It was Buck who helped the wavering men to their decision. He understood them. He understood their needs. The ethics of the proposition did not trouble him. These men had reached a point where they needed a support such as only the fiery spirits their stomachs craved could give them. The Padre’s help would come afterward. At the moment, after the long weeks of disappointment, they needed something to lift them, even if it was only momentarily. He reached round to his hip-pocket and pulled out two single-dollar bills and laid them on the dusty ground in front of him.
“Ante up, boys,” he said cheerfully. “Empty your dips. The Kid’s right. An’ to-morrow you can sure choose what you’re going to do.” Then he turned to the Kid. “My plug Cæsar’s outside. Guess you best take him. He’ll make the journey in two hours. An’ you’ll need to bustle him some, because ther’s a kind o’ storm gettin’ around right smart. Eh?” He turned and glanced sharply at Beasley. “You got a dollar?”
“It’s fer whisky,” leered the ex-Churchman, as he laid the dirty paper on the top of Buck’s.
In two minutes the pooling was completed and the Kid prepared to set out. Eight dollars was all the meeting could muster – eight dollars collected in small silver, which represented every cent these men possessed in the world. Buck knew this. At least he could answer for everybody except perhaps Beasley Melford. That wily individual he believed was capable of anything. He was sure that he was capable of accepting anything from anybody, while yet being in a position to more than help himself.
Buck went outside to see the Kid off, and some of the men had gathered in the doorway. They watched the boy swing himself into the saddle, and the desperate shadows had lightened on their hungry faces. The buoyancy of their irresponsible natures was reasserting itself. That bridge, which the Padre’s promise had erected between their despair and the realms of hope, however slight its structure, was sufficient to lift them once more to the lighter mood so natural to them.
So their tongues were loosened, and they offered their messenger the jest from which they could seldom long refrain, the coarse, deep-throated jest which sprang from sheer animal spirits rather than any subtlety of wit. They forgot for the time that until Buck’s coming they had contemplated the burial of a comrade’s only remaining offspring. They forgot that the grieving father was still within the hut, his great jaws clenched upon the mouthpiece of his pipe, his hollow eyes still gazing straight in front of him. That was their way. There was a slight ray of hope for them, a brief respite. There was the thought, too, of eight dollars’ worth of whisky, a just portion of which was soon to be in each stomach.
But Buck was not listening to them. He had almost forgotten the messenger riding away on his treasured horse, so occupied was he by the further change that had occurred in the look of the sky and in the atmosphere of the valley. Presently he lifted one strong, brown hand to his forehead and wiped the beads of perspiration from it.
“Phew! What heat! Here,” he cried, pointing at Devil’s Hill, away to his left, “what d’you make of that?”
For a moment all eyes followed the direction of his outstretched arm. And slowly there grew in them a look of awe such as rarely found place in their feelings.
The crown of the hill, the whole of the vast, black plateau was enveloped in a dense gray fog. Above that hung a mighty, thunderous pall of purple storm-cloud. Back, away into the mountains in billowy rolls it extended, until the whole distance was lost in a blackness as of night.
It was Curly Saunders who broke the awed silence.
“Jumpin’ Mackinaw!” he cried. Then he looked after their departing messenger. “Say, that feller oughtn’t to’ve gone to Bay Creek. He’ll never make it.”
Beasley, whose feelings were less susceptible, and whose mind was set on the promised orgie, sneered at the other’s tone.
“Skeered some, ain’t you? Tcha’! It’s jest wind – ”
But he never completed his sentence. At that instant the whole of the heavens seemed to split and gape open. A shaft of light, extending from horizon to horizon, paralyzed their vision. It was accompanied by a crash of thunder that set their ear-drums well-nigh bursting. Both lightning and the thunder lasted for what seemed interminable minutes and left their senses dazed, and the earth rocking beneath their feet. Again came the blinding light, and again the thunder crashed. Then, in a moment, panic had set in, and the tattered blanket had fallen behind the last man as a rush was made for the doubtful shelter of the hut.
CHAPTER VI
OUT OF THE STORM
The challenge had gone forth. In those two vivid shafts of light, in the deafening peals of thunder the war of elements had been proclaimed, and these men of the wilderness understood something of their danger.
Thereafter, for some moments, a threatening silence reigned everywhere. The birds, the insects even, all life seemed to crouch, hushed and expectant. The valley might have been the valley of death, so still, so dark, so threatening was the superheated atmosphere that hung over it.
The men within the shelter of the hut waited, and only Buck and Blue Grass Pete stood near the blanket-covered doorway. There was little enough confidence in the inefficient shelter of the hut, but it was their natural retreat and so they accepted it. Then the moment of tension passed, and Buck, glancing swiftly round the hut, seized a hammer and hastily secured the covering of the doorway.
“She’ll be on us right smart,” he observed to Pete, who assisted him while the others looked on.
“Yes,” replied Pete resignedly. “Guess we’re goin’ to git it good.” There was not only resignation, but indifference in his tone.
Buck glanced up at the roof, and the rest followed his gaze curiously. He shook his head.
“It’s worse than – ”
But he did not finish what he had to say. A strange hissing broke from the distance, like the sound of rushing water, and, with each passing moment, it grew in volume until, out of the heart of it, a deep-throated roar boomed over the hilltops.
It was a great wind-storm leaping down from the everlasting snows of the mountains, tearing its way through the lean branches of the forest-tops, the wide-gaping valleys, and rushing up the hillsides with a violence that tore limbs from the parent trunks and rooted out trees that had withstood a thousand storms. It was the deep breath of the storm fiend launched upon a defenseless earth, carrying wreck and destruction whithersoever its blast was turned.
“By Jing’!”
It was Montana Ike who voiced the awe crowding every heart.
But his exclamation brought the practical mind of Buck to consideration of their needs. His eyes turned again to the roof, and Pete voiced his thoughts.
“She’ll carry away like – like a kite when it hits us,” he declared. Several more pairs of eyes were turned helplessly upward. Suddenly Buck swung round upon the doorway.
“Here she comes,” he cried. “Holy – !”
With a rush and a deafening roar the wind hit the building and set it rocking. Buck and Pete flung themselves with arms outspread against the ballooning blanket, and it held. Again the wind crashed against the sides of the hut. Some one flung himself to the two men’s assistance. Then came a ripping and tearing, and the thatch hissed away on the breath of the storm like straw caught in a whirlwind. The men gazed stupidly up at the blackened heavens, which were now like night. There was nothing to be done. What could they do? They were helpless. And not even a voice could make itself heard in the howling of the wind as it shrieked about the angles of the building.
Then came the rain. It fell in great drops whose sheer weight and size carried them, at the moment of impact, through the ragged shirts to the warm flesh beneath. In a second, it seemed, a waterspout was upon them and was pouring its tide into the roofless hut.
With the deluge, the elemental battle began in desperate earnest. Peal after peal of thunder crashed directly overhead, and with it came such a display of heavenly pyrotechnics that in their wildest moments these men