at Banneker, not looking at anything outward
and visible; her vision seemed somberly introverted.

"Not now, though," said Banneker.

"Why not?" asked both women. He answered Io.

"You called for a storm. You're going to get it. A big one. I could send
you out on Number Eight, but that's a way-train and there's no telling
where it would land you or when you'd get through. Besides, I don't
believe Gardner is coming. I'd have heard from him by now. Listen!"

The slow pat-pat-pat of great raindrops ticked like a started clock on
the roof. It ceased, and far overhead the great, quiet voice of the wind
said, "Hush--sh--sh--sh--sh!", bidding the world lie still and wait.

"What if he does come?" asked Miss Van Arsdale

"I'll get word to you and get her out some way."

The storm burst on Banneker, homebound, just as he emerged from the
woodland, in a wild, thrashing wind from the southwest and a downpour
the most fiercely, relentlessly insistent that he had ever known. A
cactus desert in the rare orgy of a rainstorm is a place of wonder. The
monstrous, spiky forms trembled and writhed in ecstasy, heat-damned
souls in their hour of respite, stretching out exultant arms to the
bounteous sky. Tiny rivulets poured over the sand, which sucked them
down with a thirsting, crisping whisper. A pair of wild doves, surprised
and terrified, bolted close past the lone rider, so near that his mount
shied and headed for the shelter of the trees again. A small snake,
curving indecisively and with obvious bewilderment amidst the growth,
paused to rattle a faint warning, half coiled in case the horse's step
meant a new threat, then went on with a rather piteous air of not
knowing where to find refuge against this cataclysm of the elements.

Lashing in the wind, a long tentacle of the giant ocatilla drew its
cimeter-set thong across Ban's horse which incontinently bolted. The
rider lifted up his voice and yelled in sheer, wild, defiant joy of the
tumult. A lesser ocatilla thorn gashed his ear so that the blood mingled
with the rain that poured down his face. A pod of the fishhook-barbed
cholla drove its points through his trousers into the flesh of his knee
and, detaching itself from the stem, as is the detestable habit of this
vegetable blood-seeker, clung there like a live thing of prey, from
barbs which must later be removed delicately and separately with the
cold steel. Blindly homing, a jack-rabbit ran almost beneath the horse's
ho