Page:The Oregon Trail by Parkman.djvu/200

174 around us was wrapped in gloom. There was an awful sublimity in the hoarse murmuring of the thunder, and the somber shadows that involved the mountains and the plain. The storm broke with a zigzag blinding flash, with a terrific crash of thunder, and with a hurricane that howled over the prairie, dashing floods of water against us. Raymond looked about him and cursed the merciless elements. There seemed no shelter near, but we discerned at length a deep ravine gashed in the level prairie, and saw half-way down its side an old pine-tree, whose rough horizontal boughs formed a sort of pent-house against the tempest. We found a practicable passage, led our animals down, and fastened them to some large loose stones at the bottom; then climbing up, we drew our blankets over our heads, and crouched close beneath the old tree. Perhaps I was no competent judge of time, but it seemed to me that we were sitting there a full hour, while around us poured a deluge of rain, through which the rocks on the opposite side of the gulf were barely visible. The first burst of the tempest soon subsided, but the rain poured steadily. At length Raymond grew impatient, and scrambling out of the ravine, gained the level prairie above.

"What does the weather look like?" asked I, from my seat under the tree.

"It looks bad," he answered; "dark all around;" and again he descended and sat down by my side. Some ten minutes elapsed.

"Go up again," said I, "and take another look;" and he clambered up the precipice. "Well, how is it?"

"Just the same, only I see one little bright spot over the top of the mountain."

The rain by this time had begun to abate; and going down to the bottom of the ravine, we loosened the animals,