Sprague set the temerarious example by springing to his feet, and the others followed him. There was no answering volley from the hill-side. On the contrary, the black blot of things animate on the slope was melting away, and a minute later Tarbell came running back.
“The boys have got their hunch!” he cried. “A couple of them are taking Jennings back to Angels, and the rest of ’em’ll be here in a minute to help us. They didn’t know what was up.”
As one man the half-dozen flung themselves upon the task of keeping the roaring crevasse under control; and a little later eight of the cowmen came racing down to swell the working force. But even for the augmented numbers, it proved to be a fiercely fought battle, with the issue hanging perilously in the balance for a long time.
Hour by hour they toiled, making plank bulk-heads out of the shack lumber, piling sand-bags against the crumbling embankment, and fighting inch by inch with the gnawing flood as the night wore away.
And it was thus that the graying dawn found them; soaked, muddied, gasping, and haggard with fatigue, but with the victory fairly won. The flood was still pouring through the gap which had by now widened to the cutting away of a full half of the dam; but the great body of water had already passed out and there was no longer any danger.
When the sun was just beginning to redden on the higher peaks of the western mountains, a shout from the hill-side road broke upon the morning stillness. A moment later Maxwell and Stillings came running to the brink of hazard.
Sprague stumbled up out of the crevasse chasm and pointed down to the washed-out heart of the dam. There, piled in the bottom of what had once been the plank-lined pit with the hoisting-tackle over it, and laid bare now by the scouring flood, was a great pile of dynamite stacked solidly in its shipping-boxes. And, half-buried in the sand and detritus of the outflow, lay the iron pipe through which the firing fuse had been carried to the gully edge Jennings had tried to reach.
“There is the warrant for what we’ve been doing, gentlemen,” said the big expert wearily. “Take a good look at it, all of you, so that if the courts have anything to say about this night’s work——”
Maxwell cut in quickly.
“There’s nobody left to make the fight. Jennings went east from Angels on the first train that got through. He was badly blinded, so Disbrow says; got a fall from his horse, was the story he told. We’ll fix this lay-out so it will stand just as it is until everybody who wants to has seen it!”