A Scottish Scout in Geronimo's Land
by Toby Johnston
Chapter 3
Be Prepared, for Any Old Thing
I awoke the next morning looking into Hank's twinkling, coal black eyes. He smiled, "Morning. Do you know how beautiful you look when you're asleep? Your eyelashes are so blond, but up close I can see how long they are. Your cheeks with the most adorable red glow. Your lips ever so slightly parted, lightly breathing. Your hair's all mussed up though."
I stretched—my arms reaching over my head; my toes trying to find the end of the mound of blankets covering us; my body in between arching and twisting. It all felt so good, even better as I was rubbing up against Hank the entire time. He even helped, rubbing his hands all up and down my torso as I stretched.
I laughed as I replayed what he'd said, "Have you looked at your hair?" I tried to run my hand through his tangled mane, but got hung up, hitting snag after snag. It wasn't the glorious mane that had floated behind him back on Thanksgiving Day. Then, he and his cousins staged a twenty-man Navajo war party, thundering up and down the field outside his Amá Sání's house peppering targets with arrows.
"I think I need to groom you, probably Bonnie too," I grinned, "Me, I'm good. A little spit in the hand, slick it back, good to go! Low maintenance is the scout's friend!"
Bonnie, hearing her name, popped her head from around the mound of quilts. She looked exactly like we felt—a mess of wet, matted fur. She raised her nose, her ears twitching, checking the incoming reports from the local environment.
I started to sit up, but Hank had other ideas, letting out a low chuckle, he pulled me back down into our naked nest of boy-heated bedding. "Low maintenance, maybe. But I think we both need some critical maintenance before the day gets going."
I was going to protest, but that's hard to do when a really long tongue has politely requested its way into your mouth—not that I was complaining! Hank pulled me in tight against him, his hot shaft settling nicely along my cleft, and snaked his hand around to cup my velvety crown jewels. Two rounds, each , of shpritz later, our stomachs growling, we finally crept out from under our blankets.
"Whose cabin is this anyway?", I asked, as I knelt to get our fire re-energized. I laid some kindling on the grate, then layered in some larger logs. Another round of kindling directly on the warm coals and ashes; some enthusiastic work with the bellows; and whomp —fire! It felt good, instant warmth—especially nice since we were both completely naked.
Hank was poking around in the pantry, "Mr. Cowman. He's a huge supporter of the Scouts, grew up here, and was a scout himself. He owns a ton of land here along the Guadalupe. Let's us use it; and in exchange, we take care of the trails. Like the bridge last night, that was an Eagle Scout project, the rest of us were manual labor."
"That's how you knew of the cabin and the key?"
"Yep! We camped here while building the bridge. He gave us a tour and showed us the key if we ever needed to use it in an emergency."
"I suppose last night was an emergency," I murmured, testing the weight of the word. I looked at my hands—they were steady now, but the skin was still mapped with the red scratches from the scarp.
"Ya think?", Hank popped his head out of the pantry in disbelief, "Lachlan, we were fifteen feet up; we put our clothes on up another ten and then had to run again! That's twenty-five feet of vertical rise! The Guadalupe crests at twelve feet on a bad day maybe; we should have been fine."
He came back with the breakfast choices—MRE Chili Mac or Beef Stew. I wrinkled my nose, but figured beef stew was the lesser of two evils. While Hank tended to breakfast, I took stock of our gear. We hadn't emptied our bags the previous night, so that was the first problem—dry bags are only so dry, everything was soaking wet.
I pulled everything out, hanging it wherever I could find a perch. I soon had the room festooned with our clothes and what gear was left.
"Looks like that REI store at Christmas when we first spied your Marmot Lair!" Hank called out from the kitchen, shaking a heater pouch, "Except with more mud and a lot less retail value."
I chuckled, he wasn't wrong, the whole story had been decorated using little bits of gear from their inventory. "My tent," I lamented, "You stabbed my tent! Et tu, Brute !"
Hank, looked troubled, "I don't think my cut in the side of your tent is the worst of its problems."
It hit me then, like a fucking freight train, I couldn't muster more than a whisper, "You saved our lives. We almost died."
Hank flew to me, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me in, my protective warrior, "We all saved our lives," he whispered, "Bonnie, you, me—we didn't hesitate. We reacted. We did it fast."
