the engine backed it down around the mesa toward the viaduct twenty
miles below. Rodney and Winters prepared to go with Miss Illingworth
across the wooded island, with its cresting of stone, so to speak,
that lay between the ravine and the valley. The conductor of the
train, a local employee of the railroad, told them that the shortest
way was directly over the mesa. The sandstone of which this huge
mound was mainly composed had been broken and disintegrated on all
sides by centuries of erosion and weathering and there were
practicable ascents and descents at both ends. The nearest ascent
was at the side of the big tableland directly opposite which the car
was placed.
The trails through the pines which covered the hill up to the very
foot of the big butte were unfrequented and in bad repair, but
practicable if the traveler was prepared for a wetting. The shortest
and on the whole the easiest way to the dam would be to make their
way to the foot of the mesa, climb it through the big ravine and
cross it to the lower end, less than two miles away, where there was
an easy descent to the dam.
"And if you get caught in the rain," said the conductor, "which ain't
likely, for it's already rained more in the last twenty-four hours
than in the last twenty-four years, it seems to me, there's a hut,
half stone and half timber, up on the mesa that campers sometimes
make use of when they want to see the sun rise, which is a mighty
fine sight from there. It was in pretty fair shape when I visited it
last year and you can find shelter there. It's at the highest point
on the mesa. You can see a long way up the gulch there, and a longer
way down and up the Picket Wire valley. Above the dam it used to
show a level, fertile stretch between the hills, but it's all a lake
now."
Shurtliff, of course, declined Miss Illingworth's invitation to
accompany the party on plea of urgent duties and important papers to
prepare. He had spoken no words to Rodney or Winters, and those
gentlemen made no effort to engage him in conversation. They were,
in truth, a little ashamed of their actions of the night before.
They were exceedingly anxious as to whether their theories as to the
possible effect of Miss Illingworth's action would be justified, so
they carefully avoided the secretary, letting the leaven work if it
would. To their disappointment it gave no sign of life or action.
Of the four most interested in Meade, Winters was the only one who
had slept soundly that night. Rodney was too much in love with the
woman ever to sleep soundly again, he thought, certainly not until
her future had been settled and her relations to Meade finally
determined. Shurtliff's feelings were painful in the extreme. Torn
between the old habit of affection for the dead, his new habit of
affection for the woman, his oft recurring compunction of conscience,
his immediate resentment of the treatment of the two men, his
acknowledgment of the splendid action of the woman, his suspicions,
his uncertainty, as to how the younger Meade would take it if he told
the truth, he slept not at all.
Into Helen Illingworth's mind also had come, although to her credit
be it said not until she had retired and had thought over her action
in the light of the hints given, that perhaps her generous
interposition in behalf of Shurtliff might move his gratitude and
that he might at last vouchsafe her the help which she felt more
certain than ever he alone could give. She was glad when the thought
came to her that she could look herself squarely in the face and
declare to her conscience that it had not been back of her action,
which had been purely spontaneous.
The possibility, although a faint one, that Meade might be working on
the dam and that she might see him on the morrow would have sufficed
to give her a wakeful night, Rodney was a more careful observer than
Winters, but even the cattleman noticed that she looked worn and
strained as he helped her out of the car for their tramp across the
mesa to the dam.
"You know," he said, with rough and ready sympathy, "we haven't the
least assurance that Meade is there. It's only a chance, and
probably a long one."
"I shall never rest until it is decided absolutely one way or the
other," said the woman.
"Well, I'm not much of a walker," said the cattleman. "I generally
prefer to get over the ground astride of a broncho, but I guess I can
keep up with the party for two miles, if that's the distance."
It was dark and damp and wet under the pines. As the conductor had
said, the trail was an execrable one. Although the two men cleared
the way for her, holding branches back and shaking the water off the
drooping boughs, it was well Helen Illingworth was protected from the
wet. She had tramped hills and mountains many a time, camp and
forest were familiar to her. She wore a short-skirted dress, stout
boots and leggings, and a yellow western slicker.
