That lanky youngster's word was law to the father, and she had set his thoughts in a new channel. He felt the camp must be saved, if he died for it. The girl said so. He only remembered now how easily the men had let him off, when they might have half-killed him; and their jests and jeers and tormentings he forgot. His loose-hung frame gave him a long stride, and his endurance was marvellous. Through the gray and silver glades, over stumps and windfalls, through thickets and black valleys and treacherous swamps, he went leaping at almost full speed.
Before long the tremendous effort began to tell. At first he would not yield; but presently he realized that he was in danger of giving out, so he slackened speed a little, in order to save his powers. But as he came out upon the valley and neared the camp, he caught once more a whisper of the flood, and sprang forward desperately. Could he get there in time? The child had said he must. He would.
His mouth was dry as a board, and he gasped painfully for breath, as he stumbled against the camp-door; and the roar of the flood was in his ears. Unable to speak at first, he battered furiously on the door with an axe, and then smashed in the window.
As the men came jumping wrathfully from their bunks, he found voice to yell:—
"The water! Dam broke! Run! Run!"
But the noise of the onrushing flood was now in their startled ears, and they needed no words to tell them their awful peril. Not staying an instant, every man ran for the hillside, barefooted in the snow. Ere they reached a safe height, Gillsey stumbled and fell, utterly exhausted, and for a moment no one noticed his absence.
Then the boss of the camp looked back and saw him lying motionless in his tracks. Already the camp had gone down under the torrent, and the flood was about to lick up the prostrate figure; but the boss turned back with tremendous bounds, swung Gillsey over his shoulder like a sack of oats, and staggered up the slope, as the water swelled, with a sobbing moan, from his ankles to his knees.
Seeing the situation of the boss, several more of the hands, who had climbed to a level of safety, rushed to the rescue. They seized him and his burden, while others formed a chain, laying hold of hands. With a shout the whole gang surged up the hill,—and the river saw its prey dragged out of its very teeth.
After a rest of a few moments, Gillsey quite recovered, and began most abject apologies for not getting to camp sooner, so as to give the boys time to save something.
The demonstrative hand-shakings and praises and gratitude of the men whom he had snatched from a frightful death seemed to confuse him. He took it at first for chaff, and said, humbly, that "Bein' as sis wanted him to git thar in time, he'd did his best." But at length it dawned upon him that his comrades regarded him as a man, as a hero, who had done a really splendid and noble thing. He began to feel their gratitude and their respect.