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XIV

'A CAMP IN CONSTERNATION

TAKE down the wagons/' was the next order.

"Don't stop to pitch any more tents. Don't try

to kindle any fires." Scarcely had the orders been obeyed before a darkness as black as Erebus had settled upon the camp like a gigantic pall. It was a peculiar darkness, permeated by an ominous, silent, intangible, vibrating, appalling Something! A silence that could be felt was in the air. The oxen in the gulch bellowed in terror; the horses neighed. The stillness of the air was oppressive, portentous, awful. The women clasped the children in close embrace. The children clung to their protectors in silent terror. All hands save the teamsters, who were out with the stock at the mouth of the ravine, where they were stationed to guard the animals against stampede, crouched under the wagons in the Cimmerian blackness. Anon, a blinding flash of sheet lightning, followed by others and yet others in bewildering succession, awoke a rolling, roaring, reverberating cannonade of thunder. Guided by the flashes of lightning, the frightened men left the cattle to their fate and, returning to the camp, took refuge under the wagons. Hailstones as big as hens' eggs fell by hundreds of tons, displacing the awful silence with a cannonade like unto the heaviest artillery of a great army in battle.

The wind blew a terrific gale. The chained wagons rocked like cradles. Several heavy vehicles in a neighboring train, not being chained to the ground, as the Ranger wagons had been, were upset and their contents ruined by the hail and rain. Others were blown bodily into the river. Luckily no lives were lost. The cattle