“Lizzie! Lizzie! God in heaven! What has become of you?”
He remembered the fate of a girl in Marshall County which he had heard discussed only last week. That child had been picked up by one of these whirling devils and her neck broken against a tree!
With a wild cry, he turned and ran in the direction of the receding storm, calling her name and looking frantically on both sides of the path where the cyclone had licked the ground as clean as a swept floor. He could see nothing at all of Elizabeth. Realizing at last that he was wasting his efforts, and that some degree of composure would assist in the search, Luther stopped and looked about him.
Outside the immediate path of the cyclone, which was cleared of every movable thing, the hay was tossed and thrown about as if it had been forked over the ground to dry itself from the wetting it had had. Hay everywhere, but no living thing to be seen. Could it be that Elizabeth had been carried completely away by the storm, or was she buried in the hay somewhere?
Unresponsive as all nature to human emotions, the tumbled grass lay about him, a picture of confusion and ruin. The futility of human effort was borne in upon him as he scanned the waste. A pile larger than the surrounding piles separated itself from the scattered heaps at last. He regarded it eagerly. Yes! there was a flutter of wet calico.
Half rejoicing, half terrified at the prospect of what he might find, Luther Hansen ran and flung himself down on his knees beside it, dragging at the half-buried form of the girl in frantic haste. She was doubled together and mixed with the hay as if, after being picked up with it, she had been whirled with it many times and then contemptuously flung aside.
Drawing her out, Luther gathered her into his arms and listened to her heart beat to make certain that she still lived.
Though limp and unconscious, Elizabeth Farnshaw was alive, and Luther drew her up and leaned her loosely rolling head on his shoulder while he considered what to do.
A sharp, peppering fall of hail struck them. Luther looked about quickly for shelter. The Kansas prairie stretched level and bare before him. Not even a bush presented itself. The size of the hailstones increased.
Elizabeth began to show signs of returning consciousness and to move feebly.