“It’s like Love and Life racing in the picture,” she laughed back and they bounded into the buckboard, Wayland standing braced behind the seat, “to stop her kiting down the hill if we break loose,” he said; she, forward with the driver, feet braced to the iron foot-rest, hands holding the seat-guard.  Then, the brim of his felt hat flapping, the bronchos’ ears laid back, necks craned out, the old man whirling the whip, they were off for the Rim Rocks.  The breaking storm, the whipping winds, the wild pace, the rush of the fringed rain, seemed a part of the furious exaltation breaking the bounds of her own consciousness.

“Cross the ford, Sir,” shouted the Ranger bending forward, “it’s shorter than the bridge;” and her hair tossed in his face as the buckboard splashed into the River and bounced up the far side with hind wheels swaying.

“Are y’ all right, there?” called the old driver over his shoulder.

“Stay with it,” yelled Wayland, “straight ahead where the road cuts the Rim Rocks.”

“We’re splitting the air all right,” shouted the old man.  “Ye mind y’ talked of sawing air.  Split it, man, an’ y’ll get somewhere.”

Up a hummock, down a ravine, over a fallen log with a hurdle jump that threatened to break the buckboard’s back.

“Are ye there yet?” called the old man.

“Split the wind, Sir,” shouted Wayland; and the rig went rattling up the red earth road of the Rim Rocks not a wheel’s width from the edge.

“We’re leaving the storm behind; look back,” she said.

Up the Valley swept the rains in a wall of whipped spray jagged by the zig-zag streaks of lightning.

“Hold on till we turn the next switch back,” warned the Ranger.  The buckboard wheeled a point as he spoke and the bronchos floundered to a fagged trot.  They saw it coming:  the rain wall, frayed at the edge to a fringe, the wind lashing their faces, the red rocks of the battlements jutting through the cloud wrack spectral and ominous.  A toothed edge of rock above, then a belt of cloud cut by the darting wings of the countless swallows.

The trees of the Ridge across the Valley seemed to bend and snap.  There was a funnelling roar, sucking up earth and air, trees and brushwood; whips and lashes and splintering crashes of rain and wind and jagged light-lines; the bronchos cowering against the inner wall of the trail.  Then the funnelling wind tore the pinnacled rock tops clear of the billowing mist.

“There goes your hat, Sir,” cried Wayland as the black felt went sailing down the precipice.

“What’s that!” demanded the old man, springing from the seat and pointing upward with his whip.