Chapter 8 - Page 2

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.

They had thought the railroad safe at last, what with the guards and the numerous burned patches where the fire had jumped the plowed boundary and blackened the earth to the fence which marked the line of the right of way, and, in some places, had burned beyond. It took a flag-flying special train of that bitter Presidential campaign to find a weak spot in the guard, and to send a spark straight into the thickest bunch of wiry sand grass, where the wind could fan it to a blaze and then seize it and bend the tall flame tongues until they licked around the next tuft of grass, and the next, and the next--until the spark was grown to a long, leaping line of fire, sweeping eastward with the relentless rush of a tidal wave upon a low-lying beach.

Arline Hawley was, perhaps, the only citizen of Hope who had deliberately chosen to absent herself from the crowd standing, in perspiring expectation, upon the depot platform. She had permitted Minnie, the "breed" girl, to go, and had even grudgingly consented to her using a box of cornstarch as first aid to her complexion. Arline had not approved, however, of either the complexion or the occasion.

"What you want to go and plaster your face up with starch for, gits me," she had criticised frankly. "Seems to me you're homely enough without lookin' silly, into the bargain. Nobody's going to look at you, no matter what you do. They're out to rubber at a higher mark than you be. And what they expect to see so great, gits me. He ain't nothing but a man--and, land knows, men is common enough, and ornery enough, without runnin' like a band of sheep to see one. I don't see as he's any better, jest because he's runnin' for President; if he gits beat, he'll want to hide his head in a hole in the ground. Look at my Walt. He was the biggest man in Hope, and so swell-headed he wouldn't so much as pack a bucket of water all fall, or chop up a tie for kindlin'--till the day after 'lection. And what was he then but a frazzled-out back number, that everybody give the laugh--till he up and blowed his brains out! Any fool can run for President--it's the feller that gits there that counts.

"Say, that red-white-'n'-blue ribbon sure looks fierce on that green dress--but I reckon blood will tell, even if it's Injun blood. G'wan, or you'll be late and have your trouble for your pay. But hurry back soon's the agony's over; the bread'll be ready to mix out."

Even after the girl was gone, her finery a-flutter in the sweeping west wind, Arline muttered aloud her opinion of men, and particularly of politicians who rode about in special trains and expected the homage of their fellows.

She was in the back yard, taking her "white clothes" off the line, when the special