I nodded into his shoulder, comforted by the warmth of his body; not to mention our soft cocks snuggling together. Then my stomach growled in protest. "Somebody's hungry. Come on, breakfast is ready!"
The stew was edible, though definitely not to grandmum's standards, more like high quality dog food. I think Bonnie agreed as she scarfed hers down, and then raised her nose in the air with her are you going to finish that look. Of course, sitting hip-to-hip naked with Hank while we ate made it a pleasant experience! We kind of zoned out, watching the steady rain through the expanse of windows.
I mustered my Grandda's finest brogue, "Aye, Lachlan, it's a grand day for the ducks on the Firth of Forth, and a fine one for the rest of us to stay inside!"
Stomachs satisfied, we turned to on some clean-up. Our jeans and shirts were dry—courtesy of the fire—but caked in the thick, red silt of the canyon. We found a couple of heavy-duty brushes and took the clothes, and Bonnie, out onto the front porch. Hank took care of the clothes; I took care of Bonnie. The temperature had risen, so even naked we were comfortable.
After I finished Bonnie, I turned my attention to Hank. I stood behind him, working carefully with the brush to untangle the mess of his Navajo mane. I moved slowly, making sure I didn't snag the sensitive skin at the nape of his neck. Once it was proper, I set the brush aside and let my fingers do the rest, gently stroking from the tips all the way down to his warm scalp. He leaned his head back against me, letting out a low purr.
"Ummm," he breathed, his eyes drifting shut. "Don't stop. Just keep doing that forever."
"I plan on it," I whispered, leaning down so my breath caught in the damp curls of his hair. " Forever ."
His eyes shot open at that; he knew exactly what I was committing to. He turned in my arms, his coal-black eyes wide and shining. "I love you, so much," he whispered back.
"I love you more," I said, pressing a kiss to his forehead, "Now, let's get dressed. I want to see the river."
Redressed in jeans—commando of course, shirts, and wellies, we each grabbed a poncho from the hooks by the door. These weren't the flimsy, bright-yellow, plastic things you buy at a gas station. These were heavy-duty Army Surplus—thick, rubberized-olive drab that smelled of a deployment in the field.
Hanging next to the ponchos were two coils of half-inch braided nylon rope. It had a supple flex to it, lightweight, but we knew the tensile strength was high. Those got thrown over our shoulders— Be prepared, for any old thing !
We made our way back down the trail from the previous night. Bonnie was ranging far out on the flanks, cutting back and forth across our path to touch base. I laughed and nodded to Hank, "It's July 4th after all. She's my skirmisher protecting the flanks of the main column. Can't have you rebels sniping at us from the trees again instead of massing at a hundred yards like a real soldier!"
Hank rolled his eyes, "Your just jealous because they fought smarter. I'm thinking my Green Mountain Boy great-great not getting shredded by a massed musket volley was a good thing!"
I couldn't argue with that. If his great-great had been shredded, there'd be no Hank!
We crossed the Troop Five footbridge, still solid as a rock. The heavy timber lashings had held firm. It had weathered the night without a problem—solid Boy Scout craftsmanship! When we reached the edge of the scarp, however, we hit a full stop. The path we'd scrambled up in the night was gone, the bottom ten feet submerged under a churning, brown surge. No getting to the river that way!
"Let's swing off to the right," Hank said, his warrior eyes scanning the tree line. "There's a limestone shelf that fans out about a hundred yards down. It's a gentler slope—no bluffs to navigate, just a silt bench. It'll put us right at the waterline."
We caught glimpses of the churning brown through the cedar breaks as we tromped down the slope, but the sound was what hit first. It wasn't a roar anymore; it was a low-frequency growl that I felt in my teeth, I felt in my feet, the ground was trembling.
Then we cleared the tree line, and the world just...ended.
" Holy fuck ," I murmured.
" Holy, holy fuck ," Hank breathed.
The Guadalupe we'd beached on yesterday afternoon—that lazy, sixty-foot ribbon of tea-colored water—was gone. In its place was a five-hundred-foot-wide fucking freight train of liquid earth. It was a moving canyon, a chocolate-brown thing that had flexed and simply erased the valley floor.
"This is bad," Hank whispered, his warrior stance actually faltering for a second. "Lachlan...this is really, really bad."
