Man with No Name- Shooting Dynamite Fuse

The bounty hunter sniffed and suddenly barked, “Pipe down and keep your eyes open. I get a strong odor of fresh burned powder, and it smells to me more like blasting powder than gunpowder.”

They both saw it and yelled at the same time as a brownish-gray cylinder wrapped in greased paper came arching out from among the rocks, spitting sparks and trailing a plume of smoke. The horses shied as the object landed in the middle of the trail almost under their hooves.

Herkimer yelled and yanked at the reins, trying to swing his mount back and away from the deadly menace. The hunter’s hand flashed under the poncho and out again, holding his gun. The gun blasted and a half-inch of sputtering fuse whipped away from the dynamite stick, leaving another half-inch still unburned.

The hunter flung himself out of the saddle, snatched up the stick and lit the remaining stub of fuse from his cigarro. As it sputtered to life he hurled it with deadly accuracy into the pocket of rocks from whence it had come.

A wild yell of pure terror rose and was lost in the crash of the dynamite blast. This, in turn, was engulfed in an earth-shaking thunder as the boxes of dynamite and blasting caps blew up.

- The Devil’s Dollar Sign, chapter 19