Hours later, under the advancing flood, all the live stock of the valley was swept away, all the houses and all the fences and roads and bridges were wiped out as though they had never been.

But this was fifty, sixty, seventy miles away, and much later in the morning.

Those below could only guess what had happened far up in the great Two Forks canyon.

The big dam was broken! The face of the giant dam, more solidly coherent than granite itself, slowly, grandiose even in its ruin, passed out and down in a hundred foot crevasse where the spill gates were widened by the high explosive.
A vast land slip, jarred from the cut-face mountain side above, thundered down and aided in the crumbling of the dam.

A disintegrated mass of powdered concrete fell out, was blown apart.