"Smasher, we ought not to be foolin' with dynamite. Let's fergit about that," Joker said.

"You kin fergit about it if you want to. I'm gonna have a look. Some blastin' powder would come in real handy to finish off what's left of that there motor barn," Smasher told him. It came to me then that Smasher just might have a couple of marbles loose and rattling around in his head giving him those crazy ideas. Joker was right. Dynamite was dangerous stuff. A guy could get blown to smithereens or worse. Smasher started off by himself down the dirt road that led toward the powder magazine.

"Come on guys. Smasher's right! If there's any dynamite in the magazine, we might as well have that too," Wizzer spoke up. "Smasher is right! It might come in handy. Let's go!" The rest of us followed Smasher and Wizzer toward the powder magazine.

The powder magazine was locked with the biggest padlock I have ever seen. The hasps of that lock was set into a steel plate that was fastened to the building with rivets whose heads was the size of my wrists. That rig was a match for Smasher's hatchet and a whole lot more. Twenty minutes of steady pounding with our hatchets hadn't made so much as a dent on the lock. I decided to look around in the back of the building for something bigger that we could use to pound on that lock. When I turned the corner of the powder magazine, I noticed some cracks in the mortar joints between the blocks of the building. A cribbing block, which isn't anything more than a piece of hardwood that is cut four inches by four inches square and is about three feet long, lay on the ground at my feet. I picked it up and gave one of the blocks that ran along the crack in the building a tap or two with the butt end of the crib block. Thump! Thump! Plop. The block fell inside the building.

The rest of the gang was making so much noise with their pounding on the lock that they couldn't hear me. I gave a tap to three more blocks, and three more blocks fell inside the building. With just two or three taps with a crib block I'd made a decent hole in the powder magazine. I crawled inside. Those boys outside the building were sure making a terrible racket. Pranking isn't one of my specialties, but in one shiver it was done. Goose bumps popped out on my arms as an idea pricked my brain.

"Who is trying to break in here?" I screamed as loud as I could. That shout slipped from my throat before I could stop it. The magazine echoed. Things got quiet outside the building in an awful hurry.

"Cripes, there's somebody in there. Let's get out of here!" one of them hollered. I could hear them running. I poked around in the gloom and found one of the blocks that I had knocked loose. I sat the block on end and sat down, resting my elbow on one of the dozens and dozens of cardboard cases that was stacked in the magazine, and waited to see how long it would take for the other guys to come back. I chipped with a twig of wood at one of the blocks that I had pushed into the powder magazine while I waited for the other guys to return. Ping! -- Ping! -- Ping! Bullets began to ricochet off the building, followed by the sharp crack of rifles. Cripes! The guys was shooting at the building with their twenty twos. What a pickle I had gotten myself into. I figured I had better stick my head out through the hole that I had made in the rear of the building and let the guys know that it was me that they was shooting at. This here was a good strong building, but yours truly was getting awfully fidgety about those bullets that were flying around outside and slamming into the side of the powder magazine. I stuck my head through the hole in the back of the building and began to shout.

"Boys, it is me you are shooting at." Ping! Another bullet ricocheted off the building. I ducked back inside to what I hoped was safety. They must not have heard me. I tried again. "Guys, it's me, Squirt!" Ping! Ping! I knew then that it wasn't just a pickle I had gotten myself into; it was the whole crock and all. There was nothing for me to do now but lay low and hope I didn't get killed or worse. It wasn't long before I heard them coming back. If they were going to be shooting like that, I figured I would let them think they had hit something. I stretched out on the floor of the powder magazine and moaned, "Help me! Help me! I'm shot! I'm shot!"

"Where are you, Squirt?" one of them shouted.

"I'm here, inside the building. Come around the back," I moaned my best imitation of someone who's just been shot.

Smokey poked his head through the hole I had made and asked, "Squirt are you all right? Honest, we didn't mean to shoot you. We was only kiddin' with you. We knew that it was you that was inside here all along."

