The Sagebrusher: A Story of the West

by Emerson Hough

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  THE DAM

  Doctor Allen Barnes turned slowly toward the house where the wife ofSim Gage still lay. His heart was heavy with the hardest duty he hadever known in all his life.

  But as he reached a point half way between the two houses he suddenlystopped. At that moment every man on the little street stopped also.

  The routine of the patrol had been relaxed in the excitement of theselate events. Indeed, it seemed tacitly agreed that the climax hadcome, so that there was no need now for further guardianship of theproperty. It was not so.

  The sound was a short, heavy moan, as nearly as it may be described,and not a sharp rending note; a vast, deep groan, somewhere deep in theearth, as though a volcano were about to erupt. It was not over in aninstant, but went on, like the suppressed lamentations of some creaturetrying to break its chains. It might have been some prehistoric,tremendous creature, unknown to man, unknown to these times. But itwas our creature. It was of our day. Else it could never have been.

  Then the ground under the feet of every man on the little streetlifted, gently, slowly, and sank down again. As it did so a tremendousreverberation gathered and broke out, ran up and down the canyon, upthe opposite cliff face, echoing and rising as dense and thick as smokedoes. The rack-rock charge, of no one may know how many hundreds ofpounds, had done its work.

  And then all earth went back to chaos. A new world was in the making.There arose in that narrow, iron-sided gorge a havoc such as belikesurpassed that of the original breaking through of the waters. Thatfirst slow work of nature might have been done drop by drop, a littleat a time. But now all the outraged river was venting itself in oneepochal instant. Its accumulated power was rushing through the wallthat held it back from the seas--the vast vengeance of the waters,which they had sought covertly all this time, now was theirs.

  An uncontrollable and immeasurable force was set loose. No man maymeasure the actual horse power that lay above the great dam of the TwoForks--it never was a comprehensible thing. A hundred Johnstownreservoirs lay penned there. That there was so little actual loss oflife was due to the fact that there were few settlements in the sixtymiles below the mouth of the great canyon itself. A few scattered dryfarms, edging up close to the river in the valley far below, werecaught and buried. Hours later, under the advancing flood, all thelive stock of the valley was swept away, all the houses and all thefences and roads and bridges were wiped out as though they had neverbeen. But this was fifty, sixty, seventy miles away, and much later inthe morning. Those below could only guess what had happened far up inthe great Two Forks canyon. The big dam was broken!

  The face of the giant dam, more solidly coherent than granite itself,slowly, grandiose even in its ruin, passed out and down in a hundredfoot crevasse where the spill gates were widened by the high explosive.A vast land slip, jarred from the cut-face mountain side above,thundered down and aided in the crumbling of the dam. A disintegratedmass of powdered concrete fell out, was blown apart. The face of thedam on that part slowly settled down into a vast U. Then the waterscame through, leaping--a solid face of water such as no man maycomprehend.

  An instant, and the canyon below the dam was fifty feet deep with asubstance which seemed not water, but a mass of shrieking and screamingdemons set loose under the name of no known element. There came a vastroar, but with it a number of smaller sounds, as of voices deep downunder the flood, glass splintering, rocks rumbling. The gorge seemedinhabited by furies. And back of this came the pressure of twentymiles of water, a hundred feet deep, which would come through. Theriver had its way again, raving and roaring in an anvil chorus of itsown, knocking the great bowlders together, shrieking its glee. The TwoForks river came through the Two Forks canyon once more! Against itthere stood only the fragmental ruin of the great, gray face,buttressed with concrete more coherent than granite itself, but alluseless here.

  The tide rose very rapidly. The canyon was too crooked to carry offthe flood. The lower part of the town, where the street grade sankrapidly, went under water almost at once. Horses, cows, sheep,chickens, the odds and ends of such an encampment, gathered by vagrantlaborers, were swept down before opportunity could be found to savethem. Men and the few women in that part of town, employees of thecook camp, abandoned their possessions and ran straight up the mountainside, seeking only to get above the tide. Their houses were swept awaylike cheese boxes. Logs were crushed together like straws. The soundof it all made human speech inaudible anywhere close to the water'sedge.

  The east half of the dam, that closer to the camp, still held. Thebuildings here were still under the dam--a mass of water fifty feet inheight rose above them, would come through if that portion of the dambroke. But at the time only the suction of the farther U, where thebreak was made, caused a gentle current to be visible at this side ofthe backwater. If the dam held, it would be quite a time before thelevel of the lake above would be appreciably altered. Slowly, inch byinch, each inch representing none might say how much in power of ruin,it would sink, and in time reveal the ancient bed of the river. If theremnant of the dam held, that would be true. Happy the human raceaspiring to erect such a barrier, that so few suffered in this rebirthof the wilderness. Had the settlements been thick below, all must haveperished. The telephone was out, there was no way for a messenger toget out ahead of the flood. Only the quick widening of the valley,below the canyon's lower end, eased down the volume of the flood sothat it was less destructive. There was no settlement at all in thecanyon proper.

  After the first pause of horror men here at the broken dam began tobestir themselves. Discipline was a thing forgotten, and _sauve quipeut_ was the law. It was some time before Doctor Barnes pulledhimself together and began to try to get his men in hand. He orderedthem to the lower end of the street, to drive the people out of theirhouses without an instant's delay; for none might say at what time thebreak in the dam would increase, in which case it soon would be toolate for any hope. He himself hastened at last to the house where thetwo women were, Wid Gardner with him, after he had issued generalorders for all the men to get up the trail above the dam as soon aspossible.

  "Come out!" he cried as he opened the door. Mary Gage and Annie camearm in arm, both of them hysterical now.

  "It's all gone," said Doctor Barnes, not even bitterly, but calmlyafter all. "It's out. The dam's gone."

