Twenty times that day I climbed the windmill tower and looked one way for the outlaws and the other for the train, but got no sight of either. The track was mostly bare as far as I could see, but I knew that even if the chinook had reached so far east many cuts around where Lone Tree had been and west even as far as the last siding, No. 15, would still be half full of snow and ice which would need a vast deal of shoveling and quarrying before any train could come through. It was growing colder, and after the sun went down it began to freeze. I thought I could easily sit up till midnight, and after it was dark began patrolling the sidewalk like a policeman. The Indian had gone to sleep in his cellar. There was an east wind which felt as if it might bring snow. I was getting so tired that I could scarce drag my feet and was having another fit of the shivers thinking about the outlaws, when suddenly, as I stood in front of Taggart's, something popped into my head which I had not thought of for almost three months. This was the big can of powder inside the store. I forgot my shivers and ran to the hotel for the lantern. Then I had another look at the powder-can. It was like any tin can, only big, almost, as a keg. There was an opening in the top with a cover which screwed on. I was wondering if there was not some way that I could put the can under the floor of the bank and blow up the robbers if they tried to open the safe. I felt that the chances for beating them off again in a fight, with no fortifications, were very slim. You may think it strange that I felt so sure the robbers would come again, after having been beaten off once. I was not certain of it, of course, but I knew Pike was not a man to give up easily, and that he must have fully understood how much the snow helped to defeat them. I knew that since the weather had moderated a spy might have come in the night and discovered that I was alone and how defenseless the town was. I had heard of fuse, but it happened that I had never seen any in my life. I remember I thought it must be white and soft like the string of a firecracker. So I began to rummage through all the drawers and boxes for fuse. One of the first things I came across was a coil of black, stiff, tarry string, but I threw it to one side and went on looking for fuse. After I had hunted half an hour and found none, I gave up. As I stood there thinking, a good deal discouraged, my eye lighted on the black coil again. My curiosity made me pick it up, and on looking at one end closely I thought I could see powder. I cut off about six inches of it and touched one end to the lantern flame. There was a little fizz of fire and I stood holding it in my hand and wondering what it was doing inside, when suddenly there was a bigger fizz at the other end and a streak of fire shot down inside my sleeve to my elbow. I concluded that I had found some fuse.