I wrapped my arm around his waist, just to have something to hold onto, my fingers digging into the heavy olive-drab fabric of his poncho. He grabbed my shoulder tight, his knuckles white. We weren't just looking at the water; we were looking at the mass of nature and human wreckage being carried down it.
A massive centuries-old Cypress tree swept past, its root ball still clutching a massive limestone boulder like a dying fist. Behind it came a white-and-red camper, bobbing like a cork before it slammed into a submerged bluff and disintegrated into a cloud of splinters and insulation. A pontoon boat, half-submerged, dinghy still tied to the stern, spinning in a dizzying dance as it hurtled downriver.
And then, the piece that broke me: a section of a wrap-around porch, curtains still flapping in the windows—someone's home.
"Jesus," I stammered, trying to wrap my brain around this, trying to find a footing. "Hank, the velocity...that's like twenty miles an hour. That's millions of tons of pressure. This isn't a flood; it's obliterating everything in its path!"
Then we saw them.
Two figures—one big, one small—trapped on a Cyprus tree a good forty-yards out into the water. We could see they were moving; so alive. But there was no way they could make it out of the water; and at any moment, their refuge could be wiped out by the next debris battering ram hurtling down the river.
"We've got to do something!" Hank yelled, "Or they're dead!"
I looked at the tangle of the cypress tree—assessing our options. It was wedged forty feet out, pinned by a massive limestone outcrop. Behind that rock, the water was swirling in a dark, foam-flecked circle—an eddy.
"We can't swim the channel," I shouted over the roar, "But if we get to the edge of that limestone shelf, we can enter the slack water behind the pillar. The current will be pinned against the rock; it'll give us a pocket."
Hank nodded, already stripping off his olive-drab poncho. "I'll go in the water. You're the anchor, Lachlan. You stay on the shelf with the line. If I miss the grab, you haul me back before I hit the shear line."
"No," I said, surprised that my voice was steady. "I need to go first," I said, "I'm lighter, Hank. I can navigate the eddy without putting too much strain on the ropes. Test the waters, and figure out the best way to get the dad. Then we'll swap."
Hank's warrior instincts flared—I know he wanted to be the one in the breach—but he saw the logic. He nodded. "Okay, need to go naked, clothes will just weigh us down."
We stripped off our ponchos, using those to wrap up our cloths and hopefully keep them a little dry. Then we moved down to the silt fan. The water was up to our knees instantly. We tied off the yellow nylon rope—a bowline-on-a-bight around a stout, living Pecan tree on the bank, then tied a Boy Scout rescue harness around my shoulders and chest.
The water went from knee-deep to waist-deep in three steps as the shelf dropped off. The river was cold, the water moving fast even though we were in the protected edge.
"Ready?" Hank asked, He was braced against the silt, the yellow nylon line wrapped twice around his shoulders in a belay.
"Ready," I whispered, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. I was fucking terrified.
I plunged in. The moment the water hit my chest, the Guadalupe tried to claim me. It was an ice-cold, muddy weight that wanted to sweep my feet toward the Gulf. I started to fight it, panic rising like the silt, then I remembered Hank's words about working with the river .
I stopped fighting and angled my lead shoulder, turning my body into a vane. I let the pressure of the eddy's back-current catch me, using the very power of the river to propel me toward the cypress. It was like flying through a liquid forest. I slammed up against the tree. The bark was like sandpaper against my bare chest as I hauled myself out of the churn.
I climbed up along the trunk and into the branches. The father was higher up, his leg pinned in a jagged angle by a splintered pier timber. But the boy—he was lower, perched on a limb just above the waterline. He was tiny, maybe six years old, his skin pale and his eyes two black holes of shock.
The dad looked at me, he didn't look good, "Andy, leg's broke. You gotta save my boy!"
The boy was too terrified to move. I moved up close to him, projecting a calm, I got this totally under control attitude , even if it was the furthest thing from the truth.
"I've got you," I panted, reaching out a hand. "I'm Lachlan. We're with Boy Scouts—water rescue, it's what we do. I'm going to get you back to shore; then we're going to get your dad, okay? What's your name?"
"Jason, you sound funny," he murmured.
"That's 'cause I'm from Scotland, but that guy over there," pointing to Hank, "He's all Texan!"
