The Boys of Crawford's Basin Part 20

As it would not do to start too early, because people might be about, John waited till nearly ten o'clock, and then sallied out. As he rounded the corner of his shack a furious blast of wind, driving the rain before it, almost knocked him over.

"Good!" he exclaimed. "There won't be a soul out o' doors to-night."

With his head bent to the storm and his hat pulled down over his ears, John made his way through alleys and bye-streets to the edge of town, and then set off across the intervening empty s.p.a.ce towards the house where Joe and I were at that moment playing our last game of checkers.

As he approached, he saw dimly through the blur of rain the light of two windows.

"Good!" he exclaimed a second time. "Old Snyder not gone to bed yet.

Mighty kind of the old gent to leave his light burning for me to steer by. If it hadn't been for him I'd 'a' had a job to tell which was the right house. As it is, I've borne more to the right than I thought."

At this moment the town clock struck ten, and almost immediately afterwards the light in the windows went out.

"Never mind," remarked John to himself. "I know where I am now."

Advancing a little further, he caught sight of the dim outline of the house through the rain, and turning short to his left, he measured off one hundred steps along the empty street, a distance which brought him opposite the next house to the east.

All was dark and silent, as he had expected, but to make sure he approached the house and thumped upon the door. There was no reply.

Again he thumped and struck the door sharply with the handle of his knife. Silence!

"He's out all right," muttered John. "Was there ever such a lucky chance? Howling wind, driving rain, dark as the ace of spades, and Tom Connor not coming back for an hour!"

Dark it surely was. The night was black. Not a glimmer of light in any direction. Even the town itself, only a quarter-mile away, seemed to have been blotted from the face of the earth.

As he had noticed in coming across the flats that there were lights still burning in two of the other houses, the patient plotter, in order to give the inmates a chance to get to bed and to sleep, sat waiting on the leeward side of the building for a full half hour. At the end of that time, however, he arose, moved along a few steps, and then, going down on his hands and knees, crept under the house. Ten minutes later he came crawling out again, feet foremost. Once outside, he struck a match, and sheltering it in his cupped hands he applied the flame to the end of something which looked like a long, stiff cord about as thick as a lead pencil. Presently there was a sharp "spit" from the ignited "cord,"

blowing out the match and causing John to shake his hand with a gesture of pain, as though it had been scorched.

Next moment Long John sprang to his feet and fled away into the darkness; not straight across lots as he had come, but by a roundabout way which would bring him into town from the eastern side.

Then, for two minutes, except for the roaring of the wind, all was silence.

Joe and I were sound asleep on the floor of Tom's back room, when by a single impulse we both sprang out of bed with an irrepressible cry of alarm, and stood for a moment trembling and clinging to each other in the darkness. The sound of a frightful explosion was ringing in our ears!

"What was it, Joe?" I cried. "Which direction?"

"I don't know," my companion replied. "I hope it isn't an accident up at the Pelican. Let's get into our clothes, Phil."

Lighting the lamp, we quickly dressed, and putting on our hats and overcoats we went out into the storm. All was dark, except that in the windows of each of the occupied houses in the row we could see a light s.h.i.+ning. The whole street had been roused up.

"It must have been a powder-magazine," Joe shouted in my ear. "Or else the boiler in the engine-house of the Pelican. What do you say, Phil?

Shall we go up there? We might be able to help."

"Yes, come on!" I cried. "Let's go and see first, though, if Tom hasn't a second lantern. We shall save time by it if he has."

Our hurried search for a lantern was vain, however, so we determined to set off without one. As we closed the door behind us, our clock struck eleven, and a moment later we heard faintly the eleven o'clock whistle up at the Pelican.

"Good!" cried Joe. "It isn't the boiler blown up, anyhow, so Tom's safe; for he is working underground and the explosion, whatever it was, was on the surface."

With bent heads we pushed our way against the wind, until, looking up presently, I saw the light of a lantern coming quickly towards us.

"Here's Tom, Joe," I shouted. "Pull up!"

We stopped, and as the light swiftly approached we detected the beating footsteps of a man running furiously.

"Then there is an accident!" cried Joe. "Ho, Tom! That you?" he shouted.

It was Tom, who, suddenly stopping, held the lantern high, looking first at one and then at the other of us. He was still in his miner's cap and slicker, his face was as white as a ghost's, and he was so out of breath that for a moment he could not speak.

"Hurt, Tom?" I cried, in alarm.

"No,"--with a gasp.

"Anybody hurt?"

"No."

"What is it, then?"

"Scared!" And then, still panting violently: "Come to the house," said he.

Once inside, I brought Tom a dipper of water, which quickly restored him, when, turning his still blanched face towards us, he said:

"Boys, I've had the worst scare of my life!"

"How, Tom?" I asked. "That explosion? Was it up at the Pelican?"

"No, it wasn't; and I didn't know anything about it until I came up at eleven, when George, who was waiting to go on, told me there had been a heavy explosion down in the direction of my house. When he told me that, there rushed into my head all of a sudden an idea which nearly knocked me over--it was like a blow from a hammer. I grabbed the lantern, which I had just lighted, and ran for it. Can you guess what I expected to find?"

We shook our heads.

"I expected to find my house blown to pieces, and you two boys lying dead out in the rain!"

We stared at him in amazement.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Look here, boys," Tom went on. "When George Simpson told me there had been an explosion down this way, it came into my head all at once that Yetmore or Long John--probably Long John--had heard that I was out at work to-night, and not knowing that you were staying the night with me, had come and wrecked my house."

"But why should they?" Joe asked.

"So as to prevent my raising money on it, and so keep me tied up in town while they skipped out to look for that vein of galena. I'm glad to find I was wrong. I did 'em an in----"

He stopped short, and following his gaze, we saw that he was staring at the second window.

"When did you put that in?" he cried.

"Just after you left. We finished by nine o'clock."

"How soon did you go to bed?"