“But you see—” said the captain.
“Never mind, Captain,” interrupted the judge, “explainin’ don’t count. Here’s what I want to say to you-alls. I jist want to say that person’ly I think you’re a mighty nice lot o’ fellers, but collectively I’m assoomin’ you’re the darndest lot of skates I ever run up agin’.”
And, with this parting shot, the judge hastily left the room, muttering dire vengeance against bloated bondholders and coupon-clippers.
CHAPTER XXXIV.—THE PRAIRIE-FIRE
A KANSAS prairie is a veritable inland sea. From Meade to the northwest a broad expanse of buffalo-grass lands stretched away for many miles, almost as level as the top of a table, without even a single gully or rill to break its tiresome monotony. Often, at night, I have walked along some quiet roadway far into the country, listening to the silence that enveloped me. Sometimes the very air that, seemingly, pulsed with monotonous stillness, would be startled by the sharp, quick bark of a wolf in the distance. I have looked out across these flat table-lands, dimly lighted by the moon in its last quarter, and for hours watched half-formed shadows of passing clouds flit vaguely on across this vast sea of silence, while others followed in countless numbers, until vision became confused and imagination triumphed over knowledge. At such times, in fancy I stood on the beach of a mighty ocean, and each shadow was a sable-shrouded sail-boat carrying my hopes away to some unknown shore of mystery.
The hot winds had dried and browned the buffalo-grass. Then the rain came and freshened the landscape into a new life. Several weeks of warm, windy weather had now intervened. The country was becoming parched and dry again. The thick, matted buffalo-grass was cured as effectually as is the Eastern farmer’s hay when it is cut into swaths and dried before it is bunched into windrows. It, however, retained its nutritiousness. Indeed, it was said to be more fattening for the vast herds of cattle than prior to the hot winds.
One afternoon a thin line of smoke was discernible afar in the western horizon. It seemed like a black ribbon reaching from No-Man’s-Land, on the south, to the sand-hills, a distance of almost a hundred miles to the north. These remarkable mounds of sand, in width from five to fifteen miles, border the Arkansas River on its south bank. They separate the river from the table-lands lying farther to the south. To the inexperienced observer, the dark border in the western horizon had more the appearance of dust-clouds, caused by innumerable whirlwinds, than of smoke, but the older frontiersmen recognized in the menacing dark border, a prairie-fire.
As Hugh Stanton was walking along the street, his attention was called to this distant cloud, by Judge Lynn.