ing his shoulder under the
projecting peavey stock, to straighten in a mighty effort.

"Hire a boy!" "Get some powder of Junko!" "Have Jimmy talk it out!" "Try
that little one over by the corner," called the men on top of the jam.

Everybody laughed, of course. It was a fine spring day, clear-eyed and
crisp, with a hint of new foliage in the thick buds of the trees.
The air was so pellucid that one distinguished without difficulty the
straight entrance to the gorge a mile away, and even the West Bend,
fully five miles distant.

Jimmy Powers took off his cap and wiped his forehead.

"You boys," he remarked politely, "think you are boring with a mighty
big auger."

"My God!" screamed one of the spectators on top of the cliff.

At the same instant Wallace Carpenter seized his friend's arm and
pointed.

Down the bed of the stream from the upper bend rushed a solid wall
of water several feet high. It flung itself forward with the headlong
impetus of a cascade. Even in the short interval between the visitor's
exclamation and Carpenter's rapid gesture, it had loomed into sight,
twisted a dozen trees from the river bank, and foamed into the entrance
of the gorge. An instant later it collided with the tail of the jam.

Even in the railroad rush of those few moments several things happened.
Thorpe leaped for a rope. The crew working on top of the jam ducked
instinctively to right and left and began to scramble towards safety.
The men below, at first bewildered and not comprehending, finally
understood, and ran towards the face of the jam with the intention of
clambering up it. There could be no escape in the narrow canyon below,
the walls of which rose sheer.

Then the flood hit square. It was the impact of resistible power. A
great sheet of water rose like surf from the tail of the jam; a mighty
cataract poured down over its surface, lifting the free logs; from
either wing timbers crunched, split, rose suddenly into wracked
prominence, twisted beyond the semblance of themselves. Here and there
single logs were even projected bodily upwards, as an apple seed is shot
from between the thumb and forefinger. Then the jam moved.

Scotty Parsons, Jack Hyland, Red Jacket, and the forty or fifty top men
had reached the shore. By the wriggling activity which is a riverman's
alone, they succeeded in pulling themselves beyond the snap of death's
jaws. It was a narrow thing for most of them, and a miracle for some.

Jimmy Powers