Chapter 13

"Unless the back is straight the right shoulder will drop, and that is fatal," cautioned Wallace. "Grip firmly and evenly with the fingers--not the palms--of both hands, but let the wrists be flexible until the club-head comes to the ball."

Wallace corrected other errors, and after fifteen minutes of instruction Harding teed a ball and for the first time in his life cleared the lane. He was as delighted as a boy who unexpectedly comes into possession of his first gun.

"Wallace," he declared, "if you will stick to me until I get so I can do that well half of the time I'll give you a hundred shares of the L.M. & K. and a job which beats this one all hollow."

"I think you will be able to do even better than that," said Wallace confidently.

As the game progressed Harding's play steadily improved and his face took on an expression of supreme satisfaction delightful to contemplate.

His crowning triumph came on the thirteenth hole, in which he drove the green and found his ball laying within a foot of the cup, from which distance he easily negotiated a two which won the hole, and, as it subsequently developed, the match, Wallace holding the best ball of Carter and myself even.

Harding made the round in 106, which is ten strokes better than any of his previous records. He tried in vain to induce Wallace to take some large sum of money, but this strange young Scotchman positively refused to accept more than the regular rate for a lesson.

LaHume left, bag and baggage, early this morning, and I doubt if Woodvale will see him again. His membership is for sale, and at a special meeting of the board his resignation was accepted. He seems to have been the villain of this diary, but really he is not a bad sort of fellow, save for a strain of tactless selfishness. I presume that his good looks eventually will win for him some unfortunate heiress.

Had he remained here until this evening he would have been treated to another surprise. Wallace took Miss Lawrence's high-powered automobile from the garage, and, after a preliminary run of several miles in which to become familiar with certain new devices, swung it around the club house and up to the landing steps with the easy skill in which he handles a mashie.

As Bishop says, he certainly is "a most remarkable hired man."

Miss Lawrence, Miss Ross and Miss Dangerfield soon appeared and, with Wallace, started on a trip which was to include a call at Bishops, and later a spin down the old post road and back by some circuitous route.

It is only a week from to-day until the meeting of the directors of the N.O. & G. I shall then know whether I am to be comparatively a financial nonentity or a man of affairs. And then I shall know something of vastly more importance!

ENTRY NO. XIX

THE TORNADO

Early Monday morning Mr. Harding took a train for Oak Cliff, where he had an appointment with Mr. Wilson. He made a remark to the effect that his mission pertained more to business than golf. Mr. Wilson is president of the bank through which the "Harding System" transacts most of its financial operations.

"You can do me a favour, if you will, Smith," he said. "I shall stay over night in Oak Cliff. We have visitors coming to Woodvale to-morrow evening, and I should be back here to dine with them by six o'clock. There is no train from Oak Cliff within hours of that time, and it has occurred to me that the folks might come for me in the red machine. Of course the Kid thinks she can handle it, but I hate to trust her on so long and hilly a route. Could you come with them?"

An invitation was never accepted with more cheerful willingness. It was arranged that Mrs. Harding, Miss Harding and I should arrive at Oak Cliff with the auto at about four o'clock Tuesday afternoon.

We were to start from Woodvale at half after one o'clock, so as to have plenty of time. That Fate, which is always prying into and disarranging the plans of us poor mortals, interfered with our arrangements an hour before the time fixed for our departure. The visitors who were to arrive in the evening came shortly after noon. It was exasperating.

I pictured myself making that long trip alone, and cursed the chattering arrivals who had the bad form to anticipate the hour set for their welcome. There were three of them, and I noticed that they were of mature years.

I sat glumly watching them and heartily wishing that the train which brought them had been blocked for an hour or two, when Miss Harding came smilingly towards me.

"Mamma cannot go," she said.

"And you?" I asked, hardly daring to hope for the best.

"They seemed glad to excuse me, Jacques Henri," she laughed.

