from above had come, the outpourings
of a hundred mountain creeks that had belched forth into the Alamo
like summer cloudbursts. The forefront of the mighty storm-crest
lapped over the presumptuous barrier in one hissing, high-flung
waterfall; then with a final roar the dam went out and, as the
bowlders groaned and rumbled beneath the flood, the Alamo overleapt
them and thundered on.

A sudden sea of yellow water spread out over the lower valley, trees
bent and crashed beneath the weight of drift, the pasture fence ducked
under and was gone. Still irked by its narrow bed the Alamo swung away
from the rock-bound bench where the ranch house stood and, uprooting
everything before it, ploughed a new channel to the river. As it
swirled past, Hardy beheld a tangled wreckage of cottonwoods and
sycamores, their tops killed by the drought, hurried away on this
overplus of waters; the bare limbs of _palo verdes_, felled by his own
axe; and sun-dried skeletons of cattle, light as cork, dancing and
bobbing as they drifted past the ranch.

The drought was broken, and as the rain poured down it washed away all
token of the past. Henceforward there would be no sign to move the
uneasy spirit; no ghastly relic, hinting that God had once forgotten
them; only the water-scarred gulches and canyons, and the ricks of
driftwood, piled high along the valleys in memory of the flood. All
day the rain sluiced down, and the Alamo went wild in its might,
throwing a huge dam across the broad bed of the river itself. But when
at last in the dead of night the storm-crest of the Salagua burst
forth, raging from its long jostling against chasm walls, a boom like
a thunder of cannon echoed from all the high cliffs by Hidden Water;
and the warring waters, bellowing and tumbling in their titanic fury,
joined together in a long, mad race to the sea.

So ended the great flood; and in the morning the sun rose up clean and
smiling, making a diamond of every dew-drop. Then once more the cattle
gathered about the house, waiting to be fed, and Hardy went out as
before to cut _sahuaros_. On the second day the creek went down and
the cattle from the other bank came across, lowing for their share.
But on the third day, when the sprouts began to show on the twining
stick-cactus, the great herd that had dogged his steps for months left
the bitter _sahuaros_ and scattered across the mesa like children on a
picnic, nipping eagerly at every shoot.

In a week the flo