Wallie"s short laugh was cynical.
"It might drown somebody half a mile from me but it wouldn"t settle the dust in my dooryard."
"I see you"re gittin" homesteaditis," Pinkey commented, "but jest the same them clouds look like they meant business."
Wallie felt a glimmer of hope in spite of himself and he scrutinized the clouds closely.
"They do look black," he admitted. "But since it hasn"t rained for two months it seems too much to expect that it will rain when I need it so desperately."
"It"s liable to do anything. I"ve seen it snow here in August. A fur-lined linen duster is the only coat fer this country. I"ll gamble it"s goin" to do _somethin"_, but only the Big Boss knows what."
During breakfast they got up at intervals to look through the doorway, and while they washed dishes and tidied the cabin they watched the northwest anxiously.
"She"s movin" right along," Pinkey reported. "It might be a stiddy rain, and then agin it might be a thunder-shower, though you don"t often look for "em in the morning."
The light grew subdued with the approaching storm and Wallie commented upon the coolness. Then he went out in the dooryard and stood a moment.
"The clouds are black as ink, and how still it is," he said, wonderingly. "There isn"t a breath of air stirring."
Pinkey was sitting on the floor oiling his saddle when he tilted his head suddenly, and listened. He got up abruptly and stood in the doorway, concentrating all his faculties upon some sound of which he alone was cognizant, for Wallie was aware of nothing unusual save the uncanny stillness.
"Hear that?" The sharp note in Pinkey"s voice filled Wallie with a nameless fear.
"No--what?"
"That roar--can"t you hear it?"
Wallie listened intently.
"Yes--like a crashing--what is it?"
"Hail! And a terror! We"ve got to run the stock in." He was off with Wallie following and together they got the cow and horses under shelter with all the haste possible.
The sound preceded the storm by some little time, but each moment the roar and the crash of it grew louder and when it finally reached them Wallie gazed open-mouthed.
Accustomed to hail like tapioca, he never had seen anything like the big, jagged chunks of ice which struck the ground with such force that they bounded into the air again. Any one of them would have knocked a man unconscious. It seemed as if they would batter his roof in, and they came so thick that the stable and corral could be seen only indistinctly.
They both stood in the doorway, fascinated and awe-stricken.
"Hear it pound! This is the worst I"ve seen anywhur. You"re licked, Gentle Annie."
"Yes," said Wallie with a white face. "This finishes me."
"You"ll have to kiss your wheat good-bye. It"ll be beat into the ground too hard ever to straighten." He laid an arm about Wallie"s shoulder and there was a sympathy in his voice few had heard there:
"You"ve put up a good fight, old pardner, and even if you are counted out, it"s no shame to you. You"ve done good fer a Scissor-bill, Gentle Annie."
Wallie clenched his hands and shook himself free of Pinkey"s arm while his tense voice rang out above the clatter and crash of the storm:
"I"m not licked! I _won"t_ be licked! _I"m going to stick, somehow!_ And what"s more," he turned to Pinkey fiercely, "if you don"t stop calling me "Gentle Annie," I"ll knock your block off!"
Pinkey looked at him with his pale, humorous eyes and beamed approvingly.
CHAPTER XIV
LIFTING A CACHE
The Prouty barber lathering the face of a customer, after the manner of a man whitewashing a chicken coop, paused on an upward stroke to listen.
Then he stepped to the door, looked down the street, and nodded in confirmation. After which he returned, laid down his brush, and pinned on a nickel badge, which act transformed him into the town constable.
The patron in the chair, a travelling salesman, watched the pantomime with interest.
"One moment, please." The barber-officer excused himself and stepped out to the edge of the sidewalk, where he awaited the approach of a pair on horseback who were making the welkin ring with a time-honoured ballad of the country:
I"m a howler from the prairies of the West.
If you want to die with terror, look at me.
I"m chain-lightnin"----
As they came abreast the constable held out his hand and the pair automatically laid six-shooters in it and went on without stopping in their song:
--if I ain"t, may I be blessed.
I"m a snorter of the boundless, lone prairee.
Other citizens than the barber recognized the voices, and frowned or smiled as happened, among whom was Mr. Tucker repairing a sofa in the rear of his "Second-Hand Store."
Returning, the constable laid the six-shooters on the shelf among the shaving mugs and removed his badge.
"Who"s that?" inquired the patron, since the barber offered no explanation.
"Oh, them toughs--"Gentle Annie" Macpherson and "Pinkey" Fripp," was the answer in a wearied tone. "I hate to see "em come to town."
The pair continued to warble on their way to the livery barn on a side street:
I"m the double-jawed hyena from the East.
I"m the blazing, b.l.o.o.d.y blizzard of the States.
I"m the celebrated slugger----
The song stopped as Pinkey asked:
"Shall we work together or separate?"
To this mysterious question Wallie replied:
"Let"s try it together first."