And also Rick was happy because he had fallen in love, or dangerously close to it. He kept thinking of the girl he had danced with the night before. Sometimes he felt almost as if he had a few drinks in him, and he swung the curves a little absent-mindedly so that the outside tires went off the pavement and he could hear the gravel fly.

It was good to be a man, and to work on a job that called on you to do things that were a little dangerous, and to have “blue eyes in a dark-tanned face” to think about, and to breathe the clean mountain air sweeping in from the pine woods, feeling cooler and snappier the closer you got to the Pass.

7

The General was not exactly making a tour of inspection, but in his capacity as Flood-Control Co-ordinator he found himself unable to drive anywhere in the Sacramento Valley without observing river-channels and levees. So he stopped his car at the Landing, and went out on the bridge. He walked a little stiff-jointedly, and he limped with his right leg. He stopped at the middle of the bridge and looked out up-stream. The water stood at nine-point-seven on the gauge. None of the gauge-readings had varied much in the last three weeks; a certain amount of snow-melting in the mountains was compensating for the lack of rain. The General let his eyes follow along the bridge to the other side of the river where from the slope of the levee in big black letters GABLE CROSSING stared back at him. In its shrunken stage the river was only about sixty yards wide, and the levees sloped up like high natural ridges. Their crests, as the General well knew, were at the thirty-two-foot level, more than twenty-two feet above the present water surface. Penned in between the levees the river seemed puny, as if flowing in a canyon. But the General wasted no pity on the river—not when the forecast was RAIN.

8

The manager of the Palace Department Store read the forecast in the morning paper and immediately went into action. For the coming week he had planned an emphasis upon hats, baby-carriages, and bed-sheeting. He shifted it to ski-clothing, rain-equipment, and blankets.

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The Director of the Observatory gave up his plans for some lunar photography.

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The proprietor of the Gaiety Amusement Park shrugged his shoulders. He had gambled his last dollar on a fair week-end. Rain would break him. He called up his lawyer, and said he would probably have to make an assignment on Monday.

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In the Eagle Lumber Yard the owner kept his men working over-time on Saturday afternoon, and picked up two extra helpers. He had a lot of finished lumber in the yard, and to save it from getting wet and warping was hundreds of dollars in his pocket.

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