"He's gone down-stream, I'm afraid. They say his home is clean gone. We have been across the river and came over on that high bridge. I don't know much about this side. They said Thelma Ekblad tried to save him and nearly got lost herself. Her brother, the cripple, you know, couldn't get away. Their house is gone now. He and the Belkap baby were given up for lost when old Fishin' Teddy got to them some way. He knew the high stepping-stones below the deep hole and hit them true every step. They said he went nearly neck deep holding Paul and striking solid rock every time. He'd lived by the river so long he knew the crossing, deep as the flood was over it. Paul made him take the baby first, and he got out with it, all right, and would have been safe, but he was bound to go back for Paul, too; and he got him safe to land, where the baby was; but I guess the effort was too much for the old fellow, and he loosed his hold and fell back into the river before they could catch him. He saved two lives, though, and he wasn't any use to the community, anyhow. A man that lives alone like that never is, so it isn't much loss, after all. But that big Joe Thomson's another matter. And he was so strong, he could swim like a whale; but the Sage Brush got him--I'm afraid." Jerry's engine gave a great thump as she flung on all the power and dashed away on the upper road toward Joe Thomson's ranch. "At the bend of the river you turn toward the three cottonwoods." Jerry recalled the directions given her on her first and only journey down this valley three years before. "Why, why, there is no bend any more!" she cried as she halted her car and gazed in amazement and horror at the river valley where a broad, full stream poured down a new-cut channel straight to the south. "Joe's home isn't gone at all! Yonder it stands, safe and high above the flood-line. Oh, where did the river take Joe?" She twisted her hands in her old quick, nervous way, and stiffened every muscle as if to keep off a dead weight that was crushing down upon her. "He said if I wanted him he would be down beyond the blowout. I'm going to look for him there. I don't know where else to go, and I want him." The white, determined face and firm lips bespoke Jim Swaim's own child now. And if the speed of her car was increased, no one would ever know that the thought of reaching her goal ahead of any possible Thelma might be the impetus that gave the increase. "Yonder are the three cotton woods. From there I can see the oak-grove and all of my rare old acres of sand. What beautiful wheat everywhere! The storm seems to have hit the other side of the river as it runs now, and left all this fine crop to Joe. But what for, if it took him?" Her quick imagination pictured possibilities too dreadful for words. <tb>