“I’d like to, Paul,” he answered. “But I can’t. I’ve got to rush in a machine all the way to the Buckeye. Word came in just before lunch. They’re in trouble at the dam. There must have been a fault in the under-strata, and too-heavy dynamiting has opened it. In short, what’s the good of a good dam when the bottom of the reservoir won’t hold water?”

Three hours later, returning from the Buckeye, Dick noted that for the first time Paula and Graham had gone riding together alone.

The Wainwrights and the Coghlans, in two machines, out for a week’s trip to the Russian River, rested over for a day at the Big House, and were the cause of Paula’s taking out the tally-ho for a picnic into the Los Ba�os Hills.