When the sun was just beginning to redden on the higher peaks of the western mountains, a shout from the hill-side road broke upon the morning stillness. A moment later Maxwell and Stillings came running to the brink of hazard.
Sprague stumbled up out of the crevasse chasm and pointed down to the washed-out heart of the dam. There, piled in the bottom of what had once been the plank-lined pit with the hoisting-tackle over it, and laid bare now by the scouring flood, was a great pile of dynamite stacked solidly in its shipping-boxes. And, half-buried in the sand and detritus of the outflow, lay the iron pipe through which the firing fuse had been carried to the gully edge Jennings had tried to reach.
“There is the warrant for what we’ve been doing, gentlemen,” said the big expert wearily. “Take a good look at it, all of you, so that if the courts have anything to say about this night’s work——”
Maxwell cut in quickly.
“There’s nobody left to make the fight. Jennings went east from Angels on the first train that got through. He was badly blinded, so Disbrowsays; got a fall from his horse, was the story he told. We’ll fix this lay-out so it will stand just as it is until everybody who wants to has seen it!”
“You couldn’t stay away, could you?” said the white-haired colonel, grinning up from his seat on the last of the sand-bags. “I told the boys here you’d be turning up as soon as your railroad track was open.”
“We’ve had a mighty anxious night,” Stillings put in. “The river is up five feet, and we couldn’t tell what was happening over here. Great Jonah! but you men must have had your hands full!”
“We did,” said Smith; “but it’s all over now.”
“All but the shouting,” said Maxwell. “But post your guards and let’s get back to town. My car is at Angels, and we came up special. When we left Brewster the plaza was black with people waiting for news.”
It was on the way down the flood-swollen canyon that the chemistry expert explained to the private-car company at the breakfast-table how he had been able to diagnose the case of the cloud-bursters.
“It was merely a bit of what you might call constructive reasoning,” he said modestly. “I knew by personal investigation in the line of my proper work—soil-testing—that there was no arable landwithin reach of the Mesquite project. The other steps followed, as a matter of course. Starbuck, here, is wondering why I risked his life and mine to get a few photographs forThe Tribune, but if any of you will examine the snap-shots carefully under a magnifier, you will see that they prove the existence of the central pit in the dam, and that one of them shows the pipe-line through which the fuse was to run. For the possible legal purpose I was anxious to have this evidence in indisputable form. That’s all, I believe.”
“Not quite all,” Maxwell broke in. “How did you know that Jennings would be hanging over the wire at Angels while you people were making your flying trip across the mountain in the auto?”
Sprague laughed good-naturedly.
“Call it a guess,” he said. “It was evident that Jennings wasn’t anxious to kill a lot of innocent people. His inquiries about the strength of the High Line dam proved that. It ran in my mind that he wouldn’t touch off his earthquake until he could be reasonably sure that the flood wouldn’t catch a train in transit in the canyon. That would have been a little too horrible, even for him. Now you’ve got it all, I guess.”
“But you haven’t got yours yet,” laughed Stillings. “When this thing gets out in Brewsterthe whole town will mob you and want to make you the next mayor, or send you to Congress, or something of that sort.”
“Not this year,” said the big man, with another mellow laugh. “And I’ll tell you why. Just before this train reaches town it’s going to stop and let us law-breakers get off, scatter and drop into town as best we can without calling attention to ourselves. And to-morrow morning you’ll read inThe Tribunehow the Mesquite dam, weakened by the recent storms and cloud-bursts, went out by littles during the night, watched over and kept from going as a disastrous whole by a brave little bunch of”—he looked around the table and winked solemnly—“by a brave little bunch of cowboys from the ‘Lazy X.’” Then, with sudden soberness: “Promise me that you won’t give it away, gentlemen all. It’s the only fee I shall exact for my small part in the affair.”
And the promise was given while the locomotive whistle was sounding for the Brewster yard-limits, and Maxwell was pulling the air-cord for the out-of-town stop.