As a matter of fact, two holes a day, one shot at noon and one at night, were the most Casey ever heard fired in the tunnel or elsewhere about the mine.-But he did not tell them any of the things he thought; not even Joe, who had intelligence far above Paw and Hank, ever guessed that Casey listened every day for their shots and could tell, almost to an inch what progress they were actually ****** in the tunnel.-Nor did he guess that Casey Ryan with his mouth shut was more unsafe than "giant powder" laid out in the sun until it sweated destruction.
Persistent effort, directed by an idea based solely upon an abstract theory, must be driven by a trained intelligence.-In this case the abstract theory that every prisoner must be watched must support itself unaided by Casey's behavior.-Not even Joe's intelligence was trained to a degree where the theory in itself was sufficient to hold him to the continuous effort of watching Casey.
Wherefore Paw, Hank and Joe presently slipped into the habit of leaving Casey alone for an hour or so; being careful to keep the guns out of his reach, and returning to the dugout at unexpected intervals to make sure that all was well.
Casey Ryan knew his pots and pans, and how to make them fill his days if need be.-With savory suppers and his care-free, Casey Ryan grin, he presently lulled them into accepting him as a handy man around camp, and into forgetting that he was at least a potential enemy.-Afoot and alone in that unfriendly land, with his left hand smashed and carried in a sling, and on his tongue an Irish joke that implied content with his captivity, Casey Ryan would not have looked dangerous to more intelligent men than these three.
They should have looked one night under the bedding in Casey's bunk. More important still would have been the safeguarding of their "giant powder" and caps and fuse.-They should not have left it in a gouged, open hollow under a boulder near the dugout.
They were not burdened by the weight of their brains, I imagine.
Just here I should like to say a few words to those who are wholly ignorant of the devastating power contained in "giant powder"-- which is dynamite.-If you have never had any experience with the stuff, you are likely to go out with a bang and a puff of bluish-brown smoke when you go.-On the other hand, you may believe the weird tales one reads now and then, of how whole mountainsides have been thrown down by the discharge of a few sticks of dynamite.-Or of one man striking terror to the very souls of a group of mutinous miners by threatening to throw a piece at them.-Very well, now this is the truth without any frills of exaggeration or any belittlement:
Dynamite MAY go off by being thrown so that it lands with a jar, but it is not likely to be so hasty as all that.-Whole boxes of it have been dropped off wagons traveling over rough trails, with no worse effect than a nervous chill down the spine of the driver of the wagon.-It is true that old stuff, after lying around for months and months through varying degrees of temperature, may perform erratically, exploding when it shouldn't and refusing to explode when it should.-The average miner refuses to take a chance with stale "giant" if he can get hold of fresh.
One stick the size of an ordinary candle, and from that to a maximum amount of four sticks, may be used to "load" a hole eighteen to twenty-four inches long, drilled into living rock.
The amount of dynamite used depends upon the quality of rock to be broken and the skill and good judgment of the miner.-In average hard-rock mining, from three to five of these holes are drilled in a space four-by-six feet in area.
A stick of dynamite is exploded by inserting in one end of the stick a high-power detonating cap which will deliver a twenty-pound blow per X--whatever that means.-From three- to six-X caps are used in ordinary mining.-Three-X caps sometimes fail to explode a stick of dynamite.-A six-X cap, delivering a one-hundred-and-twenty-pound blow, may be counted upon to do the work without fail.
The cap itself is exploded by a spark running through a length of fuse, the length depending altogether upon the time required to reach a point of safety after the fuse is lighted.-The cap is really more dangerous to handle than is the dynamite itself.-The cap is a tricky thing that may go off at any jar or scratch or at a spark from pipe or cigarette. You can, if you are sufficiently careless of possible results, light the twisted paper end of a stick of dynamite and watch the dynamite burn like wax in your fingers; it MAY go off and set your friends to work retrieving portions of your body.-More likely, it will do nothing but burn harmlessly.
Well, then, a piece of fuse is inserted in the open end of the cap, and the metal pressed tight against the fuse to hold it in place. Pressed down by the miner's teeth, sometimes, if he has been long in the business and has grown careless about his head; otherwise he crimps the cap on with a small pair of pliers or the back of his knife blade--and feels a bit easier when it is done without losing a hand.
You would think, unless you are accustomed to the stuff, that when five holes are loaded with, probably, ten or twelve sticks of dynamite to the lot, each hole containing a six-X exploding cap as well, that the first shot would likewise be the last shot and that the whole tunnel would cave in and the mountain behind it would shake. Nothing like that occurs.-If there are five loaded holes in the tunnel face, and you do not hear, one after the other, five muffled BOOMS, you will know that one hole failed to go off--and that the miner is worried.-It happens sometimes that four holes loaded with eight sticks of dynamite explode within a foot or so of the fifth hole and yet the fifth hole remains "dead" and a menace to the miner until it is discharged.