Axle Bust Creek

Book 1: Cleve Trewe Western

by John Shirley

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Westerns

Synopsis

From the acclaimed author of Ralph Compton’s Prairie Fire, Kansas, the first in an action-packed new series starring Civil War veteran Cleveland Trewe, a master gunfighter, horseman, and lawman who’s looking to strike it rich in the gold fields of Axle Bust, Nevada …

From the battlefield of Shiloh to the prisoner camp at Slocum, former Union soldier Cleveland Trewe has seen more than enough carnage for one lifetime. Now that the war is over he’s found work as a peacekeeper and prospector—the perfect set of survival skills for a town like Axle Bust, Nevada, a place seething with danger.

Cleve’s uncle staked a claim in Axle Bust only to lose it to a murderous con-man partnered with Duncan Conroy, owner of the Golden Fleece Mine and a man determined to build an empire by means fair and foul. The only person keeping Conroy in check is his sister Berenice, a freethinker whose scientific education benefits the family interests—even while catching Cleve’s eye.

To reclaim his uncle’s mine, and bring justice to a town under tyranny, Cleve finds himself turning the streets into a bullet-riddled battlefield. Conroy is about to learn there just isn’t room for both men in a town like Axle Bust.

Release date: September 27, 2022

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

Nevada. Spring of 1874.

Cleveland Terwilliger Trewe was trying to get to Axle Bust before sundown. He kept Ulysses at a canter whenever the rugged northward trail allowed, and a trot when it didn’t. He’d been told the thin trail skirting the steep hillside was prone to collapse, and rain was coming. Steady rain was rare in northeast Nevada, but sudden gulley-washers came along in April, and he had no wish to dig his horse out of a mudslide. The late-afternoon sky was closed by gray clouds, and now and then they rumbled, growling low like sleeping bears.

“Step carefully, Ulysses,” he told the sorrel stallion, patting his neck. “And we’ll get you to grain and rest.” They’d ridden for many hours with scarce a respite. Cleve and his mount were getting tired and thirsty.

Another mile, and he reined in and got a drink from his canteen. He climbed down off the horse, knuckled dust from his gray-blue eyes, and took off his dark gray Stetson. He used the hat to slap dust from his long charcoal coat, muttering, “Yesterday it was dust, tonight it’ll be mud.”

Cleve got a small tin cooking pan from his saddlebags, filled it with water from his canteen, and held it under the sorrel’s mouth. Ulysses’ drank it all. He patted the horse’s neck. “We’d best get on. See if we can beat the rain.”

Cleve ran his thumb along his jawline, feeling a thorny bristle. Better see a barber when he got to town, especially seeing as he just might have to stand before a judge.

He put the pan away, slapped his hat on his head, remounted, and nudged Ulysses into a trot. His gaze returned often to the stands of white bark pine and quaking aspen on the hills. He was alert for the long-riders said to sometimes lie in wait on the trail to Axle. They were known to pounce on travelers who might be carrying gold dust panned from a claim or cash money.

Cleve Trewe had been a Union Scout, before his time as a battlefield commander, and watchfulness was ingrained. Besides bandits, it was possible that Les Wissel had learned he was on his way; for Cleve had made inquiries at the claims recording office in Elko. Wissel might purpose to waylay Cleveland Trewe before he could testify as to his uncle’s claim in Axle.

He cantered Ulysses ’round a sharp bend—and slowed to a trot when he heard men talking not far ahead. The voices came from a defile opening between hills, on the east side of the trail. Cleve reined in at the gap, and peered east in the dimming light. He made out three of them, about thirty paces from him, standing in a lantern’s glow just within the mouth of an old mine burrowed into the hillside. Dusty tailings lay in humps to either side of the adit. The mine’s age was attested by weeds growing within its entry, the vines dangling from above, and the half-buckled state of the timbers straining to hold it open. Two horses and a mule were picketed near the opening.

Cleve knew one of the trio instantly, for the fellow had a distinct profile and voice. It was Leon Studge. He was a stocky, sandy-haired, stub-nosed man with a high forehead and small unruly beard. He was gazing intently at something glittery in the palm of his hand.

Leon had been a friend to Cleveland Trewe, despite the hard truth of their relationship—Cleve had kept Leon Studge a prisoner for half of 1865. Leon had been a Confederate prisoner of war at Fort Slocum when Cleve was in command.

