Ham's shovel bit swiftly down into the soft, moist sand. Now he is down to his waist. Now only his shoulders show above the top of the hole. Suddenly, with a violent grunt, he straightens up. "Bed-rock!" he yells, and begins digging again. The excitement is now intense. Nearly every one has a gold-pan in his hand, and is holding it out toward Ham, ready to receive the first shovel of pay-dirt. That first shovel of dirt means so much, possibly a fortune for all! Even the graybeards, Mr. Conroyal and Rad Randolph and Frank Holt, men who could, who often had faced death without the quiver of a muscle, are now all of a tremble with excitement. Thure and Bud are both bending forward so far that there is danger of their tumbling into the hole on top of Ham. For a couple of minutes longer Ham shovels out the dirt, but more slowly and carefully now. "Give me a pan," and he suddenly straightens up, seizes one of the pans, and disappears in the hole. A moment later he jumps out of the hole, the pan nearly filled with dirt in his hands, and races like a mad man with it to the little stream of water, followed by all the others. In the excitement of the moment no one notices how dark it is becoming, nor hears an ominous sound, a distant roar, each second growing louder, and coming from far up the gulch. Ham reaches the water, and, plunging the pan down into it, begins carefully stirring its contents with his big fingers. Around him bend the others, regardless of wet feet. In a few minutes the larger part of the sand and the gravel is washed out of the pan by the water. Now only a thin layer of black sand remains on the bottom of the pan. The crucial instant has come. Ham slowly straightens up, carefully pours all the water out of the pan, bends his head down close over it, and begins moving the thin layer of black sand about with his fingers. "Is there, is there any gold?" queries Thure, unable longer to keep silent. Ham does not answer for a moment, but continues to stir the sand with his big fingers, bending his head still closer to the pan. "Not a durned smell!" and he suddenly hurls the pan violently from him. At this moment Mr. Conroyal utters a startled exclamation and glances quickly up the gulch. One look is sufficient to turn his face white. From where he stands he can see straight up the gulch for nearly half a mile; and half that distance up the gulch he sees a dark gray wall, ten feet high, topped with white, rushing down toward him with the speed of a race horse, and hears a roar like the rushing charge of a thousand cavalrymen. "My God, a flood!" he yells. "Climb for your lives!"