"It seems so. My luck hasn't run out, that's plain." The speaker pondered briefly, then he said: "Shut in! Safe! Jove, it's wonderful! Buddy can take me to the railroad to-night and—"
"Oh, you can't leave. You're not able."
"I must. This gasser was a great disappointment to me. I allowed myself to count on a big well, and now I have a serious problem to meet. It must be met without delay. Buddy will soon be back, I dare say?" Allie undertook to evade the speaker's eye, but unsuccessfully, and he inquired, sharply: "What's wrong? What's happened to him?"
"Nothing. He's all right, but"—Gray's evident alarm demanded the truth, therefore she explained—"but I don't know when he'll be back. That's why I've been so frightened. It has been raining cats and dogs; the creek has overflowed and everything is under water."
"Under water? Here? Why, that can't be." Gray insisted upon rising, and Allie finally consented to his doing so; then, despite his protest that he was quite able to take care of himself, she helped him to the window. From that position he beheld a surprising scene.
The Briskow farm lay in a flat, saucerlike valley, arid and dusty at most seasons of the year, but now a shallow lake, the surface of which was broken by occasional fences, misty clumps of bushes, or the tops of dead weeds. The nearest Briskow derrick was dimly visible, its floor awash, its shape suggestive of the battle mast of a sunken man-of-war.
"It's not more than a foot or two deep on the level," Allie explained, "but that's enough. And it has come up six inches since Buddy left. He'd have been back before this if he could have made it."
"Did you ever see it like this before?"
"Once, when I was a little girl. Some years the creek never has a drop in it."
"Then we're marooned."