It began to
crackle and send up smoke wreaths of its own, with sparks dancing
through; then its voice deepened and coarsened, till it roared quite
like its mother around the hill.
The smoke from the larger fire rolled back with the wind, and Beatrice
felt her eyes sting. Flakes of blackened grass and ashes rained upon the
hilltop, and Rex moved uneasily and pawed at the dry sod. To him a
prairie-fire was not beautiful--it was an enemy to run from. He twitched
his reins from Beatrice's heedless fingers and decamped toward home,
paying no attention whatever to the command of his mistress to stop.
Still Beatrice sat and watched the new fire, and was glad she chanced to
be upon the south end of a sharp-nosed hill, so that she could see both
ways. The blaze dove into a deep hollow, climbed the slope beyond,
leaped exultantly and bellowed its challenge. And, of a sudden, dark
forms sprang upon it and beat it cruelly, and it went black where they
struck, and only thin streamers of smoke told where it had been. Still
they beat, and struck, and struck again, till the fire died ingloriously
and the hillside to the south lay dark and still, as it had been at the
beginning.
Beatrice wondered who had done it. Then she came back to her
surroundings and realized that Rex had left her, and she was alone. She
shivered--this time not in ecstasy, but partly from loneliness--and went
down the hill toward where Dick and Sir Redmond and the others were
fighting steadily the larger fire, unconscious of the younger, new one
that had stolen away from them and was beaten to death around the hill.
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