“Ain’t there no place to hide?” demanded Jim with trembling voice.
No, there was no place to hide. The storm king owned everything around there that night. It was all his domain and he meant to do with it as he would. So he blasted an oak, and the boys saw it; and he cracked his horrid whip at the invisible horses of the air, and they rushed by screaming. And then the rain came; not drop by drop as rain should, but in drops that chased each other so that they became streams; in streams that became inverted fountains.
The boys couldn’t even call out to each other. They fought for breath as the furious winds whipped them and the drenching rain engulfed them almost like a wave. It was a cloudburst, they knew that much, and finally, from mere animal instinct, they turned their faces to the ground, wreathed their arms about their heads and lay prone. Still the lightning flashed and the thunder bellowed; still the winds wailed and the trees snapped. It seemed at last merely a question of keeping alive till it was over.
But by and by it was over. It ceased almost as suddenly as it had come, and weak as half-drowned rats the two boys got to their feet, and looking up into a clear sky, saw the morning star shining down at them.
“We’ve got to get home,” said Jim, breathing deep.
“Yes,” agreed Hi.
It was some time before they could find any sort of a trail whatever, but after a while they came upon one, though whether it had been made by human feet long since and overgrown, or whether it was merely a rabbit run they could not decide. However, they decided to take it. The dawn was flushing the sky and they could make their way without much difficulty now, so far as seeing was concerned, but their feet were blistered and their bodies felt as sore as if they had been pounded. They went on and on, doggedly.
“We’re bound to come to a road soon,” they kept telling each other.
“Oh, yes, we’ll get somewhere.”
And they got “somewhere,” beyond any manner of doubt. Lifting their eyes at length, they saw before them that frightful cabin of “rattlers,” and stealing to the door to greet the brightly shining sun was a fine, confident father of rattlers. Hi gave one despairing whoop and fled, Jim following, and once more they sped on, taking however an opposite direction from that of the night before and trying to keep their faces toward home. There was the mountain before them to cross, and then Mulberry Valley, and then there was Tennyson mountain to climb. It was really quite simple.