“Wagh! I don’t b’lieve it, Bill: ’taint possyble no-howso-ever. The paraira wur sot afire—must ’a been—thur’s no other ways for it. It cudn’t ’a tuk to bleezing o’ itself—eh?”
“Sartinly not; I agree wi’ you, Rube.”
“Wal—thur wur a fellur as I met oncest at Bent’s Fort on the Arkinsaw—a odd sort o’ a critter he wur, an no mistake; he us’t to go pokin about, gatherin’ weeds an’ all sorts o’ green garbitch, an’ spreadin’ ’em out atween sheets o’ paper—whet he called button-eyesin—jest like thet ur Dutch doctur as wur rubbed out when we went into the Navagh country, t’other side o’ the Grand.”
“I remembers him.”
“Wal, this hyur fellur I tell ’ee about, he us’t to talk mighty big o’ this, thet, an t’ other; an he palavered a heap ’bout a thing thet, ef I don’t disremember, wur called spuntainyus kumbuxshun.”
“I’ve heerd o’ ’t; that are the name.”
“Wal, the button-eyeser, he sayed thet a paraira mout take afire o’ itself, ’ithout anybody whatsomdiver heving sot it. Now, thet ur’s what this child don’t b’lieve, nohow. In coorse, I knows thet lightnin’ sometimes may sot a paraira a bleezin’, but lightnin’s a natral fire o’ itself; an it’s only reezunible to expect thet the dry grass wud catch from it like punk; but I shed like to know how fire kud kindle ’ithout somethin to kindle it—thet’s whet I shed like to know.”
“I don’t believe it can,” rejoined Garey.
“Ne’er a bit o’ it. I never seed a burnin’ paraira yit, thet thur wa’n’t eyther a camp-fire or a Injun at the bottom o’ it—thet ur ’ceptin whur lightnin hed did the bizness.”
“And you think, Rube, thar’s been Injun at the bottom o’ this?”