ng, he was drenched to the skin; he
was, in fact, sheeted with mud like the car itself.

To find a doctor, however, was a problem. Buddy tried first one camp,
then another, but without success. Meanwhile, the downpour continued
and the creeks rose steadily, obliging him to make numerous detours and
to follow the ridge roads wherever possible. He was aching in every
bone and muscle from the pounding he had received, his arms were numb,
his back was broken. He drowned his motor finally in fording a roily
stream and abandoned the car.

He came into Ranger that afternoon on the back of a truck horse that he
had borrowed--without the owner's consent. For a time it seemed that if
he got a doctor at all he would have to follow a similar procedure, but
the Briskow name was powerful, and Buddy talked in big figures, so
eventually he set out on the return journey--this time in a springless
freight wagon drawn by the stoutest team in town. A medical man was on
the seat beside him.

Progress was maddeningly slow, incredibly tedious; creek beds, long
dry, had become foaming torrents; in places even the level roads were
belly deep and the horses floundered. When one of them fell, it
required infinite labor and patience to get it upon its feet again.

It was after midnight when Buddy and his miserable companion gained the
comparatively easy going of the last ridge, that flinty range beyond
which lay the Briskow farm. Here they drove in the glare of lightning
and under a sky that rumbled almost steadily, for a frightful electric
storm had broken. Here it was that they saw what havoc was being
wrought--they counted several blazing wells ahead of them.

Buddy stopped at a drilling camp where lights showed the occupants to
be astir, and there he received confirmation of his fears. The flats
beyond were inundated to a depth rendering travel impossible, and
although some of the men stationed out there had managed to work their
way back, others were, for the time being, hopelessly cut off. What was
more alarming by far, in view of these blazing beacons, was the news
that a huge gusher on sixteen was wild and pouring its inflammable
flood out upon the surface of the water.

Buddy stood in the midst of a spreading puddle from his streaming
clothes, and through chattering teeth announced: "My sister and Mr.
Gray are out there. I _gotta_ get through!"

"How you going to get through, kid?" one of the drillers inquired. "Our
men had to swi