If she could have lived in that solitude always, never returning to the ranch home that reminded her of her name, she could have forgotten and have been happy.
She loved the storms.

It was a dry country and she had learned through years to welcome the creamy clouds that rolled from the southwest.
They came sailing and clustering and darkening at last to form a great, purple, angry mass that appeared to lodge against the mountain rim and burst into dazzling streaks of lightning and gray palls of rain.
Lightning seldom struck near the ranch, but up on the Rim there was never a storm that did not splinter and crash some of the noble pines.
During the storm season sheep herders and woodsmen generally did not camp under the pines.

Fear of lightning was inborn in the natives, but for Ellen the dazzling white streaks or the tremendous splitting, crackling shock, or the thunderous boom and rumble along the battlements of the Rim had no terrors.

A storm eased her breast.

Deep in her heart was a hidden gathering storm.