  "Gone? What does it mean? Where shall we go? Is there danger?"These questions came all at once from the two women. The roar of thewaters drowned their voices.

  "Come quick! Get into my car. It's only a step up the grade--we'll besafe on the upper level."

  They came, Mary Gage still with her bandages in place, stumbling,terrified, but leading the little dog, Tim, who cringed down in curiousterror of his own. Doctor Barnes hurried them, guided them, and thelittle car quickly carried them up the incline above the top of the dam.

  They paused here at the first sharp curve under the lee of the cutbank, where they might take breath and look down. There came up andgrouped themselves near them and beyond them now several of the peopleof the camp, and practically all of the soldiers from the barracks, whofell into a stiff, silent line, looking down. It was a scene singularenough which lay before them, this wild remaking of the wilderness.

  There came another cosmic cry from the chaos below them, moreterrifying than anything yet had been. Two Forks was throwing in thereserves. The enemy was breaking! Doctor Barnes knew what this meant.The break was widening. He stood looking down. And then he heard ahuman voice cry out, a voice he knew.

  He turned--and saw Mary Gage fall as though in a faint upon the ground.Her eye-bandages were off, her eyes wholly uncovered to the light.

  "Well, it's over now," said he quietly to Annie Squires. "One way orthe other, it's done."

  He lifted her gently, attended her until at length she moved,stood--until at length he knew that she saw!

  She turned her face back from
the ruin which had been her first visionof her new world, and looked into the eyes of the man who had givenback to her eyes with which to see. And he looked deep, deep into herown, grave and unsmiling.

  She spoke to him at last. "I can see," said she simply.

  "I'm very glad," said he, trying to be as simple. But he turned heraway, giving her into Annie's arms.

  "Look!" cried other voices.

  A section of the side of the great U, running clear back to a seamwhich had formed in the dam face, slowly broke out and went down. Thewater rose like a tide now, very rapidly, because the canyon itself, sonarrow and so full of abrupt curves, made no adequate outlet for thisaugmented flood. The entire lower part of the camp was covered, andthe flood, eddying back from the mountain wall, came creeping up towardthe top of the grade, covering now this and now that portion of thesettlement. One house after another was swept away before their eyes.

  Doctor Barnes stood looking out over it all moodily. He did not goback to Mary Gage. Back beyond a few of the soldiers were chatteringidly, but no one paid attention to them, for not even they themselvesknew that they were talking. But at length a voice, clear anddistinct, did come to Doctor Barnes' ears.

  "Where is my husband!" cried Mary Gage, breaking away from Annie."Which is he?"

  He turned to her silently. He shook his head.

  "I want to see him! I've got to see him. Who's that man?" Shepointed.

  "That's Wid Gardner," said Doctor Barnes, slowly and gently as he could.

  "Those men yonder--those soldiers--is one of them my husband? You saidhe was a soldier."

  "Yes," said Doctor Barnes, "he was a soldier."

  Then she guessed at last.

  "He _was_ a soldier? Where is he _now_?" She turned upon him, layingher hands upon his arms. "Where is he now?" she demanded.

  But Doctor Barnes was looking at the foam-flecked surface of the water,eddying against the mountain side, crawling up and up. The little loghouse where Sim Gage's soul had passed was no more to be seen. It hadgone. The house where the women had stopped was swept down but a shorttime later. Doctor Barnes could not speak the cruel truth.

  "Annie!" called out Mary Gage, sobbing openly, imploringly. "Tell me,won't I _ever_ see him? You said he was a good soldier."

  "One of the best," said Doctor Barnes at last. "Listen to me, please.Your husband died believing he had saved the dam. And so he had, sofar as his work was concerned. It was he who discovered their worklast night. He took care of two of them--it makes three for him. Itwas he that killed Big Aleck, up on the reserve, and avenged you, andnever told you. He was shot--you heard the firing. He died before wecame up here. I couldn't bring his body till you were cared for. Nowit's too late. He's gone. Well, it's as good a way for a good man togo."

  "Blow 'Taps,'" he ordered of the bugler near by. It was done. Andthen, at his order, the rifles spoke in unison over a soldier's grave.

  "But I've never _seen_ him!" she said to him piteously, after theechoes of the salutes had passed. It was as though she was unable tocomprehend.

  "No," said Allen Barnes. "But keep this picture of him--think that hedied like a gentleman and a soldier. A good man, Sim Gage."

  He turned away and walked down the grade apart from them, hardly seeingwhat lay before him, hardly hearing the rush of the waters down thecanyon.

  When men began to question as to the cause of the disaster, it becameplain that some man, whose name no one will ever know, must have creptalong the side of the river bank below the road grade, and have firedthe fuse of a heavy charge of rack-rock, which, none might know howlong, had been hid between the buttresses and back of the apron of thedam.

  Doctor Barnes reasoned now that that man in all likelihood had comefrom below. If so, in all likelihood he was one of the Dorenwaldparty. His face lighted grimly. There were but few places where theycould have found a place in the canyon for an encampment. If they hadfound one of these places--where were they now? Their fate could nowbe read in this flood forcing its way down through the crooked gorge ofthe mountain range. The flag staff had not been swept down--the flagstill fluttered now, triumphant over the attempted ruin--the answer ofAmerica to Anarchy! And the flag had been avenged. Dorenwald and his"free brothers," leaders of the "world's revolt," would revolt no more.The sponge of the slate had wiped off their little marks. No one wouldever trace them. They would find no confessional and no shriving, fortheir way back to that underworld of devil-fed minds, out of which theyhad emerged to do ruin in a country which had never harmed them, butwhich on the contrary had welcomed them and fed them in their want.