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.
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