THE ANSWER
The rumbling up the canyon was hardly a noise; it was a tremulous
shudder of earth and air like the grinding that accompanies an
earthquake. But Wunpost knew, and the Campbells knew, what it meant and
what was to follow; and as it increased to a growl they threw down the
corral bars and rushed the stock up to the high ground. They waited, and
Wunpost ran back to get his dog, and then the dammed waters broke loose.
A great spray of yellow mud splashed out from Corkscrew Gorge and a
pinon-trunk was snapped high into the air; and while all the earth
trembled the dam of mud burst forth, forced on by the weight of
backed-up waters. Then more trees came smashing through, followed by
muddy tides of driftwood, and as suddenly the debacle ceased.
There was quiet, except for the hoarse rumble of boulders as they ground
their way down through the Gorge; and for the muffled crack of submerged
tree-trunks, straining and breaking beneath the ever-mounting jamb. It
rose up and overflowed in a gush of turbid waters, rose still higher and
overflowed again; and then it broke loose in a crash like imminent
thunder--the cloudburst had conquered the Gorge. It went through it and
over it, spreading out on its sloping sides; and when the worst crush
seemed over it washed higher yet and came through with an all-devouring
surge. In a flash the whole creekbed was a mass of mud and driftwood,
which swashed about and swayed drunkenly on; and, as great tree-boles
came battering through, the jamb broke abruptly and spewed out a sea of
yellow water.
The fugitives climbed up higher, followed by the cat and dog, and the
burros which had been left in the corrals; but the flood bore swiftly
on, leaving the ranch unsullied by its burden of brush and mud. The jamb
broke down again, letting out a second gush of water which crept up
among the lower trees, but just as the Gorge opened up for the third
time the flood-crest struck the lower gorge and stopped. Once more the
trees and logs which had formed the jamb above bobbed and floated on the
surface of a pond; and while the Campbells gazed and wept the turbid
flood swung back swiftly, inundating their ranch with its mud.
First the orchard was overflowed, then the garden above the road, then
the corrals and the flowers by the gate; and as they ran about
distracted the water crept up towards the house and out over the verdant
alfalfa. But just when it seemed as if the whole ranch would be
destroyed there was a smash from the lower point; the jamb went out,
draining the waters quickly away and rushing on towards the Sink. The
great mass of mud and boulders which had been brought down by the flood
ceased to spread out and cover their fields, and as the millrace of
waters continued to pour down the canyon it began to dig a new streambed
in the debris. Then the thunder of its roaring subsided by degrees and
by sundown the cloudburst was past.
Where the creek had been before there was a wider and deeper creek, its
sides cumbered with huge boulders and tree-trunks; and the mixture of
silt and gravel which formed its cut banks already had set like cement.
It _was_ cement, the same natural concrete which Nature combines
everywhere on the desert--gravel and lime and bone-dry clay, sluiced and
mixed by the passing cloudburst and piled up to set into pudding-stone.
And all the mud which had overlaid the garden and orchard was setting
like a concrete pavement. The ancient figs and peach-trees, half buried
in the slime, rose up stiffly from the fertile soil beneath; and the
Jail Canyon Ranch, once so flamboyantly green, was now shore-lined with
a blotch of dirty gray. Only the alfalfa patch remained, and the house
on the hill--everything else was either washed away or covered with
gravel and dirt. And the road--it was washed away too.
Wunpost worked late and hard, shoveling the muck away from the trees and
clearing a section of the corral; but not until Cole Campbell came down
the next day was the Stinging Lizard road even mentioned. It was gone,
they all knew that, and all their prayers and tears could not bring back
one rock from its grade; and yet somehow Wunpost felt guilty, as if his
impious words had brought down this disaster upon his friends. He rushed
feverishly about in the blazing sun, trying to undo the most imminent
damage; and Billy and Mrs. Campbell, half divining his futile regrets,
went about their own tasks in silence. But when Campbell came down over
the mountain-sheep trail and beheld what the cloudburst had done he
spoke what came first into his mind.
"Ah, my road," he moaned, talking half to himself after the manner of
the lonely and deaf, "and I let it lie idle six weeks! All my ore still
sacked and waiting on the dump, and now my road is gone."
