“Yes, sir,” I answered.
“Do you know if Allenham or any one is on watch about town to-night?”
“I think not, sir,” I said. “I haven’t seen nor heard anybody for over an hour.”
“Very careless, very careless,” muttered the old gentleman. Then he went out, and in a moment I heard his footsteps as he went up the outside stairs to his rooms in the second story of his bank building. I put the horses in their stalls, and fed and watered them, and started up the ladder to the loft. What Mr. Clerkinwell had said was still running in my 20 mind. I stopped and thought a moment, and concluded that I was not sleepy, and decided to take a turn about town.
I left my lantern and went out to the one street. There was not a sound to be heard except the rush of the wind around the houses. The moon was almost down, and the buildings of the town and Frenchman’s Butte made long shadows on the prairie. There was a dull spot of light on the sky to the southeast which I knew was the reflection of a prairie fire a long ways off; but there was a good, wide fire-brake a quarter of a mile out around the town, so there was no danger from that, even if it should come up.
I went along down toward the railroad, walking in the middle of the street so as not to make any noise. The big windmill on the water-tank swung a little in the wind and creaked; and the last light from the moon gleamed on its tail and then was gone. I turned out across where the graders had had their camp. Here the wind was hissing through the dry grass sharp enough. I stood gaping at the stars with the wind blowing squarely in my face, and wondering how I 21 ever came so far from home, when all at once I saw straight ahead of me a little blaze of fire.
My first thought was that it was the camp-fire of some mover on the fire-brake. It blazed up higher, and lapped to the right and left. It was the grass that was afire. Through the flames I caught a glimpse of a man. A gust of wind beat down the blaze, and I saw the man, bent over and moving along with a great torch of grass in his hand, leaving a trail of fire. Then I saw that he was inside the fire-brake.
In another moment I was running up the middle of the street yelling “Fire!” so that to this day it is a wonder to me that I did not burst both of my lungs.