“Come along, Bragg,” he commanded. “It’s more’n li’ble that he kept to the Bunganuck ridge.”
Hiram had no desire to ask further questions. He lashed his hors’e and rattled away toward the village at his best speed.
It had been one of those unseasonably hot May days, humid and sweltering, with thunder-heads boiling above the horizon and a menace in the steaming quietness of nature.
When Hiram turned in at the yard of the Look place the low sun was dipping behind an ominously purple curtain in the west, and there was a jarring growl of thunder behind the hills.
His brother was not at home.
“He may need old Hime for somethin’ or other,” he muttered as “Figger-Four” Avery bobbed into the barn leading the horse. “It ain’t especially the place for me to go buttin’ in, under the circumstances, but I’m a right-hand man for Phin when he needs help, and he knows it now.”
He hurried away down the street, casting an occasional glance over his shoulder at the purple-black curtain of cloud. “It looks as though it was goin’ to be a ripper,” he commented.
In the yard of the Kleber Willard place little groups of villagers were talking in hushed tones.
“How be they now inside there, Uncle Buck?” inquired Hiram, solicitously.
“Them that’s still inside is in a mighty bad way,” replied the old man, grimly. He added yet more grimly, “And them that’s outside is most likely wuss off than that.”