“How soon are they going to set it off?” Mr. Newton asked of a man who had one of the red flags.
“Then we’ll stay and watch it,” said Mr. Newton to Larry. “I can send an account of it to the paper. It will make good reading.”
The preparations went busily on. It began to rain again, but the men working at the dynamite explosion did not seem to mind it. They were too interested in the result of the experiment which might mean so much to all of them.
At last those bearing the red flags, at a signal from someone in charge, warned the onlookers farther back.
“I guess it’s going off now!” said Mr. Newton. “We’d better get away a bit.”
They retreated several hundred feet. While they were wondering whether they were far enough off there came a dull rumble and roar. The ground seemed to tremble and then, as they looked, they saw a mass of earth and rocks rise high in the air.
“Now let’s see if it does any good,” said Mr. Newton.
They looked to see if the big lake of water would become less as a new outlet was provided, but it did not. Either the dynamite had not been placed right, or the men had calculated too much on its power. At any rate, though a big hole was blown in the hill, near the ravine, there was still a large piece of earth between the gully and the imprisoned water. The dynamite had failed to do its work.
“Come on,” said Mr. Newton to Larry. “We’ll get some stuff off to the paper and then we can come back.”
Through the mud and rain they splashed to the hotel. There the reporter wrote up his story and sent Larry to the telegraph office with it, about a mile and a half away.
“I tell you what it is,” said Mr. Newton on Larry’s return, “we’ll have to get up a new scheme. It takes too long to go from the hotel to the telegraph office. I wonder how we can save time.”
“No, you run fast enough now. I’m not finding fault with you.”
“Why, I mean I could get a wheel here, and take the copy in on that. I could also get out to the dam, and you could follow. Then you could write the stuff there and I could rush it to the telegraph office right from the scene.”
“Good idea!” exclaimed Mr. Newton. “We’ll do it. But can you ride a bicycle in this weather?”
“I guess so,” said Larry. “I’m pretty good on one. Besides the roads are hard, and the rain hasn’t hurt them much.”