Explore "Red Mesa" by Warren H. Miller on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
As Sid's scattered wits returned to connected thought, after the first few moments following that stunning detonation, his mind and his hopes went out first to Scotty. How _could_ he and the Apaches down there have survived, right in the storm center of that explosion? For a time he dared not even call out, nor was there the least sound of human beings alive down there to reassure him. Not even a faint groan came up to his listening ears.
Still there was at least a ray of hope. That white glare of the explosion had come out like the flare from the mouth of a cannon. The tunnel, in fact, _was_ a vast stone cannon. Vasquez, true to Sid's diagnosis of the Latin mind, had planned his coup logically, had thrown the bundle of dynamite sticks fair and true right into the mouth of the cave where it would do the most damage. But he had not reckoned on the laws of mechanics, the immutable principles of action and reaction. For the forces of that explosion had blown right back upon him who had thrown the charge. It had rent him to bits, and Sid had seen enough to be sure that the victim had been the rash Vasquez himself.