The exertion of the upward climb, stumbling over broken branches and
uprooted logs and floundering through boggy places on the trail,
brought a touch of color to her face, and though damp, the air sweet
and fragrant, clean and pure, refreshed and pleased her greatly; the
men, too. It was a hard pull and she was out of breath when she
reached the broken coulee, or ravine, which led to the top of the big
red sandstone plateau.
"I'm terribly out of practice," she said to the two men, "but I don't
believe I'm in any worse state than you are, Mr. Winters."
"I told you I wasn't any good on foot," said Winters, who was blowing
like a grampus.
Rodney laughed at the two of them.
"Look at me," he said. "I'm as fresh as when I began."
"Well, you're used to walking," returned Winters. "It's this
plugging along this broken trail that has knocked us out. The rich,
they ride on--bronchos, you know."
"When we get on top of the mesa we will find it easier going," said
Rodney encouragingly.
"Let us start," said the girl, suddenly serious, as she thought what
might be at the end of the journey.
"Before we go any further," said Winters, staring up the ravine at
the sky which showed above it, "just take a look at that."
He pointed to the black clouds rapidly rising, apparently against the
wind, which swayed rather violently the tops of the tallest pines,
although they were protected and in comparative quiet where they
stood in the ravine.
"It looks as if there were more rain there," said Rodney.
"It's incredible," answered Winters, "after what we've had."
"But it certainly is coming down again and if I'm any judge it will
be another cloudburst."
"Perhaps we'd better go back," suggested Winters to Miss Illingworth.
"Go back!" exclaimed the girl. "When I'm as near as this?"
"But it's only a possibility, you know."
"Possibility or not it would take a deluge in my path to stop me.
Come."
She stepped toward the broken ravine. Rodney sprang before her.
Winters brought up the rear. It was an entirely practicable climb,
but rather a hard one on the wet, crumbling rocks. It did not take
the three young people long to surmount the difficulties, however,
and after a few minutes they stood on top of the mesa. It was bare
of vegetation, save in scattered little earth pockets, grass-covered,
where dwarfed pines grew, stunted trees centuries old. Its general
surface was level, but the upturned expanse was seamed and guttered
in every direction like the wrinkles in a face that had confronted
the sky for how many thousand years no one knew, for the rock was the
early old red sandstone of the triassic period.
Near at hand was the hut of which the conductor had spoken. It stood
upon a little rise above the general level and from it one could
obviously see far in every direction. There ran valley and gorge,
there extended the high waters of the new-made lake, already dark
under the clouds. Before them rose hill on hill, each overtowering
the others until they merged into the high-land of the great
rampart-like range, its serrated peaks showing whiter their crowns of
snow against the blackness of the heavens. Between the hills and
over the lower crest of Baldwin's Knob they could even see dimly the
far-off plains, a little sickly yellow light still lingering there
before the advance of the storm.
The hut was made of stone and logs. The doors and windows had long
since vanished and the broad eaves overhanging the walls were rotting
away, but the inside they found upon inspection was fairly dry. They
had not any more than reached it before the storm began. Claps of
thunder, flashes of lightning under which the army on the dam were
fighting, were heard and seen with tenfold clearness by the little
group on the huge upland.
It was a sight to awe the very soul of humanity. Miles and miles
down the mountain side and among the hills the whirling battalions of
clouds rolled and tumbled and tossed and clashed like aerial armies.
The lightning, while it was not in sheets, was practically
continuous, flash succeeding flash in uncountable and blinding
succession. Again they noticed the strange coruscating, bursting
effect as bolt after bolt apparently struck some granite ledge and
was then thrown back in splinters of fire. The heavy awful roll of
the thunder was continuous and terrific.
They stood staring through door and windows in silence, Meade and
their quest forgot in the appalling tempest by all except the woman.
It was she who recalled them.
"Let us hasten on," she said, and she had almost to scream to make
herself heard in the wild tumult. "It's magnificent, wonderful,
but----"
As a matter of fact all the manifestations of nature at its grandest
would not have sufficed to turn her head away from her lover's face
if she could have seen him.
"You can't go now," said Winters decisively, "the rain's bad enough
as it is and that cloud will burst in a minute. Old Noah's flood
won't be a circumstance to it."
