gain.

He straightened. He took a last look at the snapping, sparkling,
smoldering fuse, then flung his burden full down upon the spot where
the Mexicans were again pointing their guns at him. Swiftly picking up
the second canister, while bullets whined by, he cast it down after
the first. A glimpse of startled faces he had, of men attempting to
scatter from before the huge missiles, then he flung himself full
length upon the dam.

Interminably time seemed to stretch itself out as lying there he
listened, waited, sought to brace himself for the impending shock. A
quick doubt assailed his mind. Had the charges failed.

All at once the earth seemed rent by a roar that shook the very dam.
Followed instantly a second volume of sound more terrific, more
blasting in its quality, more dreadful in its power, deafening,
stunning, as if the world had erupted.

"Their dynamite!" Weir breathed to himself.

His ear-drums appeared to be broken. His hat was gone. His body ached
from the tremendous dispersion of air. But that he could still hear he
discovered when through his shocked auditory nerves he distinguished,
as if far off, faint booming echoes from the hills.

He got to his knees, finally to his feet. Pressing his hands to his
head he gazed slowly about. Stones and a rain of earth were still
falling, as if from a meteoric bombardment. About him he perceived
sections of woodwork shaken to pieces, collapsed.

Stepping to the edge of the dam he peered downward. A vast hole showed
in the earth before the wall though the wall itself was uninjured and
only smeared with a layer of soil. Huge rocks lay where there had been
none before, uprooted and flung aside by the explosion, dispersed by
the gigantic blast. On the hillside half a dozen men were picking
themselves up and struggling wildly to flee. Nearer, a few other forms
lay in the moonlight mangled and still, or mangled, and writhing in
pain. Of all the rest--nothing.

Almost completely Burkhardt's predatory band had been blotted out.
Weir's thunderbolt had struck down into its very heart, and it had
vanished.

As he turned and walked towards the end of the dam, he staggered a
little. The sight had shaken even his iron nerve.

CHAPTER XXVII

WEIR STRIKES WHILE THE IRON IS HOT

In his runabout, with Sheriff Madden at his side, and followed by
Atkinson and half a dozen men for guards in two other machines, Weir
sped along the road to San Mateo. They carried