Cleve swung Ulysses down the side trail.

Riding closer, Cleve heard Leon’s Texas drawl, “I could not be more satisfied, sir!” His voice came clearly from the tunnel entrance, as if from a speaking-trumpet. “Ya’ll have done a kingly thing!”

The other two men were wearing suits of mismatched parts, which operators of their sort slapped together in a hasty effort to look respectable. They had fresh shaves, waxed mustaches, and their hair oiled back. One was a large, swag-bellied man in a frock coat a little too small for him; he rocked on the balls of his feet as he counted a stack of greenbacks. The third man, in a checked coat and copper-colored vest, was also familiar to Cleve. This was Salty Jones, a confidence man from Virginia City. Cleve instantly knew his darting, deep-set eyes, and the strikingly large mouth, which was forever in motion.

Salty slapped Leon on the shoulder and declared, “I am obliged to you for taking this weighty responsibility from my shoulders, Mr. Studge. To let such a bounty go unclaimed would be sinful; to remain here when calamity at home calls my brother and myself to the long journey would be shameful. All the way to Boston, sir! For a mother’s pleas cannot be ignored.”

“Mr. Culp, I’m obliged to you for the opportunity, I surely am,” said Leon.

“His name isn’t Culp,” said Cleve, trotting Ulysses up close to the mine. He drew his Winchester rifle from its saddle scabbard. He had an Army Colt revolver and shell-belt in his saddlebags, but he rarely wore them. “Leastways, Culp wasn’t the name he was using in Virginia City,” Cleve went on. He dismounted, and said, “He called himself Tom Fairbanks, there. But he was known familiarly as “Salty,” around the benzinery he was pleased to call a saloon.”

Leon gaped wide-eyed at Cleve. “Why it’s Major Trewe!”

“No more the Major, but Cleveland Trewe I am, Leon.”

Carrying the rifle in both hands, thus far pointed away from the men, Cleve stepped up to block them from their mounts.

“I believe you have mistaken me, sir,” Salty began. “I have that peculiar face, that mercuriality of feature, that seems sometimes one fellow and sometimes another. I recall one occasion in Boston—”

“I doubt you’ve ever been to Boston, Salty,” Cleve interrupted, noticing that the other man was squeezing the sheaf of bills in his left hand, while his right was moving toward the interior of his frock coat.

Cleve swung the rifle to center on the man’s substantial belly. “Do not reach into that coat, mister. Drop your hand.”

“You think to rob me?” asked Salty’s partner, in a low-pitched voice of outrage, as he dropped the hand to his side.

“No, sir. I am here to prevent a robbery.”

“What! I am a Deputy U.S. Marshal—on leave!”

“A marshal?” said Cleve. “What is your name?”

“I am U.S. Marshal Washburn!” he sputtered.

“I doubt it.” Cleve turned to Salty. “I take it that you boys have sold mining rights to Mr. Studge, here?”

“We have!” declared Salty. He was frowning, himself, his eyes darting about, having recognized Cleve now. “All is honest and aboveboard!”

“I know gold when I see it, Cleve!” Leon said, coming over to show his glittery palm. “Just wiped it right off the rock in there!”

Cleve nodded. “That no doubt is gold dust—which is not often found in mines in its free form. Mines are worked for veins and gold-bearing quartz and the like. Gold dust, loose like that, is found in creek sand, or gravel bars. Let us have a look at that sparkling rock in the mine.”

“Just as you say,” grumbled Washburn. “I will not dispute with that rifle. Have your look. You will find us, when you are ready to render an apology, in the Gideon Hotel, in Axle. Goodbye, sir!” He made to go.

“No, I think we will all look at the mine together, boys,” said Cleve, raising a hand. “That is to say—if Leon does not object. I do not intend to embarrass you, Leon. I ask only that you trust me for a minute or two.”

“Major, you kept me alive, and you fed me when I needed it most badly,” said Leon. “Come the time, you gave me ten Yankee dollars from your own purse for the road. So, I reckon I owe you at least my trust.”

Cleve gestured with his rifle at the other two men. “Washburn, hand that money back to Mr. Studge. If he chooses, he’ll give it back to you shortly.”

“I will in no wise part with it!” Washburn declared, his piggish eyes narrowing. “We have a signed contract!”

