e men looked at his face, then
turned sheepishly back.

Jim picked up a shovel. Iron Skull already was digging like a madman.

One of the workmen, who never had ceased digging, snarled to another:
"What does he want to let the whole dam go to hell for two nigger
rough-necks for?"

"Bosses' rule," panted the other. "Up on the Makon we'd risk our lives
to the limit and fight for the other fellows just as quick. How'd you
like to be under there? Never know who's turn's next!"

The brown water rose steadily, running faster and faster over into the
excavation. The water was touching the brown hand which now twitched and
writhed, when Jim said:

"Now, boys, catch the cable hook to the boom and give the signal."

The derrick swung up into the air. Jim and a Makon man seized the
Indian, Iron Skull and another man the _hombre_. Both of them were alive
but helpless. The cement engineer shouted an order through the megaphone
and just as a lifting brown wave showed its fearful head beyond the
Elephant, the river bed was cleared of human beings.

Up around the cable tower foot was gathered a great crowd of workmen,
women and children. Jim, greeted right and left as he relinquished his
burden, looked about eagerly. Penelope must have heard of the flood and
have come to see it. But surrounded by his friends, Jim missed the
girlish figure that had hovered on the outskirts of the crowd and that,
after he had reached the tower foot in safety, disappeared up the trail.

Jim, with his arm across Iron Skull's shoulder, turned to watch the
river. The moving brown wall had filled the excavation. It rushed like a
Niagara over the flume edge. In half an hour it ran from bank to bank,
with a roar of satisfaction at having once more regained its bed.

Jim sighed and said to Iron Skull: "She's taken a hundred thousand
dollars at a mouthful. I'll put that in my expense account for my trip
to Washington."

Iron Skull grunted: "We'll be lucky if we get off that cheap. This will
make talk for every farmer on the Project. They'll all be up to tell you
how you should have done it."

Jim shrugged his shoulders. "This isn't the first flood we've weathered,
Iron Skull. Come up to the house while I change my clothes."

The two started along the road that wound up to the low mountain top
where the group of adobe cottages known as "officers' quarters" was
located. The cottages were occupied by Jim's associate engineers and
their families.

"I