Arizona republican., 1911-09-25
TheDynamiter
BY P. C. MACFARlANE
Copyright 1910, by The Pearson

How 1T already he had escaped.
 John might walk straight into deadly trap. He might blunder on one of those horrible banana clusters just as the flame of death shot out of 1t. He might be caught amid the debris in the wild moments following the explo- sions. and he torn to pieces by the aroused strike-breakers, or. what to John would have been infinitely worse, charged with the crime, arrested, tried and convicted of murder or of felony that involved half lifetime in prison. Worse than that, he would have en- tangled himself and his union in what he believed the most dastardly possible assault upon their own" interests, namely, the destruction of property. For while Martin could not in cold blood resort to physical violence in a battle with place-takers, he owned no such care for the life of a scab as he did for the integrity of the walls of the buildings in which he had learned his trade and where he had toiled for fifteen years, until he felt that they were his.
 Inside lay deadly risk and unknown chances, but Martin slipped quietly through the window The way was un- familiar. but he groped about till his hand touched a pulley and then a bit of rubber belting on which he swung to the floor He felt his way through q maze of shafting and machinery Once his hand clutched an electric light bulb swinging above lathe, but he dared not turn it on. At length he was in the open air.
 Two arc lights swung high in the center of the yard, but projecting cor ners of buildings threw spots and lines of shadow profusely about In one of these patches of darkness John crouched, breathless, for he had heard a sound in the boiler house. which was only fifty feet away, but barred by an area of light that was almost as bright as sunshine. Immediately he heard voices on his right. and plastered him. self against the wall as two men ap- peared, lolling lazily across the zone of light. Neither was one of the union watchmen. They stopped at the edge of the shadow and stood conversing idly in sleepy tones. while John hardly dared to breath, fearing for himself and for a repetition of that, to him, ominous sound from the boiler house
 After an age of waiting the men separated, one going back and one going on. As soon as he dared John edged around the circle of light and came up under a begrimed window at the side of the boilers. He pressed his face close and made out a glimmer of light. It was only for an instant as the shutter of a bull's-eye lamp opened and closed, but in that instant John saw the crouching figure of Holtzman with a bag upon his arm. John tried the window It was fast. He essayed the door. It too was unyielding. Holtzman must have come in by the front entrance, which was probably left unsecured. Martin darted back to this through the shadow. but just as ne would have rounded the corner, heard the footsteps of the watchman -eturning. The man stopped and stood ooking at the boiler house rather ,uriously, as if he had heard some hing there. For the fraction of minute, which seemed to John an hour, le stood regarding it, and then turned md walked directly toward 1t. He actually thrust his head in the open ioor and listened.
 John felt that he must have heard lis heart beating. and all the while vas himself praying that Holtzman would make no sound that could reach he listening ear. Satisfied at length, ;he man turned away, but fingered about the edge of the light spot in front for ten minutes, before finally Iuieting his own alarms and nov ing on.
 Instantly John slipped through the ioor, and as swiftly as possible made his way by the 10 him familiar pass age-for in his fourteen years in the plant he had seen those boilers one by one bricked into place as the insti- tuition grew in size-along the front of the boilers to the spot at the side where he had seen Holtzman, around this 10 the back. and there to the man. hole where. between the second and third boilers. the dynamiter would seek to do his work.
 The door was open. as he discovered in feeling for it with his hands, and the place within as black as an Egyptian tomb. He sniffed the air and detected the odor of something burn ing. Then his eyes made out feeble glow in the narrow way ahead of him. with now and then the faintest sput- tering flicker of light. A thrill passed through his frame. Icicles seemed to congeal along his spine. How long was that fuse? An inch? Or foot? Or three? Holtzman appeared to have got out and away. Martin thought of his wife. Her face. with a wisp of hair down from her care-worn brow,