“If it’s not signed with your real name, it has no force,” Cleve said. “I doubt your name is Washburn. Hand him the money.”

Salty cleared his throat. “I expect you’d better give it over for now. I have seen this gentleman in action. He does not ask thrice.”

The big man growled but slapped the money into Leon’s outstretched hand.

“Now, Leon,” said Cleve, “if you would pick up that lantern, we’ll follow these two into the mine. And boys, do not try my patience.”

As if deeply affronted, “Washburn” and Salty turned away, muttering bitterly.

They had not gone but fifty feet in, past cobwebs and rat-holes, when Leon pointed at the clay and stone wall to the left. “There, you see it, Cleve? Gold!”

Leon raised the lantern and it set the wall aglitter with points of gold. A distinct smell hung in the air, too.

Cleve nodded. “Do you notice the odor of a shotgun charge in here, Leon?”

“I do, now you mention it.”

“Ah,” said Salty. “As to that, when we inspected the mine this morning, we found a rattlesnake and had to shoot it.”

Cleve smiled and pointed at the black marks about six feet above the wall. “The famous ‘leaping rattlesnake’ was it?”

Leon laughed.

Cleve said, “Leon—are you aware that one of the common ways to salt a claim is to take a little gold dust, put it in a shotgun shell, and fire on the ground you want to sell?”

Leon stared. “I was surely not aware of that!”

“It’s one way to ‘salt’ a mine, as it’s called—an expression that may cast some light on Salty’s nickname. Now normally it’s done ’round about a creek, for hawking a placer claim. But these two got this mine for next to nothing, I expect, since it was played out years ago, and so they fired their charge of gold dust in here. They then told you the usual sad tale of having to rush home on a mission of mercy. I’m afraid you’ve been honey-fogled, Leon.”

“Why, I gave them a thousand dollars!”

“They calculated that a thousand dollars for twenty dollars’ worth of gold dust is a prodigious good trade.”

“Why, these aspersions . . .” Salty began.

Cleve pointed the rifle at him. “Shut your bazoo, Salty.”

Salty clamped his mouth into a scowl.

Leon lifted the lantern again and peered closer at the rocky wall. “It does look some . . . unnatural. The way it’s all in one spot there. And I believe I see some black marks . . .”

“Yes, they stood too close to the rock, and left gunpowder there along with the gold.”

Cleve was alerted by the sudden motion of Washburn reaching for a pistol. His hands responded on their own, pointing the Winchester and squeezing the trigger.

The rifle barked, loud in the enclosed space, and the ball took Washburn in his right shoulder, as Cleve intended.

The bunko artist shouted in startlement and pain; he stumbled backward and fell with a grunt. Gun smoke swirled, and made the men blink.

“He was pulling his weapon,” explained Cleve. “Leon, could I trouble you to take the gun from his coat, while I watch Salty? Be careful when you do it. He may have a knife.” He turned the rifle to Salty—who looked set to hie from the mine. “Do not attempt to bolt, Salty. I’ll shoot you too.”

“I got his gun,” said Leon, straightening up over the fallen man. “It’s one of those little hideaway guns. Suppose he is a real Deputy Marshal?”

“Did he show you a badge?”

“He surely did not.”

“Because there’s none to show.”

“I’m shot!” groaned Washburn. “I’m bleeding out! Salty why’d you get me into this?”

“Shut up, Digley!” Salty snapped.

“Digley—is that his real name?” Cleve said. “I have heard that name, somewheres. I’d be obliged, Leon, if you’d come over and find Salty’s gun. He’s surely armed.”

Salty suffered Leon to search him, and another small gun was found.

Leon stuck the two-shot into his pocket.

“Come along then, Salty,” Cleve said. “You take Digley by the ankles and drag him out.”

“That great oaf!” Salty protested. “I cannot manage him!”

“You do it, or you’ll find yourself there beside him.”

Growling to himself, Salty attempted to pull the big man toward the mine entrance. Digley set up a yelping. “That’s hurting me, damn you! I shall walk out!”

Digley pulled away from Salty, then got awkwardly to his knees and struggled to his feet. “I believe a bone is cracked in my shoulder . . . I’m bleedin’ like a stuck pig . . . Someone shall pay!”

