“Did you ever see a flood, Mr. Cramer? I covered Pueblo and several other places; was down South, that last big one. Families down below here are getting out,--and believe me, they are making it snappy! I’ll bet you couldn’t find a breakfast cooked in its own kitchen, down below here, to save your life! They know what a flood means, and this is going to be like the crack o’ doom when it comes. Sudden, what I mean. They’ve been tickling the gas levers, believe me, since that blast went off.” Peter turned and looked at him, frowning. “What makes you all take it for granted the dam won’t hold?” he queried resentfully. “It would, I’d stake my life on it almost, though it should have been shot in low water, or falling water. This high water is not going to last. It’s the run-off of a big general storm, and I believe the peak is past, anyway. You don’t realize the size of the Cramer Dam. And you seem to forget altogether the auxiliary dam that can be thrown in, any time it seems necessary.” Jerry Newton saw the point, but he saw something else, and being a blunt young man by nature, he blurted a retort. “If you’re so sure of its holding, Mr. Cramer, what are you so worried about?” Peter’s eyes hardened. “Lives, young fellow. Two of them dear to me.” The A. P. man was silenced. He looked contritely at Peter’s back, but he could not think of anything to say. “Look there!” The engineer, hurrying along in the lead, stopped and pointed. “That’s what I call enterprise. But it’s taking a chance I shouldn’t care about, myself.” The party pulled up, facing the river. They had reached the lower edge of the basin, about where Rawley and Johnny Buffalo had camped. The bank here was high and rocky as the canyon opened slowly its mouth. The river had been forced to a narrower channel, and it held therefore a deeper bed. Away down there in the middle of it, almost at the edge of the channel fighting still to hold its own, a bent figure was groping, bent almost double, eyes to the ground. Now and then it knelt and clawed in slimy pools. Then it went on, inch by inch, like a child picking pretty pebbles on a beach. “Old Jess!” cried Rawley. “Peter, it’s Old Jess! Call to him! He’ll step into a hole--there’s quicksand--or if the dam breaks--” “He’s crazy!” several of the party spoke the words at once, as sometimes happens, unconsciously forming an impromptu chorus. “Call him out of there!” “He wouldn’t come!” Peter was starting toward the edge, seeking a trail down. Rawley, running ahead to the place where he used to bring up water, was down before him. “Go back! I’ll get him,” shouted Peter, scrambling after, and those left at the top gesticulated and shouted. “You go back,” Rawley cried over his shoulder. “One’s enough!” Then, having reached the bottom, he started out. The vulture saw them, and flapped his arms and screamed vituperations in a reasonless rage, greed-mad, thinking they were come to rob him.