It was still dusk, with a smell of the ground in the air. And a little new moon was dropping down to bed. It didn't seem as if there ought to be a fire on such a night. Everything seemed too usual and casual.
But there was. When we got in sight of the gas house, we could see the red glare on the round wall. When we got nearer, we could see the raggedy flames eating up into the black air.
The men that lived in the cars were trying to scrabble out their poor belongings. They were shouting queer, throaty cries that we didn't understand, but some of the folks from the Flats were answering them. I think that it seemed queer to some of us that those men of the bunk cars should be having a fire right there in our town.
"Don't let's get too near," says somebody. "They might have small-pox or something."
It was Mis' Sykes, with Silas, her husband, and him carrying that bright red little boy. And the baby, kind of scared at all the noise and the difference, was beginning to straighten out and cry words in that heathen tongue of his.
"Mercy," says Mis' Sykes, "I can't find Berta. He's going," she says, "to yell."
Just then I saw something that excited me more than the baby. There was one car near the middle that was burning hard when the stream of water struck it. And I saw that car had a little rag of lace curtain at its window, and a tin can with a flower in it. And when the blaze died for a minute, and the roof showed all burned, but not the lower part of the car or the steps, I saw somebody in blue overalls jump up the steps, and then an arm tearing down that rag of lace curtain and catching up the tin can.
"Well," I says pitiful, "ain't that funny? Some man down there in a bunk car, with a lace curtain and a posy."
I started down that way, and Mis' Toplady, Mis' Holcomb and the Sykeses come too, the Sykeses more to see if walking wouldn't keep the baby still. It wouldn't. That baby yelled louder than I'd ever heard one, which is saying lots but not too much.
When we all got down nearer, we came on Mis' Swenson and Mis' Amachi, counting up.