Chapter 8

THE PRAIRIE FIRE

A calamity expected, feared, and guarded against by a whole community does sometimes occur, and with a suddenness which finds the victims unprepared in spite of all their elaborate precautions. Compared with the importance of saving the range from fire, it was but a trivial thing which took nearly every man who dwelt in Lonesome Land to town on a certain day when the wind blew free from out the west. They were weary of watching for the fire which did not come licking through the prairie grass, and a special campaign train bearing a prospective President of our United States was expected to pass through Hope that afternoon.

Since all trains watered at the red tank by the creek, there would be a five-minute stop, during which the prospective President would stand upon the rear platform and deliver a three-minute address--a few gracious words to tickle the self-esteem of his listeners--and would employ the other two minutes in shaking the hand of every man, woman, and child who could reach him before the train pulled out. There would be a cheer or two given as he was borne away--and there would be something to talk about afterward in the saloons. Scarce a man of then had ever seen a President, and it was worth riding far to look upon a man who even hoped for so exalted a position.

Manley went because he intended to vote for the man, and called it an act of loyalty to his party to greet the candidate; also because it took very little, now that haying was over and work did not press, to start him down the trail in the direction of Hope.

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