"Then, Little Blue Flower, you must stay with us."

She pointed toward the eastern sky where a faint light was beginning to
show above the horizon. "See, the day comes!"

"Then we will break camp now," my uncle said.

"Not in the face of this storm, Clarenden," Jondo declared. "You can
fight an Indian. You can't do a thing but 'hold fast' in one of these
hurricanes."

The air was still and hot. The black cloud swept swiftly onward, with
the weird yellow glow before it. In the solitude of the plains the trail
showed like a ghostly pathway of peril. Before us loomed that grim rock
bluff, behind whose crest lay the sleeping band of Kiowas. It was only
because they slept that Little Blue Flower could steal away in hope of
rescue.

Hotter grew the air and darker the swiftly rolling clouds; black and
awful stood old Pawnee Rock with the silent menace of its sleeping
enemy. In the stillness of the pause before the storm burst we heard
Jondo's voice commanding us. With our first care for the frightened
stock, we grouped ourselves together as he ordered close under the
bluff.

Suddenly an angry wind leaped out of the sky, beating back the hot dead
air with gigantic flails of fury. Then the storm broke with tornado rage
and cloudburst floods, and in its track terror reigned. Beverly and I
clung together, and, holding a hand of each, Mat Nivers crouched beside
us, herself strong in this second test of courage as she had been in the