ng
yeasty-topped, speckled with debris.

"S'pose cloud _kokshut_!" Simon observed.

"Cloudburst, eh!" said Casey. "Looks like it. Then either the company's
dam has gone, or it can't take care of the head."

The former supposition seemed the more likely. Somewhere up in the
heart of the hills the black storm cloud had broken, and its contents,
collected by nameless creeks and gulches, had swooped down on the
Coldstream, raising it bank high, booming down to the lower reaches,
practically a wall of water, against which only the strongest
structures might stand. Temporary ones would go out before it, washed
away like a child's sand castle in a Fundy tide.

Ignoring trails, they struck straight across country. The land had been
washed clean. Beneath the brown grasses the earth lay dark and moist. A
hundred fresh, elusive odours struck the nostrils, called forth from
the soil by the rare moisture, a silent token of its latent fertility.
On the way there were no houses, no fences, no cleared fields. The land
lay in the dawn as empty as when the keels of restless white men first
split the Western ocean; and more lifeless, for the great buffalo herds
that of old gave the men of the plains and foothills food and raiment
were gone forever.

The sun was up when they reached Talapus. Mrs. McCrae had just
discovered her daughter's absence; and her husband was cursing the leg
that held him helpless. Casey told them the events of the night, and
Donald McCrae was proud of his daughter, and but little worried about
his son.

"Show me another girl would have ridden in that storm!" he exclaimed.
"She's the old stock--the old frontier stock! And Sandy, locking the
detective in the harness room!" He chuckled. "Go down and let them out,
Casey, and give them breakfast. A fine pair of children we've got,
mother."

"Sandy can take care of himself," said Mrs. McCrae practically. "He
always did, since he could walk, and he took his own ways, asking
nobody. And Sheila, for a girl, is the same. They take after you,
Donald, not me. But now, Casey, Mrs. Wade is at Chakchak, isn't she?"

"Mrs. Wade and Miss Burnaby," Casey replied. "It's all right, Mrs.
McCrae."

"Sheila needs no chaperon," said her father.

"Not with Casey," said her mother. "But there's the gossip, Donald, and
the dirty tongues. It's not like the old days."

"True enough, maybe," McCrae admitted. And he added, when his wife had
left the room: "What have they got hold