One cold, windy day, when a gale was blowing from the northwest, Jack started out alone and afoot--he said it was too cold and windy to ride--to kill a few buffalo wolf baits.
Crossing the creek below the beaver dam, to look for buffalo in the prairie beyond, he soon passed out of sight, while Tom and I busied ourselves taking up the dried skins and baling them. We heard the report of Jack's carbine occasionally and knew by the direction of the sounds that he was to windward of camp--about northwest.
After Jack had been out for some time Tom took the field-glass and went up onto the bluff south of our camp, from which he could view the prairie north of the creek.
He gazed long and intently through the glass in Jack's direction and presently started back to camp on a run.
I knew that something unusual was up. We had heard no uncommon firing from Jack, but, on seeing Tom hurrying down the hill, my thought was: "Indians about or Jack's in trouble." Dropping my work, I rushed down into the dugout, seized both rifles, and, with a few blocks of cartridges, ran back up onto the bank again, looking first toward Tom and then to the timber north of us. There was no sign or sound of an enemy.
When the old man arrived, breathless from running, he noted my preparations for war and gasped out as fast as he could catch his breath:
"No! no Injuns! See the big smoke over the tree tops? Prairie's all afire out that way! Comin' fast! I'm afraid Jack's caught in it. I saw him just before I noticed the fire. He was out in the bottom 'bout midway between the timber and the lodge-pole trail, a-working on a buffalo he'd killed, and just then I noticed a lone Injun riding along the trail the other side of Jack; and I saw the infernal rascal halt when he got right to windward of Jack, and dismount and squat down in the grass; and then come a puff of smoke and the prairie was afire. And then the Injun got on his pony and galloped along the trail a piece and fired the grass again. And this he repeated several times. The cuss had seen Jack and fired the grass to try to burn him up, and I'm afraid he's done it, for I don't see how Jack could escape without he could fly, for when I left the bluff the fires had all run together and were a-coming toward Jack like a race-horse, in a wall of flames that seemed to leap twenty feet high at times."