“Leon, pass me that lantern and head on out, if you will please,” said Cleve. He did not feel comfortable giving Leon orders, as he had at Fort Slocum. Leon Studge was a free man now, and Cleve had no authority over him.

Leon made his way out, and Cleve backed out after him, lantern in one hand and rifle in the other, keeping an eye on the scoundrels.

Cleve and Leon were soon out in the clean air. The rain had not yet commenced, but the sky was sullen and darkening as Salty came out. Digley came stumbling after, moaning and cursing.

“Cease that squalling, Digley,” said Salty, gazing longingly toward the horses.

“I carry bandages and medical spirits with me,” Cleve said. “You shall have the good of them, Digley, and we will take you into Axle Bust.”

“There is a man named Hull in Axle Bust who says he’s a physician,” said Leon. “Saw his signboard. I haven’t had his ministrations, so I cain’t say if he truly is. I’ve known men to say they were surgeons when they were but barbers.”

Cleve nodded. Fort Slocum had given them both a considerable respect for real surgeons. “Sit down, Digley, and I’ll see to your wound. Leon, I’ll trouble you to hold the rifle on these men . . .”

Digley attended to, they were soon mounted, riding north on the main trail, all in a line: the scalawags on their aging nags, Cleve astride the sorrel, Leon on his mule Lily. On the west side was a steep valley, channeling the southern reach of Axle Bust Creek southward; on the east rose the increasingly sere, gray hills. The slopes here were flecked with scrub and stands of trees, and knobbed with boulders. The sun was dipping behind the hills beyond the narrow valley. It was dusk, and night would soon be upon them. The tang of impending rain was in the air.

“Leon,” Cleve called, over his shoulder, “how far do you suppose it is to Axle Bust?”

“Not much above two miles,” Leon replied. “Perhaps three.”

“How’s that mule for a mount?” Cleve asked.

“Lily? This mule has carried me all the way here from South Texas! She was intent on living up to her mulishness at first, but she came to like me, for I treated her well, and we had many a talk—with me doing the talking—and now we are the best of friends.”

They clopped along a quarter-mile more, when they came to a narrow canyon between two hills on the right, where a rock-strewn trail branched up into the hills. The main trail continued north.

Of a sudden, Salty whooped and kicked his mount into a turn, veering down the side trail, his horse’s hooves clacking on the stones.

“Damn you, Salty!” shouted Digley. “I got to go where the doctor is!”

“Where’s that trail take him, Leon?” Cleve asked.

Leon shook his head. “That I do not know. I reckon he’ll look for a place to turn back south. I will not chase him alone—he’d ambush me on the trail.”

Cleve decided he did not have the time to pursue the confidence trickster. He needed to get to Axle Bust, for the sake of the wounded man and a pocketful of other aims. “I expect he’s fearful of being hung,” he remarked.

“You have shot me,” growled Digley, “and you propose to take me to a doctor in a town where I am to be hung? You compound your barbarities!”

“I will see that you are not lynched,” said Cleve. But he said it reluctantly. In Cleve’s view, men who ran confidence games on the gullible were parasites, like ticks or mosquitoes.

They rode on, and the trail widened enough that Leon could ride up beside Cleve. “Major, how long since you left Fort Slocum?”

“I resigned my commission a few weeks after the last prisoner left,” Cleve said.

“That when you come out west?”

“No, I went to Europe for a time.”

“Europe!”

“Oh, it was a wonder. But if I thought I was going to forget the war there—but war is practically the mortar for the bricks in European history. The fine constructions, the museums, the food, the women—now that did take me out of myself, a while.”

“And—French women? Is it true that they—”

“Leon,” Cleve interrupted, “I am a gentleman.”

“So they do!”

“They do. Had to go back to the States soon enough. Tried to keep busy in Ohio for almost three years. My uncle Terrence is an engineer, the sort for bridges and machinery, and hired me on as a secretary. Then he invented a portable steam pump—or so he thought. But it had a tendency to blow up and scald the unwary. Terrence is a good man, but he has a bent to . . . enthusiasms. Well, he ran through most of his money, and half of mine, and he caught the gold fever. He came out to the gold fields, and I went into fur trapping and scouting, out west. Then I went to Denver, for a rest, never intending to stay, but a friend talked me into joining the police force. I carried a badge—and on the side I did some gambling. It’s curious how often those two go together . . .” He cleared his throat. “I was there for several years. Then I too caught the bug and made my way to Pike’s Peak and the hills ’round Virginia City, trying my hand at prospecting—and ‘games of chance.’ Once again, it’s curious. . .” He shrugged.

