"Is there, is there any gold?" queries Thure, unable longer to keep silent.
Ham does not answer for a moment, but continues to stir the sand with his big fingers, bending his head still closer to the pan.
"Not a durned smell!" and he suddenly hurls the pan violently from him.
At this moment Mr. Conroyal utters a startled exclamation and glances quickly up the gulch. One look is sufficient to turn his face white. From where he stands he can see straight up the gulch for nearly half a mile; and half that distance up the gulch he sees a dark gray wall, ten feet high, topped with white, rushing down toward him with the speed of a race horse, and hears a roar like the rushing charge of a thousand cavalrymen.
"My God, a flood!" he yells. "Climb for your lives!"
There was no need of a second warning. All could now see the advancing flood, could hear the deafening roar, could feel the solid earth beginning to tremble beneath their feet; and all began to climb for their lives up the steep side of the gulch. There was no time to stop to pick up anything. Pans, shovels, picks, and such parts of their clothes as happened to be off their bodies they left where they lay.
Thure and Bud happened to be climbing almost directly under Marshall. Suddenly, before they were above the danger line and when the flood was almost upon them, Marshall's feet slipped and he slid past the boys down directly in front of the advancing flood. It looked like death to stop to help him; but neither boy hesitated an instant.
"Here, grip wrists!" yelled Thure, who was a little above Bud. "I will hold you while you pull Marshall up."
Bud instantly saw what was wanted; and, in another moment the two arms of the boys were locked together in a grip almost impossible to break.
"Now reach down and try and get hold of one of Marshall's hands. Quick!" and Thure gripped, with the strength of desperation, the point of a projecting rock with his free left hand and planted his feet firmly on the narrow ledge where he stood.