"I'm protected from the rain," she answered.
Winters shook his head.
"The weight of it would almost beat you down, Miss Illingworth."
"I haven't had any experience with it, but I think Winters is right,"
said Rodney.
"I'll go on alone, then," said the girl passionately, stepping out of
the house, "if you gentlemen don't care to come."
The next moment, with a culminating scream like the shriek of all the
lost souls of creation heard above the furious detonating roll of the
thunder, the wind added its quota to the demonstration of natural
force, and now the rain fairly dropped upon them in apparently solid
sheets. Of course clouds do not burst. Such a thing is
scientifically and meteorologically impossible, but anyone who has
ever experienced the suddenness and fury and weight of a western
deluge in a normally dry land will understand the term. The wind
swept over the plateau where it had free course like a hurricane; the
rain came down in masses apparently. Until their eyes became
accustomed to it, the falling water blotted out the landscape.
The woman was hurled against the side of the house by the sudden and
violent assault of the hurricane. The two men half dragged, half
carried her around to the lee side of the cabin. The roof of the hut
had given way here and there, and within it was soon flooded. Where
they stood, however, by chance happened to be the solidest part of
the overhang of the roof and they were in some degree protected, that
is from the direct violence of the downpour. They were, of course,
drenched in a few minutes in spite of their raincoats. With one man
on either side of her to give her as much protection as possible, the
woman leaned against the stone wall and stared through the rain down
the valley, seeking to see the dam, perhaps a mile and a half away.
Of course the maximum of the downpour could not last any more than
the maximum of the gale, but the deluge was succeeded by a heavy
driving rain still swept on by a strong wind.
Below the mesa the lake was whipped into foam by the beat of the rain
and rolled into waves by the assault of the wind. All three of them
knew what this deluge portended. The downpour would raise the level
of the lake so that it would overflow the dam, which would be swept
away, the valley would be inundated by a flood, like a tidal wave,
the incompleted viaduct would be ruined, the town would be
overwhelmed, the loss of life and property would be appalling.
"The spill-way ought to take it," shouted Winters, knowing what was
in the minds of the other two by what was in his own.
"It's not finished," roared Rodney.
Winters threw up his hands.
"Will the dam hold it?" cried the woman, understanding.
"Until the water rises above it. Just as soon as it begins to wash
over it will go, and the quicker for these waves," answered Rodney at
the top of his voice.
"And the bridge and the town," screamed the woman.
"They, too."
"And father?"
"He'll be all right, they've had warning. The engineers on the dam
must know the danger now. They're working like mad."
He had brought a small six-power field glass with him and he was
straining his eyes through it. The violence of rain and wind had
sensibly abated, although it was still coming down in torrents. With
his knowledge of what would probably be attempted, Rodney was able to
see through his glass something of what was being done even at that
distance.
"They're building palisades on top of the dam and backing it with an
earth mound. See, they are dropping sand bags over," he stated,
handing the glass to the other man.
"By heaven," shouted Winters, "they're making a magnificent fight."
In his excitement he left the shelter of the hut and stalked through
the rain toward the edge of the mesa, where he could have a better
and nearer view. In spite of Rodney's remonstrances, even though
backed by his outstretched arm, the woman followed. Presently all
three, indifferent to the beat of the rain and the assault of the
wind, stood watching the battle on the dam. It was abating still
more, fortunately, or else they could scarcely have sustained the
attack of that wind and rain, nor could they have seen at all, even
with that glass.
Staring down at the dam after a moment Helen Illingworth took the
glass from Rodney. She focused it rapidly and looked steadily
through it. She knew what she was seeking as she stood steadying
herself with splendid nerve and resolution and swept the length of
the dam back and forth.
"I don't see him. He's not there," she said at last, handing the
glass back to its owner.
"If he were there, you'd see him all right," said Winters
enthusiastically, "because he'd be in the thick of the fight."
"I doubt if you can recognize anyone even through the glass, at such
a distance," said Rodney, after he had focused it and taken a look
himself. "Yet if he were there he certainly would be in the thick of
it. He's that kind. You look, Dick."
