Not
until he had made a closer inspection of the living-room did he
discover that the Shack also had a telephone.
By that time he noted that the sun had gone out. Driving up from the
west was a mass of storm clouds. He unlocked a door from which he could
look up the river, and the wind that was riding softly in advance of
the storm ruffled his hair and cooled his face. In it he caught again
the old fancy--the smells of the vast reaches of unpeopled prairie
beyond the rim of the forest, and the luring chill of the distant
mountain tops. Always storm that came down with the river brought to
him voice from the river's end. It came to him from the great mountains
that were a passion with him; it seemed to thunder to him the old
stories of the mightiest fastnesses of the Rockies and stirred in him
the child-bred yearning to follow up his beloved river until he came at
last to the mystery of its birthplace in the cradle of the western
ranges. And now, as he faced the storm, the grip of that desire held
him like a strong hand.
The sky blackened swiftly, and with the rumbling of far-away thunder he
saw the lightning slitting the dark heaven like bayonets, and the fire
of the electrical charges galloped to him and filled his veins.
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