It happens sometimes that four holes loaded with eight sticks of dynamite explode within a foot or so of the fifth hole and yet the fifth hole remains "dead" and a menace to the miner until it is discharged.
So please don't swallow those wild tales of a stick of dynamite that threw down a mountainside.

I once read a story--it was not so long ago--of a Chinaman who wiped out a mine with a little piece of dynamite which he carried in his pocket.

I laughed.
Casey Ryan, on the first day when he was left alone with his crippled hand and his pots and pans for company, did nothing whatever that he would not have done had one of the three been present.

He was suspicious of their going and thought it was a trap set to catch him in an attempted escape.
On the second day when the three went off together and left him alone, Casey went out gathering wood and discovered just where the "powder," fuse and caps were kept under a huge, black boulder between the tunnel portal and the dugout.

On the third day he also gathered wood and helped himself to two sticks of dynamite, three caps and eighteen inches of fuse.