nes' ears.

"Where is my husband!" cried Mary Gage, breaking away from Annie.
"Which is he?"

He turned to her silently. He shook his head.

"I want to see him! I've got to see him. Who's that man?" She
pointed.

"That's Wid Gardner," said Doctor Barnes, slowly and gently as he could.

"Those men yonder--those soldiers--is one of them my husband? You said
he was a soldier."

"Yes," said Doctor Barnes, "he was a soldier."

Then she guessed at last.

"He _was_ a soldier? Where is he _now_?" She turned upon him, laying
her hands upon his arms. "Where is he now?" she demanded.

But Doctor Barnes was looking at the foam-flecked surface of the water,
eddying against the mountain side, crawling up and up. The little log
house where Sim Gage's soul had passed was no more to be seen. It had
gone. The house where the women had stopped was swept down but a short
time later. Doctor Barnes could not speak the cruel truth.

"Annie!" called out Mary Gage, sobbing openly, imploringly. "Tell me,
won't I _ever_ see him? You said he was a good soldier."

"One of the best," said Doctor Barnes at last. "Listen to me, please.
Your husband died believing he had saved the dam. And so he had, so
far as his work was concerned. It was he who discovered their work
last night. He took care of two of them--it makes three for him. It
was he that killed Big Aleck, up on the reserve, and avenged you, and
never told you. He was shot--you heard the firing. He died before we
came up here. I couldn't bring his body till you were cared for. Now
it's too late. He's gone. Well, it's as good a way for a good man to
go."

"Blow 'Taps,'" he ordered of the bugler near by. It was done. And
then, at his order, the rifles spoke in unison over a soldier's grave.

"But I've never _seen_ him!" she said to him piteously, after the
echoes of the salutes had passed. It was as though she was unable to
comprehend.

"No," said Allen Barnes. "But keep this picture of him--think that he
died like a gentleman and a soldier. A good man, Sim Gage."

He turned away and walked down the grade apart from them, hardly seeing
what lay before him, hardly hearing the rush of the waters down the
canyon.

When men began to question as to the cause of the disaster, it became
plain that some man, whose name no one will ever know, must have crept
along the side of the river bank below the road grade, and have fired
the fuse of a heavy charge