Tarbell paused scarcely a moment at the mouth of the mid-dam shaft. “It’s filled up to within a few feet of the top with dirt,” he said, when he returned.
“That is what I expected. We might find another warrant for what we are about to do, but we haven’t time to search for it. Jennings may come back at any minute, and if he suspects anything wrong, he’ll bring that bunch of dance-hall cowmen with him. If you’d like to hide the car and stand aside to see what he will do when he comes——”
“By Jove! I’m with you, injunction or no injunction!” cried Smith, and he began to take the picks and shovels out of the car.
“Go to it,” said the colonel; and Sprague turned to Williams.
“Mr. Williams, you’re an engineer. Our problem is to drain this lake in the shortest possible time in which it can be done without raising a dangerous flood-level in the Timanyoni River. We’re under your orders.”
Williams took the job as a dog snaps at a fly, barking out his directions with the curt precision of a man who knew his business. Planks were brought from the dismantled shacks to be thrust down on the inward face of the dam as a protection, and these were weighted in place with a make shift buttressing built out of the bags of sand which had been used as temporary coffer-dams in the construction work. When all was ready, a small ditch was opened across the protected end of the dam and the water began to pour through.
Immediately the wisdom of Williams’s precaution became evident. Instantly the rushing stream began to eat into the loosely built dam, threatening to turn the ditch into a gully and the gully into a chasm, and quick work was necessary with more planks and sand-bags to check the rapid widening of the spillway. Even at that, the ditch grew swiftly deeper and more cavernous as the torrent emptied itself through it, and the roar of the artificial cataract filled the air with a note of sustained thunder.
“Jennings’ll be deaf if he doesn’t hear this plumb down at the railroad!” shouted Tarbell. But there was no time to consider the consequences Jennings-wise. Every man of the six, including the colonel, was constrained to work like mad to prevent the catastrophe they were trying to avert.
It was when the flood was pouring through the gap in a solid six-foot stream that shot itself far out to fall in a thunderous deluge upon the barren Mesquite mesa, and the planking and sand-bagging was sufficing to hold it measurably within bounds, that Sprague took steps looking toward a defensive battle should the need arise. Under his direction the auto was drawn out to one side and the lamps were extinguished. Then a hasty breastwork was made of the remaining bags of sand, and Tarbell and Starbuck were sent out as skirmishers to keep watch on the Angels road while the others renewed their efforts to hold the pouring torrent within safe limits.
A toiling half-hour, during which the spillway flood had slowly grown in volume until it threatened to become a destroying crevasse, slipped away, and at the end of it the two scouts came hurrying in.