"I can't see him," said Winters in turn. "But what a fight they are
making to save that dam."
"Will it hold?" asked the woman.
"Impossible," said Rodney.
"I give it one hour," said Winters, handing over the glass.
"Not more than that," assented the other, after another look. "See
for yourself, Miss Illingworth."
From where they stood high up on the roof of the world they were
spectators of a great battle, witnesses of a terrible contest, in
which herculean effort, desperate courage, human will, all exerted to
the limit, finally degenerated into blind, mechanical habit of
continuous and frenzied endeavor. The spirit of reckless continuance
had got into them and moved them to the impossible. As men in a
battle-charge go on even with wounds enough to kill them in ordinary
circumstances, as soldiers at Winchester, though shot in the heart,
actually struggled after Sheridan until they fell, or even as a
common horse may so be imbued with blind intensity of determination
that he gallops on until he drops dead, so these men gave their all
in unmatchable persistence.
"They'd better get off that dam," said Rodney. "When it once fails
it'll go with a rush and then it'll be too late."
"Look at them. They're not going to get off," said Winters.
"They're going down with it. Damned fools, God bless 'em!" he
shouted, throwing up his arms in exultation over manhood and courage
and determination.
"Perhaps you had better go back, Miss Illingworth," said Rodney,
thinking of the horror she might witness at any moment.
"I wouldn't be elsewhere for the world," said the brave girl, white
but with firm lips--she was made of the same stuff as the fighting
men, it seemed--"Even if he were there, fighting that great battle, I
should wait to see the end."
"We're not the only people in this wilderness. Look yonder!" cried
Winters.
He pointed down through the ceaseless rain toward the lower edge of
the mesa. There far below him were three sodden figures. The water
in the lake had risen so that it had overflowed the lowlands, it had
flooded the slope of the hill and on that side it was lapping the
base of the cliff. The trail had, of course, been covered and there
was no way of progress except by taking advantage of the broken rock
at the foot of the cliff, which here and there still stood above the
water. It was a place apparently where men could only pass by
carefully choosing their way and calculating the distance of the next
point toward which to leap.
These three were moving like madmen, splashing through the water,
hurling themselves from rock to rock, falling against the wall,
clutching a tree or shrub, slipping into the lake, saving themselves
from drowning apparently only by the caprice of complacent fortune,
which they were trying to the utmost limit. They had raincoats on;
two of them, however, had lost their hats, the light slicker of the
last one was torn to rags; the first stopped a moment, jerked off his
coat, and went on without it as if the stiff and sodden garment
impeded his action.
One man carried a miner's pick, a spade and a surveyor's range pole,
the other another spade and two long stakes which looked like the
separate legs of a tripod. The bareheaded man, who had thrown his
rubber coat down in the reddish-yellow water, carried a good-sized
oilskin bag. He was the most hurried of the three. He ran some
distance in front of the others. They noticed how carefully he
sought to protect the bag. When he slipped or seemed about to fall
he always thrust it frantically away from the rock with outstretched
arm.
What the three men would be at of course no one knew. It was obvious
that they were in a desperate hurry and that the thing in the bag
must be carefully carried. Naturally the watchers connected the men
with the dam builders. They were dressed as the men engaged in such
labor would be dressed. The pick, the spades, and the pole and
stakes bore out that conclusion.
"What's in the bag?" asked the woman.
"He carries it as though it might be gold or diamonds," said Winters.
Rodney shook his head. Suddenly he divined the reason for the
extreme care with which the bag was carried. The men were
immediately below the three watchers now. He could make out pretty
well what was the size and shape of the objects that bulged the
waterproof bag.
"I have it," he shouted. "Dynamite."
"What for?"
Rodney shook his head again. The man in front was in plain view. He
was a tall figure, his face was heavily bearded. From the angle at
which they saw him it was impossible for them to recognize him, nor
was he in his frantic progress assuming the usual attitude and
bearing of a man under ordinary conditions which sometimes betray him
to those who know him well. Nor could Helen Illingworth with her
trembling hands focus the glass, which she took from Rodney before
the struggling adventurers had passed; and yet there was something in
the figure below that made her heart beat faster.
