rried a full
head without accident. This time, however, it had failed just at the
time when water was absolutely necessary to the crops. The only way to
get water now was to build a flume; and so, immediately after breakfast,
Rennie started for a load of planks, while the others began to get out
timbers to support them, and to clear away the mass of dirt. Chetwood,
it appeared, had not been near the water gate. Somebody, however, had
changed it.

They dug into the mess, and sank holes for timbers to support the flume.
Now and then a small bowlder or a little dirt came down from above,
where the hill rose sheer above the slip. Gus, looking up at it, shook
his head.

"Mebbe she come anoder slide an' take dae flume, hey! Mebbe I better put
in leetle shot up dere an' fetch him now?

"You might fetch half the hill."

"Yoost vat you say."

"Well, make it a darn small one."

So Gus put in a very small shot which brought down a small patch of dirt
and gravel, but did not budge the mass.

"I guess she ban O.K.," he admitted.

It took four days to put in the flume. When water was running once more
and the long, silver ribbons of it were trickling down the length of the
fields giving fresh life to the grain which, even in that short time was
yellowing with the drouth, Angus heaved a sigh of relief.

"Thank the Lord that's done," he observed.

"If we couldn't have put her in we'd have had a hundred years of dry
weather," Rennie grumbled. "But now, of course, she'll rain."

That night, as if to make his prediction good, thunder-heads rose above
the ranges and lightning was splitting the back of the southwest sky.
But all that came of it was a heavy wind, though some time in the night
Angus was awakened by what he thought was a heavy roll of thunder. But
as he emerged from the house in the early morning the sky was clear and
the day seemed to promise more heat than ever.

Thankful that he had water anyway, he stood for a moment cleaning his
lungs with big draughts of mountain air; but as he stood he seemed to
miss something which was or should have been a part of that
early-morning stretch and breath. Puzzled for an instant he would not
tell what was missing. And then he knew. He could not hear the gurgle of
water in the ditch which ran beside the house.

He reached it in two jumps. It was dry. For a moment he stood
contemplating it, and then started on a run for the flume. There his
worst fears were verified. There