Howards agent, Kline, received this on June 15, 1933, and commented on it in a letter to Howard the next day; "the other westerns you sent me are short..."

In a letter (#251) to August Derleth, July 3, 1933 Howard mentions Lake Brownwood:

The great drawback of this country is always lack of water, except during certain years when it is swept by terrific floods. (Such as filled Lake Brownwood in twenty-four hours, after the engineers had predicted that two years at the least would be required to fill it.) This lake may mean life to hundreds of cattle; what it will mean to the farmers who irrigate with it, only time can tell.

On the night of July 3, torrential rains created flooding on both Pecan Bayou and Jim Ned Creek, with peak inflows into the newly created reservoir estimated at 235,000 cubic feet per second. The basin was filled to 150,000 acre-feet, covering more than 7000 acres of land, in about six hours. Howard’s story is based on this event.