I have no doubt I grinned like a Cheshire cat. I refrained from telling the abominable falsehood that I was sorry Mrs. Harding could not go with us, and an hour later the huge touring car rolled smoothly away from the Woodvale club house, its front seat occupied by a supremely happy gentleman of the name of Smith, and by his side a supremely pretty young lady who waved her hand to the elderly group on the veranda.

I had been so absorbed in the unfolding of the incidents just narrated that I took no note of the weather or of anything else. For a month or more the weather has been so uniformly fine that we had come to accept the succession of warm but cloudless days as a matter of course.

When I was a boy my father drilled into me a knowledge of the visible signs of impending changes in meteorological conditions. As I became older the study of the warnings displayed in the sky and in the indescribable variations in the feel of the air possessed a fascination for me. During the early years after the formation of the club the members jested me on account of my predilection for weather forecasting, but the uniform accuracy of these guesses commanded their surprise and subsequently won their respect.

Chilvers and others sometimes call me "Old Prog. Smith," and I am more proud of that pleasantry than of some others.

There was not a breath of air stirring. The atmosphere seemed stagnant, like a pool on which the sun has beat during rainless weeks. The dried tops of the swamp grass and reeds pointed motionless to the heat-quivering sky. The dust cast up by our car hung over the road like a ribbon of fog.

The forest to our left shut off a view of the western sky, but I felt sure that the clouds of an approaching storm were already marshalled along its horizon. Then we shot out into a clearing and I took one swift look.

From north to south was spanned the sweeping curve of a gray cloud with just a tinge of yellow blended into it. The ordinary observer would have seen in it no premonition of a storm. It was smooth, light in tone and restful to the eye as compared with the angry blue from out of which the sun blazed.

The upper edges of this mass were unbroken save at one point near the zenith of its curve. From this there protruded the sharper edges of a "thunder-head," as if some titanic and unseen hand were lifting to the firmament a colossal head of cauliflower, its shaded portions beautifully toned with blue. This description may be homely, but it has the merit of accuracy.

I said no word of my certainty of the oncoming tempest, but threw on full speed and dashed ahead at a rate which startled my fair companion. From the turn in the road just beyond the clearing we headed directly into the line of march of the storm. If it were slow-moving I calculated we would reach Oak Cliff before it broke, but I realised it would be close work.

Miss Harding leaned over and said something to me. The whirr of the machinery and the swaying of the car made conversation difficult. I presume she thought I was determined to show my nerve and skill as a driver.

"Why this mad haste, Jacques Henri?" she again cried, her head so close to mine that her hair brushed my cheek.

I returned a non-committal smile and fixed my eyes on the road which slipped toward us like a huge belt propelled by invisible pulleys.

The miles kept pace with the minutes. Of a sudden the sun was blotted out. When I lifted my eyes from the road I saw birds circling high in the sky. The cattle in adjacent fields lifted their heads and moved uneasily as if some instinct sounded a warning in their dull brains. Above the trees I saw the skirmish line of the storm.

In after hours Miss Harding told me that she had quickly solved the secret of my wild dash. For a quarter of an hour she hung to the swaying seat and said no word. Once I looked into her eyes and read in them that she understood.

We dashed through a little village and paid no heed to the angry shouts and menacing gestures of a man who wore a huge star on his chest. Oak Cliff was only ten miles away. Could we make it?

The restful grays of the cloud had disappeared; and low down on the horizon I saw a belt of bluish black, and as I looked, a bolt of lightning jabbed through it. We were now running parallel to the storm, and I believed I could beat it to Oak Cliff. I felt certain I could reach the little hamlet of Pine Top, and from there on it would be easy to get to shelter. Between us and Pine Top was practically an unbroken wilderness, a part of the country reserved as a source of water supply for the great city far to the south of us.

Into that wilderness we dashed.

We were taking a hill with the second speed clutch on when a grating sound came to my alert ears, and with it an unnatural shudder of the machinery. I threw off power and applied the brakes. As the car stopped the deep rolling bass of the thunder rumbled over the hills.

