He gazed long and intently through the glass in Jack's direction and presently started back to camp on a run.
I knew that something unusual was up. We had heard no uncommon firing from Jack, but, on seeing Tom hurrying down the hill, my thought was: "Indians about or Jack's in trouble." Dropping my work, I rushed down into the dugout, seized both rifles, and, with a few blocks of cartridges, ran back up onto the bank again, looking first toward Tom and then to the timber north of us. There was no sign or sound of an enemy.
When the old man arrived, breathless from running, he noted my preparations for war and gasped out as fast as he could catch his breath:
"No! no Injuns! See the big smoke over the tree tops? Prairie's all afire out that way! Comin' fast! I'm afraid Jack's caught in it. I saw him just before I noticed the fire. He was out in the bottom 'bout midway between the timber and the lodge-pole trail, a-working on a buffalo he'd killed, and just then I noticed a lone Injun riding along the trail the other side of Jack; and I saw the infernal rascal halt when he got right to windward of Jack, and dismount and squat down in the grass; and then come a puff of smoke and the prairie was afire. And then the Injun got on his pony and galloped along the trail a piece and fired the grass again. And this he repeated several times. The cuss had seen Jack and fired the grass to try to burn him up, and I'm afraid he's done it, for I don't see how Jack could escape without he could fly, for when I left the bluff the fires had all run together and were a-coming toward Jack like a race-horse, in a wall of flames that seemed to leap twenty feet high at times."
"What can we do, Tom?" I asked. "Can't we do something to help him?"
"I don't see what we can do," replied the old man with a look of despair, "but you run down to the stable and clap the saddle onto Prince, and be ready to go and look for what's left of him soon as the fire burns out. It'll stop when it gets to the creek and quick as the smoke clears away so's you can stand it, you be ready to light out."
I rushed to the stable and he followed me, talking as I saddled up.
"Near as I could make him out through the glass, I believe it's that infernal old Broken Nose that's done this job. It looked some like him and I noticed he climbed on and off his pony like an old man."
I soon had Prince saddled and led him up onto the bank, where we impatiently waited what seemed an endless time but was really only a few minutes.
The fire was now roaring and crackling just beyond the strip of timber bordering the creek. The smoke would probably have been stifling in our camp by this time, but on striking the timber the wind had given it an upward pitch that sent most of it above us.