The Quirt | Page 9

thirstily. The riders continued their conversation.
"--and as I says time and again, they ain't big enough to fight the outfit,
and the quicker they git out the less lead they'll carry under their hides
when they do go. What they want to try an' hang on for, beats me. Why,
it's like setting into a poker game with a five-cent piece! They ain't got
my sympathy. I ain't got any use for a damn fool, no way yuh look at
it."
"Well, there's the TJ--they been here a long while, and they ain't packin'
any lead, and they ain't getting out."
"Well, say, lemme tell yuh something. The TJ'll git theirs and git it
right. Drink all night, would yuh?" He swore long and fluently at his
horse, spurred him through the shallows, and the two rode on up the
hill, their voices still mingled in desultory argument, with now and then
an oath rising clearly above the jumble of words.
They may have been law-abiding citizens riding home to families that
were waiting supper for them, but Lorraine crept out from behind her
sagebush, sneezing and thanking her imitation of the jack rabbits.
Whoever they were, she was not sorry she had let them ride on. They
might be her father's men, and they might have been very polite and
chivalrous to her. But their voices and their manner of speaking had
been rough; and it is one thing, Lorraine reflected, to mingle with
made-up villains--even to be waylaid and kidnapped and tied to trees
and threatened with death--but it is quite different to accost
rough-speaking men in the dark when you know that they are not being
rough to suit the director of the scene.
She was so absorbed in trying to construct a range war or something
equally thrilling from the scrap of conversation she had heard that she
reached the hilltop in what seemed a very few minutes of climbing. The
sky was becoming overcast. Already the stars to the west were blotted

out, and the absolute stillness of the atmosphere frightened her more
than the big, dark wilderness itself. It seemed to her exactly as though
the earth was holding its breath and waiting for something terrible to
happen. The vague bulk of buildings was still some distance ahead, and
when a rumble like the deepest notes of a pipe organ began to fill all
the air, Lorraine thrust her grip under a bush and began to run, her
soggy shoes squashing unpleasantly on the rough places in the road.
Lorraine had seen many stage storms and had thrilled ecstatically to the
mimic lightning, knowing just how it was made. But when that huge
blackness behind and to the left of her began to open and show a
terrible brilliance within, and to close abruptly, leaving the world ink
black, she was terrified. She wanted to hide as she had hidden from
those two men; but from that stupendous monster, a real thunderstorm,
sagebrush formed no protection whatever. She must reach the
substantial shelter of buildings, the comforting presence of men and
women.
She ran, and as she ran she wept aloud like a child and called for her
father. The deep rumble grew louder, nearer. The revealed brilliance
became swift sword-thrusts of blinding light that seemed to stab deep
the earth. Lorraine ran awkwardly, her hands over her ears, crying out
at each lightning flash, her voice drowned in the thunder that followed
it close. Then, as she neared the somber group of buildings, the clouds
above them split with a terrific, rending crash, and the whole place
stood pitilessly revealed to her, as if a spotlight had been turned on.
Lorraine stood aghast. The buildings were not buildings at all. They
were rocks, great, black, forbidding boulders standing there on a
narrow ridge, having a diabolic likeness to houses.
The human mind is wonderfully resilient, but readjustment comes
slowly after a shock. Dumbly, refusing to admit the significance of
what she had seen, Lorraine went forward. Not until she had reached
and had touched the first grotesque caricature of habitation did she
wholly grasp the fact that she was lost, and that shelter might be miles
away. She stood and looked at the orderly group of boulders as the
lightning intermittently revealed them. She saw where the road ran on,

between two square-faced rocks. She would have to follow the road, for
after all it must lead somewhere,--to her father's ranch, probably. She
wondered irrelevantly why her mother had never mentioned these queer
rocks, and she wondered vaguely if any of them had caves or ledges
where she could be safe from the lightning.
She was on the point of stepping out into the road again when a
horseman rode into sight between the