She pressed her hand to the wet garments over her heart and stared.
Suddenly Rodney raised his voice and shouted at the very top of it.
Winters joined in and even Helen Illingworth found herself screaming.
The three men below were not more than five or six hundred feet away,
but evidently they could not possibly hear in that tumult of nature.
No voices would carry through any such rain and wind. They were too
intent on their paths and on what they had to do to look upward.
They rounded the shoulder of the mesa and disappeared in the pines at
its feet.
The three on the top looked at each other.
"The dam still holds," said Rodney, quite unsuspecting what was in
the woman's heart.
Even as he spoke Helen Illingworth turned away. She ran heavily in
her sodden garments along the broken mesa top past the house to the
upper edge. There below her were the three men just emerging from
the fringe of trees. Rounding the end of the mesa they had at last
struck firmer ground. Helen Illingworth could see them through the
pines on the old trail. The going was bad enough, but it was nothing
compared to what they had passed over and presently they burst out of
the woods and ran along the greasy, well-rounded hog-back that
divided the valley from the ravine.
The woman had no idea what was toward, what was their purpose. She
could only stare and stare at the rapidly moving far-off figure
indomitably in the lead and the others following after. There
Winters joined her.
"Rodney sent me to look after you; he feels that he must stay back
and watch the dam for his paper."
"Look," said Helen, pointing far down. The men halted at the very
narrowest part of the hog-back. They were clustered together. The
bag lay on the ground behind them. One man bent over it, evidently
opening it. Another man swung the shovel viciously, the third
grabbed the pick. Winters had been too far removed from engineering
even yet to figure out what was toward. They could only watch and
wonder.
XXIX
THE VICTORS
Meade knew that they were fighting a losing battle. Every one of the
higher grade men knew it also. The spill-way was entirely
inadequate, but it suddenly flashed into his mind, with that
consciousness of the hopelessness of the struggle, that perhaps there
was another way to discharge the flood. The same idea might have
come to any other of the more intelligent of the men from Vandeventer
down if they had taken a moment for reflection. If they had not been
so frantically, so frightfully engrossed in their present puny but
gallant efforts to save the dam they certainly would have remembered.
That the possibility came to Meade rather than to any of the others
was perhaps due to the fact that he had noted the situation later and
had studied the conditions more recently. Those solitary rambles of
his, those careful inspections of the terrain of the valley, had been
made long after the original surveys and the results of his
observations were still fresh in his mind.
The water was rising so rapidly since the cloudburst and he saw the
inevitableness of the failure so clearly that he did not dare to
waste time to look up Vandeventer, tell him his plan and get his
permission. Every second was of the utmost value. When the thought
came he acted instantly. He was in the position of the commander of
a small force to whom is suddenly presented the bare possibility of
wresting victory from defeat by some splendidly daring and unforeseen
undertaking. And he was the man to seize such a possibility and make
the most of it.
It was well that he had endeared himself to some of the men and that
the respect in which he was held by Vandeventer was shared by the
others. Indeed perhaps the men under a man are quicker to estimate
his character and worth than those over him. Therefore when Meade
called two of the most capable of the workmen, a big, burly Irishman
and a stout little Italian, to follow him they did it without a
moment's hesitation.
"The rest of you keep on here," he shouted as he left the gang.
"Murphy and Funaro, come with me. Keep it up; I think I know a way
to help," he yelled back through the rain as he scrambled off the dam
up the rocks to the spill-way. It was not his fault that they could
not hear and could not understand.
The water was rushing through the spill-way about knee deep and the
three men plunging forward through it had difficulty in keeping their
footing on the broken, rocky bottom. When they reached the other
side, Meade shouted above the storm:
"Murphy, bring your pick and shovel; take that iron range pole, too.
Here, Funaro, you take your shovel and these."
As he spoke he ran into the office shack and wrecked a transit
tripod, ruthlessly separating the legs from one another by main force
and pitching two of them into the little Italian's outstretched arms.