e little man's face was turned momentarily toward the hill-slope
cemetery beyond the town. "And when a girl like that comes to me for my
fastest-powered car to go where no car can't go, for the sake of as good
a man as ever lived on earth, a man she's been _comrading_ with for
three years, and with that look in her fine eyes, they's no mistakin' to
any sensible man on God's earth why she's doin' it."

"If my room is ready I'll go to it," Eugene broke in, curtly.

"Yes, Georgette, call George to take the gentleman to number seven, an'
put him to bed."

Then the little keeper of the Commercial Hotel and Garage turned toward
the street again, and his full-moon face went into a total eclipse. But
what lay back of that shadow of the earth upon it no man but Junius
Brutus Ponk could know.

XIX

RECLAIMED

Down the Sage Brush trail Jerry Swaim's car swept on in spite of ruts
and gullies and narrow roadways and obstructing debris, flood-washed
across the land. But though the machine leaped and climbed and skidded
most perilously, nothing daunted the girl with a grip on the
steering-wheel. The storm-center of destruction had been at the big bend
of the river, and no hand less skilful, nor will less determined, would
have dared to drive a car as Jerry Swaim drove hers into the heart of
the Sage Brush flood-lands in the twilight of this June evening.

Where the forks of the trail should have been the girl paused and looked
down the road she had followed three years before; once when she had
lost her way in her drive toward the Swaim estate; again, when she
herself was lost in the overwhelming surprise and disappointment of her
ruined acres; and lastly when she had come with Joe Thomson to recover
her stolen money from the old grub whose shack was close beside the deep
fishing-hole. The road now was all a part of the mad, overwhelming Sage
Brush hurrying its flood waters to the southeast with all its might.
Where was the flimsy little shack now, and where was the old Teddy Bear
himself? Did his shabby form lie under the swirling current of that
angry river, his heroic old heart stilled forever?

A group of rescuers, muddy and tired, came around a growth of low bushes
on the higher ground toward her. All day they had been locating homeless
flood victims, rescuing stock, and dragging farm implements above the
water-line. The sight of Ponk's best car, mud-smeared and panting,
amazed them. This wasn't a place for cars.