She sweeps them with cloudbursts that wash half a hillside into the valleys, and now and then with snowslides and tremendous falls of rock.

One of them filled up that creek, and, as far as I can figure, it did rather more.

It filled up the gully through which the creek flowed high up on the range, and, while a little water still creeps through, most of the melted snow goes down another creek.

As I took the trouble to ascertain, it splits right through the lower slopes and comes out most a league away." This seemed reasonable.

Most of the streams among those ranges originate, as Weston knew, in the melting snow, but there was still a point his comrade had left unexplained.
"Then where's the lake ?" he asked.
Devine laughed.
"You're sitting right beside it now." Weston gazed at him in blank astonishment, and then a light broke in on him.
"The willows ?" he said.