THE HEART OF THE TEMPEST

Stacy, who had volunteered to build the fire because it required less effort than making camp, balanced the match between his fingers and thoughtfully regarded the blackened sliver.

“Girls, what is the quickest tempered thing in the world?” he asked.

“I should say it is Stacy Brown when someone asks him to work,” laughed Grace.

“You lose. What do you say, Uncle Hip?”

“I suppose you want me to say ‘I give it up,’ eh?”

“No, I want you to answer the question.”

“A rattlesnake shedding its skin,” suggested Hippy.

“Wrong again. Give it up?”

“Yes, yes,” laughed Lieutenant Wingate.

“A match! At the slightest irritation it flares right up and sputters and bites your finger. Frightful temper!”

“Awful!” grinned Tom.

“I call it much more acceptable than Chunky’s jokes ordinarily are,” approved Emma. “Even if he did read it in last year’s almanac I think—” “Did you read it in last year’s almanac?” demanded Stacy.

“Well, no, but—”

“Then don’t jump at conclusions, Miss Dean. It is a sure indication of brainlessness. Of course, among ourselves it doesn’t matter, but when outsiders are present you should endeavor to hide your shortcomings. I’ll give you another one. What is yesterday?”

“Yesterday—yesterday?” repeated Emma perplexedly. “Why, I don’t know unless yesterday is yesterday.”

“There you go jumping at conclusions again. No, Miss Dean, yesterday is what to-day will be to-morrow.”

The Overlanders groaned.

“Silly!” rebuked Emma, her face rather red.

“Suppose you do something useful, instead of indulging in such silly talk,” suggested Nora.

“Yes, you might fetch the water for supper,” urged Grace.

“I have done my part,” retorted Stacy. “I lighted the fire and I’m all tired out. My heart won’t permit me to do anything more until after supper.”

“Never mind, I’ll fetch it,” said Grace, picking up the water bucket, which Stacy promptly took from her and went for the water, but, sitting down by the spring, he soon forgot himself in contemplation of the scene spread before him in the valley far below.

“Beautiful view off there, isn’t it?” mused the fat boy dreamily.

“Yes, very,” agreed Tom, strolling over to the spring to see what Stacy was doing. “I’ll tell you what to do, Chunky. You take your fill of the scenery while we fill up on food.”

Stacy came to at once, and made haste to fill the water bucket and hurry to the cooks with it.

“I guess not,” he objected. “I never get so full of scenery that I have no room left for real food. Do you know, that wonderful scene down there is enough to move anyone to poetry?”

“Stacy! Don’t you dare,” objected Elfreda. “There are some things that we long-suffering Riders cannot endure. Your alleged poetry is one of them.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to waste any of it on you folks. My uncle once had a hired man who wrote ‘pomes’ as he called them, and—”

“Is that where you acquired the habit?” inquired Emma, as the party sat down to their supper.

“Indeed not. I was born with the gift of expressing myself poetically,” answered Stacy, narrowly observing the effect of his statement on the Overlanders. “Poetic expression comes as naturally to me as partaking of food.”

A peal of laughter greeted Stacy’s assertion.

“What about the hired man?” questioned Grace, urging him on.

“He used to sit up in bed, smoking his pipe, and write poetry after the rest of the family had gone to bed. One night he went to sleep over his ‘pome’—”

“It must have been a lullaby that he was writing,” suggested Emma demurely.

“As I was saying,” resumed Stacy after a withering glance in Emma’s direction, “he went to sleep. His pipe set fire to my aunt’s comforter and burned the quilt half up before the poet woke up and yelled ‘fire!’ Uncle grabbed up a pail of soft soap, and, running upstairs, put out the fire with it. When uncle got through, that comforter and the ‘pome’ were a soapy mess. You couldn’t have picked the ‘pome’ out of the lather with a magnifying glass.”

The Overland Riders shouted, and Jim Badger grinned broadly.

“Your story is most entertaining, but I can’t say as much for your manner of telling it,” said Tom.

“That is about what aunt said of uncle’s manner of putting out the fire,” returned Stacy.

“What happened to the hired man?” questioned Elfreda, her eyes twinkling eagerly.

“Nothing. But uncle said he was so blamed mad that he had a good notion to set the hired man’s boots outdoors,” was the fat boy’s solemn reply.

“Stacy!” rebuked Nora.

“Nora!” retorted Stacy, amid the laughter of his companions.

Supper was a merry meal that evening, Stacy entertaining his companions until they had finished eating. Twilight deepened as they sat around the blanket that served for a table, and the shadows were thickening in the valley, blotting out the landscape. Drifting clouds were covering the peak of the mountain, some so low that it seemed to the campers as if they could stretch up their hands and touch the filmy masses.

Tom Gray stretched himself, took a survey of the clouds and what he could see of the valley below them.

“Jim, I reckon you had better give the tents an extra staking-down. It looks like a storm to-night,” he said.

“At the same time, someone should see that the ponies are well staked down,” suggested Grace.

“They can’t git away,” answered the guide, proceeding to make the little tents more secure.

In the meantime, Tom had begun to construct a shelter for the fire by setting up stones about it to protect it from the storm that was threatening. The party was now well above the timber line, and the only material for fire was stunted growths and bushes. With them Tom Gray then built a lean-to in which their equipment was stored for the night. The Overlanders found the lean-to a most comfortable place during the evening, with the warmth of the campfire caught and held by it.

