An uncontrollable and immeasurable force was set loose. No man may measure the actual horse power that lay above the great dam of the Two Forks—it never was a comprehensible thing. A hundred Johnstown reservoirs lay penned there. That there was so little actual loss of life was due to the fact that there were few settlements in the sixty miles below the mouth of the great canyon itself. A few scattered dry farms, edging up close to the river in the valley far below, were caught and buried. Hours later, under the advancing flood, all the live stock of the valley was swept away, all the houses and all the fences and roads and bridges were wiped out as though they had never been. But this was fifty, sixty, seventy miles away, and much later in the morning. Those below could only guess what had happened far up in the great Two Forks canyon. The big dam was broken!
The face of the giant dam, more solidly coherent than granite itself, slowly, grandiose even in its ruin, passed out and down in a hundred foot crevasse where the spill gates were widened by the high explosive. A vast land slip, jarred from the cut-face mountain side above, thundered down and aided in the crumbling of the dam. A disintegrated mass of powdered concrete fell out, was blown apart. The face of the dam on that part slowly settled down into a vast U. Then the waters came through, leaping—a solid face of water such as no man may comprehend.
An instant, and the canyon below the dam was fifty feet deep with a substance which seemed not water, but a mass of shrieking and screaming demons set loose under the name of no known element. There came a vast roar, but with it a number of smaller sounds, as of voices deep down under the flood, glass splintering, rocks rumbling. The gorge seemed inhabited by furies. And back of this came the pressure of twenty miles of water, a hundred feet deep, which would come through. The river had its way again, raving and roaring in an anvil chorus of its own, knocking the great bowlders together, shrieking its glee. The Two Forks river came through the Two Forks canyon once more! Against it there stood only the fragmental ruin of the great, gray face, buttressed with concrete more coherent than granite itself, but all useless here.
The tide rose very rapidly. The canyon was too crooked to carry off the flood. The lower part of the town, where the street grade sank rapidly, went under water almost at once. Horses, cows, sheep, chickens, the odds and ends of such an encampment, gathered by vagrant laborers, were swept down before opportunity could be found to save them. Men and the few women in that part of town, employees of the cook camp, abandoned their possessions and ran straight up the mountain side, seeking only to get above the tide. Their houses were swept away like cheese boxes. Logs were crushed together like straws. The sound of it all made human speech inaudible anywhere close to the water's edge.
The east half of the dam, that closer to the camp, still held. The buildings here were still under the dam—a mass of water fifty feet in height rose above them, would come through if that portion of the dam broke. But at the time only the suction of the farther U, where the break was made, caused a gentle current to be visible at this side of the backwater. If the dam held, it would be quite a time before the level of the lake above would be appreciably altered. Slowly, inch by inch, each inch representing none might say how much in power of ruin, it would sink, and in time reveal the ancient bed of the river. If the remnant of the dam held, that would be true. Happy the human race aspiring to erect such a barrier, that so few suffered in this rebirth of the wilderness. Had the settlements been thick below, all must have perished. The telephone was out, there was no way for a messenger to get out ahead of the flood. Only the quick widening of the valley, below the canyon's lower end, eased down the volume of the flood so that it was less destructive. There was no settlement at all in the canyon proper.
After the first pause of horror men here at the broken dam began to bestir themselves. Discipline was a thing forgotten, and sauve qui peut was the law. It was some time before Doctor Barnes pulled himself together and began to try to get his men in hand. He ordered them to the lower end of the street, to drive the people out of their houses without an instant's delay; for none might say at what time the break in the dam would increase, in which case it soon would be too late for any hope. He himself hastened at last to the house where the two women were, Wid Gardner with him, after he had issued general orders for all the men to get up the trail above the dam as soon as possible.
"Come out!" he cried as he opened the door. Mary Gage and Annie came arm in arm, both of them hysterical now.
"It's all gone," said Doctor Barnes, not even bitterly, but calmly after all. "It's out. The dam's gone."
"Gone? What does it mean? Where shall we go? Is there danger?" These questions came all at once from the two women. The roar of the waters drowned their voices.
"Come quick! Get into my car. It's only a step up the grade—we'll be safe on the upper level."