Before midday it
had grown dark in the canons. In the driving blast of the wind many a
tall pine had snapped, broken at last after long valiant years of
victorious buffeting with the seasons, while countless tossing branches
had been riven away from the parent boles and hurled far out in all
directions. Through the narrow canons the wet wind went shrieking
fearsomely, driving the slant rain like countless thin spears of
glistening steel.
At the wan daybreak the sound filling the air was one of many-voiced but
subdued tumult, like the faraway growling of fierce, hungry, imprisoned
beasts. As the sodden hours dragged by the noises everywhere increased
steadily, so that before noon the whole of the wilderness seemed to be
shouting; narrow creek beds were filled with gushing, muddy water; the
trees on the mountainsides shook and snapped and creaked and hissed to
the hissing of the racing wind; at intervals the thunder echoing
ominously added its boom to the general uproar. Not for a score of
years and upward had such a storm visited the mountains in the vicinity
of the old road house in Big Pine Flat.
Night, as though it had leaped upon the back of the storm and had ridden
hitherward on the wings of the wind all impatience to defy the laws of
daylight, was in truth mistress of the mountains a full hour or more
before the invisible sun's allotted time of setting.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25