I used the end of my rope to fashion a rescue harness for Jason. "Alright, first we're going to scoot to the end on the tree on our bums, okay!" That got a laugh, and he managed to focus just on that task, staying between my legs until we go to the end.
I felt a rhythmic, chest-thumping whack-whack-whack as we worked our way along the tree trunk. I looked up and saw a black helicopter bank hard over the scarp, its nose pitched down like a predatory bird—as it flashed by, I saw Texas DPS in big letters on the side.
"We're almost there, Jason. We need to get in the water, then my friend over there is going to help pull us to safety. Now, when we first go in, we might go under water, but it'll just for a few seconds, so I need you to take a deep breath—can you do that?"
Jason nodded, his eyes pinned on mine, his small face framed by the dark, churning muck of the eddy. I tightened the harness I'd fashioned for him, checking the knots one last time.
"Big breath on three, Jason. Like you're diving for pirate treasure."
I looked back at the shore. Hank was anchored deep, his frame leaning back against the tension. He saw me raise my hand—the signal. He didn't wave back; he just gripped the yellow nylon tighter.
"One...two...three!"
We slid into the eddy. The cold was another physical punch, a shock that tried to steal the air from my lungs. As we hit the water, the weight of the current doubled. I pulled Jason tight against my chest; my arm hooked around his middle like a vise.
We went under—just like I'd warned Jason—and for a second, the world was nothing but brown silt and the roar of stones grinding on the riverbed. Then, my head broke the surface. I gasped. Jason was coughing, his small hands clutching my neck so hard I could barely breathe, but he was above water.
We hit the limestone shelf with a jar that rattled my teeth. Hank was there in an instant, reaching into the churn to grab us by the scruffs of our necks. He hauled us up onto the silt fan like two drowned rats.
"Got you," Hank grunted, his voice thick with relief. "I've got you both."
I collapsed onto the mud, my chest heaving, the cold starting to settle into my bones. But there was no time, let alone a place, for a fire. Hank led Jason up on to the rise, where Bonnie was waiting. He got her to lay down, and tucked Jason in against her warm belly. She's always a good port in a storm; she lay her head down across Jason's legs—providing warmth, and more importantly, comfort.
I was up and had the harness ready to go when Hank got back. I talked him through what I had done, using my body as a vane—letting the current do the heavy lifting. I doubled up on our anchor; looping it around a secondary cedar stump and braced my feet against a rock rib. No matter what, I would be an immovable anchor—stationary, calculating, and unyielding.
He was about to plunge I, when I screamed "Wait!"
There it was, there it fucking was—an ugly as fuck, an I don't know how to swim, bright orange Type II keyhole lifejacket— caught in the tangle of a half-submerged cedar break! I splashed over and ripped it free from the branches.
"Use this on Andy!" I yelled, hosing the mud off it with a quick dunk in the shallows.
Hank caught it with one hand, his eyes flashing with a quick appreciation of the luck. He didn't say thanks—there wasn't time. He just looped it over his arm, gave the yellow nylon rope a final, bone-crushing tug to check my anchor, and hit the water.
I watched him move. Lesson learned, he made himself a vane, and the current cut him through the eddy. I could see his muscles bunching as he fought the cross-current.
He reached the cypress and hauled himself up. I saw him move toward the father. Hank didn't waste words. He jammed the orange lifejacket over Andy's head and buckled the strap with a brutal efficiency.
Then he braced his legs against the trunk, his shoulders squaring as he grabbed the man under his shoulders. No gentle sliding into the water like I had done with Jason. This was pure brute force. He pulled Andy free of the tangle of branches and the two of them fell back into the water!
I threw my weight back, digging my heels into the limestone rib. The rope snapped taut. I wasn't a boy anymore; I was a Viking-fucking raider , every fiber of my being dedicated to my man in the water.
Thank God for that jacket, they surfaced quickly. Between the rope and Hank's angling, they made steady progress towards the shore—not fast enough for me, but there was nothing I could do to influence the vector physics of this equation. I was an infinitesimal factor; negligible at best. I was just a meat-anchor at the end of a string.
But I was wrong. I wasn't negligible. I was the friction.
They hit the shear line—that violent space where the eddy meets the freight train of the channel. The rope jerked, nearly tearing my arms from my sockets. I screamed, a raw, warrior sound that stayed trapped in my throat, and leaned back until my spine felt like it would snap.
