The last workman yielding to temptation, free from supervision for the
moment, had run down the bank to meet the train, get mail, see who had
come. Lying not a dozen feet away from Joe on their grey blanket were
the sticks of dynamite.

Lithe, quick and silent as one of the mountain wild-cats he had so often
trailed through his domain, he slipped down from his stump, caught up a
stick of the explosive, tucked it carefully into his game-bag, took his
place again upon the stump, impassive, calm, apparently quite unexcited.

When the men came trooping back, opening letters, tearing wrappers from
their newspapers, gossipping, he still sat on the stump as they had left
him. Not one of them suspected that he once had left it.

"Bright and lively as a cigar-store Indian," he heard one care-free
youth exclaim as he went by him.

He did not know what the man meant; he had never seen a cigar-store
Indian; but he knew a jibe was meant. It did not anger him, as it would
have done, a few moments earlier. Now he had exacted his small tribute.
They could stare at him and jibe, if they were so inclined. Hidden
carefully there in his game-bag was one of their own weapons for their
fight against the wilderness, which, in course of time, might be a
weapon of the wilderness in fighting against some of them.

Presently he climbed down from the stump and strolled back along the raw
embankment toward the little group still standing near the train which
had arrived.