"We're splitting the air all right," shouted the old man. "Ye mind y' talked of sawing air. Split it, man, an' y'll get somewhere."
Up a hummock, down a ravine, over a fallen log with a hurdle jump that threatened to break the buckboard's back.
"Are ye there yet?" called the old man.
"Split the wind, Sir," shouted Wayland; and the rig went rattling up the red earth road of the Rim Rocks not a wheel's width from the edge.
"We're leaving the storm behind; look back," she said.
Up the Valley swept the rains in a wall of whipped spray jagged by the zig-zag streaks of lightning.
"Hold on till we turn the next switch back," warned the Ranger. The buckboard wheeled a point as he spoke and the bronchos floundered to a fagged trot. They saw it coming: the rain wall, frayed at the edge to a fringe, the wind lashing their faces, the red rocks of the battlements jutting through the cloud wrack spectral and ominous. A toothed edge of rock above, then a belt of cloud cut by the darting wings of the countless swallows.
The trees of the Ridge across the Valley seemed to bend and snap. There was a funnelling roar, sucking up earth and air, trees and brushwood; whips and lashes and splintering crashes of rain and wind and jagged light-lines; the bronchos cowering against the inner wall of the trail. Then the funnelling wind tore the pinnacled rock tops clear of the billowing mist.
"There goes your hat, Sir," cried Wayland as the black felt went sailing down the precipice.
"What's that!" demanded the old man, springing from the seat and pointing upward with his whip.