Part 11 (1/2)

But Susan Clegg stood as if paralyzed, staring straight at the funnel-shaped cloud.

Gran'ma Mullins started for her own house; Mrs. Lathrop sprang up and clasped the piazza post nearest; Mrs. Macy grabbed her skirts up at both sides and faced the cyclone just as she had once faced the cow.

The funnel-shaped cloud came sweeping towards them. The town was between, and a darkness and a mighty roar arose. Buildings seemed falling; the din was terrible.

”I knew it,” said Susan grimly. ”It _is_ a cyclone!” She faced the worst--standing erect.

The next instant the storm was on them all. It lifted Mrs. Lathrop's old-gold-plush stationary rocker and hurled it at that good lady, smas.h.i.+ng her hard against the post. It raised the roof of Mrs. Macy's house and dropped it like an extinguisher over the fleeing form of Gran'ma Mullins.

”Oh, Gran'ma Mullins, it _is_ a cyclone!” Susan shrieked. But Gran'ma Mullins answered not.

A second mighty burst of fury blew down two trees, and it blew Susan herself back against the side wall of the house which shook and swayed like a bit of cardboard.

”Oh, yes, it's a cyclone,” Susan screamed over and over. ”Oh, Mrs.

Lathrop, it's a real cyclone! It isn't a tornado; you can see the difference now. It's a cyclone; look at the roof; it's a cyclone!”

Mrs. Lathrop could see nothing. She and the old-gold-plush stationary rocker were all piled together under the piazza post.

And now came the third and worst burst of fury. It crashed on the blacksmith's shop; it carried the sails of the windmill swooping down the road, and then ”without halting, without rest” lifted Mrs. Macy with her outspread skirts and carried her straight up in the air. ”Oh!

Oh!” she shrieked and sailed forth.

Susan gave a piercing yell. ”Oh, Mrs. Macy, it's a tornado, it's a tornado!” But Mrs. Macy answered not.

Tipping, swaying, ducking to the right or left, she flew majestically away over her own roof first and then over that of Gran'ma Mullins'

woodshed.

”Help! Help!” cried Gran'ma Mullins from under the roof.

Mrs. Lathrop was oblivious to all, smashed by her own old-gold-plush stationary rocker.

Susan Clegg stood as one fascinated, staring after the trail which was all that was left of Mrs. Macy.

”It was a tornado!” she said over and over. ”Mrs. Macy'll always believe in the Bible now, I guess. It was a tornado! It _was_ a tornado!”

”No, they ain't found her yet,” Susan said, coming into the hotel room where Mrs. Lathrop and Gran'ma Mullins had found a pleasant and comfortable refuge and were occupied in recuperating together at Jathrop's expense. Neither lady was seriously injured. Gran'ma Mullins had been preserved from even a wetting through the neat capping of her climax by Mrs. Macy's roof; while Mrs. Lathrop's squeeze between the piazza post and her well beloved old-gold-plush stationary rocker had not--as Gran'ma Mullins put it--so much as turned a hair of even the rocker.

”No one's heard anything from her yet,” continued Susan, ”but that ain't so surprising as it would be if anybody had time to want to know. But n.o.body's got time for nothing to-day. The town's in a awful taking, and I d'n know as I ever see a worse situation. You two want to be very grateful as you're so nicely and neatly laid aside, for what has descended on the community now is worse'n any cyclone, and if you could get out and see what the cyclone's done, you'd know what _that_ means.”

”Was you to my house, Susan?” asked Gran'ma Mullins anxiously.

”I was; but the insurance men was before me, or anyhow, we met there.”

”The insurance men!”

”That's what I said,--the insurance men. Oh, Mrs. Lathrop, we all know one side of what it is to insure ourselves, but now the Lord in his infinite wrath has mercifully seen fit to show us the other side. The a.s.syrian pouncing down on the wolf in his fold is a young mother wrapping up her first baby to look out the window compared to those insurance men. They descended on us bright and s.h.i.+ning to-day, and if we was murderers with our families buried under the kitchen floor, we couldn't be looked on with more suspicion. I was far from pleased when I first laid eyes on 'em, for there's a foxiness in any city man as comes to settle things in the country as is far from being either soothing or syrupy to him as lives in the country; but you can maybe imagine my feelings when they very plainly informed me as I couldn't put the roof back on Mrs. Macy's house till it was settled whether it was a cyclone or a tornado--”

”Settled--whether--” cried Mrs. Lathrop.

”Cyclone or tornado,” repeated Susan. ”The first thing isn't to get to rights, but it is to settle whether we've got any rights to get. I never dreamed what it was to be injured--no, or no one else neither. Seems if it's a tornado, we don't get a cent of our insurance. And to think it all depends on Mrs. Macy.”

”On Mrs.--” cried Gran'ma Mullins.