setting her down, "but we did. I
carried you across while you had yore eyes shut. I told you you'd
never know what was happenin'."

She sat down limply on the ground. Racey started back across the
stringer to get the horse. He hurried, too. That posse they had seen
in the valley! There was no telling where it was. It might be four
miles away, or four hundred yards.

"C'mon, feller," said Racey, picking up the reins of the tired horse.
"And for Gawd's sake pick up yore feet! If you don't that dynamite is
gonna make one awful mess at the bottom of the canon."

Dynamite! Mess! There was an idea. Although in order to spare Molly
an extra worry for the time being, he had told her they would push on
together, it had been his intention to hold the bridge with his rifle
while Molly rode alone to the Cross-in-a-box for help. But those
six sticks of dynamite would simplify the complex situation without
difficulty.

He did not hurry the horse. He merely walked in front holding the
bridle slackly. The horse followed him as good as gold--and picked up
his feet at nearly every spike. Once or twice a hind hoof grazed a
spike-head with a rasping sound that sent Racey's heart bouncing up
into his throat. Lord, so much depended on a safe passage!

For the first time in his eventful life Racey Dawson realized that he
possessed a full and working set of nerves.

When they reached firm ground Racey flung the reins to Molly.

"Unpack the dynamite," he cried. "It's in the slicker."

With his bowie he began furiously to dig under the end of the stringer
where it lay embedded in the earth. Within ten minutes he had a hole
large enough and long enough to thrust in the whole of his arm. He
made it a little longer and a little wider, and at the end he drove an
offset. This last that there might be no risk of the charge blowing
out through the hole.

When the hole was to his liking, he sat back on his haunches and
grabbed the dynamite sticks Molly held out to him. With strings cut
from his saddle, he tied the sticks into a bundle. Then he prepared
his fuse and cap. In one of the sticks he made a hole. In this hole he
firmly inserted the copper cap. Above the cap he tied the fuse to the
bundle with several lappings of a saddle-string.

"There!" he exclaimed. "I guess that cap will stay put. You and the
hoss get out of here, Molly. Go along the trail a couple of hundred
yards or so. G'on. Get a move on. I'll be with you in a minute. Bette