Once more at the camp they prepared the fish for the pan. The sun suddenly burned hot and the lake was still as brass, but great, splendid, leisurely, gleaming clouds were sailing in from the west, all centering about Chief Audobon, and the experienced girl looked often at the sky. “I don’t like the feel of the air. See that gray cloud spreading out over the summits of the range, that means something more than a shower. I do hope daddy will overtake the horses before they cross the divide. It’s going to pour up there.”
“What can I do?”
“Nothing. We’ll stay right here and get dinner for him. He’ll be hungry when he gets back.”
As they were unpacking the panniers and getting out the dishes, thunder broke from the high crags above the lake, and the girl called out:
“Quick! It’s going to rain! We must reset the tent and get things under cover.”
Once more he was put to shame by the decision, the skill, and the strength with which she went about re-establishing the camp. She led, he followed in every action. In ten minutes the canvas was up, the beds rolled, the panniers protected, the food stored safely; but they were none too soon, for the thick gray veil of rain, which had clothed the loftiest crags for half an hour, swung out over the water—leaden-gray under its folds—and with a roar which began in the tall pines—a roar which deepened, hushed only when the thunder crashed resoundingly from crag to crest—the tempest fell upon the camp and the world of sun and odorous pine vanished almost instantly, and a dark, threatening, and forbidding world took its place.
But the young people—huddled close together beneath the tent—would have enjoyed the change had it not been for the thought of the Supervisor. “I hope he took his slicker,” the girl said, between the tearing, ripping flashes of the lightning. “It’s raining hard up there.”
“How quickly it came. Who would have thought it could rain like this after so beautiful a morning?”
“It storms when it storms—in the mountains,” she responded, with the sententious air of her father. “You never can tell what the sky is going to do up here. It is probably snowing on the high divide. Looks now as though those cayuses pulled out sometime in the night and have hit the trail for home. That’s the trouble with stall-fed stock. They’ll quit you any time they feel cold and hungry. Here comes the hail!” she shouted, as a sharper, more spiteful roar sounded far away and approaching. “Now keep from under!”
“What will your father do?” he called.