dark, I suppose. And before I could open a window and get out I heard two men in the front room I'd just left. I didn't dare open a window then. They'd have heard me surely, so I just knelt down behind a bed. And after a while, when one man was busy at the safe, the fat man came into my room and sat down on a chair inside the door. Lordy, I hardly dared breathe. It's a wonder my hair didn't turn white. Once I thought they must have heard me--the time the fat man said 'rats'. Honestly, I was so scared I was almost sick." "But you have nerve enough to try and hold them up." "I had to. When I found out they were going to rob the safe, I had to do something. Why, they might have taken the very paper I wanted, and somehow later Tweezy might have gotten it back. I couldn't allow that. I knew that I must get at what was inside the safe before they did. I just had to, so when the fat man got up from his chair and stood in the doorway with his back to me, I just gritted my teeth and stood up and said 'Hands up.'" "My Gawd, girl, you might 'a' been shot!" "I had a sixshooter," she said, tranquilly. "But I wouldn't have shot first," she added, reflectively. Willy-nilly then he took her in his arms and held her tightly.