Scott sat for some minutes gazing absently at the rugged mountains. He felt tired and his mind wandered listlessly from one vague something to another, none of them connected with the present situation. The peace and quiet of his surroundings began to soak into him and a lassitude crept over him. He had been under a much greater nervous strain than he had realized and the reaction made him sleepy. He wanted to curl up right where he was and sleep. He had no interest in anything else. His heavy eyes closed wearily and he sank down beside the still unconscious man.
Scott dreamed that he was lying on the battlefield with other wounded and dying men groaning all around him. The ambulance corps picked him up and carried him far back of the lines to a peaceful little French village surrounded by high mountains and put him in a little cabin beside a lake. He could hear the babbling of many small streams and the gentle lapping of tiny waves on a pebbly shore. They were soothing, lulling sounds but woven through them he could still hear the groans of the dying. The cabin was becoming unbearably warm and oppressive. He writhed about on his burning couch until the discomfort awoke him.
The groaning continued and Scott sat up suddenly to find that Dawson had regained consciousness. His jaw was badly broken, and it was his moaning that Scott had heard in his dreams. The sun was shining directly on them both with a blistering heat unusual for that time of the year. Scott did not know how long he had been asleep but it must have been a long time. The sun had shifted to the western half of the sky, a warm breeze was ruffling the surface of the reservoir, and black clouds were peeping over the horizon. Dawson was half delirious from suffering and lack of water in the blazing sun. He was moaning constantly and talking incoherently. He did not seem to recognize Scott or to know where he was.
Scott picked up the suffering man as carefully as he could and carried him into the cabin. All his feeling against Dawson was gone now and he saw only a human being in agony. He reproached himself for going to sleep and leaving him in such a condition. He realized now how panic-stricken he must have been to bind the wrists of a crippled man when he himself was armed with the cripple’s revolver. He removed the belt from Dawson’s wrists and ran out to get some water from the reservoir. He poured some of it on the parched lips and the injured man swallowed eagerly though every movement of his mouth seemed to cause new agony. Scott bathed his fevered brow, gave him a little more water to drink and then bound up his jaw with his handkerchief. He wondered how he could get him home. There were two horses there now, but Jed was not well enough trained to be trusted with one end of a stretcher. A trailing pole stretcher on Dawson’s horse would be too rough. He decided that his best move would be to ’phone down to Baxter or Benny for help.
His anxiety to aid the suffering man had so completely occupied Scott’s attention that he had not noticed what was going on outside. A sudden gust of wind forced his attention. He ran to the door. The little black clouds which were just peeping over the horizon a short time before had spread over half the sky. The heat was oppressive and a warm, sultry wind which was blowing half a gale seemed only to accentuate it. Angry little waves were beating on the shore now and the growing streams on the other side of the reservoir were beginning to roar ominously.
Scott ran down to the edge of the reservoir to look at the mark he had set on the dam the day before. The water had already risen a foot since he had noticed it that morning and he knew from the rush of waters in the ca?ons that it was rising now at an alarming rate. He glanced at his watch. It was five o’clock. Ordinarily the cool of the approaching evening had begun to tie up the springs of ice and snow in the hidden ca?ons before that time and the streams would be drying up, but to-day that hot wind was searching its way into every cranny of the rocks and melting the winter’s store of ice at a tremendous rate. Nor would they cease to melt even with the setting of the sun as long as that wind continued. A warm rain on top of that was almost sure to be disastrous.
Even while Scott looked the last patch of blue was blotted from the sky and the little basin was thrown into semi-darkness. The swiftness of the onrushing storm was bewildering. He would ’phone Baxter for help to get Dawson out of there and then open the sluice gates without waiting for the level of the reservoir to reach the danger point. He feared that it would reach it all too quickly even with the sluice gates open.
Scott rushed up the bank to the little camp and grabbed the telephone. He gave Baxter’s ring and waited what seemed an age. He tried three times without getting any answer. Baxter must be either out on the range or out of hearing of the ’phone. He tried Benny. Benny was always there.
“Hello,” came the prompt answer.
“That you, Benny? This is—”
He was interrupted by a blinding flash followed instantly by a deafening explosion. The receiver was apparently wrenched from his hand and he stood dazed while the reverberations of the mighty report were hurled crashing from peak to peak. The storm was on them. He grasped the ’phone again desperately but the fuses were burned out and the line was dead.
The echoes of the first crash of thunder had not died away in the distant hills when the rain came down in torrents. A half hour of that and the reservoir would overflow even if the dam itself did not go out before that. The opening of the sluice gates was the only thing which he could do. He could not imagine those sluice gates taking care of the mad torrents which would soon be raging down the ca?ons from all those encircling barren peaks, but the storm might possibly cease as suddenly as it had begun.
Scott sprang to the gates and was already bending his back to the old-fashioned windlass when he remembered that Jed was on the other side of the meadow. Once he had opened those gates it would be impossible to get him across to the trail. He had to have Jed to get help for Dawson and carry the warning of the impending danger to the ranchers along the course that the flood would take if the dam should burst.
The rain continued to fall in a deluge which almost blinded him, but he managed to stagger across the meadow to the clump of willows where he had left Jed. He feared that the horse might have been frightened by the storm and run away. The booming of the thunder in those hollow ca?ons was enough to terrify either horse or man. But Jed had spent his life in the open. Thunder storms in the mountains were nothing new to him. Close in the lee of the bushes, with his tail to the storm, he was waiting patiently. He greeted Scott with a little nicker of recognition.
Scott jumped on to his slippery, wet back and rode across the darkening meadow toward the place where he had hidden the saddle. He put on the saddle while there was yet light and leaving Jed well up from the trail, he dashed once more for the sluice gates. In the trail at the foot of the dam he almost ran into a strange horse. The poor beast was saddled and bridled and steaming in the rain from hard riding. Its breath was coming in great gasps, its head hung down until its nose was almost on the ground, and its feet were spread wide, a sign of total exhaustion. Some one had ridden up that steep ca?on trail at a killing pace.
“It must be Baxter,” Scott thought as he ran past the heaving horse and made for the sluice gates. There was not enough daylight left to recognize objects at any distance, but almost continuous lightning flashes made things stand out momentarily with vivid distinctness. Scott was just rounding a clump of bushes not more than ten yards from th............