With the wind came the clouds, and a darkness that could be felt.
Then down died the fitful breeze, and loud and long roared and rattled the thunder, while the blinding lightning seemed everywhere. It rushed down the darkness in rivers like blood, it glanced and glimmered on the pools of water, and zigzagged through the trees. From the awful hurtling of the thunder one would have thought every trunk and stem were being rent and riven in pieces.
Tell—the horse—seemed uneasy, so Archie made for home. The rain had come on long before he reached the creek, but the stream was still fordable.
But see! He is but half-way across when, in the interval between the thunder peals, he can hear a steady rumbling roar away up the creek and gulley, but coming closer and closer every moment.
On, on, on, good Tell! Splash through that stream quicker than ever you went before, or far down the country to-morrow morning two swollen corpses will be seen floating on the floods!
Bewildered by the dashing rain, and the mist that rose on every side, Archie and his trusty steed had but reached high ground when down came the bore.
A terrible sight, though but dimly seen. Fully five feet high, it seemed to carry everything before it. Alas! for flocks and herds. Archie could see white bodies and black, tumbling and trundling along in the rolling "spate."
The floods continued for days. And when they abated then losses could be reckoned. Though dead cattle and sheep now lay in dozens about the flat lands near the creek, only a small percentage of them belonged to Burley.
Higher up Findlayson had suffered, and many wild cattle helped to swell the death bill.
But it was bad enough.