de of
the cotton-woods, and Daddy John lying on the grass among the whiteness
of the week's wash. The hour was hot and breathless, the middle
distance quivering through a heat haze, and the remoter reaches of the
prairie an opalescent blur.

The Indian village was deserted and he wandered through its scattered
lodges of saplings wattled with the peeled bark of willows. The
Indians had not long departed. The ash of their fires was still warm,
tufts of buffalo hair and bright scraps of calico were caught on the
bushes, yet it already had an air of desolation, the bleakness of the
human habitation when the dweller has crossed the threshold and gone.

Shadows were filling the hollow like a thin cold wine rising on the
edges of a cup, when he left it and gained the upper levels. Doubtful
of his course he stood for a moment looking about, conscious of a
curious change in the prospect, a deepening of its colors, a stillness
no longer dreamy, but heavy with suspense. The sky was sapphire clear,
but on the western horizon a rampart of cloud edged up, gray and
ominous, against the blue. As he looked it mounted, unrolled and
expanded, swelling into forms of monstrous aggression. A faint air,
fresh and damp, passed across the grass, and the clouds swept, like
smoke from a world on fire, over the sun.

With the sudden darkening, dread fell on the face of the land. It came
first in a hush, like a holding of the breath, attentive, listening,
expectant. Then this broke and a quiver, the goose-flesh thrill of
fear, stirred across the long ridges. The small, close growing leafage
cowered, a frightened trembling seized the trees. David saw the sweep
of the landscape growing black under the blackness above. He began to
run, the sky sinking lower like a lid shutting down on the earth. He
thought that it was hard to get it on right, for in front of him a line
of blue still shone over which the lid had not yet been pressed down.
The ground was pale with the whitened terror of upturned leaves, the
high branches of the cotton-woods whipping back and forth in wild
agitation. He felt the first large drops, far apart, falling with a
reluctant splash, and he ran, a tiny figure in the tragic and
tremendous scene.

When he reached the camp the rush of the rain had begun. Through a
network of boughs he caught the red eye of the fire and beyond had a
vision of stampeding mules with the men in pursuit. Then crashing
through the bush