"We are caught," declared Miss Harding, but there was no fear in her voice.

"Not yet!" I asserted, springing from the car and making a frenzied examination of the cause of our breakdown. I knew it was not serious, and when I located it I joyously proclaimed it a mere trifle. But automobile trifles demand minutes, and nature did not postpone the resistless march of its storm battalions. As I toiled with wrench and screw-driver I cursed the folly which induced me to plunge into that desolate stretch of forest and marsh.

The roar of the tempest's artillery became continuous. The low scud clouds travelling with incredible velocity blotted out the blue sky to the east and darkness fell like a black shroud. I could not see to work beneath the floor of the car, and lost another minute searching for and lighting a candle.

In the uncanny gloom I saw the fair face of the one whose safety now was menaced by my bold folly. I saw her form silhouetted against the black of a fir tree in the almost blinding glare of a flame of lightning.

"Just one minute and I will have it fixed!" I said, and she smiled bravely but said nothing.

Still not a breath of air! The spires of the pine trees stood rigid as if cast in bronze!

This is the time when a storm strikes terror to my soul. With the first patter of the rain and the onrushing of the wind I experience a sensation of relief, but it is nerve-racking to stand in that frightful calm and await the mighty charge of unknown forces.

As I bolted the displaced part into its proper adjustment I reflected that had it not been for the ten minutes thus lost we would have been in Oak Cliff. My calculations had been accurate, but again Fate had introduced an unexpected factor. I started the engine and leaped into the car.

"Only a mile to shelter!" I exclaimed. "I think we can make it. Where are the storm aprons?"

"We forgot them," she said.

"I forgot them, you mean," I declared. "Hold fast! It is a rough road!"

The red car leaped forward. I remembered that there was a farmhouse a mile or so ahead.

Never have I witnessed anything like the vivid continuity of that lightning. With a crash which sounded as if the gods had shattered the vault of the heavens a bolt streamed into a tree not a hundred yards ahead, and one of its limbs fell to the roadway. It was impossible to stop. She saw it and crouched behind the shield. With a lurch and a leap we passed over it.

I felt a drop of rain on my face. The trees swayed with the first gust of the tempest. We were going down hill with full speed on. A few hundred yards ahead was a stone culvert spanning the bed of a creek whose waters years before had been diverted to a reservoir a mile or so to the east. Save at rare intervals, the bed of this creek was dry.

As the recollection of this old culvert came to me I raised my eyes and saw something which drove the blood from my heart! A quarter of a mile ahead was a gray wall of rain, and dim through it I saw huge trees mount into the air and twist and gyrate like leaves caught up in an air eddy.

Holding our speed for a few seconds, which seemed like minutes, we surged toward the old culvert. Jamming on the brakes, I swung to one side of the embankment and stopped almost on the edge of the dry bed of the creek.

Miss Harding leaped to the ground and stood for an instant dazed. I stumbled as I jumped, but was on my feet like a flash. The arch of the culvert was not thirty feet away, but had we not been protected by the embankment we should have been beaten down and killed ere we reached its shelter.

The stones and gravel from the roadway above were dashed into our faces by the outer circle of the tornado. Grasping Miss Harding by the arm I dragged or carried her, I know not which, to the yawning but welcome opening of the old stone archway.

I cannot describe what followed. It was as if the earth were in its death throes. We were tossed back and forth in this tunnel, a resistless suction pulling us first toward one entrance and then to the other, only to be hurled back by buffeting blows.

There was a sense of suffocation as if the lightning had burned the air. Our nostrils were filled with the fumes of sulphur, and we looked into each other's frightened eyes only when some near flash penetrated the awful blackness of what seemed our living tomb.

A tree fell across the west opening, one twisted limb projecting well into the tunnel of the culvert. We could not distinguish the crashes of thunder from that of hurtling trees or the demoniac roar of the tornado. All of our senses were assailed by the unleashed furies of the tempest; crazed with rage that we were just beyond their reach.

