“What do you think caused it!” some one who had just come up asked of a little knot near Gildersleeve.
“Cloud-burst in the hills most likely,” vouchsafed one of the group.
“Cloud-burst nothing,” derided another. “I could tell you just what happened: The beaver-dam in Solomon Creek has busted and let that lake of water behind it loose.”
“Anyway, it will make more work for the workers,” piped a loose-tongued disciple of Lenin. “We’ll be kept busy salvagin’ them poles up along the shore till the freeze-up comes and all next spring. The North Star won’t let all that good timber go to waste.”
“Salvage!”
The word rang in the brain of Norman T. Gildersleeve like a clang of doom. It meant—it meant that those poles could now never be recovered in time to start the Kam City Mills on the date set by the government.
The crowd was thinning out, but Gildersleeve, soaked to the skin, stood as one in a daze till a police officer came up.
“Costly night’s damage for the North Star Company, sir,” he remarked gravely.
Norman T. Gildersleeve made a strange noise in his throat but no more coherent answer as he stood staring into the blackness over the lake.
“But then they say that timber can be salvaged in due time,” suggested the friendly officer.