With angry mutter and swollen shape the purple cloud came on at a tremendous pace. The spin-drift of it caught the plain far ahead, and one after another the trains of the emigrants were swallowed in the blackness. When the first gust struck the bull train the touch was icy cold. “Hail, boys! Hail!” shouted Charley. “Watch the bulls!” Now sounded a clatter like rain on a sheet-iron roof; and across the landscape of sand and clay, and a cottonwood grove at the mouth of the creek, swept a line of white. The men dived for cover like prairie-dogs whisking into their holes. Yes, it was hail! Such hail! Driven by a gale the stones, some as large as hickorynuts, and all as large as filberts, lashed the huddled train; whanged against canvas and wagon-box and with dull thuds bounded from the bulls’ backs. Some of the animals shifted uneasily, for the stones stung. The others stood groaning and grunting with discomfort, shaking their heads when a particularly vicious missile landed on an ear. Under the wagons the men were secure; but Dave felt sorry for the poor bulls who turned and sought in vain. As quickly as it had come the storm passed, leaving the ground white with the hail. Almost before the men had crawled out from underneath their wagons the sun was shining. The hail had not damaged the bull train to any extent. There were dents in the tough wood where the heavy stones had struck, and several of the wagon sheets, forming the hoods, had been punctured in weak spots; but thanks to Charley’s promptness in corralling, the animals had not stampeded. However, some of the emigrants had not fared so well, because they had not known what to do. After the bull train was yoked up again and was travelling on, it passed two emigrant outfits stalled by the trail, trying to recover their teams which had run away. Many of the flimsy cotton hoods used by the emigrants were riddled into strips. The Overland Trail followed up the south side of the Platte, the same way by which Dave had come down with the Lew Simpson train a year before, after the fight in the mule fort. Where the North Platte and the South Platte joined current it continued on up the South Platte――and now to the north a short distance was the place where the mule fort had been located so hastily by Billy Cody and Lew and George Woods. Soon the main trail for Salt Lake and California forded the South Platte to cross the narrow point of land for Ash Hollow at the North Platte and for Laramie and Salt Lake City. But the Denver branch proceeded on into the west by the newer trail to the mountains and Denver.