ngry, imprisoned
beasts. As the sodden hours dragged by the noises everywhere increased
steadily, so that before noon the whole of the wilderness seemed to be
shouting; narrow creek beds were filled with gushing, muddy water; the
trees on the mountainsides shook and snapped and creaked and hissed to
the hissing of the racing wind; at intervals the thunder echoing
ominously added its boom to the general uproar. Not for a score of
years and upward had such a storm visited the mountains in the vicinity
of the old road house in Big Pine Flat.

Night, as though it had leaped upon the back of the storm and had ridden
hitherward on the wings of the wind all impatience to defy the laws of
daylight, was in truth mistress of the mountains a full hour or more
before the invisible sun's allotted time of setting. In the
storm-smitten, lonely building at the foot of the rocky slope, shivering
as though with the cold, rocking crazily as though in startled fear at
each gust, the roaring log fire in the open fireplace made an uncertain
twilight and innumerable ghostlike shadows. The wind whistling down the
chimney, making that eerie sound known locally as the voice of William
Henry, came and went fitfully. Poke Drury, the cheerful, one-legged
keeper of the road house, swung back and forth up and down on his one
crutch, whistling blithely with his guest of the chimney and lighting
the last of his coal oil lamps and candles.

"She's a Lu-lu bird, all right," acknowledged Poke Drury. He swung
across his long "general room" to the fireplace, balanced on his crutch
while he shifted and kicked at a fallen burning log with his one boot,
and then hooked his elbows on his mantel. His very black, smiling eyes
took cheerful stock of his guests whom the storm had brought him. They
were many, more than had ever at one time honoured the Big Pine road
house. And still others were coming.

"If Hap Smith ain't forgot how to sling a four horse team through the
dark, huh?" continued the landlord as he placed still another candle at
the south window.

In architectural design Poke Drury's road house was as simple an affair
as Poke Drury himself. There was but one story: the whole front of the
house facing the country road was devoted to the "general room." Here
was a bar, occupying the far end. Then there were two or three rude pine
tables, oil-cloth covered. The chairs were plentiful and all of the
rawhide bottom species, austere looking, but comfortab