Then, they were through.
The current relented as they hit the shallow shelf. I hauled hand-over-hand, my palms burning against the nylon, until Hank's feet found purchase in the silt. He didn't stop. He stood up in the waist-deep churn, Andy draped over his shoulder and stumbled onto the fan.
I splashed in to the water, taking the other side so Hank and I could haul Andy up onto the rise. We laid him down as carefully as we could, and then both of us fell back on the rise, gasping for breath. We'd done it. As we looked up, the helicopter banked away. It vanished back into the mist down river.
We recovered our clothes, shivering as we pulled them back on—grateful for what little warmth they provided. Now we just had to get the Andy back to the cabin. At least he wasn't huge. Now back on the safety of the bank, we could see he wasn't that much bigger than us. A little taller and definitely heavier—but he looked like a runner like us, and at least we weren't going to have to haul one of those Texas big-boys we had seen guzzling beer on the river yesterday.
Hank quickly took stock of our options. "There's no way we'll make it back with a Fireman's carry or a two-person carry—those are out. We need to make a litter that we can drag him back up the rise to the cabin. Let's see what the Great Spirit can provide," Hank said with a grin, "You go left, I'll go right. Grab anything we can use to make a litter."
To my left, I found a big piece of cargo netting, a length of nylon webbing from a destroyed boat trailer, and a thick piece of plywood.
Hank came back with two long, sturdy cedar poles that had been stripped of their bark by the river's force. They were straight, about eight feet long, and seasoned enough not to snap under the father's weight.
"This is it," Hank grunted, dropping the gear next to Andy. "We use the poles for the frame, that plywood and cargo net for the bed—tie it all together with the webbing. We can drag him like a Plains Indian travois."
"I'm pretty sure I read that the Plains Indians use horses to pull the travois," I mused.
"We're the horses," Hank laughed, "How's your whinny?"
We got to work, our fingers moving with speed despite the cold. We laid the cedar poles in a long V, lashing the plywood across the middle as a rigid spine for his back. Then, we stretched the cargo netting over the frame, weaving the nylon boat-trailer webbing through the mesh to create a tight, bouncy litter. We retrieved our rescue roping, repurposing the harnesses into our horse yokes.
"Ready, Seabiscuit?" Hank grinned.
"I'm Silver and you're Scout," I wheezed, "Unless you want to switch it up for diversity purposes."
We leaned into the yokes, the yellow nylon biting into our raw shoulders. The plywood creaked as it took Andy's weight, and for a second, the travois didn't budge—the friction of the mud felt like glue.
Then, with a collective grunt, we broke the seal.
The poles hissed across the mud. We moved in a rhythmic, stumbling march, our eyes locked on the ground, searching for every limestone rib that could offer a bit of traction. Jason walked beside us, his small hand buried in Bonnie's thick fur. She stayed by him like a steady rock; no longer skirmishing on the flanks.
Finally, we crested the rise and saw the dark silhouette of the cabin through the rain. We were home—well, Cowman's home anyway. We managed to shoulder Andy into the cabin without too much trouble, settling him into a chair by the fireplace. Jason tucked himself into the opposite chair; Bonnie snuggling in next to him—warmth and comfort.
Hank went in search of medical supplies so we could splint Andy's leg; I turned to on resurrecting my fire. I was more successful than he, pretty quickly having the fire once again going strong. Hank came back with a first aid kit—a lot of Band-Aids, bandages, and ointment—nothing that was going to help us splint Andy's leg.
"Looks like it's going to be duct tape and kindling," he grinned holding up a heavy roll of silver tape, "But, look what else I found!" What else was a rugged handheld VHF Marine radio.
"That's a Midland575," I whistled, "Mr. Cowman doesn't skimp! This is a fifty-watt beast, enough strength to punch through the heavy Hill Country cedar and the canyon. And it's got fifteen High-Power GMRS Channels, eight of them repeaters. We can talk to our parents from this thing!"
Hank laughed, "I love how you're such a geek on some things, Lachlan, an impressive geek though! Okay, Lord Vader, radio's yours— see if you can raise the Death Star and get us some help. I'll see what I can do about stabilizing Andy's leg."
I chose to ignore the Empire slight; my Empire would never build a flawed Death Star. "Careful, Hank. Don't make me find your lack of faith disturbing."
