THE DAM
Doctor Allen Barnes turned slowly toward the house where the wife of
Sim Gage still lay. His heart was heavy with the hardest duty he had
ever known in all his life.
But as he reached a point half way between the two houses he suddenly
stopped. At that moment every man on the little street stopped also.
The routine of the patrol had been relaxed in the excitement of these
late events. Indeed, it seemed tacitly agreed that the climax had
come, so that there was no need now for further guardianship of the
property. It was not so.
The sound was a short, heavy moan, as nearly as it may be described,
and not a sharp rending note; a vast, deep groan, somewhere deep in the
earth, as though a volcano were about to erupt. It was not over in an
instant, but went on, like the suppressed lamentations of some creature
trying to break its chains. It might have been some prehistoric,
tremendous creature, unknown to man, unknown to these times. But it
was our creature. It was of our day. Else it could never have been.
Then the ground under the feet of every man on the little street
lifted, gently, slowly, and sank down again. As it did so a tremendous
reverberation gathered and broke out, ran up and down the canyon, up
the opposite cliff face, echoing and rising as dense and thick as smoke
does. The rack-rock charge, of no one may know how many hundreds of
pounds, had done its work.
And then all earth went back to chaos. A new world was in the making.
There arose in that narrow, iron-sided gorge a havoc such as belike
surpassed that of the original breaking through of the waters. That
first slow work of nature might have been done drop by drop, a little
at a time. But now all the outraged river was venting itself in one
epochal instant. Its accumulated power was rushing through the wall
that held it back from the seas--the vast vengeance of the waters,
which they had sought covertly all this time, now was theirs.
An uncontrollable and immeasurable force was set loose. No man may
measure the actual horse power that lay above the great dam of the Two
Forks--it never was a comprehensible thing. A hundred Johnstown
reservoirs lay penned there. That there was so little actual loss of
life was due to the fact that there were few settlements in the sixty
miles below the mouth of the great canyon itself. A few scattered dry
farms, edging up close to the river in the valley far below, were
caught and buried. Hours later, under the advancing flood, all the
live stock of the valley was swept away, all the houses and all the
fences and roads and bridges were wiped out as though they had never
been. But this was fifty, sixty, seventy miles away, and much later in
the morning. Those below could only guess what had happened far up in
the great Two Forks canyon. The big dam was broken!
The face of the giant dam, more solidly coherent than granite itself,
slowly, grandiose even in its ruin, passed out and down in a hundred
foot crevasse where the spill gates were widened by the high explosive.
A vast land slip, jarred from the cut-face mountain side above,
thundered down and aided in the crumbling of the dam. A disintegrated
mass of powdered concrete fell out, was blown apart. The face of the
dam on that part slowly settled down into a vast U. Then the waters
came through, leaping--a solid face of water such as no man may
comprehend.
An instant, and the canyon below the dam was fifty feet deep with a
substance which seemed not water, but a mass of shrieking and screaming
demons set loose under the name of no known element. There came a vast
roar, but with it a number of smaller sounds, as of voices deep down
under the flood, glass splintering, rocks rumbling. The gorge seemed
inhabited by furies. And back of this came the pressure of twenty
miles of water, a hundred feet deep, which would come through. The
river had its way again, raving and roaring in an anvil chorus of its
own, knocking the great bowlders together, shrieking its glee. The Two
Forks river came through the Two Forks canyon once more! Against it
there stood only the fragmental ruin of the great, gray face,
buttressed with concrete more coherent than granite itself, but all
useless here.
The tide rose very rapidly. The canyon was too crooked to carry off
the flood. The lower part of the town, where the street grade sank
rapidly, went under water almost at once. Horses, cows, sheep,
chickens, the odds and ends of such an encampment, gathered by vagrant
laborers, were swept down before opportunity could be found to save
them. Men and the few women in that part of town, employees of the
cook camp, abandoned their possessions and ran straight up the mountain
side, seeking only to get above the tide. Their houses were swept away
like cheese boxes. Logs were crushed together like straws. The sound
of it all made human speech inaudible anywhere close to the water's
edge.
The east half of the dam, that closer to the camp, still held. The
buildings here were still under the dam--a mass of water fifty feet in
height rose above them, would come through if that portion of the dam
broke. But at the time only the suction of the farther U, where the
break was made, caused a gentle current to be visible at this side of
the backwater. If the dam held, it would be quite a time before the
level of the lake above would be appreciably altered. Slowly, inch by
inch, each inch representing none might say how much in power of ruin,
it would sink, and in time reveal the ancient bed of the river. If the
remnant of the dam held, that would be true. Happy the human race
aspiring to erect such a barrier, that so few suffered in this rebirth
of the wilderness. Had the settlements been thick below, all must have
perished. The telephone was out, there was no way for a messenger to
get out ahead of the flood. Only the quick widening of the valley,
below the canyon's lower end, eased down the volume of the flood so
that it was less destructive. There was no settlement at all in the
canyon proper.
After the first pause of horror men here at the broken dam began to
bestir themselves. Discipline was a thing forgotten, and _sauve qui
peut_ was the law. It was some time before Doctor Barnes pulled
himself together and began to try to get his men in hand. He ordered
them to the lower end of the street, to drive the people out of their
houses without an instant's delay; for none might say at what time the
break in the dam would increase, in which case it soon would be too
late for any hope. He himself hastened at last to the house where the
two women were, Wid Gardner with him, after he had issued general
orders for all the men to get up the trail above the dam as soon as
possible.
"Come out!" he cried as he opened the door. Mary Gage and Annie came
arm in arm, both of them hysterical now.
