"If my room is ready I'll go to it," Eugene broke in, curtly.
"Yes, Georgette, call George to take the gentleman to number seven, an' put him to bed."
Then the little keeper of the Commercial Hotel and Garage turned toward the street again, and his full-moon face went into a total eclipse. But what lay back of that shadow of the earth upon it no man but Junius Brutus Ponk could know.
XIX
RECLAIMED
Down the Sage Brush trail Jerry Swaim's car swept on in spite of ruts and gullies and narrow roadways and obstructing debris, flood-washed across the land. But though the machine leaped and climbed and skidded most perilously, nothing daunted the girl with a grip on the steering-wheel. The storm-center of destruction had been at the big bend of the river, and no hand less skilful, nor will less determined, would have dared to drive a car as Jerry Swaim drove hers into the heart of the Sage Brush flood-lands in the twilight of this June evening.
Where the forks of the trail should have been the girl paused and looked down the road she had followed three years before; once when she had lost her way in her drive toward the Swaim estate; again, when she herself was lost in the overwhelming surprise and disappointment of her ruined acres; and lastly when she had come with Joe Thomson to recover her stolen money from the old grub whose shack was close beside the deep fishing-hole. The road now was all a part of the mad, overwhelming Sage Brush hurrying its flood waters to the southeast with all its might. Where was the flimsy little shack now, and where was the old Teddy Bear himself? Did his shabby form lie under the swirling current of that angry river, his heroic old heart stilled forever?
A group of rescuers, muddy and tired, came around a growth of low bushes on the higher ground toward her. All day they had been locating homeless flood victims, rescuing stock, and dragging farm implements above the water-line. The sight of Ponk's best car, mud-smeared and panting, amazed them. This wasn't a place for cars. But the face of the driver amazed them more.
"Why, it's Miss Swaim, that teacher up at New Eden!" one man exclaimed.