A “norther!” The boys had heard tales of the fury of these storms, and now they would have an opportunity to judge for themselves the truth of these stories.  They had always believed them exaggerated, but the haste and anxiety of the ranchmen told them that something out of the ordinary was expected.

The air was close and oppressive, and not a breath of wind rustled the dry prairie grass.  The boys mopped their foreheads, and hurried along with the men.  By this time the entire sky was overspread with a funeral pall, and it was so dark that they could hardly see.  When they were within a few hundred yards of the bunkhouse they heard a weird whining noise far off over the prairie, and suddenly a little puff of cool air struck against their heated faces.

At this moment Sandy, followed by several cowboys, dashed up, and they all leaped from their horses.  “We’ll jest have time to make the bunkhouse,” he said; “the wind will reach us in another minute.  Lively’s the word, boys.”

He and the others with him who had horses dashed behind the bunkhouse, and tethered the frightened animals where they would be sheltered in some measure from the wind and rain.  They dashed around the end of the building and ran through the door, preceded by the party with which the boys had started from the corral.  The door of the bunkhouse was slammed shut just in the nick of time.

With a shriek and a roar the norther was upon them.  The wind blew with terrific violence, and rain dashed in great sheets against the windows and drummed on the roof with a noise that made it difficult for the men to hear the sound of each other’s voices.  The building quivered and trembled as the fierce gusts shook it in their grasp, and it seemed as though it must be torn away from its foundations.  But it had been stoutly built with an eye to resisting just such storms, and held firm.  The air was filled with grass, bits of planking, and other wreckage that it had picked up in its furious course.  The boys gazed out the windows, wondering mightily at the tremendous force of the gale, which closely approached that of a cyclone.  They had been in storms at sea, and a gale was no new thing to them, but this surpassed anything of the kind they had ever seen.

“I’m mighty glad we weren’t caught out in this,” shouted Bert into the ears of Tom and Dick.  “I never thought it could rain so.”

And his astonishment was shared by his friends.  “Rain” hardly seemed an adequate word to describe the torrents that poured down.  The sky seemed fairly to open, and the rain descended in solid sheets.  The ranchmen took it all calmly, however, and loafed lazily in their bunks, smoking pipes and gazing contemplatively up at the roof.  Weather conditions they had learned to take as a matter of course, as all men do who earn a living in the open, and they accepted philosophically what Dame Nature meted out to them.

The fury of the storm continued unabated for perhaps half an hour, and then began to slacken perceptibly.  The wind still tore at the rude building and the rain continued to fall heavily, but with less of their former violence.  The rattle of the rain on the roof grew less deafening, and it became possible to make one’s self heard without being under the necessity of shouting.