The Sagebrusher by Emerson Hough (first ebook reader txt) 📖

vast, deep groan, somewhere deep in the earth, as though a volcano were about to erupt. It was not over in an instant, but went on, like the suppressed lamentations of some creature trying to break its chains. It might have been some prehistoric, tremendous creature, unknown to man, unknown to these times. But it was 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 street lifted, gently, slowly, and sank down again. As it did so a tremendous reverberation gathered and broke out, ran up and down the canyon, up the opposite cliff face, echoing and rising as dense and thick as smoke does. The rack-rock charge, of no one may know how many hundreds of pounds, 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 belike surpassed that of the original breaking through of the waters. That first slow work of nature might have been done drop by drop, a little at a time. But now all the outraged river was venting itself in one epochal instant. Its accumulated power was rushing through the wall that 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 may measure the actual horse power that lay above the great dam of the Two Forks—it never was a comprehensible thing. A hundred Johnstown reservoirs lay penned there. That there was so little actual loss of life was due to the fact that there were few settlements in the sixty miles below the mouth of the great canyon itself. A few scattered dry farms, edging up close to the river in the valley far below, were caught and buried. Hours later, under the advancing flood, all the live stock of the valley was swept away, all the houses and all the fences and roads and bridges were wiped out as though they had never been. But this was fifty, sixty, seventy miles away, and much later in the morning. Those below could only guess what had happened far up in the 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 hundred foot 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 disintegrated mass of powdered concrete fell out, was blown apart. The face of the dam on that part slowly settled down into a vast U. Then the waters came through, leaping—a solid face of water such as no man may comprehend.

An instant, and the canyon below the dam was fifty feet deep with a substance which seemed not water, but a mass of shrieking and screaming demons set loose under the name of no known element. There came a vast roar, but with it a number of smaller sounds, as of voices deep down under the flood, glass splintering, rocks rumbling. The gorge seemed inhabited by furies. And back of this came the pressure of twenty miles of water, a hundred feet deep, which would come through. The river had its way again, raving and roaring in an anvil chorus of its own, knocking the great bowlders together, shrieking its glee. The Two Forks river came through the Two Forks canyon once more! Against it there stood only the fragmental ruin of the great, gray face, buttressed with concrete more coherent than granite itself, but all useless here.

The tide rose very rapidly. The canyon was too crooked to carry off the flood. The lower part of the town, where the street grade sank rapidly, went under water almost at once. Horses, cows, sheep, chickens, the odds and ends of such an encampment, gathered by vagrant laborers, were swept down before opportunity could be found to save them. Men and the few women in that part of town, employees of the cook camp, abandoned their possessions and ran straight up the mountain side, seeking only to get above the tide. Their houses were swept away like cheese boxes. Logs were crushed together like straws. The sound of it all made human speech inaudible anywhere close to the water's edge.

The east half of the dam, that closer to the camp, still held. The buildings here were still under the dam—a mass of water fifty feet in height rose above them, would come through if that portion of the dam broke. But at the time only the suction of the farther U, where the break was made, caused a gentle current to be visible at this side of the backwater. If the dam held, it would be quite a time before the level of the lake above would be appreciably altered. Slowly, inch by inch, 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 the remnant of the dam held, that would be true. Happy the human race aspiring to erect such a barrier, that so few suffered in this rebirth of the wilderness. Had the settlements been thick below, all must have perished. The telephone was out, there was no way for a messenger to get 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 so that it was less destructive. There was no settlement at all in the canyon proper.

After the first pause of horror men here at the broken dam began to bestir themselves. Discipline was a thing forgotten, and sauve qui peut was the law. It was some time before Doctor Barnes pulled himself together and began to try to get his men in hand. He ordered them to the lower end of the street, to drive the people out of their houses without an instant's delay; for none might say at what time the break in the dam would increase, in which case it soon would be too late for any hope. He himself hastened at last to the house where the two women were, Wid Gardner with him, after he had issued general orders for all the men to get up the trail above the dam as soon as possible.

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

"It's all gone," said Doctor Barnes, not even bitterly, but calmly after 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 the waters drowned their voices.

"Come quick! Get into my car. It's only a step up the grade—we'll be safe 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 curious terror of his own. Doctor Barnes hurried them, guided them, and the little 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 cut bank, where they might take breath and look down. There came up and grouped themselves near them and beyond them now several of the people of the camp, and practically all of the soldiers from the barracks, who fell into a stiff, silent line, looking down. It was a scene singular enough which lay before them, this wild remaking of the wilderness.

There came another cosmic cry from the chaos below them, more terrifying than anything yet had been. Two Forks was throwing in the reserves. The enemy was breaking! Doctor Barnes knew what this meant. The break was widening. He stood looking down. And then he heard a human 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 or the 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 vision of her new world, and looked into the eyes of the man who had given back to her eyes with which to see. And he looked deep, deep into her own, 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 her away, giving her into Annie's arms.

"Look!" cried other voices.

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

Doctor Barnes stood looking out over it all moodily. He did not go back to Mary Gage. Back beyond a few of the soldiers were chattering idly, but no one paid attention to them, for not even they themselves knew that they were talking. But at length a voice, clear and distinct, 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?" She pointed.

"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 said he 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, laying her 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 log house where Sim Gage's soul had passed was no more to be seen. It had gone. The house where the women had stopped was swept down but a short time 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, so far as his work was concerned. It was he who discovered their work last night. He took care of two of them—it makes three for him. It was he that killed Big Aleck, up on the reserve, and avenged you, and never told you. He was shot—you heard the firing. He died before we came up here. I couldn't bring his body till you were cared for. Now it's too late. He's gone. Well, it's as good a way for a good man to go."

"Blow 'Taps,'" he ordered of the bugler near by. It was done. And then, 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 the echoes of the salutes had passed. It was as