The big fellow produced a three-foot steel chisel and held it in place while the man with the eye patch tapped it until the point was firmly seated in the granite. Then he handed the hammer back.

"Here you go, Kevin. Quickly, now."

"Are you certain smashing this tunnel won't hurt the boys working the main bore?"

"I'd stake my life on it. There are twenty feet of solid granite between us."

Kevin's was a common story in the West. Born to be a farmer before his family lost their land to the bank, he had toiled in the silver mines, until he got fired for speaking up in favor of the union. Riding around the country on freight trains looking for work, he had been beaten by railway police. Rallying for higher wages, he'd been attacked by strikebreakers with ax handles. There were days his head hurt so bad he couldn't think straight. Worst were the nights he despaired of ever finding a steady job, or even a regular place to sleep, much less meeting a girl and raising a family. On one of those nights, he had been seduced by the anarchists' dream.

Dynamite, "the proletariat's artillery," would make a better world.

Kevin swung the heavy sledge with both hands. He pounded the chisel a foot in. He stopped to catch his breath and complained about the tool. "I can't abide these steel hammers. They bounce too much. Give me old-fashioned cast iron."

"Use the bounce." Surprisingly lithe, the cripple with the eye patch took the hammer and swung it easily, using his powerful wrists to whip the steel up on the bounce, flick it back in a one fluid motion, and bring it hard down on the chisel again. "Make it work for you. Here, you finish ... Good. Very good."

They chiseled a hole three feet into the stone.

"Dynamite," said the old man, who had let Kevin carry everything incriminating in case the railway police searched them. Kevin removed three dull-red sticks from under his shirt. Printed on each in black ink was the manufacturer's brand, VULCAN. The cripple stuffed them one after another into the hole.

"Detonator."

"You absolutely certain it won't hurt any workingmen?"

"Guaranteed."

"I guess I wouldn't mind blowing the bosses to hell, but those men in there, they're on our side."

"Even if they don't know it yet," the old cripple said cynically. He attached the detonator, which would explode forcefully enough to make the dynamite itself blow.

"Fuse."

Kevin carefully uncoiled the slow fuse he had hidden in his hat. A yard of the hemp yarn impregnated with pulverized gunpowder would burn in ninety seconds--a foot in half a minute. To gain five minutes to retreat to a safe place, the old man laid eleven feet of fuse. The extra foot was to take into account variations in consistency and dampness.

"Would you like to fire the blast?" he asked casually.

Kevin's eyes were burning like a little boy's on Christmas morning. "Could I?"