I scanned the channels first, getting a sense of the traffic. I found the Kerr County Sheriff on Channel Nine—clearly Kerr County Dispatch was coordinating the emergency response efforts. I waited for a pause in the traffic, and then keyed the mic.
"Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is Scout Five, over."
"Roger, Scout Five, Kerr Dispatch, what's your emergency. Over.?"
"Kerr Dispatch, we have one adult male, compound femur fracture, stable but in shock. One juvenile, uninjured, Stage One hypothermia. We just pulled them out of the Guadalupe. Over."
"Scout Five, we've been tracking a DPS bird report of two juveniles performing a water extraction. Is that you? Over."
"Kerr Dispatch, if that's by what's left of Wagon's Ford, yes that's us. We're scouts with Troop Five out of Austin, that's why we called ourselves Scout Five. We're in a safe location—Cowman's hunting cabin just up from the ford."
Then the speaker hissed with a crackle, then a voice came back—not the dispatcher, but the pilot of the inbound bird.
"Copy, Scout Five. This is Starflight One. We know your location—I was Troop Five. We're coming up the Guadalupe now en route to County General, can be on top of you in fifteen. Can you have the adult male and child ready for basket extraction, over?"
"Starflight One, can do, see you in fifteen over!"
I unkeyed the mic, my hand shaking with a mix of adrenaline and cold.
"Hank! Did you hear that?" I shouted over the crackle of the fire. "We got a helo inbound. Pilot is a Troop Five alum. They're fifteen minutes out and they want a basket extraction."
Hank looked up. "A basket? That means they aren't landing. They're going to hover-load. Time to move!"
We had Jason and Bonnie stay inside, but took Andy out to the porch. True to their word, Starlight One was overhead in exactly fifteen minutes. The roar of the rotors became a physical weight, pressing the air down onto the cabin porch, buffeting us. Then, a figure stepped out into the empty space beneath the bird.
The medic, clad in a dark flight suit, slid down the cable with a stainless-steel Stokes Basket tethered below him. He hit the limestone fan with precision and ran toward us, pushing his visor up and doing quick check of the duct-tape splint on Andy's leg. Not wasting a second, he quickly had Andy in the basket and ran back to us.
"The boy?" he shouted over the scream of the turbine.
We motioned inside, so he followed us in, temporarily out of the noise and buffet of the rotors. He gave a quick look around, the fire, bedding, kitchen. "Okay, looks like you guys are okay for now, yes?"
We nodded.
"We have another injured already onboard, so only have room for the adult and the boy, so we can't evac you. You're safe here. Stay put overnight. At first light, follow that logging road east. Two miles in, it hits the old Flat Rock plateau. The National Guard has turned the whole shelf into a base camp for the emergency response. You'll see the LMTVs and the medical tents from the ridge. Just follow the sound of the rotors. They'll get you back to civilization."
We nodded.
"And boys. When I say stay put. I mean stay put—in this cabin. No going down to check the river. No going into the river to rescue people. I don't want to have to tell your parents that you survived the flood only to die doing something reckless. Awesome job on the rescue, that man and the boy would have died if you hadn't saved them, but let us take it from here."
We nodded again.
The medic didn't wait for a salute. He scooped Jason up—the boy looking small and fragile against the dark Nomex of the flight suit—and headed back into the rotor wash
We stood on the porch, leaning against each other to stay upright in the buffeting. We watched as the Stokes basket, with Andy secured inside, was winched up into the belly of the beast. Then came the medic and Jason, a dark silhouette rising through the mist until they disappeared into the cabin.
With a final, chest-thumping surge of power, helo banked hard, its nose dipping as it accelerated down-canyon. The roar faded into a distant hum, then into silence, leaving us alone with the crackle of the fire and the steady, rhythmic rain.
Hank let out a breath that sounded like a tire deflating. He looked at his hands—still stained with silt and the adhesive from the duct tape—and then at me.
"No going back to the river," he repeated, his voice sounding small in the sudden quiet. "I think I'm okay with that."
I nodded, "I'm more than okay with that."
We closed the door to the outside world. Stoked up the fire. Stripped off and hung up our soaking wet clothes. Snuggled in under the covers, Bonnie at our feet. No sex, just hugs and sleep. The soft thrumming of the rain now a lullaby; not a threat.
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