OVERTAKEN BY DISASTER

While Hippy was soothing the horses, the others of the party, with the exception of Stacy Brown, were trying to save their billowing tents. A yell from Stacy sent them hurrying to him.

“My tent’s gone!” he howled. “It went up into the air. Catch it when it comes down. Oh, wow!”

“Stop that noise and help us to save the other tents,” commanded Tom Gray, grabbing the fat boy and jerking him from his blankets.

“I—I can’t. I’m too scared.”

“T-t-t-t-tenderfoot!” screamed Emma in Stacy’s ear, herself on the verge of hysterics. “I—I’ll punish you if you do—on’t get busy!”

“Get to work or I’ll trounce you!” warned Tom.

“There goes my blanket,” yelled the fat boy, as, in taking it off, the wind caught and hurled the blanket down the mountain-side. Stacy was then put to work.

“Strike the tents!” commanded Tom. “We shall lose them if we don’t.”

It was a lively few minutes that the Overlanders experienced, following Tom Gray’s order, but one at a time the tents were laid on the ground and held down by being sat upon. The equipment, such as had not been blown away, was underneath the canvas and was thus fairly well protected, but the Overlanders themselves were drenched to the skin and rivulets of water were running down their faces and bodies.

“This is awful,” moaned Emma.

No one gave heed to her words. Even Stacy Brown had lost his voice, for he had not uttered a word since Tom ordered him to help with the tents. In the meantime, so busily engaged had the members of the party been that they had forgotten all about Lieutenant Wingate. Hippy was having a strenuous time trying to keep the ponies from breaking their tethers and stampeding. Such a result would have been fatal to them, for in the darkness the animals undoubtedly would have plunged down the mountain-side to their death.

After the storm had raged for a full hour there came a sudden blast that seemed as if it were tearing the mountain apart. So severe was the shock that the Overlanders were almost stunned. Emma toppled over and lay moaning, while the others struggled to pull themselves together. As for Hippy Wingate, with the blast he crumpled up in a heap, struggled for a few seconds, got to his feet, then fell forward and slid away into the darkness.

The big blast was the last for that night. The storm, from that moment, abated and the clouds slowly drifted away. The stars began to show and then the skies cleared.

Then for the first time since he had gone to look after the horses, the thought of Hippy occurred to the Overlanders.

“Hippy!” cried Nora, springing up in alarm.

“The storm is all over, Hippy,” shouted Tom Gray. “You may come in now.”

There was no reply.

“Hippy!” called Grace.

“Oh, something has happened to him,” wailed Nora, starting to run towards the tethering ground.

“Watch your step!” warned Tom.

All hands started after Nora, each one feeling instinctively that something was wrong with Lieutenant Wingate. They ran shouting, but there was no response to their hails.

“He isn’t here! Hippy! Oh, Hippy!” wailed Nora Wingate.

“Take it easy. He must be somewhere about,” begged Tom Gray. “Jim, get a light.”

“All right, if you’ll tell me where to find it,” retorted the guide.

“Your pocket light, Grace,” suggested Elfreda.

“I’ll see if I can find it,” answered Grace, hurrying back to her flattened tent. She soon returned with the pocket lamp and with it they began searching for Hippy. Not a trace of him did they discover.

“Mebby he fell down and rolled away,” suggested Jim Badger.

Tom took the lamp from Grace and began creeping down the sloping rocks.

“You folks stay where you are,” he called.

“Have you discovered anything?” called Elfreda.

“Some broken-down bushes,” came the reply. “Something went down this way.”

“Come back,” begged Grace, as Stacy also began clambering down the slope.

“Somebody must be a hero,” answered Stacy, continuing on.

A shout from Tom Gray indicated that he had made a discovery.

“He’s got him,” called Stacy, relaying the message that Tom had hurled up from somewhere below him.

“Is—is he—” began Nora.

“All right!” Tom’s voice sounded far away.

Tom had found his companion sitting up on a shelving rock at the very verge of a sheer drop of a hundred feet or more. Hippy was dazed.

“Wha—at—” stammered Lieutenant Wingate.

Tom shook him vigorously.

“What happened to you, Hip?” questioned Tom.

“I don’t know.”

“Were you struck by a bolt?”

“I—I don’t remember. I reckon the mountain must have fallen on me. Hello, Chunky!” he added as the fat boy came sliding towards them.

Together, Tom and Stacy assisted Lieutenant Wingate up the mountain-side, Hippy gaining strength as they progressed, and by the time they reached the Overland party his mind had cleared. Nora threw herself into Hippy’s arms.

“My darlin’!” she cried, and burst into tears.

“Uncle Hip got potted by lightning,” announced Stacy. “He ought to have stepped aside when he saw the thing coming.”

“Is the camp all right?” questioned Hippy.

Tom explained that they did not know, adding that the tents had been taken down when it was seen that they could not stand the blow.

“You come along and sit down while we look things over,” added Tom.

Grace and Elfreda ran on ahead and got out blankets from under the collapsed tents, which they spread on the ground and insisted that Lieutenant Wingate lie down.

“Why doesn’t some one start a fire?” demanded Hippy.

“With what?” jeered Chunky.

