Upon us without warning a few days before, and seemed
determined to wash the whole town down to the Missouri River.
It was about eleven o'clock, and four of us had gone to the shops to
look at some pretty things that had just been brought over from a boat
at Fort Benton by ox train. Mrs. Pierce and Mrs. Hull had stopped at a
grocery next door, expecting to join Mrs. Joyce and me in a few
minutes. But before they could make a few purchases, a few large drops
of rain began to splash down, and there was a fierce flash of
lightning and deafening thunder, then came the deluge! Oceans of water
seemed to be coming down, and before we realized what was happening,
things in the street and things back of the store were being rushed to
the valley below.
All along the gulch runs a little stream that comes from the canon
above the town. The stream is tiny and the bed is narrow. On either
side of it are stores with basements opening out on these banks. Well,
in an alarmingly short time that innocent-looking little creek had
become a roaring, foaming black river, carrying tables, chairs,
washstands, little bridges - in fact everything it could tear up - along
with it to the valley.