"It's all gone," said Doctor Barnes, not even bitterly, but calmly
after all. "It's out. The dam's gone."
"Gone? What does it mean? Where shall we go? Is there danger?"
These questions came all at once from the two women. The roar of the
waters drowned their voices.
"Come quick! Get into my car. It's only a step up the grade--we'll be
safe on the upper level."
They came, Mary Gage still with her bandages in place, stumbling,
terrified, but leading the little dog, Tim, who cringed down in curious
terror of his own. Doctor Barnes hurried them, guided them, and the
little car quickly carried them up the incline above the top of the dam.
They paused here at the first sharp curve under the lee of the cut
bank, where they might take breath and look down. There came up and
grouped themselves near them and beyond them now several of the people
of the camp, and practically all of the soldiers from the barracks, who
fell into a stiff, silent line, looking down. It was a scene singular
enough which lay before them, this wild remaking of the wilderness.
There came another cosmic cry from the chaos below them, more
terrifying than anything yet had been. Two Forks was throwing in the
reserves. The enemy was breaking! Doctor Barnes knew what this meant.
The break was widening. He stood looking down. And then he heard a
human voice cry out, a voice he knew.
He turned--and saw Mary Gage fall as though in a faint upon the ground.
Her eye-bandages were off, her eyes wholly uncovered to the light.
"Well, it's over now," said he quietly to Annie Squires. "One way or
the other, it's done."
He lifted her gently, attended her until at length she moved,
stood--until at length he knew that she saw!
She turned her face back from the ruin which had been her first vision
of her new world, and looked into the eyes of the man who had given
back to her eyes with which to see. And he looked deep, deep into her
own, grave and unsmiling.
She spoke to him at last. "I can see," said she simply.
"I'm very glad," said he, trying to be as simple. But he turned her
away, giving her into Annie's arms.
"Look!" cried other voices.
A section of the side of the great U, running clear back to a seam
which had formed in the dam face, slowly broke out and went down. The
water rose like a tide now, very rapidly, because the canyon itself, so
narrow and so full of abrupt curves, made no adequate outlet for this
augmented flood. The entire lower part of the camp was covered, and
the flood, eddying back from the mountain wall, came creeping up toward
the top of the grade, covering now this and now that portion of the
settlement. One house after another was swept away before their eyes.
Doctor Barnes stood looking out over it all moodily. He did not go
back to Mary Gage. Back beyond a few of the soldiers were chattering
idly, but no one paid attention to them, for not even they themselves
knew that they were talking. But at length a voice, clear and
distinct, did come to Doctor Barnes' ears.
"Where is my husband!" cried Mary Gage, breaking away from Annie.
"Which is he?"
He turned to her silently. He shook his head.
"I want to see him! I've got to see him. Who's that man?" She
pointed.
"That's Wid Gardner," said Doctor Barnes, slowly and gently as he could.
"Those men yonder--those soldiers--is one of them my husband? You said
he was a soldier."
"Yes," said Doctor Barnes, "he was a soldier."
Then she guessed at last.
"He _was_ a soldier? Where is he _now_?" She turned upon him, laying
her hands upon his arms. "Where is he now?" she demanded.
But Doctor Barnes was looking at the foam-flecked surface of the water,
eddying against the mountain side, crawling up and up. The little log
house where Sim Gage's soul had passed was no more to be seen. It had
gone. The house where the women had stopped was swept down but a short
time later. Doctor Barnes could not speak the cruel truth.
"Annie!" called out Mary Gage, sobbing openly, imploringly. "Tell me,
won't I _ever_ see him? You said he was a good soldier."
"One of the best," said Doctor Barnes at last. "Listen to me, please.
Your husband died believing he had saved the dam. And so he had, so
far as his work was concerned. It was he who discovered their work
last night. He took care of two of them--it makes three for him. It
was he that killed Big Aleck, up on the reserve, and avenged you, and
never told you. He was shot--you heard the firing. He died before we
came up here. I couldn't bring his body till you were cared for. Now
it's too late. He's gone. Well, it's as good a way for a good man to
go."
"Blow 'Taps,'" he ordered of the bugler near by. It was done. And
then, at his order, the rifles spoke in unison over a soldier's grave.
"But I've never _seen_ him!" she said to him piteously, after the
echoes of the salutes had passed. It was as though she was unable to
comprehend.
"No," said Allen Barnes. "But keep this picture of him--think that he
died like a gentleman and a soldier. A good man, Sim Gage."
He turned away and walked down the grade apart from them, hardly seeing
what lay before him, hardly hearing the rush of the waters down the
canyon.
When men began to question as to the cause of the disaster, it became
plain that some man, whose name no one will ever know, must have crept
along the side of the river bank below the road grade, and have fired
the fuse of a heavy charge of rack-rock, which, none might know how
long, had been hid between the buttresses and back of the apron of the
dam.
Doctor Barnes reasoned now that that man in all likelihood had come
from below. If so, in all likelihood he was one of the Dorenwald
party. His face lighted grimly. There were but few places where they
could have found a place in the canyon for an encampment. If they had
found one of these places--where were they now? Their fate could now
be read in this flood forcing its way down through the crooked gorge of
the mountain range. The flag staff had not been swept down--the flag
still fluttered now, triumphant over the attempted ruin--the answer of
America to Anarchy! And the flag had been avenged. Dorenwald and his
"free brothers," leaders of the "world's revolt," would revolt no more.
The sponge of the slate had wiped off their little marks. No one would
ever trace them. They would find no confessional and no shriving, for
their way back to that underworld of devil-fed minds, out of which they
had emerged to do ruin in a country which had never harmed them, but
which on the contrary had welcomed them and fed them in their want.