Whose Letters?

There is something about a night alarm of fire at a military post that
borders on the thrilling. In the days whereof we write the buildings
were not the substantial creations of brick and stone to be seen
to-day, and those of the scattered "camps" and stations in that arid,
sun-scorched land of Arizona were tinder boxes of the flimsiest and
most inflammable kind.

It could hardly have been a minute from the warning shot and yell of
No. 5--repeated right and left by other sentries and echoed by No. 1
at the guard-house--before bugle and trumpet were blaring their fierce
alarm, and the hoarse roar of the drum was rousing the inmates of the
infantry barracks. Out they came, tumbling pell-mell into the
accustomed ranks, confronted by the sight of Blakely's quarters one
broad sheet of flame. With incredible speed the blaze had burst forth
from the front room on the lower floor; leaped from window to window,
from ledge to ledge; fastened instantly on overhanging roof, and the
shingled screen of the veranda; had darted up the dry wooden stairway,
devouring banister, railing, and snapping pine floor, and then,
billowing forth from every crack, crevice, and casement of the upper
floor streamed hissing and crackling on the blackness that precedes
the dawn, a magnificent glare that put to shame the feeble signal
fires lately gleaming in the mountains. Luckily there was no
wind--there never was a wind at Sandy--and the flames leaped straight
for the zenith, lashing their way into the huge black pillar of smoke
cloud sailing aloft to the stars.