lling embers
To the level, open plain.
On the right and left, the head fires
Rushing on at furious pace,
Stretched beside the horse and rider
In the life-and-death-fought race.

27

Here the gale with venomed fury
Met in vortex from afar,
Raising high the flaming pennons
Of the fiery fiends of war.
Flashing by, the blazing grass stems
Sped like arrows through the air,
Falling on the distant prairie,
Kindling fresh fires everywhere.
Pressing through the low-flung smoke clouds--
Stifling fumes of Hades' breath--
Fiercer with each flying moment
Drove those scorching blasts of death.
Thrice his horse, 'neath quirt and rowel
Bravely struggling, almost fell,
As he fled in desperation
O'er the trail that led through hell.

28

One poor singed and panting coyote
Through the perils of the ride
Hemmed in by the flames pursuing
Ran close by the horse's side.
Scarce a meager pace behind them,
Pressing hard the coyote's rear,
Raced a frantic old jack rabbit,
Ears laid low in speed and fear.
Reaching now a stretch of upland,
Here the coyote changed his course,
Breaking through the narrow side-fire,
Followed fast by hare and horse;
And, upon the smoking prairie
Over which the fire had passed,
Steaming horse and stricken rider
Found a breathing space at last.

[Illustration: "Fiercer with each flying moment
Drove those scorching blasts of death."]

29

When the morning sun in splendor
Rose upon the blackened plain,
His red beams revealed the lover
Back at Old Man's Bend again.
Waist deep in its soothing waters
Bathing blistered brow and hands;
While near by, in pain a-tremble,
Faithful Zeb impatient stands.
Through the bend he searched and wandered,
But except the furrowed bark,
Of a gnarled and aged elm tree
Which revealed one bullet-mark,
Naught was left save blackened embers;
And the words he "knew in part"--
"Dust to dust and then to ashes"--
Told the story of his heart.

30

Back along the Solomon River,
Trailing towards the humble claim
He had lost when love and duty
Fired his soul to "being game";
Back, across the beaver fordway,
Where love first had found the track,
Now returning with the rankling
Sting of hate to bring him back--
Hate, that hunger made more bitter
When his last jerked beef was gone;
Climbing trees to cut off branches
For his horse to browse upon;
Back, where once the flower-decked prairie,
S