Second by second it grew until with a
muffled explosion the whole was ablaze. Before the man had merely stood
watching; now deliberately as before, yet as unhesitatingly, he returned
to the tent.
This time he was gone longer; and when he returned it was with an armful
of books--and something more. The fire was crackling merrily now, and
volume by volume his load disappeared. Then for the first time he
hesitated. There was still something to destroy, something which he had
gathered in the old felt hat from off his own head; yet he hesitated.
Greedy as a hungry animal deprived of its due the fire at his feet kept
sending out spurts of flame like longing tentacles toward him; yet he
delayed. Like the sulky thing it was, it had at last drawn back into
passive waiting, when of a sudden, without a single glance, the man laid
this last sacrifice, as he had done the first, gently down. But this
time he did not watch the end. Swiftly, his bare black head glistening
in the sunlight, he started away toward the now expectant broncho; and
back of him the pathetic little gathering of useless trinkets, bearing
indelibly the mark of a woman's handiwork, a woman's trust, mingled with
the ashes of the things which had gone before.
Long ere the fire had burned itself out, the wicked-looking cayuse
following a bridle's length at his heels, he was back; waiting
impatiently for the flame to die. No frontiersman, in a land where
prairie fires spread as the breath of scandal, ever leaves fire alive
when out of his sight; and to this instinct the Indian was true.
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