Under the firm touch of the girl’s hand on the rein the horse sped on down the valley.
It was a mad race with death and Shirley knew it. But she realized that human lives were at stake and she did not hesitate.
To the left of the road down which she sped lay high ground and safety, while coming down the valley, perhaps a mile in the rear, poured a dense wall of water, coming as swift as the wind.
For days the Mississippi and its tributaries had been rising rapidly and steadily. Along the lowlands in that part of the state of Illinois, just south of Cairo, where Shirley Willing had been visiting friends, fears that the Darret dam, three miles up one of these tributary streams, would give way, had been entertained.
Some families, therefore, had moved their perishable belongings to higher ground, where they would be beyond the sweep of the waters should the dam break.
Then suddenly, without warning, the dam had gone.
The home where Shirley had been visiting was a farmhouse, and the cry of danger had been received by telephone. Those in the house had been asked to repeat the warning to families further down the valley. But the fierce wind that was raging had, at almost that very moment, blown down all wires.
Shirley, in spite of the fact that she, with the others, could easily have reached the safety afforded by higher ground a short distance away, had thought only of those whose lives would be snuffed out if they were not warned.
She had decided that she would warn them herself. She ran from the house to the stable, where one single horse had been left.
But the seriousness of the situation seemed to have been carried to the animal, and when Shirley had attempted to slip a bridle over his head he struck out violently with his fore feet. As the girl sprang back, he dashed from the stable.