Afloat on the Flood

by Lawrence J. Leslie

Bandy-legs watched the timbers bumping against the side of the house until they parted company, and floated swiftly away in smaller sections. He felt like waving a sad farewell after the strange craft that had borne them all the way down the valley; never would he forget how it looked, passing away in pieces, as though its mission had been completed after allowing them to reach the farm-house.

There had been three refugees of the flood on the roof before; now their number had increased to eight. But whether the coming of the boys added anything to the hopefulness of the situation remained to be proved.

At least it seemed to have cheered up both girls considerably. Mazie welcomed the coming of Max when he climbed to a place beside her, with a look that was intended to be sunny, but bordered on the pitiful. Truth to tell the poor girl had just passed through the most terrible experience of her young life, having had responsibility crowded upon her in the absence of older heads.

"Oh! I am so glad you have come to help us, Max!" she told him, after they had shaken hands like good friends, which they always had been.

Max tried to laugh at that; he thought there was altogether too much gloom in the gathering, and it would be better for all hands to discover some sort of rift in the clouds.

"A queer old way of coming to help you, I should say, Mazie," he told her. "What you saw floating off after it carried us here was all that is left of the Carson bridge, which was carried away by the flood an hour or so ago."

"Oh! were there many people on it when it fell?" asked Bessie French, her eyes filled with suspense; she had pretended not to pay any attention to Steve, who had deliberately found a place beside her, and was sitting there as though he had a perfect right, and that nothing disagreeable had ever come up between them; but in spite of her seeming indifference she was watching him out of the tail of her eye all the same, just as a girl will.

"I'm glad to say that we were the only ones who went down with the bridge," Max hastened to tell her, knowing that she had loved ones in Carson, about whose safety she must naturally feel anxious.

"And all of you managed to cling to the timbers of the bridge?" questioned Mazie, looking with open admiration, first at Max, and then those with him, until a puzzled frown came on her pretty face, for she had finally noticed Shack Beggs, and could not understand how a boy of his bad reputation chanced to be in the company of Max and his chums.

"Yes, it wasn't so hard, after we got settled in the water," Max explained. "We had the railing to help us out. And a little later we managed to help Shack in out of the wet, for he was on the bridge at the same time, being thrown into the water when it collapsed."