Harding had once thought as his comrade did, but now his optimistic courage had deserted him. The future was very dark. He meant to fight on, but defeat seemed certain. It would be easier to bear because he had already lost what he valued most.
Presently the wagon wheels sank in yielding sand, and that roused him.
"Our hauling costs us high with these loose trails. I'd counted on cutting more straw with the crop this year and using it to bind the road. But now we may not have any grain to send out."
The plan was characteristic of him, though his dejection was not. As a rule, straw has no value in a newly opened country, and not much is cut with the grain, the tall stubble being burned off; but Harding had seen a use for the waste material in improving the means of transport.
"Well," said Devine, "we'd better hustle. The team won't stand for a storm."
Harding urged the horses, and as the wheels ran out on firm ground the pace grew faster, and a distant bluff began to rise from the waste. When they were a mile or two from the woods there was a rumble of thunder and the light grew dim. The dark sky seemed descending to meet the earth, the bluff grew indistinct, but the burned grass still retained its ghostly whiteness. Then the temperature suddenly fell, and when a puff of cold wind touched his face Harding used the whip. He knew what was going to happen.
Throwing up their heads in alarm as a pale flash glimmered across the trail, the team broke into a gallop, while the light wagon rocked and swung as the wheels jolted over hummocks and smashed through scrubby brush. Harding did not think he could hold the horses in the open when the storm broke, and he did not wish to be hurled across the rugged prairie behind a bolting team. Springing down when they reached the trees, he and Devine locked the wheels and then stood waiting at the horses' heads. All was now very still again, but a gray haze was closing in. Now and then leaves stirred and rustled, and once or twice a dry twig came down. The faint crackle it made jarred on the men's tingling nerves.
Harding found it difficult to keep still. He slowly filled his pipe for the sake of occupation. The match he struck burned steadily, but its pale flame was suddenly lost in a dazzling glare as the lightning fell in an unbroken fork from overhead to a corner of the bluff. Then the pipe dropped and was trodden on, as the men swayed to and fro, using all their strength to hold the plunging team. It was only for a moment they heard the battering hoofs, for a deafening crash that rolled across the heavens drowned all other sound, and as it died away the trees began to moan. A few large drops of rain fell, and then, as the men watched it, gathering a faint hope, the rain turned to hail. A savage wind struck the bluff, the air got icy cold, and the hail changed from fine grains to ragged lumps. Harding could hear it roar among the trees between the peals of thunder, until the scream of wind and the groan of bending branches joined in and formed a wild tumult of sound.
Though the men stood to lee of the woods, the hail found them out, bruising their faces and cutting their wet hands; even their bodies afterward felt as if they had been beaten. It raked the bluff like rifle-fire, cutting twigs and shredding leaves, and the wild wind swept the wreckage far to leeward. Light branches were flying, and Harding was struck, but his grapple with the maddened horses demanded all his thought. The lightning leaped about them and blazed through the woods, silhouetting bending trees and the horses' tense, wet bodies, before it vanished and left what seemed to be black darkness behind.
Then, when the men were getting exhausted, the thunder grew fainter and the bitter wind died away. There was a strange, perplexing stillness in the heavy gloom, until the cloud-ranks parted and a ray of silver light broke through. The grass steamed as the beam moved across it, and suddenly the bluff was warm and bright, and they could see the havoc that had been made.