I cannot say how long this lasted. Observers of the tornado in other places state that it was not more than three minutes in passing. Its path was less than half a mile in width, but I am convinced that its onward speed was comparatively slow else we would not have reached the culvert from the time I first saw it until its edge struck us.

Then came a moment of appalling silence. The tornado had passed. With this strange calm the darkness lifted and we knew that the crisis was over.

We were near the centre of the tunnel. I became aware that I was holding her hands and that her head was resting on my shoulder.

As the silence came like a shock, she raised her head and our eyes met.

"God has been very good to us," she said, gently releasing her hands. "Let us thank Him."

Standing there in the rising waters we silently offered up our thanks to the One who rides on the wings of the storm and Who had guided two of His children to a haven of refuge.

The rain was still falling in sheets and the water had risen to our shoe-tops. In the growing light I discovered a projecting ledge near the centre of our shelter and helped Miss Harding to obtain a footing.

"If the water keeps on rising," she said, "we must get out of here. I am sure the rain will not kill us."

"That's true," I admitted, "but I hope the rain will cease before the flood reaches your ledge. It's coming down good and hard now."

It was pouring torrents. Though the crippled stream drained only a small territory the current had already reached my knees. I waded to the east opening and took one glance at the sky. The outlook was not encouraging, but we could stand another eighteen-inch rise without serious discomfort or danger. I realised that it would not do to be swept against the tree which partially clogged the further opening.

Half an hour passed and the rain still fell and the water rose inch by inch. We laughed and joked and were not in the least alarmed. Then the water lapped over the ledge on which she stood. She declared that her feet were wet as they possibly could get.

"I can stand it a few more minutes if you can," she said. "The rain is ceasing. You poor Jacques Henri! It's all you can do to keep your feet!"

I stoutly denied it.

"I'm having a jolly time!" I declared. "I see a light in the west. The rain will cease in a few minutes."

Even as I spoke the water rose several inches in one wave. I surmised what had happened. A dam had formed below us and the water was backing up. In less than a minute it had risen six inches, and was at her shoe-tops.

"We are drowned out!" I said. "Let's get out before we have to swim for it. Now be steady and remember your training as an equestrienne. Grab me by the neck and hang on and we'll be out of here in a minute."

I lifted her to my left shoulder and with my free right hand steadied myself against the wall of the tunnel. The bed of the brook was of soft sand and formed a fairly good footing. Luckily the same cause which so suddenly flooded us out materially lessened the force of the current, but it still struggled fiercely against me, and a false movement on the part of my fair burden might have led to distressing and even serious circumstances.

The water was almost to my waist but her skirts were clear of it. I slipped once and thought we were in trouble, but we safely reached the opening and it was a happy moment when I placed her on solid ground. Not that I was tired of my burden--not at all. I cheerfully would have attempted the task of carrying her the three miles between us and Pine Top.

A light mist was falling, but we did not notice that. We stood spellbound, gazing on a scene of unspeakable devastation!

To the north, west and southeast the forest lay prone like a field of wind-swept corn. Huge oaks and pines were tossed in grotesque windrows. Here and there gnarled roots projected above the prostrate foliage. The once proud trees lay like brave soldiers; their limbs rigid in the contorted attitudes of death.

The line of wreck was clearly marked along its northern line but the hills shut off our view to the west. The road to Pine Top was one mass of trunks and twisted limbs. For some distance in the other direction there was no forest to the right, and so far as we could see the road was clear.

At first glance I thought the touring car a total wreck. It had been lifted and hurled on its side against a partially dismantled stone wall. It was half hidden by a large branch of a tree, and its rear wheels were buried in mud and debris.

As we stood silent and awe-stricken amid this manifestation of the insignificance of man, the sun blazed forth from behind a laggard cloud. The effect was theatrical. It was like throwing the limelight on the scene which marks the climax of some tense situation. Instinctively we lifted our arms and cheered for sheer joy.