“The lean-to has been blown away,” cried Emma.

“I reckon it’s over by the Springs Hotel long before this,” declared Jim Badger.

“Never mind,” soothed Tom. “We will build another lean-to when we need it. Just now we must manage to start a fire and dry out.”

The guide was directed to gather fuel, which he did, shaking drops of water from twigs that he gathered. While he was doing this, Chunky began to sing. There was no harmony in his song, but he sawed away until he had sung several verses, unmindful of the jeers and threats of his companions.

The end of the song was greeted with shouts of laughter.

“Is that the way you show your appreciation of my efforts to make you forget your misery?” rebuked Stacy. “The trouble with you folks is that you have no harmony in your souls. I have.”

“You may have it in your soul, but it never gets as far as your lips,” retorted Emma Dean.

“The harmony evidently gets switched off on some other line. Don’t try it again, little boy.”

“I agree with you, Emma,” answered Tom soberly.

“We will stand for it this time,” promised Hippy. “But take my advice and never repeat the performance among civilized people, unless you are courting sudden death. Frankly, Chunky, being struck by lightning is preferable.”

“Hippy, you said it that time,” chuckled Emma.

In the meantime the skies again became overcast and a fine drizzle began falling. At Grace’s suggestion the tents were raised, but they were so water-soaked that the interiors were soon as wet as the ground outside. This discovery brought groans and plaints from the party.

“What’s the odds? We cannot be any wetter than we are,” comforted Grace Harlowe.

“That is all very well, but I want to sit down and I don’t want to get rheumatism,” protested Elfreda.

“That’s what is the matter with Stacy Brown. He has rheumatism of the voice,” agreed Grace.

“Huh! Some persons not more than a thousand miles from here have rheumatism of the brain, which is worse,” retorted the fat boy sarcastically, which brought another laugh from his companions.

“So I have observed,” agreed Emma, and Stacy subsided.

Grace changed the subject by asking Hippy to tell them what had occurred at the tethering place. Hippy said that the ponies were badly frightened, but that he had succeeded in quieting them. So far as his own disaster was concerned, he knew little.

“All I know is, that all of a sudden I didn’t know anything,” added Lieutenant Wingate.

“Why put it in the past tense?” questioned Emma sweetly, amid laughter.

By this time Badger had laid the fire and was trying to light it, but the sticks merely sputtered and went out.

“Why don’t you men help him?” urged Grace. “Come, Stacy, you have not done a thing to-night.”

“Right!” agreed Tom. “He is the laziest man in the Yellowstone.”

“No. That isn’t the reason. You forget that I have a weak heart,” reminded Stacy.

Emma retorted that it was his bump of industry, not the heart, that was weak.

“That’s right, insult me. You know I can’t resent it because I dare not excite myself,” reminded the fat boy. “I’ll teach you how to light the fire if you promise not to stir me up. If you do, I might die on your hands.”

Stacy wasted many matches in trying to strike them against his damp clothes.

“Let me show you how to light a match when everything is wet,” said Tom. Placing the head of a match in his mouth, closing his teeth over the wood, Tom then drew the match sharply outward. The result was a sudden flare, which he applied to the tinder that Hippy had brought from his kit. A crackling, snapping blaze soon leaped up through the damp brush, developing into waving plumes of flame.

“Great!” cried the Overlanders admiringly.

“My, but you would make a dandy fire-eater in a side show,” declared Stacy. “How did you do that?”

“Never saw that done before, eh?” chuckled Tom.

“Not outside of a circus.”

“Watch me closely and I will show you how it is done,” volunteered Tom Gray, repeating the performance, observed closely by Stacy and his companions.

“Pshaw! I can do that, too.”

“I shouldn’t advise you to try it,” warned Lieutenant Wingate.

“I’ll try anything once,” declared Stacy, putting the head of a match in his mouth and giving it a quick outward jerk. The result was that the burning head of the match broke off in the fat boy’s mouth because he had clenched the stick too tightly between his teeth.

Blowing, howling and jumping about, the fat boy frantically ejected the flaming match head from his mouth.

“Wather, wather!” yelled Stacy thickly. “I’m on fire!”

“Of all the driveling idiots,” groaned Tom, trying hard not to laugh.

“I think we are all agreed on that subject,” nodded Elfreda.

“Did it burn oo’s precious little mouth?” begged Emma solicitously.

“Did it bu—bu—urn me? Oh, no. I just wanted to take the chill off the inside of my mouth, that’s all. Didn’t you ever try it?” retorted Stacy.

“I hope I am not so silly as to try anything like that,” returned Emma.

“One never knows until one tries,” muttered Stacy. “Greatest thing in the world to make you forget that you’re cold. Swallow a whole handful and I’ll promise that you won’t feel cold in the highest altitude. Some one give me a drink of water—cold water.”

The Overlanders were laughing heartily now. Badger was replenishing the fire and Stacy, sipping at a cup of water, was caressing his mouth and feeling altogether out of sorts.

“We know how to build fires where there aren’t any, don’t we?” laughed Tom, slapping the fat boy between the shoulders.

“Ouch! I reckon we do—I do,” gulped Chunky.