“It’s surely so—those two go together as well,” Leon said, amused. “Gambling and prospecting. Anyhow, I have read that it’s so. But my prospecting experience is thin.”

“And where did you go, after leaving Slocum?” Cleve asked.

“Texas, of course. Back to Austin. Had to rebuild the Studge Ranch, take care of Mama. Pa was sick. Two of my brothers were dead, killed in the war . . .”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” He did not ask which battles took their lives. After a period as an Army scout, Cleve had been elevated to Captain, leading men into the Battles of Shiloh, Memphis, and Devil’s Backbone. It was not likely he had fired a bullet that killed one of Leon’s brothers, but neither was it impossible.

Leon squinted up at the sky. “Seems like I told you, back at Slocum, the only reason I joined up was because my brothers and my best friend did—and my middle brother, poor Stanley, was killed.” He rode silently for a space and then went on, “Not too long after I come back, the Texas fever killed our beeves and then Pa died—died of despair, maybe, for he had to sell the ranch. Ma went to live with her sister, and I took to building fence for folks, a time. Then I drifted west, worked in a slaughterhouse—cain’t abide that job—and I did some buffalo hunting for the railroads, to feed the hammer-hands, and rode security for them too. Saved up a thousand and eighty dollars . . .” He shook his head. “I’ve been out here about a month, trying my hand at prospecting and finding little but skarn. There’s much I do not know—that’s come clear now. I owe you a debt, Major. You saved me all that money. I should split it with you—it would have been gone entirely, but for you.”

“You may buy me a meal, and that’s the end of it,” said Cleve. “You know that fellow Mark Twain?”

“The one who told that Jumping Frog story?”

“The very same. In a book he brought out this year, he said a gold mine is but ‘a hole in the ground with a liar standing next to it.’”

Leon laughed. “Today, I surely do believe it.”

“But it’s not always true, and I believe my uncle’s claim will stand. If you want to come in on it with us, we could use the help—financially, to stake the price of timber and tools, and help with the labor too.”

“A silver strike?” asked Leon.

“Why no—it is gold. There’s a small vein and some more in quartz. But there’s some dispute with a fellow as to the claim—and some other matters to settle with him. Perhaps I should not ask you to come in with us. There might be some risk.”

Leon grinned. “I would be charmed to throw in with ya’ll.” They rode onward. After a while, he cleared his throat and asked. “Say, did you ever get yourself a wife? Could be you have sons and daughters by now!”

“I have no wife, no children. I came close to marrying a couple times, but it seemed too much like settling for what had wandered my way, and my heart wasn’t in it. One summer I did have a live-in lady, I do confess. But marriage did not come about. Perhaps I should have asked her. Uncle Terrence says that I’m a fool of a romantic, and should give off waiting on some fairy-tale ideal. But then Terrence never did marry. And you, Leon?”

“Why, I was married, or close to it. A Mexican senorita, name of Lupe.” A certain bitterness entered his tone when he added, “I sent her money every last time I got paid. Finally got back to Texas to find she’d run south of the border with a vaquero. Her pa told me she got tired of waiting on me to come home.”

“Too bad. But might be for the best, if she’s so flighty as that.”

“I do love me a senorita,” Leon mused. “Now had I done the church marrying—could be she’d have stayed, on the priest’s say-so.”

Digley groaned when his horse stumbled slightly on the trail. He roundly cursed them. They ignored him.

Leon lifted his hat long enough to scratch his head. “Here now, Major, you spoke of Denver—seems to me I read something in a news sheet about an officer C.T. Trewe in a shooting affray in Denver. I thought maybe it was you.”

Cleve nodded. “Two in Soapy Smith’s gang. They did not wish to return the jewelry they swindled out of a merchant, whereas I did wish them to return it. The disagreement became a trifle hot.”

“A trifle? You killed two men in a gunfight!”

Cleve heaved a sigh. “The shooting soured me on the job. Two men dead at my feet. Till then I brought them in with a threat and maybe a knock on the head.” He thought about it and added a caveat. “However—I’m willing enough to kill a certain Lester Wissel, if it can be done legally. But on the whole—well, I saw enough killing in the war.”

