being put in just below the Dunning ranch. Near at hand Bill Dancing,
with a big gang, had been for some time watching the ice and
dynamiting the jams. McCloud brought in more men as the river
continued to rise. The danger line on the gauges was at length
submerged, and for three days the main-line construction camps had
been robbed of men to guard the soft grades above and below the
bridge. The new track up and down the valley had become a highway of
escape from the flood, and the track patrols were met at every curve
by cattle, horses, deer, wolves, and coyotes fleeing from the waste of
waters that spread over the bottoms.

Through the Dunning ranch the Crawling Stone River makes a far bend
across the valley to the north and east. The extraordinary volume of
water now pouring through the Box Canyon exposed ten thousand acres of
the ranch to the caprice of the river, and if at the point of its
tremendous sweep to the north it should cut back into its old channel
the change would wipe the entire body of ranch alfalfa lands off the
face of the valley. With the heat of the lengthening June days a vast
steam rose from the chill waters of the river, marking in ominous
windings the channel of the main stream through a yellow sea which,
ignoring the usual landmarks of trees and dunes, flanked the current
broadly on either side. Late in the afternoon of the day that Dicksie
with Marion sought McCloud, a storm drifted down the Topah Topah
Hills, and heavy showers broke across the valley.

At nightfall the rain had passed and the mist lifted from the river.
Above the bluffs rolling patches of cloud obscured the face of the
moon, but the distant thunder had ceased, and at midnight the valley
near the bridge lay in a stillness broken only by the hoarse calls of
the patrols and far-off megaphones. From the bridge camp, which lay on
high ground near the grade, the distant lamps of the track-walkers
could be seen moving dimly.

Before the camp-fire in front of McCloud's tent a group of men,
smoking and talking, sat or lay sprawled on tarpaulins, drying
themselves after the long day. Among them were the weather-beaten
remnants of the old guard of the mountain-river workers, men who had
ridden in the caboose the night that Hailey went to his death, and had
fought the Spider Water with Glover. Bill Dancing, huge, lumbering,
awkward as a bear and as shifty, was talking, because with no apparent
effort he could talk all night, and was