They offered no explanation of their whereabouts during the trouble, but Bennington surmised shrewdly that they had hunted a dry place.

“Glory!” cried Old Mizzou.  “Lucky she misses us!”

“What was it?  Where’d it come from?” inquired Bennington, shaking the surface drops from his shoulders.  He was wet through.

“Cloud-burst,” replied the miner.  “She hit up th’ ridge a ways.  If she’d ever burst yere, sonny, ye’d never know what drownded ye.  Look at that gulch!”

The water had now drained from the hill entirely.  It could be seen that most of the surface earth had been washed away, leaving the skeleton of the mountain bare.  Some of the more slightly rooted trees had fallen, or clung precariously to the earth with bony fingers.  But the gulch itself was terrible.  The mountain laurel, the elders, the sarvis bushes, the wild roses which, a few days before, had been fragrant and beautiful with blossom and leaf and musical with birds, had disappeared.  In their stead rolled an angry brown flood whirling in almost unbroken surface from bank to bank.  Several oaks, submerged to their branches, raised their arms helplessly.  As Bennington looked, one of these bent slowly and sank from sight.  A moment later it shot with great suddenness half its length into the air, was seized by the eager waters, and whisked away as lightly as though it had been a tree of straw.  Dark objects began to come down with the stream.  They seemed to be trying to preserve a semblance of dignity in their stately bobbing up and down, but apparently found the attempt difficult.  The roar was almost deafening, but even above it a strangely deliberate grinding noise was audible.  Old Mizzou said it was the grating of boulders as they were rolled along the bed of the stream.  The yellow glow had disappeared from the air, and the gloom of rain had taken its place.

A fine mist began to fall.  Bennington for the first time realized he was wet and shivering, and so he turned inside to change his clothes.

“It’ll all be over in a few hours,” remarked Arthur.  “I reckon them Spanish Gulch people’ll wish they lived up-stream.”

Bennington paused at the doorway.

“That’s so,” he commented.  “How about Spanish Gulch?  Will it all be drowned out?”

“No, I reckon not,” replied Arthur.  “They’ll get wet down a lot, and have wet blankets to sleep in to-night, that’s all.  You see the gulch spraddles out down there, an’ then too all this timber’ll jam down this gulch a-ways.  That’ll back up th’ water some, and so she won’t come all of a rush.”

“I see,” said Bennington.

The afternoon was well enough occupied in repairing to some extent the ravages of the brief storm.  A length of the corral had succumbed to the flood, many valuable tools in the blacksmith shop were in danger of rust from the dampness, and Arthur and his wife had been completely washed out.  All three men worked hard setting things to rights.  The twilight caught them before their work was done.