Gangway!

    Nervously, Francis paced back and forth, eyeing the fire alarm box and the Mint up at the top of the hill.

    Captain Flagway had remembered a bottle tucked away in his desk, and made it stand for both breakfast and lunch. There was enough left for di

    Sixteen additional guards piled into the anteroom, collapsing before they reached the second door.

    "I've got it!" Gabe cried.

    "We'll all be getting it," Roscoe said. Discouragement was becoming general.

    "Ittzy," Gabe said, "get the rest of the dynamite. All of it. Bring it over here."

    So while Gabe held the book open under Ittzy's nose, one finger tracing the words, Ittzy read with one eye and packed all the dynamite into a charge that he fixed to the face of the mangled vault door right behind the immobile handcart.

    Ittzy finished and stepped back, "Now what?"

    Gabe scowled toward the iron door. "Listen, what if there's guards lying across the tracks out there?"

    Roscoe said, "So we run over them."

    "No!" Vangie cried.

    "Vangie's right," Gabe said. "We don't want them after us for murder."

    Vangie said, "I'll go," and before anyone could react she was over by the steel door.

    Gabe rushed to catch her. "Wait a minute… wait a minute!"

    "What for?" She pushed the steel door open an inch. Gabe peered over the top of her head and saw that three of the guards were indeed sleeping across the tracks, broad smiles on their faces.

    Vangie pulled the door open just wide enough to slip through. Gabe crowded through behind her, and the two of them, holding their breaths, dashed into the anteroom, dragged the sleepers to one side, dashed back, slammed the door, and breathed.

    Roscoe said sourly, "You ready now?"

    Gabe smiled at him. "Sure… sure," he said lazily.

    "Then let's go."

    Gabe smiled. Then he frowned and shook his head to clear it. "I must've got a whiff of that stuff." He glanced at Vangie. "You okay?"

    She gave him a sleepy grin. "Hi, lover."

    "No, Vangie. Definitely not." He grabbed her arm. "Come on, snap out of it."

    "You bet." She kept on gri

    He put his lips close to her ear. "Think about how we're go

    The smile faltered.

    "Think about how we'll never get away with it, not in a million years; you warned us and we wouldn't listen to you."

    She was frowning again, irritable again. "That's right!"

    "That's better." Gabe turned back to Ittzy. "You all set?"

    "I suppose so."

    "Then let her rip." Gabe crossed to the steel door with two long strides. "Everybody take a few deep inhales and then hold your breath."

    There was a lot of huffing and puffing in the room for the next few seconds. Long sighs and heaves of breath. Finally Gabe nodded his head and flung the steel door wide open. A cloud of gas rolled into the vault room…

    Ittzy lit the dynamite and they all headed for the corners, holding their breath. Almost instantly the new charge went off.

    The blast filled the room with deafening noise and vibration. And emptied it of the handcart, which shot like a ca

    And Gabe, Vangie, Roscoe and Ittzy were ru

    They bolted out of the gas cloud and the pent-up breath exploded from their chests. They ran full-tilt, panting and straining, but the cart was way out ahead and it really wasn't any contest.

    The cart won.

    It shot right off the lip of the loading platform and crashed into the back of the waiting wagon. The blow shook the wagon loose in its tracks and started it rolling toward the main gate with the handcart's dumpbucket tilting over and cascading lumps of gold onto the driver's seat and into the footwell. Two or three ingots fell off and lay in the courtyard, glistening in the mist…

    Gabe, Vangie, Roscoe, and Ittzy were still ru

    The main gates stood wide open. The two guards there were momentarily paralyzed with disbelief. But now doors in the building began to crash open, and guards came pouring into the courtyard. Roscoe brandished his huge revolvers and fired three quick shots into the air. It made the guards hesitate, just that extra second long enough.

    Francis, the watch in his hand for the fifth nervous time, looked up in relief and delight at the sound of the shots. Turning, slipping the watch back into his pocket, he took two quick strides to the waiting fire-alarm box, yanked the handle, and took off at a fast clip for the pier.

    Up at the Mint the wagon was closing toward the gate. The ground was level here, so the wagon was gradually losing speed, trundling inexorably but not rapidly toward freedom.

    Gabe, Ittzy, Roscoe and Vangie were in its wake, strung out in a ragged line, gasping, ru

    Gabe caught the wagon. He clung frantically to the tailgate, his toes dragging in the dirt as he gasped for breath before pulling himself aboard.

    Behind him Roscoe had picked up a trailing Vangie and was holding her under his arm as he barreled forward, looking very nearly as powerful and inexorable as the wagon itself. Trailing the pack came Ittzy, still clutching the dynamite book in one of his pumping hands.

    Gabe, lying atop the jumbled ingots, reached back and down to the ru

    The guards were ru

    Ittzy scrambled over the tailgate, over Roscoe, over Gabe and Vangie, over the ingots, and finally reached the seat, where he grabbed the wagon-tongue as though it were a tiller, which it was. He didn't even bother to look at the brake, because with all this weight nothing short of total collision was going to stop this juggernaut.

    It was roaring right into the gateway. The gates were closing, but not in time. Guards were ru

    Out of the firehouse roared the great fire engine behind its magnificent white horses.

    The wagon full of gold and Gabe and Vangie and Roscoe and Ittzy gathered speed as it moved through the gates. A guard lunged for the side of the wagon and clung to it, his feet dragging, until Vangie removed her shoe and rapped his knuckles with the heel, whereupon the guard yelped and let go, and the wagon was through and rolling…