SHUT IN.
The little party of horsemen had scarcely begun their passage through
the hills, when it became evident that they were to encounter the
storm of which Lightning Jo had spoken. The warm air became of chilly
coldness, and blew in fitful gusts against their faces, the sky was
rapidly overcast by dark, sweeping clouds, and the rumbling thunder
approached nigher and nigher, rolling up from the horizon like the
“chariot-wheels over the court of heaven,” while the forked lightning
darted in and out from the inky masses, like streams of blood. A few
screeching birds went skurrying away in a cloud of dust, and the
appearance of every thing left no doubt of the elemental tumult that
was on the eve of breaking forth.
“We’re going to catch it, you bet,” remarked Jo, as he looked up at the
marshaling of Nature’s forces, clapping his hands to the top of his
head, as if fearful that his cap would be whirled out of sight by the
tornado-like gust of wind, “but it would be worse out on the perarie
than down here.”
He had to shout to make himself heard, although the lovers, Egbert and
Lizzie, were riding close to him.
The former shouted back the return in the question:
“Can we not find shelter before the storm comes? We shall all be
drenched to the skin, if we are exposed to the deluge for the space of
five minutes.”
“Certainly, we can find shelter, and that’s just what I’m going for
this minute. We’ll make it afore the deluge comes. If we’d been on the
perarie we’d had to hold our hair on, and we’d have got such a basting
that it would have taken a lifetime to git over it.”
“Couldn’t we have found shelter in the wagons?” yelled Egbert.
Jo’s face could be seen to expand in a grin, as he made answer in the
same vociferous tone:
“Shelter in the wagons? I’ve seen that tried afore--when the covering
was slathered to ribbons in the wink of an eye and the wagons went
rolling over and over like a log, going down the side of a mountain
till they went out of sight, and when we rid our hosses ’long over that
same route, we made our camp-fires with bits of wagon for the next
fifty miles. I reckon you haven’t had a storm sin’ you left St. Louey?”
“Certainly nothing like _that_,” was the answer of Rodman, who thought
the scout was drawing things with rather a “long bow.” “We had several
storms, such as struck us all as being very severe.”
“S’pose you thought so; but they were the gentlest of zephyrs alongside
of some that I’ve butted ag’in’. I came over the plains with a party
in ’48, when I was purty young, and took my first degree in perarie
storms then. We were ’bout a hundred miles out of St. Louey, when we
butted ag’in’ a dead head-wind, that got so strong that we see’d purty
soon we shouldn’t be able to stand. When I see’d how things was going,
and that my hoss was a-slipping backward, I jumped off my hoss, and
laid down flat on my face and held onto the ground; but it wa’n’t no
use. I see’d my animal going end over end over the plain, looking like
a dough-nut turning summersets, and, finding I was blowing loose, I
crawled into the wagon in the tallest kind of a hurry.”
“And there you were safe,” remarked Egbert, knowing that something
stunning was at hand.
“Yes, I rather think we was,” he answered, ironically. “When I crawled
into the ox-wagon, I found all the rest war there, and the old
shebang was already going backward, and gaining every second like a
steam-engine. You see the wind was dead ahead, and the cover of the
wagon acted like a sail, and it warn’t long afore we was a going over
the perarie at a rate that you never dreamed of. You can just bet
things hummed. I looked out of the side of the coach, and see’d the
wagon-wheels going round so fast that you couldn’t see any thing but
the hubs, and they had a misty sort of look, from buzzing round in such
style. Some of the women got a little nervous, and said they preferred
to ride at a little slower gait, and axed me, if it was all the same to
me, if I wouldn’t shut off a little steam. All I could do was to put on
the brakes, and the minute I done that, I see’d a flash and they was
gone!--jist like a pinch of powder--burned up by the friction.
“So I told the folks to compose themselves, as I reckoned we war in for
it, and we’d all go to pieces together. Well, now, that shebang kept
going faster and faster. I jist tell you things buzzed for awhile. I
looked out the tail of the wagon (we war going tail foremost) and see’d
ourselves going right straight for Devil’s Humps--which you know is
two mountain peaks, something like a quarter of a mile apart. Thinking
every thing was up, I jist scrooched down in the wagon and watched to
see ourselves go. I s’pose you will think I’m exaggerating, when I tell
you we went right up the first mountain-peak, which was half a mile
high, as quick as a wink, but there the wagon struck a rock, turned
summersets; but it was going so fast that it shot right across from one
peak to another, and happening to light right side up, we kept straight
on for St. Louey. That ’ere jump from one mount to another rather mixed
us up, and some of the women complained of being jarred a little.
“Howsumever, we got straightened up after a bit, and then begun to
watch things. I knowed there was fun ahead, when I see’d a thundering
big drove of cattle right in our path. They tried to get out of
our way, but they couldn’t, and we went right through them like a
cannon-shot, and when I looked back I see’d a regular tunnel through
the drove of bufflers knocked to flinders. You see there was several
purty good-sized streams in our way, and when we buzzed through them,
some of us got our clothes a little moist, but we had to let things go,
and, to make a long story short, we never held in until we reached St.
Louey, where we shot straight through the biggest hotel, and into an
old lady’s cellar afore we stopped.
“Of course we was a little shook up, but that was nothing to what we
met next day--”
Lightning Jo suddenly paused, in the very middle of the sentence, and
his companions saw his face blanch, and his eyes flash, as though he
had caught sight of some new and appalling danger.