“The water’s probably coming through the Quarter Circle ranch,” he suggested.
“Yes. We’d better rouse the men and get right up there. There may be danger if the valley gets flooded.”
Tug did not wait for the others. His words had expressed only palely the alarm he felt. If the break in the dam was a serious one—and it must be to have reached the mesa so quickly—the Quarter Circle must inevitably be flooded. He knew Betty was at her ranch. One of the men had mentioned in his hearing that he had seen her and Ruth going up the afternoon before. He was worried—very greatly worried.
His long strides carried him over the ground fast, but his fears moved faster. Presently he quickened his pace to a run. Dawn was at hand. He was splashing through water five or six inches deep.
Swinging round a bend in the road, he pulled up for a moment in dismay. Through the gap in the hogback, beyond which was the Quarter Circle D E ranch, a solid stream of water was pouring. Its flow was as steady and as constant as that of a river.
Cut off from the road, he splashed through a deepening stream to the foot of the hogback. It was a stiff quarter of an hour’s climb to reach the rock-rim below the ridge. He grudged the two or three minutes’ delay in finding a practicable ascent up the twenty-five-foot rim, for he was in a desperate hurry. Hand over hand he went up the face of the rock, clinging to projecting knobs, to faults in the surface, and to shrubbery rooted in narrow crevices. Over the edge of the sandstone he drew himself to the level surface above.
One glance from the summit showed him a valley submerged. Most of the cattle had evidently escaped to the higher ground, warned by the first of the flood as it poured down. He could see the upper hillside dotted with them. The barn, the bunkhouse, the ranch house itself, were all gone. Fragments of them might be made out on the surface of the lake that had formed—if one could call a pent-up, raging torrent by such a name.
His eyes swept the valley in search of the ranch house. He found one of the eaves sticking out of the current. All the rest of the overturned building was under water.
The strength oozed from his body. He was terribly shaken. If Betty was in the house—and he had no reason to suppose that she was not—she must have gone down in the flood. He could not, he would not believe it. And yet—
Again his glance moved down the valley. His gaze stopped at some rock spires known as the “Steeples.” Some part of a building, much battered by the waves, was caught there. Even as he looked, his heart leaped. For from a window a white flag was streaming. He could see now that some one was leaning out and waving a sheet or a tablecloth.