"What care we for wrecked automobiles and wet clothes?" I shouted. "We live, we live!"

"It is good to live," she cried; "it is splendid to live!"

We smilingly saluted His Majesty the sun once again, and then returned to earth.

"What shall we do?" Miss Harding asked.

My most vivid impression of this charming young woman at that instant was that her shoes gave forth a "chugging" sound as she walked, convincing aural evidence that their spare spaces were occupied with water. I also recall that her hat was a limp and bedraggled wreck from being jammed for an hour or more against the roof of the culvert.

"I don't know," I frankly admitted. "It is certain we cannot take this road to Pine Top. I have an idea that our back track is clear. I suggest that I proceed to ascertain if this machine is dead beyond hope of resurrection. If it isn't we'll take it back to civilisation. If it is we'll abandon it and walk."

"It is now half past three o'clock," she said, looking at her watch. "Even if we are late in getting to Oak Cliff we must go there if possible, for I know papa will wait for us and be worried if we do not come."

"I'll do the best I can," I said, hesitating a moment and vainly attempting to think of some discreet way in which to express what was on my mind.

"It will take some time," I finally said, "and in the meanwhile you had better--you had better--"

"Oh, I'm going to," she laughed, and before I could look up she was on her way to the sunny side of the embankment on the further approach of the culvert. Ten minutes later I turned and saw her a few paces away silently watching me, and the same glance revealed a pair of dainty shoes on the top rail of the old bridge, and I presume that in some place was a pair of stockings so disposed as to give Sol's rays a fair chance to do their most effective work.

"I think I can fix it inside of an hour," I said.

"That will be splendid!" she exclaimed.

The sun was blistering hot and I worked like a Trojan, but again was it my fate to disappoint her. The working parts were clogged with sand and mud, and I had underestimated the magnitude of my task. I know now that our best course would have been to abandon the machine and to walk to Pine Top, but perhaps what happened was just as well.

It was 5:45 before the machine gave its first sure signs of returning consciousness. Miss Harding gave a glad cry and a quarter of an hour later when the red monster stood coughing in the muddy roadway those dry shoes were where they belonged.

With light hearts we waved farewell to the kindly old culvert and set our pace toward Woodvale. It was our plan to take the first crossroad leading from the path of the tornado, and if possible make our way to Oak Cliff. We passed a small hut which nestled in the shelter of the rocks. In our mad rush I had not noticed it, but it seemed vacant.

A little farther on the road turns sharply to the right and re-enters the forest. As we came to the top of a knoll I looked ahead and saw at a glance that we were again nearing the path of the tornado. But I went on until the trunks of the stricken trees brought us to a halt.

"We are trapped, Miss Harding," I said, after an examination which proved that even foot travel was well-nigh impossible. "We are in the segment of a circle closed at its ends by fallen trees, and the worst of it is this: there remains to us positively no outlet to the road."

It was an exasperating situation. We decided to return to the hut in the hope that its occupant--if it had one--might be able to show us a trail through the woods to the west. As we came near the hut we saw smoke coming from its stove-pipe chimney. It looked mighty cheerful.

I knocked on the door and a big, good-natured Norwegian opened it. He is one of the watchmen employed by the Water Commissioners to keep trespassers off the lands reserved for water supply.

I briefly explained our predicament. He informed me that there was no wagon road leading to the east or the west, and said, with a wide grin, that our auto could not possibly get out until the road was cleared. Miss Harding joined us and made a despairing gesture when told the situation.

This man Peterson said that the tornado had missed his hut by a few hundred yards. He was in Pine Top when it swept through the edge of that village, killing several persons.

"Where is the nearest railway station?" asked Miss Harding.

"Pine Top."

"How far is it?" I asked.

Peterson scratched his head and said that to go around the fallen timber meant a journey of fully five miles.

"Will you guide us?" I asked. "I will pay you," I added, naming a liberal sum.