We hoped that they were not in the tent, though, on account of the wind might blow the tent over. If they had gotten into the station wagon, it would be a lot better. Mr. Everhard was yelling that to me above the roar of the storm as we raced along, dodging around the trees and bushes and leaping over fallen logs. It seemed like we’d never get there. In fact, it seemed like it had never taken me so long in my whole life to get to that part of the woods. Then I felt a splatter of rain on my hand and another on my face and in a jiffy it was just like a whole skyful of water was falling and the rain was coming down the way it does when Mom says it’s coming down in sheets. In fact, it started coming down so hard I couldn’t see which way I was going. The rain in my face and eyes and on my bare, red head kept me straining to see anything.
It must have taken us almost fifteen minutes—which seemed like an hour—to get to the tent, which I noticed was still standing—but not all of it. The wing which had had the green canvas roof and the netting sidewalls was all squashed in. A great big, dead branch from the oak tree under which the tent had been pitched—and shouldn’t have been—had fallen on it, smashing the baby play pen and other things in that little room. The rest of the tent was only half standing.
For a minute, I imagined Charlotte Ann and Mrs. Everhard in there somewhere, the big branch having fallen on them, and they might be terribly bad hurt or even worse. They might not even be alive.
Beside me I could hear Mr. Everhard saying something and it sounded like some kind of a prayer. I couldn’t hear him very well but I caught just enough of the words to make out: “Oh dear God, please spare her life. Spare her and I’ll be a better man. I’ll do right. I’ll—I’ll give my heart to You and be a Christian.”
Even as I stumbled blindly along with him the last few rods to the twisted-up tent, I couldn’t help but think what I had heard our minister say lots of times, which was that even a kind man could still not be an honest-to-goodness Christian. Mr. Everhard might not even have given his heart to God yet and had his sins forgiven, I thought.
I also couldn’t help but think how swell it would be if Mr. and Mrs. Everhard would honest-to-goodness for sure give their hearts to God and be saved and confess it some Sunday morning in the Sugar Creek church like other people did almost every month.
Well, it took us about half a minute, when we get there in that blinding rain storm, to look inside the part of the tent that was still standing to find out that neither Charlotte Ann nor Frances Everhard was there. Say, as glad as I was that the dead tree branch hadn’t fallen on them, I still didn’t feel much relieved because I knew that they were somewhere else and if they weren’t in the station wagon they were still out in the dangerous storm and nobody knew where. I also thought that if the dead branch of this old oak tree could break off in a storm like this, the branches of other trees could do the same thing—and if anybody happened to be under the tree at the time....
We both kept calling and yelling.
We made a dive outside the tent to the station wagon, but there wasn’t anybody there and so we hurried back to the tent again, calling and yelling, trying to make ourselves heard above the roar of the wind and the rain and the thunder, which kept crashing all around us all the time. But we didn’t hear any answer.