Beatrice slipped off her horse and sat down upon a rock, dead to everything but the fiendish beauty of the scene spread out below her. Millions of sparks danced in and out among the smoke wreaths which curled upward--now black, now red, now a dainty rose. Off to the left a coyote yapped shrilly, ending with his mournful howl. Beatrice shivered from sheer ecstasy. This was a world she had never before seen--a world of hot, smoke-sodden wind, of dead-black shadows and flame-bright light; of roar and hoarse bellowing and sharp crackles; of calm, star-sprinkled sky above--and in the distance the uncanny howling of a coyote. Time had no reckoning there. She saw men running to and fro in the glare, disappearing in a downward swirl of smoke, coming to view again in the open beyond. Always their arms waved rhythmically downward, beating the ragged line of yellow with water-soaked sacks. The trail they left was a wavering, smoke-traced rim of sullen black, where before had been gay, dancing, orange light. In places the smolder fanned to new life behind them and licked greedily at the ripe grass like hungry, red tongues. One of these Beatrice watched curiously. It crept slyly into an unburned hollow, and the wind, veering suddenly, pushed it out of sight from the fighters and sent it racing merrily to the south. The main line of fire beat doggedly up against the wind that a minute before had been friendly, and fought bravely two foes instead of one. It dodged, ducked, and leaped high, and the men beat upon it mercilessly. But the little, new flame broadened and stood on tiptoes defiantly, proud of the wide, black trail that kept stretching away behind it; and Beatrice watched it, fascinated by its miraculous growth. It began to crackle and send up smoke wreaths of its own, with sparks dancing through; then its voice deepened and coarsened, till it roared quite like its mother around the hill. The smoke from the larger fire rolled back with the wind, and Beatrice felt her eyes sting. Flakes of blackened grass and ashes rained upon the hilltop, and Rex moved uneasily and pawed at the dry sod. To him a prairie-fire was not beautiful--it was an enemy to run from. He twitched his reins from Beatrice's heedless fingers and decamped toward home, paying no attention whatever to the command of his mistress to stop. Still Beatrice sat and watched the new fire, and was glad she chanced to be upon the south end of a sharp-nosed hill, so that she could see both ways. The blaze dove into a deep hollow, climbed the slope beyond, leaped exultantly and bellowed its challenge. And, of a sudden, dark forms sprang upon it and beat it cruelly, and it went black where they struck, and only thin streamers of smoke told where it had been. Still they beat, and struck, and struck again, till the fire died ingloriously and the hillside to the south lay dark and still, as it had been at the beginning.