Grace, who had strolled out with Elfreda to look at the weather, called to her companions to join her.

“Watch your step that you don’t get a fall,” she warned. “Here is a sight worth looking at.”

“I don’t see anything worth looking at. Oh, wow!” cried Stacy.

A long, quivering flash of light far below them had caused Stacy to utter his sudden exclamation. The flash lighted up what appeared to be a large body of water in the valley below.

“Wha—at is it?” wondered Emma apprehensively.

“Lightning, dear,” answered Grace. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

“No. It frightens me. It was terrifying enough in the Sierras, but this is much more so.” Emma suddenly covered her eyes as a shaft of light leaped up from a cloud bank. Then the flash sank back through the clouds, followed instantly by a heavy roll of thunder.

“Is—is there danger of its coming up here?” begged Nora.

“Yes,” replied Tom. “What is more, there is another storm brewing above us, but it may blow away as the wind from the southwest is brisk.”

“I reckon I’ll go to bed,” announced Stacy. “Lightning never did make much of a hit with me.”

“Cheer up. There—there’s time enough yet,” encouraged Emma.

“Oh, come back here and enjoy the grandeur of this wonderful scene,” urged Grace.

“No, I don’t want to. I might spoil your fun. You watch it and tell me about it in the morning,” answered the fat boy.

The sight was indeed a grand one. The storm was now in full force, but the thunder, heavy rolling booms, seemed far away, and the roar of the rain below sounded like a distant cataract. The Overlanders gazed on the awesome scene in silence. They watched and listened for fully an hour, until the storm abated, when the blackness of the night was only occasionally broken by dull red flashes of lightning.

“It is about over for the present,” announced

Tom, gazing first at the storm below, then at the clouds hanging overhead.

“Let’s go,” suggested Miss Briggs.

All were agreed. Stacy already had gone to his tent, and now Tom and Hippy drew off their boots and stood them in the lean-to, after which they spread their blankets in their own tent and turned in, leaving Badger to sleep in the lean-to.

“Is that distant thunder that I hear?” asked Emma as the girls were snuggling down into their blankets.

“No. It is Stacy snoring,” answered Grace.

“Do we have to listen to that distressing noise all night?” complained Elfreda.

“Yes, unless you prefer to sleep somewhere else,” Nora informed her. “Once started, nothing short of a tornado can break up Stacy’s night-warbling.”

“Then I will go outside,” averred Elfreda, getting up with her blanket wrapped about her.

“Come back!” cried Grace laughingly. “It may rain and then you will get soaked.”

“So will Stacy Brown if he doesn’t stop. My nerves are on edge now, and if I have to listen to him all the rest of the night they will be shattered for life.”

Elfreda reluctantly returned to bed and, with both fingers stuffed into her ears to shut out the rasping sounds, she finally dropped off to sleep.

Tom Gray, however, unable to sleep, went out and rolled himself up in his blanket by the campfire. There he slept soundly.

It was some time after midnight when the camp was aroused by a terrific explosion. The Overland Riders leaped up in alarm and ran out into the open. They discovered Tom Gray dancing about, shaking the fire from his blanket.

“Did the camp blow up?” yelled Stacy as he came running from his tent.

“No. Lightning struck hard by,” answered Tom.

“Foggy, isn’t it?” observed Stacy in a weak voice.

“No, clouds,” replied Tom briefly.

“Are—are we going to have another storm?” stammered Emma.

“We are going to be in the heart of it,” Tom informed her. “As I told you, there is a storm just below us and also one over our heads. If the two meet, look out.”

A blinding flash, followed instantly by a terrific crash of thunder, threw some of the Overland Riders from their feet. The bolt had struck very close to them, and for the moment they were stunned, but Tom and Grace, first regaining their composure, shook their companions, assisted them to their feet and urged them to “buck up,” as Tom put it.

The ponies could be heard neighing and stamping, but the Overlanders generally were too much alarmed to give heed to the animals.

A second quivering bolt, driven against the mountain-side from above, was answered almost instantaneously by another bolt that seemed to come from below. Then the artillery of nature opened up. Flashes and crashes followed each other in such close succession that they left no breathing spell for the frightened spectators.

“They’ve met!” yelled Chunky, bolting for his tent.

“Lie down everyone!” shouted Tom. “You’re safer flat on the ground!”

The Overlanders threw themselves down just as a twisting gust of wind sucked the campfire up into the air. The burning embers swirled dizzily above their heads for a few seconds, and then were hurled scattering off into the black void below, leaving the camp of the Overlanders in deep darkness, save as it was lighted by flashes of lightning. A gale of wind was now blowing in swirling gusts, and rain was falling, a perfect deluge of it.

“The tents, boys! Save the tents,” cried Grace.

“Come, girls! We can help at that,” shouted Miss Briggs.

“The ponies!” reminded Nora.

“I’ll look after them. Tom, you and Jim take care of the camp. Rout out Stacy and make him work, and I’ll try to quiet the horses,” roared Hippy, who then cautiously began feeling his way towards their mounts.

The storm was now a succession of crashes with a continuous roar for a background, and it seemed as if one’s ear drums must burst under it.

As he approached the tethering ground, Hippy called to the ponies—shouted to them and a faint whinny of welcome came back to him, for human companionship meant much to those dumb beasts at that moment of peril, a peril that was to become a reality to Hippy Wingate a few moments later.