In every river town came a stirring of excitement; people went out on the bridges and stood there in the rain, watching the brown water flow and the bits of driftwood slide by. “Nineteen-point-three,” someone would read, looking at the gauge. “She’s risen more’n a foot since noon.”

That afternoon the water at Colusa bridge rose to an even twenty on the gauge, and then quietly began to spill over the long crest of Colusa Weir into Butte Basin, and thence flow into Sutter By-Pass. The water topped Tisdale Weir next, and then Moulton. On the other side of the Valley, gauge-readings were rising rapidly on the Feather River and its tributaries, the Yuba and the Bear. At Vernon where the Feather flowed into the Sacramento, the great stretch of Fremont Weir—nearly two miles long—offered passageway for the combined rivers into Yolo By-Pass. In the early darkness the brown water rose to the concrete lip of the weir and flowed across into the wide plain between the levees.

At Sacramento the gauge-reading was as yet just under twenty. There the American was pouring its flood into the main stream. As yet its outflow had moved down the channel of the Sacramento between the levees without preventing the waters of the upper rivers from following the same course. As a result, water had not yet begun to flow over the wicket-tops of Sacramento Weir, four miles up-stream from the city. But the level at the gauge was steadily rising.

The General had stayed in the office later than previously. He only sighed when the phone rang again, and his secretary said, “Long-distance.” It was one of the big asparagus growers in the delta country; his thousands of rich acres lay behind low levees which he was legally restrained from raising.

“Well, I don’t know,” said the General. “Up to this morning I would have said you were safe, but the Weather Bureau thinks we may get a lot of rain tomorrow. We have some leeway left even so, and a good deal depends on just how the rain hits.”

“You won’t open those gates any sooner than you need to, will you?”

The General had been a military man for many years, and he bridled at the implication of the question.

“Look here,” he snapped. “I’ll order those wickets opened exactly when I think is the right time, and no down-stream rancher and no up-stream Chamber of Commerce will tell me when is the right time either.”

The General accepted an apology and hung up.

13

“We’ve been having a pretty easy time of it,” said the L. D. to his assistant. “No break on any big line except that one up by French Bar. Of course we aren’t through with it yet. Anyway, we’re going to have something to fill the reservoirs with, next summer. The company ought to be able to pay its dividends.”

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