Moreover there was a black cloud rolling up from the west. That was enough to make the girl hurry, for when it rained in the swamp, sometimes the corduroy road was knee deep in water.
The cloud had increased to such proportions when Nan was half way across the sawdust desert that she began to run. She had forgotten all about the smoking tree.
Not a breath of air was stirring as yet; but there was the promise of wind in that cloud. The still leaves on the bushes, the absence of bird life overhead, the lazy drone of insects, portended a swift change soon. Nan was weather-wise enough to know that.
She panted on, stumbling through the loose sawdust, but stumbling equally in the ruts; for the way was very rough. This road was lonely enough at best; but it seemed more deserted than ever now.
A red fox, his tail depressed, shot past her, and not many yards away. It startled Nan, for it seemed as though something dreadful was about to happen and the fox knew it and was running away from it.
She could not run as fast as the fox; but Nan wished that she could. And she likewise wished with all her heart that she would meet somebody.
That somebody she hoped would be Tom. Tom was drawing logs from some point near, she knew. A man down the river had bought some timber and they had been cut a few weeks before. Tom was drawing them out of the swamp for the man; and he had mentioned only that morning at breakfast that he was working within sight of the sawdust tract and the corduroy road.
Nan felt that she would be safe with big, slow Tom. Even the thought of thunder and lightning would lose some of its terrors if she could only get to Tom.
Suddenly she heard a voice shouting, then the rattle of chain harness. The voice boomed out a stave of an old hymn:
“On Jordan's stormy bank I stand, And cast a wishful eye.”