and
horses, pelted by the hail till their bodies were bruised and bleeding, huddled together at the head of the gulch for mutual protection.
The storm lasted less than twenty minutes, and ceased as suddenly as it began. The black clouds soared away to the northward, leaving a blue starlit sky overhead, and underfoot a mass of hail and mud. The Platte, having caught the full fury of a cloud-burst a few miles above the camp, rose rapidly, threatening the frightened refugees in the wagons with a new danger. But the shallow banks were high enough to confine the mad rush of muddy water within an inch or two of the top, thus averting the horror of a flood which, had it come, would have completed the havoc of the storm.
The lightning, as though weary of its display of power, retreated to the distant hills, and played at hide-and-seek on the horizon's edge, while Heaven's Catling guns answered each pyrotechnic display with a distant, growling, intermittent roar.
Mrs. McAlpin's carriage was a total wreck; but her wagons remained intact, and she and her mother escaped to them in safety.
The morning revealed a scene of desolation. The earth in all directions as far as the eye could see had been torn into gulleys by the mad rush of falling hail and rain, each seeking its level in frantic haste. Hailstones lay in heaps, some soiled by contact with the liquid mud, some as clean and white as freshly fallen snow.
The contents of Mrs. McAlpin's carriage were entirely gone. Nothing remained of the vehicle but one of its wheels and some shreds of its cover, which were found half buried in the mud. Of the harness, nothing was left but a bridle bit, in which was lodged a woman's glove, and near it the remains of a palm-leaf fan.
"We should all be thankful that no lives were lost," said Mrs. Ranger, who was looking on while Sally