Smokey crawled through the hole. "Where at are you hit? Lemme see. Yer arm is bleedin'."

"Smokey, I ain't feelin' so good. Kin we jist get out of here." I staggered to my feet. "I don't think I'm bad hurt. I jist wanna get out of here n' see some sunshine."

"Make room fellahs. Squirt's been shot." Smokey crawled out through the hole in the building. I started to crawl out after him. Smasher grabbed me by the arm to help me through the hole that I had busted in the powder magazine. As luck would have it, he latched onto my arm right at the spot was it was bleeding. He jerked his hand back like he had been snake bit. The color drained from his face like somebody had opened a faucet in one of his shoes to let his blood drain out. Smasher was an expert at some things, but looking at someone else's blood wasn't one of them unless his fist had been the cause.

Smokey wiped the blood from my arm with his hanky and took a look at where I had been 'shot'. "It's only a nick, Squirt. You'll live." He wrapped my arm with his hanky. It was no bullet that had done that nick. I had scratched myself on something sharp when I had crawled into the building. I'd had that bothersome scratch before they had begun to shoot. It wasn't for me to tell them that though.

"Squirt, you rest here n' keep a lookout while we check inside to see if there's any dynamite in there," Smasher said. "Sing out if you see anybody." I could have told them that the dynamite was there. I had been sitting with my elbow resting on a whole case of the stuff when they had done their shooting. It wasn't long before they carried a box from the powder magazine. The markings on it shouted their warning for us and all the world to see: DANGER! DYNAMITE! There was some more fufaraugh writing on each case about not dropping it and storing it properly. We never bothered about that. We had seen what we wanted to see, our dynamite, and we had it.

Smokey crawled out and said, "There must be at least thirty cases er more of this stuff in there. We can't carry that much away at one time. What're we gonna do?"

"When we've got all the dynamite that we kin carry away, why don't we stack some of what's left of the dynamite against the inside wall where Squirt made the hole n' push the blocks back in place from the outside. Then we kin throw some of this brush against the outside of the building to cover the hole," Wizzer said. "Nobody's been around, n' besides, who's gonna check? The door's still locked, ain't it?"

"That's a good idea, Wiz. We kin come back tomorra' n' haul the dynamite up to the shack," Smasher said. "We should take what we kin today though. You never know what might happen between now n' tomorra'."

The rest of the gang began to haul the dynamite out of the magazine. They put me to standing watch. They didn't expect someone with a bullet shot arm to be hauling cases of dynamite around. It wasn't long before Smokey said, "Fellahs, we got eleven cases out here. There's only enough left inside to cover the hole that we made in the wall n' not have it look suspicious. Let's take ten of these cases to our underground cache n' use the other one fer testin'. We don't even know if this stuff is any good er not."

Smasher spoke up. "Smokey, How're we gonna test this stuff? We don't have no blastin' caps, n' I don't see any here. They must've took all the caps."

"We kin always do it like they do at the turkey n' ham shoots down at the Greek Church. You know. When they set a stick of dynamite against the hillside n' shoot at it with rifles, n' the guy that sets off the dynamite wins a ham er a turkey," Smokey told him. "We got our rifles. After we git them ten cases carried up to our cache, we kin come back n' have target practice at the other case."

With the prospect of shooting at dynamite in our heads we made quick work of carrying those ten cases of dynamite to our hideout. Smasher stacked three cases one above the other then picked them up and started toward our hideout as though he was only carrying three feather pillows. I could only lift and carry one case. Smokey, Joker and Wizzer each carried two cases. One trip to our hideout was all that it took to get all of the dynamite carried away. We hid the dynamite in our underground hideout.

"Don't worry about bein' able to carry only one case, Squirt. Every case counts, n' it was you that got us into the magazine in the first place. We got all of it lugged up here to the hideout and that dynamite is hid real good. Not even a chipmunk could find it," Smokey said.

Now it was time for the fun. We would shoot at the dynamite. We went back down by the mine office where we had left the case of dynamite that was to be used for our testing. The rest of the guys were discussing just how far away the dynamite should be placed from us when we shot at it.

