dn't
tell," observed Monty.

Then Dorothy climbed to his side and looked.

"Oh, isn't it just perfectly lovely!" she exclaimed. "But I wish it
wouldn't storm. We'll all get wet."

Once more Stewart faced the ascent, keeping to the slow heave of the
ridge as it rose southward toward the looming spires of rock. Soon he
was off smooth ground, and Madeline, some rods behind him, looked back
with concern at her friends. Here the real toil, the real climb began,
and a mountain storm was about to burst in all its fury.

The slope that Stewart entered upon was a magnificent monument to the
ruined crags above. It was a southerly slope, and therefore semi-arid,
covered with cercocarpus and yucca and some shrub that Madeline believed
was manzanita. Every foot of the trail seemed to slide under Majesty.
What hard ground there was could not be traveled upon, owing to the
spiny covering or masses of shattered rocks. Gullies lined the slope.

Then the sky grew blacker; the slow-gathering clouds appeared to be
suddenly agitated; they piled and rolled and mushroomed and obscured
the crags. The air moved heavily and seemed to be laden with sulphurous
smoke, and sharp lightning flashes began to play. A distant roar of wind
could be heard between the peals of thunder.

Stewart waited for Madeline under the lee of a shelving cliff, where the
cowboys had halted the pack-train. Majesty was sensitive to the flashes
of lightning. Madeline patted his neck and softly called to him. The
weary burros nodded; the Mexican women covered their heads with their
mantles. Stewart untied the slicker at the back of Madeline's saddle
and helped her on with it. Then he put on his own. The other cowboys
followed suit. Presently Madeline saw Monty and Dorothy rounding the
cliff, and hoped the others would come soon.

A blue-white, knotted rope of lightning burned down out of the clouds,
and instantly a thunder-clap crashed, seeming to shake the foundations
of the earth. Then it rolled, as if banging from cloud to cloud, and
boomed along the peaks, and reverberated from deep to low, at last to
rumble away into silence. Madeline felt the electricity in Majesty's
mane, and it seemed to tingle through her nerves. The air had a weird,
bright cast. The ponderous clouds swallowed more and more of the eastern
domes. This moment of the breaking of the storm, with the strange
growing roar of wind, like a moaning monster, was pregnant with a
heart-disturbing emoti