“If it wasn’t so early in the summer I’d say a thunderhead was fixin’ up to give us a big razoo,” he ventured. Grant looked up and noted that the blue had turned to a heavy saffron tint as if the sun were shining through a stratum of light sand; such a tint he’d seen before the great windstorm on the day of Don Padraic’s burial.
“If I could only look over the top of the wall yonder to west’ard,” Bim grumbled uneasily. “These cloudbursts always come from direction of the Gulf. We’re not very well put right here in the channel of all the wash down from up top-side. Those horses now—”
He walked uneasily about the narrow confines of the shelf, scanning the upshoots of rock for possible ways out. Then he seemed to dismiss possibility of trouble from his mind and returned to where Grant was sitting.
An hour passed. Perhaps they were dozing when the rattle of a shower of rock down the cañon side galvanized both. Up there they saw the figure of big Quelele. Like a wild goat he was leaping from foothold to foothold downward; he was in mad haste.
The big Indian risked his neck a dozen times before he came panting up to the watchers. He waved to the brink of the cliff.
“I been on top—watching—I see long way off—Urgo—rurales. They come—fast!”
[CHAPTER XXIV]
STORM
Bim translated Quelele’s intelligence for Grant. “Our li’l friend Urgo’s been burnin’ the wind,” was his dry comment. Grant sent a quick glance around the cul-de-sac of rock which encompassed them.