He guided the horse down the slope and on toward the grassy levels that lay beyond. Ten minutes later he was well out in the grass.
Here he stooped from the saddle, pulled a handful of dry grass, to which he applied a lighted match, and then threw it down.
While he did this the horse stood panting, sweat dripping from it.
Young Clayton had seen that he must do something desperate, if he escaped the Blackfeet; and this was the thing he was now to try.
The burning grass communicated fire to that surrounding the horse. Clayton sent the animal on, and with a few leaps it left the conflagration behind it.
The remarkable manner in which the fire spread through the dry grass was worthy of comment. It flamed up with a roar. Seeming to create a wind from the rising currents of heated air, the fire began to run before the breeze, leaping along in an amazing way.
It spread round from the spot where it had been started, burning backward toward the hills and outward in the direction taken by the horse.
“Now, for a race!” thought Clayton, struck by a sudden fear, as he saw how fast the fire was spreading. “Maybe that will be worse to get away from than the Blackfeet; and if anything should happen to the horse we’ll have to run for our lives!”
He voiced none of this to the girl.
“The Blackfeet haven’t been sighted yet,” he said to her. “They’ll know, of course, or guess, that we’ve taken to the grass, and set it on fire; but after that black smoke gets to rolling and the fire to running good, it will be hard for them to tell where we have gone, and I defy them to follow our trail after the fire has burned the grass.”