r, now, he ain't like
folks, you know. He's just the doctor."

"Yes, he's just the doctor, Gage, that's all."

He left Sim Gage standing in the road, looking steadfastly at the door.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE BLIND SEE

To those waiting for the threatened attack upon the power dam, the mere
torment of continued inaction became intolerable, but as to material
danger, nothing definite came. The keen-eyed young soldiers on their
beat night after night, day after day, caught no sight or sound of any
lurking enemy, and began to feel resentment at the arduous hours asked
of them. Once in a while one trooper would say to another that he saw
no sense in people getting scared at nothing out in No Man's Land. The
laborers of the camp were more or less incurious. They did their
allotted hours of labor each day, passed at night to the bunk house,
and fell into a snake-like torpor. Life seemed quiet and innocuous.
Liquor was prohibited. The regime was military. Soon after the bugle
had sounded Retreat each evening the raw little settlement became
silent, save for the unending requiem to hope which the great waters
chafing through the turbines continually moaned. It was apparently a
place of peace.

Doctor Barnes felt reasonably sure that the attack, if any, would come
through the valley at the lower dam, for that would be the only
practical entry point of the marauders marooned somewhere back in the
hills. The trail between these two dams lay almost wholly above the
rocky river bed. It would have been difficult if not impossible to
patrol the bed of the river itself, for close to the water's edge there
were places where no foothold could have been obtained even now, low as
the water was. Therefore it seemed most needful to watch the main
wagon trail along the canyon shelf.

It was sun-fall of the third day after Doctor Barnes had left Mary Gage
for her long wait in the dark. The men had finished their work about
the great dam, and were on their way to their quarters. Sim Gage,
scout, beginning his night's work and having ended his own attempt at
sleep during the daytime, was passing, hatted and belted, rifle in
hand, to the barracks, where he was to speak with the lieutenant in
charge. The two men of the color guard stood at the foot of the great
staff, dressed out of a tall mountain spruce, at whose top fluttered
the flag of this republic. The shrilling of the bugle's beautiful
salute to the flag was ringing