THE STORM—ARRIVAL AT THE INDIAN VILLAGE—THE OLD CHIEF’S WIFE—SOME KINDNESS SHOWN ME—ATTEND A FEAST.
On the 20th of July we had nearly reached the Indian village, when we camped for the night, as usual, when such a locality could be gained, on the bank of a stream of good water.
Here was a stream of sparkling, rippling water, fresh from the melting snow of the mountain. It was a warm, still night. Soon the sky began to darken strangely, and great ragged masses of clouds hung low over the surrounding hills. The air grew heavy, relieved occasionally by a deep gust of wind, that died away, to be succeeded by an ominous calm. Then a low, muttering thunder jarred painfully on the ear. My shattered nerves recoiled at the prospect of the coming storm. From a child I had been timid of lightning, and now its forked gleam filled me with dismay in my unsheltered helplessness.
The Indians, seeing the approaching tempest, prepared for it by collecting and fastening their horses, and covering their fire-arms and ammunition, and lying flat on the earth themselves. I crouched, too, but could not escape the terrible glare of the lightning, and the roar of the awful thunder grew deafening.
THE BUFFALO HUNT.
On came the storm with startling velocity, and the dread artillery of heaven boomed overhead, followed closely by blinding flashes of light; and the velocity of the whirlwind seemed to arise in its might, to add desolation to the terrible scene.
When the vivid gleams lit up the air, enormous trees could be seen bending under the fierceness of the blast, and great white sheets of water burst out of the clouds, as if intent on deluging the world. Every element in nature united in terrific warfare, and the security of earth seemed denied to me while I clung to its flooded bosom, and, blinded by lightning and shocked by the incessant roaring of the thunder and the wild ravaging of the ungovernable wind, felt myself but a tossed atom in the great confusion, and could only cling to God’s remembering pity in silent prayer.
Huge trees were bent to the earth and broken; others, snapped off like twigs, were carried through the frenzied air. Some forest monarchs were left bare of leaves or boughs, like desolate old age stripped of its honors.
The rain had already swelled the little creek into a mighty stream, that rolled its dark, angry waters with fury, and added its sullen roar to the howlings of the storm. I screamed, but my voice was lost even to myself in the mightier ones of the furious elements. Three hours—three long, never-to-be-forgotten hours—did the storm rage thus in fury, and in those hours I thought I lived a life-time! Then, to my joy, it began to abate, and soon I beheld the twinkling stars through rents in the driving clouds, while the flashing lightning and the roaring thunders gradually becoming less and less distinct to the eye and ear, told me the devastating storm was speeding on toward the east; and when, at dawn of day, the waters were assuaged, the thunder died away, and the lightnings were chained in their cell, the scene was one of indescribable desolation. The wind had gone home; daylight had cowed him from a raging giant into a meek prisoner, and led him moaning to his cavern in the eastern hills. A strangely-solemn calm seemed to take the place of the wild conflict; but the track of destruction was there, and the swollen water and felled trees, the scattered boughs and uprooted saplings, told the story of the havoc of the storm.