Elkins’ retort was wasted, for the sudden and unusual, although a familiar sound, had caught Hopalong’s ear and he was giving all his attention to it.  While he weighed it, his incredulity holding back the decision his common sense was striving to give him, the noise grew louder rapidly and common sense won out in a cry of warning an instant before a five-foot wall of brown water burst upon his sight, sweeping swiftly down the old, dry river bed; and behind it towered another and greater wall.  Tree trunks were dancing end over end in it as if they were straws.

“Cloud-burst!” he yelled.  “Run, Tex!  Run for yore life!  Cloud-burst up the valley!  Run, you fool; Run!”

Tex’s sarcastic retort was cut short as he instinctively glanced north, and his agonized curse lashed Hopalong forward.  “Can’t run—­knee cap’s busted!  Can’t swim, can’t do—­ah, hell—!”

Hopalong saw him torn from his shelter and whisked down the raging torrent like an arrow from a bow.  The Bar-20 puncher leaped from the bank, shot under the yellow flood and arose, gasping and choking many yards downstream, fighting madly to get the muddy water out of his throat and eyes.  As he struck out with all his strength down the current, he caught sight of Tex being torn from a jutting tree limb, and he shouted encouragement and swam all the harder, if such a thing were possible.  Tex’s course was checked for a moment by a boiling back-current and as he again felt the pull of the rushing stream Hopalong’s hand gripped his collar and the fight for safety began.  Whirled against logs and stumps, drawn down by the weight of his clothes and the frantic efforts of Tex to grasp him—­fighting the water and the man he was trying to save at the same time, his head under water as often as it was out of it, and Tex’s vise-like fingers threatening him—­he headed for the west shore against powerful cross-currents that made his efforts seem useless.  He seemed to get the worst of every break.  Once, when caught by a friendly current, they were swung under an overhanging branch, but as Hopalong’s hand shot up to grasp it a submerged bush caught his feet and pulled him under, and Tex’s steel-like arms around his throat almost suffocated him before he managed to beat the other into insensibility and break the hold.

“I’ll let you go!” he threatened; but his hand grasped the other’s collar all the tighter and his fighting jaw was set with greater determination than ever.

They shot out into the main stream, where the U-bend channel joined the short-cut, and it looked miles wide to the exhausted puncher.  He was fighting only on his will now.  He would not give up, though he scarce could lift an arm, and his lungs seemed on fire.  He did not know whether Tex was dead or alive, but he would get the body ashore with him, or go down trying.  He bumped into a log and instinctively grasped it.  It turned, and when he came up again it was bobbing five feet ahead of him.  Ages seemed