"Do you think so, Casey? And will you do that much for me? I'm awfully sore and tired. Every bone and muscle of me aches."
"You poor little girl." He raised her in his arms. "Come on, girls, and put her to bed. I'll carry her in."
CHAPTER XXV
With the first streaks of dawn Casey and Simon mounted and rode for Talapus. But before they had ridden five hundred yards Casey discovered an extraordinary thing. In his ears sounded a sustained, musical murmur, nothing less than the happy laugh of running water.
"By the Lord Harry!" he ejaculated. "There's water in the ditches."
Simon nodded. "Ya-as. Hiyu chuck stop, all same skookum chuck," he observed, signifying that there was a full head of it, like a rapid.
The ditches were running to the brim. After the soaking rain of the night the water was not immediately needed, but it showed that the irrigation company's works no longer controlled the supply. When they reached the river they found a swirling, yellow torrent running yeasty-topped, speckled with débris.
"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.