“These plains thunderstorms are the biggest I’ve ever seen.” Water dripped through a tiny gap in the canvas and plunked down on Preacher’s hat. “If it keeps up for very long, you’re gonna be stuck here for the rest of today and probably most of tomorrow.”
“Why can’t we move on once the storm is over?”
“Because the trail will be too muddy,” Preacher explained. “The wheels would bog down in a hurry. You’d have to use two or three teams on each wagon just to pull them loose, and even if you did that, you’d probably be stuck again before you went twenty yards. It’ll be better just to wait and let the sun dry the ground some tomorrow before you try to move.”
“I’ll bow to your superior wisdom, sir. I’m not fond of the delay, but I suppose in a journey of this magnitude, a difference of a day or two doesn’t have much significance.”
“That’s the truth,” Preacher agreed. “The trip to Santa Fe is a long haul. You got to be patient.”
The rain continued pounding down. The rumble of thunder was so loud the ground shook with each peal, and the lightning was so frequent that the flickering illumination cast by the bolts was almost as constant as firelight.
Preacher suddenly frowned as he heard a rumbling noise that didn’t seem to be caused by the thunder. He had heard something like it before and didn’t like the sound. He leaned over to the canvas flaps at the front of the wagon and pulled them apart slightly, creating a narrow gap. He couldn’t see anything except the wagon ahead of them in line, so he widened it a little more.
He put his eye to it and peered out.
What he saw brought a heartfelt exclamation from his lips. “Son of a bitch!”
“What is it?” Leeman Bartlett asked nervously.
For a moment, Preacher didn’t answer. All he could do was stare at the broad funnel of madly whirling air that danced across the prairie toward the wagons. Ball lightning spiraled around it, marking its course over the plains. Preacher estimated that the giant tornado was at least a mile away, but it wouldn’t take any time at all to cover that distance.
He found his voice again. “Cyclone,” he told Bartlett. “A big one.”
“My God. Is it headed toward us?”
“Appears to be. Hard to say, though, the way those things skip around.”
“What can we do?” Bartlett asked, his voice cracking a little with barely suppressed fear.
“If you’re a prayin’ man, I’d get busy at it. If you ain’t . . . this might be a good time to start.”
Bartlett began muttering under his breath, but between the pounding rain, the howling wind, and the rumble of the approaching twister, Preacher couldn’t tell if the man was praying or cursing. As for him, he sent up a brief plea to El Señor Dios, as the Mexicans called him.
Something else caught his eye, something that made him press his face closer to the gap in the canvas flaps. He saw a huge shape moving through the rain. It was nothing but a formless blob, but it was big. Something about the sight of it lumbering slowly along made a shiver go down Preacher’s spine. Then the gray curtains of the downpour thickened, and whatever it was vanished from Preacher’s sight.
He thought about Dog and Horse. He couldn’t do anything about Horse, but there was room in the wagon for Dog and Preacher wanted his old friend with him. He told Bartlett, “Stay put.”
The man clutched at his arm. “Good Lord! You’re not going out in that, are you? What about the cyclone?”
“It’ll get us or it won’t,” Preacher replied fatalistically. He pulled free from Bartlett’s hand, pushed the canvas aside, and climbed out over the front of the wagon, dropping to the already muddy ground next to the stolid oxen.
Instantly, he was soaked to the skin. The rain lashed at him like something alive. He held on to his hat to keep it from blowing away. The storm was worse than he had thought. If he had known things were going to get that bad, he would have taken Dog into the wagon with him to start with.
“Dog!” he yelled over the racket. “Dog!”
He couldn’t see much of anything. It was like he was in the middle of a waterfall. But after a moment he felt the big cur pressing against his leg. Preacher reached down and put his arms around Dog’s thick, heavily muscled body. Lifting the animal wasn’t easy, but he heaved Dog up until the big cur was able to scramble into the wagon. Preacher pulled himself in after him.
“That animal is soaked!” Bartlett protested.
“So am I,” Preacher pointed out. The terrible, earth-shaking roar of the cyclone grew louder. “Get down and hang on!”
The wagon shook madly as Preacher pressed himself to the floorboards, holding Dog tightly beside him with an arm around the animal. Dog whimpered and licked his face. Preacher expected that at any second the tornado was going to lift the wagon from the ground and suck it high into the air, spinning it madly at the same time.
He had looked death in the face many times, but he had probably never been closer to it until that very moment.
Although the wagon shook like it was about to fall apart, it remained on the ground. After a few seconds that seemed more like an hour, the shaking and the noise subsided slightly. Leeman Bartlett lifted his pale, fear-gaunted face and asked hollowly, “Is . . . is it over?”
“Maybe the worst of it,” Preacher said. He let go of Dog and crawled over to the flaps at the rear of the wagon. When he pushed one of them back, rain slashed through the opening. He blinked water out of his eyes and looked for the tornado. A second later he spotted it, off the ground and pulling back up into the clouds. He thought it must have started lifting up just before it reached the caravan. If a monster like that had struck the wagons directly, it would have scattered them like a child’s toys. They had definitely dodged one of nature’s deadliest bullets.
But they weren’t out of danger yet. As Preacher watched, a lightning bolt slammed into the prairie about a hundred yards away.
“The twister’s gone!” he shouted over the roaring wind. “The storm’s still a long way from played out, though. And there’s nothin’ sayin’ another cyclone won’t show up.”
“Then we should all just stay put?” Bartlett asked.
“That’s right. It’ll blow itself out sooner or later.”
And when it did, Preacher thought, there would be even more problems facing them.
CHAPTER 7
For more than an hour after the heavens opened up, the rain continued to pour down. At last the deluge began to slow, and when it did, it tapered off quickly and then came to an abrupt end. Mere minutes later, the sun started peeking through tiny rifts in the thick gray clouds.
That was the way of prairie thunderstorms, Preacher thought as he pulled the canvas back and got ready to climb out of the wagon. Once they were over, they were over.
But Lord, that one had left a mess behind.
The trail was a broad swath of thick muck and standing water. Preacher’s boots splashed when they hit the ground. He sunk almost ankle-deep in the mud. When he turned back to the wagon to lift Dog down, the big cur looked at the mess and whined a little, as if to say he’d rather just stay right where he was, thank you very much.
Preacher grinned and said, “All right, if you want to be particular about it.”
Bartlett looked down from the wagon as well. “Good Lord,” he said. “It’s a swamp out there.”
“Yep,” Preacher said. “Just like I told you. You couldn’t go very far without boggin’ down again. Better to wait until things dry out a mite.”
The air was hot and steamy. Preacher took off his hat and sleeved sweat off his forehead as he slogged along the line of wagons, checking on the vehicles and telling the occupants that it was all right to come out again, if they wanted to.