He scrambled up the hill, seizing the manzanita brush here and there to drag himself up faster, and gained the brow where the pipe made its last abrupt descent. Far ahead, and walking sturdily, he recognized the stalwart figure of his partner, and knew that Bill was suffering the same anxiety. He ran when the ascent was less steep, and shouted to the grizzled miner ahead, who turned and waited for him.
“I’m afraid of it,” Bill called as he approached; and Dick, breathless, made no reply, but hurried ahead with him to the reservoir. In all the journey, which seemed unduly long and hot that morning, they said nothing. Once, as they passed the familiar scene of his tryst with Miss Presby, now ages past, Dick bit his lips, and suppressed a moan like that of a hurt animal. Bitterly he thought that now she was more 201 unattainable, and his dreams more idle than ever they had been. And the first sight of the reservoir confirmed it.
To a large extent, the reservoir of the Cross was artificial. It had been constructed by throwing a deep stone and concrete dam across a narrow cañon through which there percolated, in summer, a small stream. Its cubic capacity was such, however, that when this reservoir was filled by spring freshets it contained water enough to run the full season round if sparingly used; and it was on this alone that the mill depended for its power, and the mine for its lights and train service, from hoist to breakers.
Where had stood the dam, gray with age and moss-covered, holding in check its tiny lake, was now nothing but ruins. The shots had been placed in the lower point, which was fifty feet down and conical as it struck and rested on the mother rock. Whoever had placed the charges knew well the explosive directions of his powder, and his work had been disastrously effective.
The whole lower part of the dam was out, and through it, in the night, had rushed the deluge of water so vital to the Croix d’Or. Small trees that had grown up since the dam had been built were uprooted in the bed of the cañon, and 202 great bowlders pulled from their sockets and sent resistlessly downward. Where, the day before, had been grassy beds and heavy growths of ferns, was now but a naked bed, stripped to the rock, down which flowed a small stream oozing from what had been the reservoir.
The partners stood, as if paralyzed, on the edge of the gulch, and looked down. The catastrophe, coming on top of all that had gone before, was a death blow, stupefying, stupendous, and hopelessly irremediable.
“Well, you were right,” Dick said despairingly. “They’ve got us at last!”
Bill nodded, without shifting his eyes from the ruin below. They stood for another minute before scrambling down the cañon’s steep side to inspect more closely the way the vandalism had been effected. Slipping down the muddy bank, heedless of their clothing or bruised hands, they clambered over the broken pieces of wall, and looked upward through the great hole and into the daylight beyond. The blow was too great to permit of mere anger. It was disaster supreme, and they could find no words in that time of despondency.
“I’ll give a hundred dollars toward a reward for the man who did that,” shouted a voice, 203 hoarse with indignation, above them; and they looked up to see the smith on the bank, shaking his smudged and clenched fist in the air.
“And I’ll take a hundred more,” growled one of the drill runners in the augmenting group behind him.