The Nomad of the Fire-Wheel

It had been an unforgettable day, this day in the pine woods. Diane had forded shallow streams and followed bright-winged birds, lunched by a silver lake set coolly in the darkling shade of cypress and found a curious nest in the stump of a tree. Now with a mass of creeping blackberry and violets strapped to her saddle she was riding slowly back through the pine woods.

Though the sun, which awhile back had filled the hollow of palmetto fronds with a ruddy pool of light, had long since dropped behind the horizon, the girl somehow picked the homeward trail with the unerring instinct of a wild thing. That one may be hopelessly lost in the deceptive flatwoods she dismissed with a laugh. The wood is kind to wild things.

It was quite dark when through the trees ahead she caught the curious glimmer of a cart wheel of flame upon the ground, hub and spokes glowing vividly in the center of a clearing. Curiously the girl rode toward it, unaware that the picturesque fire-wheel ahead was the typical camp fire of the southern Indian, or that the strange wild figure squatting gravely by the fire in lonely silhouette against the white of a canvas-covered wagon beyond in the trees, was a vagrant Seminole from the proud old turbaned tribe who still dwell in the inaccessible morasses of the Everglades.

The realization came in a disturbed flash of interest and curiosity. Though the Florida Indian harmed no one, he still considered himself proudly hostile to the white man. Wherefore Diane wisely wheeled her horse about to retreat.