to stop until this row is
over? We can take better care of you there than we can here."

She sat for a moment, her face turned away.

"Will you come?" he repeated.

"One guess!" said Annie Squires for her. "In a minute!" And by that
time she was throwing things into the valises.

CHAPTER XXIX

MARTIAL LAW

The entire flow of the greater of the Two Forks streams lay harnessed
at last, after years of labor and an expenditure of millions. For
twenty miles there lay a lake where once a clear, gravel-bottomed
stream had flowed above the gorge of the mountain canyon. The gray
face of a man-made wall rose sheer a hundred feet above the original
bed of the stream, leaving it in part revealed; and this barrier
checked and stayed the once resistless flood against which an entire
mountain range had proved inefficient. Presently for hundreds of miles
each way the transmission lines would carry out power to those seeking
light, to those employing labor; and the used water would irrigate
lands far below.

Allied with this unit of the great dam was a lesser dam operating a
mill plant on the other Fork. Down this stream ship timbers once had
come. The camp of the reclamation engineers and construction men lay
upon a bench or plateau which once formed the bank of the stream upon
that side, now about half way up to the top of the great dam. The road
running up and down the valley ascended from this plateau to a
sufficient elevation to surmount the permanent water level above the
upper dam. On the opposite side rose a sheer and bare rock running
two-thirds up to the top of the mountain peak which here had shouldered
its way down as though in curiosity to look at the bottom of the gorge
itself. The great dam was anchored to the rock face on that side, and
it was there that the chutes and wells for the turbines were located,
as well as the spill gates which now were in temporary service. A wide
roadway of cement, with vast buttresses on each side, ran along the top
of the dam and looked down upon the abrupt surface of its lower face.
Here, and there, at either side of the dam, and at the original stream
level, stood low buildings of stone, to house the vast dynamos or care
for other phases of the tremendous industrial installation of the
National Government.

Here and there were stationed the armed guards, in the uniform of the
Army. They did sentry-go along the dam-top, and patrolled or watched
the lower leve