The Prairie Fire

At the Blumenthall ranch no man save the cook remained at home, and he only because he had a boil on his neck which sapped his interest in all things else. Polycarp Jenks was in town by nine o'clock, and only one man remained at the Wishbone. That man was Kent, and he stayed because, according to his outraged companions, he was an ornery cuss, and his bump of patriotism was a hollow in his skull. Kent had told them, one and all, that he wouldn't ride twenty-five miles to shake hands with the Deity Himself--which, however, is not a verbatim report of his statement. The prospective President had not done anything so big, he said, that a man should want to break his neck getting to town just to watch him go by. He was dead sure he, for one, wasn't going to make a fool of himself over any swell-headed politician.

Still, he saddled and rode with his fellows for a mile or two, and called them unseemly names in a facetious tone; and the men of the Wishbone answered his taunts with shrill yells of derision when he swung out of the trail and jogged away to the south, and finally passed out of sight in the haze which still hung depressingly over the land.

Oddly enough, while all the able-bodied men save Kent were waiting hilariously in Hope to greet, with enthusiasm, the brief presence of the man who would fain be their political chief, the train which bore him eastward scattered fiery destruction abroad as it sped across their range, four minutes late and straining to make up the time before the next stop.