"We're gonna be shootin' at a whole case of dynamite. I figure we ought to be at least fifty er sixty yards away. If it goes off, it's gonna make a pretty big bang," Smokey said.

Smasher had different ideas. He wanted to set the case of dynamite in the remains of the motor barn and shoot at it there. Smasher was concerned that none of the glass in the roof had yet been broken. To him, the destruction of the motor barn was not yet complete and he was determined that the rest of the glass should be "smashed so that the job was finished right." The motor barn was only twenty or thirty yards away from where we stood at the entrance to the mine office. Entirely too close to suit the rest of us. We took a vote. Smokey won out. The dynamite was to be set fifty or sixty good long paces down in the gully below the mine office. The guys who were doing the shooting would use the windowsills of the mine office for rifle rests. Smokey took the extra case of dynamite and carried it down into the gully below the office. He must have been as anxious as the rest of the guys to start the fireworks. Where he had put that case of dynamite looked to me like an awfully short fifty or sixty yards away. When he got back to the rest of us, I said as much. Every one of the other guys gave me a squinty-eyed look. Each and every one of them was in an all fired hurry to start banging away with their rifles at that case of dynamite so I clammed up. Nothing I said or did would persuade them to move it again.

Each of the shooters picked a spot at one of the windowsills. I wasn't shooting so Smasher said, "Squirt, you do the drill. It'll be, ready -- aim -- fire! Jist like in a firing squad! And nobody shoots before then. Understood?" There were nods all around. Everybody had his or her rifles loaded. They were ready. I took a seat on the doorsill that faced away from the gully where Smokey had put the dynamite and covered my ears with my cupped hands. If that dynamite went off, I figured that it would go off with a blast that would make a real close thunder clap sound like the squeak of a single solitary mouse.

"Ready!" I sneaked a look in their direction. The guys were ready. I turned away. "-- Aim! -- Fire!" I shouted. I didn't even hear the sound of their rifles going off.

Ka boom! The building rocked and shook. Chunks of plaster flew all around me. I shut my eyes. I figured the office was falling down around our ears. Dust and plaster blew around the office and out through the door where I sat like the wind was blowing a hundred miles an hour. I opened my eyes. Plasterboard hung from the walls. My ears rang. I couldn't hear. My eyes burned. The walls looked crooked. The walls were crooked. The mine office was going to fall down. I took one jump from where I sat and I was through the door and standing outside. Smasher staggered out behind me. His nose was bleeding, and he was covered with coal dirt and plaster dust from head to foot. Smokey and Wizzer staggered out. They were in no better shape. Both of them were coal black and grimy except for the whites of their eyes and the shiny, bright red that dripped from their noses.

"Where's Joker?" I asked. Smokey pointed at his ear. He was telling me that he couldn't hear me. I started toward the office. Joker was still inside the building, and that building was going to fall. Creeack! It groaned and took even a greater tilt than it already had, leaning still more with each creak and groan.

I ran up to the office and slipped through the door. Joker crawled toward me. "Are you OK?" I shouted. Joker nodded his head. I took him by the arm, grabbed his rifle, and helped him to his feet. We hustled through the door as fast as we could to the outside and fresh air. Creeack! Creeack! We were none to quick. Crash! The office fell. It was finished!

We sat, tired, bruised, and bloody on some stacked rail ties looking at the destruction we had created. Smasher began to laugh. That started it. There we sat, five fools, all of us as black as crows, sitting perched on a stack of ties cawing about something that could have gotten us all killed.

"Boys, we done two jobs at one time," Smasher laughed.

"What do you mean?" Joker asked. "That was no job. It was near suicide, n' what was the second job?"

Smasher laughed again and pointed toward the motor barn. We all looked. The motor barn had been blown down, too. It was nothing now but a pile of worthless rubble.

Then I heard them. "Guys! Listen! Ain't that sirens?" I was in the best shape of any of them so I ran over past the remains of the mine office to take a look down the road. Jiggers! Two state police cars was flying up the road that lead to the mine, sirens screaming and red lights flashing. I ran back past the other guys without stopping.

