CHAPTER TENWhen they topped the rise and stood overlooking Hebertown there was a moment of silence and then a groan of horror burst from them all.
“Gutted,” Arthur Chesbro said succinctly. “Not a thin dime left in town; not a nickel.”
The true flood crest which they had missed in the hills had left a plain wake through the town. It was dark brown and even from their height they could smell its stink. Sewage, chemical waste, mud churned up from river bottoms where it had been rotting for a century. The brown smear lay over two-thirds of Hebertown, and there was something worse at its center, a long streak scores of yards to either side of the river. It seemed almost to have been bulldozed clean.
The river still boiled many feet above its normal height, and flotsam rolled past, dotting it
