Heads down against the wind, holding their hats on with both hands, they came running. Bill opened the tent flaps and held it against the wind until the strangers and Tommy were inside. Then he double-tied the flaps and turned, grinning hospitably. His twelve-by-fourteen tent was more than comfortably full now, what with the piles of supplies, Bill's stove and table and bed, and the five men. But it was a shelter, set shrewdly against just such an emergency as this storm. It faced away from the wind, and a ledge protected it from the full force of the gale. Thunder, lightning, wind--then an abrupt silence, a holding of the breath. Tommy, crouched down in his corner, his shoulder held carefully away from the canvas wall, stared owl-like through his thick glasses. "She's comin'," he mumbled dolefully. She came. All the water in the clouds seemed to have been dumped unceremoniously upon the tent. A fine mist beat through the roof and sides until warp and woof became saturated, and shrunk to a waterproof texture that sent the water running off in streams. "She's a cloud-burst--I said she'd be a cloud-burst!" Tommy muttered again in melancholy triumph. "You didn't get here any too soon," Bill observed cheerfully. "It would be pretty tough, climbing through this. You're lucky." "We certainly are!" Mr. Rayfield's voice was raised almost to a shout, to carry above the storm. "Wouldn't want to be caught out in this!" They sat and listened to it,--the boom and crash of the thunder, the vivid flashes that lightened blindingly the gloom of the tent, the roar of the falling water. "She's a tough one, all right!" Bill rose and pried open the flaps with his fingers, and put an eye to the crack. "Now I know how old Noah felt when he shut the door of the ark. Nothing in sight but water--good Lord!" Something sagged against the tent, beat upon the taut canvas. A voice was raised shrilly, frantically. "Bill! Oh, Bill! Let me in!" Bill's face had whitened at the first sound. His fingers clawed at the stiff, canvas knots that held the flaps shut. His hands, reaching out to loosen the outside fastenings, touched other fingers that tore nervously at the soaked knots. Bill was hampered by those other fingers, as a swimmer is hampered by the frenzied clutchings of a drowning man. But he managed the two lower fastenings and was beginning on the upper when the person outside stooped and ducked in past Bill's knees. "Doris---- Miss Hunter! What----" "Oh, it's perfectly _awful_! I thought I'd never make it, Bill. I couldn't make the horses face it, so I tied them down the gulch and came on afoot. I could see your tent when it lightened--I'm just _soaked_! It's the worst storm this year."