"Two cars. State Police. We better git out of here in a hurry," I panted as I ran past them. We all did exactly that in an awful hurry.

Luck was with us. When they had closed the mine, the owners had dumped a couple of truckloads of bony, which is nothing more than the reject stuff from the shakers in the tipple, onto the road to the mine. It was dumped about a hundred yards from the busted gate to the mine. The owners had done that to keep cars and trucks out. Those policemen, four of them, had to run that hundred or so yards from where their cars had been stopped by the piles of bony up a steep hill to get to the mine gate and where we stood. That fact gave us some extra time, a good chance to make our getaway. We needed the extra time. We were all in a pretty sorry state from what we had just gone through. There isn't anything better though for putting wings on a guy's feet than a bunch of cops charging up a hill toward him with pistols drawn and ready to shoot. We were off in a flash to our secret underground hideout. Those policemen were doing their best to catch us. There was no doubt in any of our minds about that, but they were no match for us. Scared kids can run faster than the wind blows in a hurricane, and we were surely scared. We reached our hideout, crawled in, and sealed the camouflaged trap door, pulling it into place behind us before the cops reached the woods. I'll give them this. Those cops were pretty fair at what they did.

All of us hunkered down in our hideout as quiet as mice. We rested, leaning against those ten cases of dynamite. We could hear the cops talking above us.

"Let's fire a couple of shots into the ground," one of them said, "Maybe that'll flush them kids out." They was standing right exactly over our heads; they had to be for us to be able to hear them talking so clearly. If they started shooting into the ground, one of their stray bullets just might hit one of our ten cases of dynamite. If one of their bullets did hit our dynamite, those cops wouldn't know about it and neither would we because all of us, including the cops, would be looking down from a far higher place at a hole in the ground that would probably reach half way to china. The blast that we had set off with just one case of dynamite would seem like small potatoes.

Bang! One of the cops fired a shot into the ground. That shot sounded like a cannon going off. Bang! Dirt dribbled down onto our heads. I was one scared young puppy, and I wasn't the only one. A body could smell the fear in our hideout. The air got real close in our hideout, and not one of us was breathing.

"You better save your ammo, Gus. If you do too much shooting, we'll have to make out a shooting report and you know how much of a pain in the ass that is." Lord, bless that policeman who told Gus to quit his shooting. "Those kids are probably long gone anyway. They can run like deer. Let's get back to the cars and make our report."

Silence was all we heard above us. We wouldn't be caught naked though. Nobody had to say it. We would lay low right where we were. Those cops just might be hiding, waiting for us to come back to the scene of the crime. It was a smart move on our part. We rested and got our wind back. None of us talked, not so much as a whisper. We heard footsteps above our heads again. It was the troopers. There wasn't one of us that didn't recognize their voices.

"Let's go. I can hear that damn car radio squawking. It's probably the lieutenant wanting to know what's going on here. Those kids are not gonna show up. I figured for sure that they'd come back to the scene of the crime," one of them said.

We looked at each other through the dim light that come down the hollow dead chestnut snag that we had rigged for air and nodded to each other. It wouldn't be long now before we would be back in the Lord's own sunlight. After five minutes had passed, with each second seeming like an hour, Wizzer cracked open the camouflage trap door and took a quick peek. The coast was clear.

"When we go out be ready to run, but let yer guns here," Smasher whispered. It wasn't necessary to run. The cops were gone. The guys did let their rifles in the shack though. A guy just never knew what else could blow in on an ill wind. When we had all crawled out of the hideout, we looked each other over.

"You guys look like you put in a shift of work in the mine. You are all covered with coal dirt," Joker laughed.

"Joker, you ain't exactly no knight in shining armor yer ownself. The way we look, none of us is fit ta go home. Let's go up to our swimmin' hole at the strip mine to take a swim n' wash some of this coal dirt out of our clothes," Smasher piped up.


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