They rode on, in thoughtful silence, both of them pondering the years that had rolled so inexorably by.

The downpour commenced when the three riders were just descending from the hills south of town. At first the rain dropped straight in heavy, splashing drops; and then it slanted, slapping at them in the rising wind. The trail soon became a slog for the horses.

But they were now within sight of their destination: Axle Bust, Nevada.

To the north rose two jutting hills of craggy stone, and from between their bases, after several falls, rushed Axle Bust Creek. A swaying pillar of mist, rippling with shards of rainbow, rose from the bottom-most pool of the falls. The creek widened, almost approximating a river, to the west of town, then narrowed as it cut to the southwest. After a long journey, it would find its way to the Humboldt River.

The rain-laden wind was swirling the gray-brown wreath of woodsmoke over the mining camp. Axle Bust was a jumble of buildings, shacks, and cabins in a basin below Beaver Peak, in the foothills of the Tuscarora Mountains. The gray and raw-wood yellow-brown shacks, the canvas tents and false-front buildings seemed as random as a tumble of rocks, so far as Cleve could make out, though a rutted, crooked passage that ran between enough of them might serve as the town’s main street.

Axle Bust was hand-painted on the sign at the edge of the mining camp, but local folks mostly called it Axle. Cleve’s uncle had told him what little he knew of the place. It had grown up quickly after an enticing placer strike downstream, six years back, and a hard rock mine, the Golden Fleece, was chiseled into the eastern hill overlooking the town. There were said to be several assayers here, and one of them did some banking; there were a couple of liveries, a sawmill. The few shops were greatly outnumbered by saloons and impromptu whiskey tents.

As they rode closer, and the rain eased, Cleve could see the lineaments of placer sluice flumes for separating gold from sand and soil, paralleling the creek down the slopes to the north. They passed rocker boxes, used for further sifting, and an acreage studded with tree stumps. Evidently a modest forest had been cleared—the tree-trunks, sawn and shorn, had become the structures straggling with little order alongside the creek on the west side, and in rough, kinked lanes extending to the east. They rode past a sawmill gushing steam and smoke, and a corral where horses bowed their heads in the rain.

The town was still growing. As they rode up to the main street, Cleve noted almost as many tents as wooden structures. One of them was particularly large; some commercial enterprise. Around the edge of the basin, cabins were beginning to glow with lantern light, haloing in the smoke and mist. Rising from a broad ledge upslope from the tailings around a hard-rock mine—likely the Golden Fleece—was the framework of an unfinished ore mill and smelter. A partly built brick chimney jutted from its brick foundation.

Cleve had spent nigh two years prospecting, on and off, and learned of a mining town’s life cycles. First would come the tents of the prospectors; then, when word spread about good placer takings, came opportunists of various stripes: miners and those who sold goods and services to the miners. Ever more placer miners flooded in, staking claims and arguing over them, to pan and sluice gold flakes, gold dust, and sometimes nuggets. When the placer gold thinned out, the first wave of prospectors might sell their claims to a second wave, hard-rock miners and combines. Exploratory shafts were dug, and when a lode was struck, a third wave of gold seekers came—agents of mining concerns, who bought up claims and promising mines.

The work of digging a shaft from an open-cut was backbreaking and dangerous. It took time and blood and sweat to exploit the gold, with just a few men working alone. But an established mining company could afford to pay miners and set up a mill. They need not invest their own blood and sweat.

To Cleve’s eye, Axle Bust was in transition, shifting from a period of feverish prospecting to the systematic takeover of big Eastern Money. Such a transition could be rowdy.

This was Elko County, but they were far from the county seat, and Cleve thought it likely there was little law here apart from miners’ courts—which were often as not run by the local bullies. Sometimes a “constable” was brought in by a mining concern, like as not a hired gunman with some history as a deputy. He had once heard James Butler Hickok say, “Any jackass can be a deputy and some of ’em decorate wanted posters.” Wild Bill was right: Cleve had encountered deputies, in Colorado and Arizona, who’d turned out to be wanted for killings across territorial lines.

As Cleve, Leon, and their prisoner rode down into town, Cleve heard a double crack. He at first thought it might be lightning. But when it recurred, h. . .