The wind rose to a gale. Ogilvie’s tent bellied and swelled. The waves were blowing over the levee. At midnight, the alarm was sounded. The sleeping shifts scrambled out of their beds, full dressed, and rode or ran down to the river. The bells of the two churches kept ringing. Pale women and children followed the men down to the embankment. There was work for every one that night. Men were hustling like mad to raise the levee an inch above the rising fury of the river. The women rushed back to their homes, bringing baskets, old tins, coal-oil cans, anything to scoop or carry earth. They dragged down worn-out clothes, bags of scraps, fire-wood; they were fighting now for their future.
Men stood a few feet apart measuring each white-foamed wave to be ready when it should strike the bank. Wired with hog-fencing on the river side, the long timbers chained in place to take the blows of the waves, the levee threatened to melt before each rush of the river. Shovels stood at attention to throw earth on each new break; to raise the levee an inch above the lapping waters. Earth could not now be wasted. The women were cautioned to conserve their ammunition. Teams from the ranches brought in hay; wagon-loads of brush for the dikes.
Down the stream rushed masses of débris; logs, sections of fence, railroad ties. Every eye on the bank followed their course. Where would that floating wreckage lodge? Long poles jumped to shove off into the stream the drift which must not be allowed to lodge, to impede that stream for an instant. Swift eyes, swift hands, needed that night! And all night long into the gray of the morning, over the roar of the rushing water, and the whistling of the demons of the wind, boomed the dynamite at Fassett’s. In the White Refuge, Ogilvie miserably slept.
CHAPTER XX
OPPOSITION
THE second night of the flood, the women of the towns dragged brush and filled sacks for the men to carry. It was past midnight when Innes Hardin left the levee. While her feet and fingers had toiled, her mind had been fretting over Tom. Two nights, and no rest! It was told by men who came down the river how Hardin was heroically laboring. She yearned to go to him; perhaps he would stop for a few hours to her entreaty. But an uncertain trail across country, with the dust-laden wind in her face? She decided to wait for the dawn. A snatched sleep first, but who would call her? She would sleep for hours, so weary every muscle. Her mind fixed on Sam as the only man in town who had time to saddle a horse for a woman.
She went in search of him. She found that the long adobe office building had already taken on the look of defeat, of ruin. The casements had been torn from the partitions; the doors and windows were out. The furniture had been hauled up to the White Refuge for safety. She went hunting through the ghoulish gloom for the darky, turning her lantern in every dark corner. She knew that she would find him sleeping.
Then she heard steps on the veranda. She ran toward them, expecting to see Sam. She swung her lantern full on two figures mounting the shallow steps. Rickard was with her sister-in-law.
“Oh, excuse me!” she blurted blunderingly. Of course Gerty would take a wrong intention from the stupid words!
The blue eyes met those of Innes with defiance. It was as though she had spoken: “Well, think what you will of it, you Hardins! I don’t care what you think of me!”
What indeed did she think of it? Why should she feel like the culprit before these two, her words deserting her? It was Gerty’s look that made her feel guilty, as though she had been spying. To meet them together, here at midnight, why should not they feel ashamed? She had done nothing wrong. And Tom down yonder fighting—and they make his absence a cover for their rendezvous—