The wagons hardly had left the noon camp when a heavy rain storm burst upon them, with a blast of cold air that quickly turned the rain into driving sheets of hail. These storms were common along the Cimarron and at times raged for two or three days. The animals became frantic with fear and pain, and the train was a scene of great confusion from one end to the other. Alternate downpours of rain, sleet, and heavy hailstones continued all the rest of the day and the encampment at Willow Bar was one of sullenness and discontent. The wind rose during the early part of the night and sent the rain driving into the wagons through every crack and crevice, and the flapping and slapping and booming of wagon covers, added to the fury of the wind and the swish of the downpour, filled the night with a tumult of noise. The guards around the camp either crawled under skins or crept back to their wagons, not able to see three feet in the blackness. Tom and Hank had taken refuge under a great Pittsburg wagon owned by Haviland and had fastened buffalo rugs to its sides to shed some of the rain. As soon as darkness set in and Pedro's spies found that they could not see an arm's length from them and were drenched and half frozen by the steady downpour, they fled from their posts and sought refuge from the storm. It took very little to convince them that the men they were to watch would stay where they were until dawn or later, and they did not let Pedro know of their deflection. "Nine, ten, eleven," muttered the first of two men leading packmules as they felt their way from wagon to wagon. "This oughter be Haviland's, Zeb. Yep, I kin feel thar skin walls." He bent down and raised the lower edge of a skin. "Hank! Tom!" "All right, Jim," came the low answer, and the two partners, bundled in skins until they looked like nothing human, crawled from their snug shelter and stood up, their one and constant thought being for the covers of the hammers of their heavy rifles. Hank pushed ahead and the night swallowed up the little party. Uncle Joe raised himself on one elbow and peered through a small opening in the canvas at the rear end of his first huge wagon, and got a faceful of cold rain before he could close the opening again. He had done this a dozen times since dark. Muttering sleepily he rolled up in his blankets and rugs and dozed again, squirming down into the warm bed as vague thoughts sped through his mind of what his friends were going to face. Suddenly the soft whinny of a horse sounded squarely under him, and he bounced from the blankets and crept to a crack where the canvas was nailed to the tailboard of the wagon. "Hello!" he called. "Hello!"