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She flushed with pleasure. As she passed him with the tea, he put his arm about her waist.

“Be careful, Jim,” she said, gently, and with a revealing, familiar, sad cadence in her voice.

He smiled at her boyishly. He was beautiful to her in this mood. “I was hoping you’d come over and stew something up for me. Hello, there’s the thunder! It’s going to rain!”

Another sudden boom, like a cannon-shot, silenced the noise inside for an instant, and then a sudden movement took place, the movement of feet passing hurriedly about, and at last only one or two persons could be heard. When Rivers re-entered the store Bailey was alone, standing in the door, intently watching the coming storm. It was growing dusk on the plain, and the lightning was beginning to play rapidly, low down toward the horizon.

“We’re in for it!” Bailey remarked, very quietly. “Cyclone!”

“Think so?” said Rivers, carelessly.

“Sure of it, Jim. That cloud’s too wide in the wings to miss us this time.”

A peculiar, branching flash of lightning lay along the sky, like a vast elm-tree, followed by a crashing roar.

Blanche cried out in alarm.

“Now, don’t be scared. It’s only a shower and will soon be over,” said Bailey. “Here’s a letter for you.”

She took the letter and read it hastily, looking often at the coming storm. She seemed pale and distraught.

“Do you s’pose I’ve got time to get home now?” she asked, as she finished reading.

“No,” said Rivers, so decidedly that Bailey looked up in surprise.

“Can’t you take me home?”

Rivers looked out of the door. “By the time we get this wagon unloaded and the team hitched up, the storm will be upon us. No. I guess you’re safest right here.”

There was a peculiar tone, a note of authority, in his voice which puzzled Bailey quite as much as her submission.

They worked silently and swiftly, getting the barrels of pork and oil and flour into the store, and by the time they had emptied the wagon the room was dark, so dark that the white face of the awed woman could be seen only as a blotch of gray against the shadow.

They lighted the oil lamps, which hung in brackets on the wall, and then Rivers said to Blanche: “Won’t you go into the other room? We must stay here and look after the goods.”

“No, no! I’d rather be here with you; it’s going to be terrible.”

“Hark!” said Bailey, with lifted hands; “there she comes!”

Far away was heard a continuous, steady, low-keyed, advancing hum, like the rushing of wild horses, their hoofbeats lost in one mighty, throbbing, tumultuous roar; then a deeper darkness fell upon the scene, and swift as the swoop of an eagle the tornado was upon them.

The advancing wall of rain struck the building with terrific force. The lightning broke forth, savage as the roar of siege-guns. The noise of the wind and thunder was deafening. The plain grew black as night, save when the lightning flamed in countless streams across the clouds. The cabin shook like a frightened hound. Bailey looked around.

“We must move the goods!” he shouted above the tumult. “See, the rain is beating in!”

Rivers, with Blanche encircled by his arm, pressed her to his side reassuringly. “Don’t be afraid. It can’t blow down,” he repeated.

He then leaped to Bailey’s assistance, and, while the thunder crashed in their ears and the lightning blinded their eyes, they worked like frantic insects to move the goods away from the western wall, through which the rain was beating. There was a pleasure in this assault which the woman could not share. It was battle, absorbing and exalting. Their shouts were full of joyous excitement.

Once, when the structure trembled and groaned with the shock of a frightful blast, Rivers again put his arm around Blanche, saying: “It can’t blow over. See those heavy barrels? If this store blows down, there won’t be a shanty standing in the county.”