With an impact that shook every timber the current flung the house against a great boulder. The building swung as on a pivot and was driven into the rocks again. Betty looked out of the window. They were wedged between two great spars of red sandstone. The furious buffeting of the racing tide lifted their frail refuge and dropped it upon the sharp edges of the crags. “We’re caught at the Steeples,” the girl told the others. If they could get out and climb the rock spires! But that was impossible. The house was submerged almost to the second floor in the swashing torrent which surrounded it and dragged at it with a violence they could feel. Again the shipwrecked three sang. This time it was “Rock of Ages.” They held one another’s hands for comfort, and in their prayer, voiced through the words of the old hymn, they found a sustaining strength. Presently Mandy took up “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” and the others came in with support. Betty helped to wear away the long night with talk. She forced into her voice cheerfulness and courage, though there was not a minute of the dark hours not filled with alarms. It would be morning soon, she promised. Daddy would come and get them, or Lon, or perhaps Justin Merrick’s men who were camping on the Flat Tops. Then they would have fun talking it all over and telling how brave Ruth had been for not crying (except just the teentiest time) like a silly little girl. After what to those in peril seemed an eternity of waiting, light sifted into the sky with a promise of the coming day. The darkness lifted and showed them a valley of wild and turbid waters. The Quarter Circle D E ranch had become a furious and rushing river flung back upon itself by the hogbacks which dammed its free course. In the darkness it had seemed that the menace of the flood had been tenfold increased by the unknown peril that lay back of the visible. But in the light they could see too much. The force of the torrent was appalling. It showed them to what a puny reed of safety they were clinging. At any moment the building might collapse like an empty eggshell under pressure. CHAPTER XXXVII HOLD THE FORT Hollister was wakened by a sound of lapping outside his tent. It was a noise feeble as the meowing of little kittens. At first he thought it must be a memory from his dream. When he had gone to bed the stars had filled the sky above the dry and arid mesa where they were camped. No rain could have fallen in sufficient quantity to make even a rivulet. But the rippling continued. The source of it puzzled the engineer. He flung back the bedding and rose. A chill shocked through him. His feet were in ice-cold water an inch or two deep. Rapidly he dressed and then stepped through the flap of the tent. A shallow sheet of water covered the ground except where there were hillocks. Apparently it was flowing toward the south, as though before the pressure of a greater volume not in sight.