He was just in time to see the last of the water.  It seemed to sink as in quicksand.  The shape of the hole had changed.  The tremendous force of the blast in the adjoining field had obstructed or diverted the underground stream of water.

Belding’s never-failing spring had been ruined.  What had made this little plot of ground green and sweet and fragrant was now no more.  Belding’s first feeling was for the pity of it.  The pale Ajo lilies would bloom no more under those willows.  The willows themselves would soon wither and die.  He thought how many times in the middle of hot summer nights he had come down to the spring to drink.  Never again!

Suddenly he thought of Blanco Diablo.  How the great white thoroughbred had loved this spring!  Belding straightened up and looked with tear-blurred eyes out over the waste of desert to the west.  Never a day passed that he had not thought of the splendid horse; but this moment, with its significant memory, was doubly keen, and there came a dull pang in his breast.

“Diablo will never drink here again!” muttered Belding.

The loss of Blanco Diablo, though admitted and mourned by Belding, had never seemed quite real until this moment.

The pall of dust drifting over him, the din of the falling water up at the dam, diverted Belding’s mind to the Chases.  All at once he was in the harsh grip of a cold certainty.  The blast had been set off intentionally to ruin his spring.  What a hellish trick!  No Westerner, no Indian or Mexican, no desert man could have been guilty of such a crime.  To ruin a beautiful, clear, cool, never-failing stream of water in the desert!

It was then that Belding’s worry and indecision and brooding were as if they had never existed.  As he strode swiftly back to the house, his head, which had long been bent thoughtfully and sadly, was held erect.  He went directly to his room, and with an air that was now final he buckled on his gun belt.  He looked the gun over and tried the action.  He squared himself and walked a little more erect.  Some long-lost individuality had returned to Belding.

“Let’s see,” he was saying.  “I can get Carter to send the horses I’ve left back to Waco to my brother.  I’ll make Nell take what money there is and go hunt up her mother.  The Gales are ready to go—­to-day, if I say the word.  Nell can travel with them part way East.  That’s your game, Tom Belding, don’t mistake me.”

As he went out he encountered Mr. Gale coming up the walk.  The long sojourn at Forlorn River, despite the fact that it had been laden with a suspense which was gradually changing to a sad certainty, had been of great benefit to Dick’s father.  The dry air, the heat, and the quiet had made him, if not entirely a well man, certainly stronger than he had been in many years.

“Belding, what was that terrible roar?” asked Mr. Gale.  “We were badly frightened until Miss Nell came to us.  We feared it was an earthquake.”