an
work algebra, logyruthms, and never slip a cog. But you'll never get
down the Sage Brush that far to-night. If them Norwegians on beyond the
ranch yon side of the big bend 'ain't done nothing, you just can't. The
Ekblads and the other neighbors will do all a body can, especially
Thelmy. The river's clear changed its channel an' you could run a car up
to the top of Bunker Hill Monument, back in New Hampshire, easier than
you could cut the gullies an' hit the levels of the lower Sage Brush
trail after this flood."

"Get the car ready quick. _I want to go_," Jerry commanded, and Ponk
obeyed. A minute later a gray streak whizzed by the Macpherson home,
where Eugene Wellington stood on the porch staring in speechless
amazement.

"Bless her heart!" he ejaculated, at length. "She is self-willed like
her dad. Aunt Darby always told me I'd have to manage her with gloves
on, but not to forget to manage her, anyhow."

He strolled back to the Commercial Hotel, where the best-natured man in
Kansas lay in wait for him.

"You're in early. Have a real cigar--a regular Havany-de-Cuby--off of
me. An' take a smoke out here where it's cool."

Eugene took the proffered cigar and the seat on the side porch of the
hotel that commanded a view of the street clear to "Castle Cluny."

"Town's pretty quiet this evenin'. All the men are gone up-stream or
down, to see if they can help in the storm region. Every store shut up
tight as wax. Three preachers, station-agent, the three movie men--gone
with the rest. We are a sympathetic bunch out here, an' rather quick to
get the S O S signal and respond noble."

"So it seems," Eugene replied, wondering the while how he should be able
to kill the time till Jerry's return, resolving not to tarry here to
paint a single canvas. The sooner Geraldine Swaim was out of Kansas the
better for her perverted sense of the esthetic, and the safer for her
happiness--and his own.

"Yes," Ponk was going on to say, "everybody helps. Why, I just now let
out the pride of the gurrage to a young lady. She's just heard that a
man she knows well is lost or marooned on a island in the floods of the
Sage Brush. And if anybody'll ever save him, she will. She's been doin'
impossible things here for three years, and the town just worships her."

"I should think it would," Eugene Wellington said, with a sarcasm in his
tone.

"It does," Ponk assured him. "She's the real stuff--even mother, out
yonder, loves her."

Th