ped at the sound of his voice as at a blow. Her face hardened
into immobility, yet when she replied it was with the deliberate
indolence of her father. "The wimmen are up on the hills by this time.
The boys hev bin drowned out many times afore this and got clear off,
on sluice boxes and timber, without squealing. Tom Flynn went down
ten miles to Sayer's once on two bar'ls, and I never heard that HE was
cryin' when they picked him up."

A flush came to Hemmingway's cheek, but with it a gleam of intelligence.
Of course the inundation was known to them FIRST, and there was the
wreckage to support them. They had clearly saved themselves. If they had
abandoned the cabin, it was because they knew its security, perhaps had
even seen it safely adrift.

"Has this ever happened to the cabin before?" he asked, as he thought of
its peculiar base.

"No."

He looked at the water again. There was a decided current. The overflow
was evidently no part of the original inundation. He put his hand in
the water. It was icy cold. Yes, he understood it now. It was the sudden
melting of snow in the Sierras which had brought this volume down the
canyon. But was there more still to come?

"Have you anything like a long pole or stick in the cabin?"

"Nary," said the girl, opening her big eyes and shaking her head with
a simulation of despair, which was, however, flatly contradicted by her
laughing mouth.

"Nor any cord or twine?" he continued.

She handed him a ball of coarse twine.

"May I take a couple of these hooks?" he asked, pointing to some rough
iron hooks in the rafters, on which bacon and jerked beef were hanging.

She nodded. He dislodged the hooks, greased them with the bacon rind,
and affixed them to the twine.

"Fishin'?" she asked demurely.

"Exactly," he replied gravely.

He threw the line in the water. It slackened at about six feet,
straightened, and became taut at an angle, and then dragged. After one
or two sharp jerks he pulled it up. A few leaves and grasses were caught
in the hooks. He examined them attentively.

"We're not in the creek," he said, "nor in the old overflow. There's no
mud or gravel on the hooks, and these grasses don't grow near water."

"Now, that's mighty cute of you," she said admiringly, as she knelt
beside him on the platform. "Let's see what you've caught. Look yer!"
she added, suddenly lifting a limp stalk, "that's 'old man,' and thar
ain't a scrap of it grows nearer than Springer's