ened its batteries of
liquid balls. There was only such protection as the wagons afforded.
Whatever preparation we could make must be effected at once.

Knowing that if the cattle should take fright and run, it would be
better that they leave the wagons, I dropped the wagon-tongue to which
I was hitching a team, and called to a boy who was hooking up the
next wagon, telling him not to do so. He had, however, already
attached to that wagon the team consisting of three yoke of oxen.

The big drops of water were in a moment followed by hailstones, at
first very large and scattering, striking the ground each with a
vicious thud--a subdued "whack"; growing more frequent and presently
mingled with lesser ones; until, in the shortest moment, there was a
cloud-burst of hail and rain pouring upon us, a storm such as none of
us had ever witnessed.

The oxen, chained together in strings of three and four pairs, pelted
by the hail, were mutinous and altogether uncontrollable. My own
string, having turned crosswise of the front end of the wagon, were
pushing it backward, down the hillside. The team in charge of the boy,
being attached to their wagon and heading away from the storm, were
turning the wagon over. Knowing that the boy's mother was in the
"schooner," on a sick bed, I left my wagon and ran to that. As the
oxen, in trying to shield themselves from the hail, were forcing the
front wheels around under the wagon-box, I was fortunate enough to get
a shoulder under one corner of the box and exert sufficient force to
prevent the wagon upsetting. All this took little more than a minute.
The storm passed away as suddenly as it had come. Then I saw the wagon
which was my special charge lying on its side, at the bottom of the
slope; the bows of the cover fitting snugly into a sort of natural
gutter, with a swift current of muddy water and hailstones flowing
through the cover, as if it were a sluice-pipe. Everything in the
wagon was topsy-turvy; and, half buried in the heap were two little
girls, who had been riding in the vehicle. They were more frightened
than hurt, but complained loudly at being placed in a cold-storage
of hailstones.

[Illustration: The Author--Twenty years after]

Meantime, the sun beamed again, clear and hot, and we saw the
storm-cloud pursuing its course over the plain to the southeast,
leaving in its wake a wet path a few rods wide.

The other men had their hands full in caring for endangered members o