He bowed his head and gave way to tears, for he had lost ten years' work
in a day, and then Mrs. Campbell forgot. She had remained silent before,
not wishing to seem unkind, but now she spoke from her heart.
"It's a visitation!" she wailed; "the Lord has punished us for our sins.
We should never have used the road."
"And why not?" demanded Campbell, rousing up from his brooding, and he
saw Wunpost turning guiltily away. "Ah, I knew it!" he burst out; "I
misdoubted it all the time, but you thought you could keep it from me.
But when I came down from Panamint, to see where the waterspout had
struck, and found it tearing in from Woodpecker Canyon, I said: 'It is
the hand of God!' We had not come by our road quite honestly."
"No," sobbed Mrs. Campbell, "and I hate to say it, but I'm glad the road
is destroyed. What you built we came by honestly, but the rest was
obtained by fraud, and now it has all been destroyed. You have worked
long and hard, Cole, and I'm sorry this had to happen; but God is not
mocked, we know that. I tried to keep it from you, and to keep myself
from knowing; but he told me himself that he salted the mine on purpose,
so that Eells would build us a road!"
"Aha!" nodded Campbell, and looked out from under his eyebrows at the
man who had befriended him by fraud. But he was a man of few words, and
his silence spoke for him--Wunpost scuffled his feet and withdrew.
"Well I'm going," he announced to Billy as he threw on his packs; "this
is getting too rough for me. So I crabbed the whole play, eh, and
fetched that cloudburst down Woodpecker? And it washed out your father's
road! It's a wonder Divine Providence didn't ketch _me_ up the
canyon, and wipe me off the footstool, too!"
"Perhaps He spared you," suggested Billy, whose eyes were big with awe,
"so you could repent and be forgiven of your sins."
"I bet ye!" scoffed Wunpost; "but you can't tell _me_ that God
Almighty was steering that waterspout. It just hit in Woodpecker Canyon,
same as one hit Hanaupah last week and another one washed out down
below. They're falling every day, but I'm going up into them hills, and
do you reckon one will drop on me? Don't you think it--God Almighty has
got more important business than following me around through the hills.
I'm going to take my little dog, so I'll be sure to have Good Luck; and
if I don't come back you'll know somebody has got me, that's all."
He tightened his lash ropes viciously, mounted his horse and took the
lead, followed by Old Walker and the other mules, packed; and when he
whistled for Good Luck, to Billy's surprise the little terrier went
bounding off after him. She waved at him furtively and tried to toll him
back, but his devotion to his master was still just as strong as it had
been when he had adopted him in Los Angeles. When he had been prostrated
by the heat he had stayed with Billy gladly, but now that he was strong
and accustomed to the climate he raced along after the mules. Wunpost
looked back and grinned, then he reached down a hand and swooped his dog
up into the saddle.
"You can't steal him!" he hooted, and Billy bit her lip, for she thought
she had weaned him from his master. And Wunpost--she had thought he was
tamed to her hand, but he too had gone off and left her. He was still as
wild and ruthless as on the day they had first met, when he had been
chasing Dusty Rhodes with a stone; and now he was heading off into the
high places he was so fond of, to play hide-and-seek with his pursuers.
Several had come up already, ostensibly to view the ruin but undoubtedly
to keep Wunpost in sight; and if he continued his lawless strife she
doubted if the good Lord would preserve him, as He had from the
cloudburst.
Time and again he had mounted to go and each time she had held him back,
for she had sensed some imminent disaster; and now, as he rode off, she
felt the prompting again to run after him and call him back. But he
would not come back, he was headstrong and unrepentant, making light of
what others held sacred; and as she watched him out of sight something
told her again that he was going out to meet his doom. Some great
punishment was hanging over him, to chastise him for his sins and bring
him, perhaps, to repentance; but she could no more stop his going, or
turn him aside from his purpose, than she could control the rush of a
cloudburst. He was like a force of nature--a rude, fighting creature who
beat down opposition as the flood struck down bushes, rushing on to seek
new worlds to conquer.