Late that evening the wind changed and blew up the cañon like a gale, carrying with it clouds of smoke and burning brands which started fires far in advance of the main line. But the boy stayed with the sheep, wide awake and watchful, hardly taking time to eat his simple meals of _frijoles_, mutton and bread. Below him, the sky was alight with the flames. Now and then a thunderous crash told where some giant of the forest had given up the fight--three hundred and fifty years' work undone in an hour. Half a dozen coyotes and a wildcat skulked out of the timber that fringed the meadow and buried themselves in the little clump of willows that grew about the spring. By midnight he realized that to stay where he was meant death for himself and his woolly charges. The sheep were restless, constantly moving about on the bed ground, the lambs running and bleating through the herd as if they, too, realized the danger. The dog whined and looked anxiously toward the coming light, which now made the night almost as bright as noonday. "What would'st thou do, Panchito?" said the boy. "Did not the _patron_ tell us to remain here until he came, and yet, shall we stay and die when the fire comes?" Then the thought came to him that up higher on the mountain the sheep would be safe if once there. At the first sign of coming day he set about his preparations for leaving. First, he tore from its pins the light tent, spread it out on the ground, swept into it the small supply of food which the camp contained, and rolled the tent about it. Then, with a short-handled camp shovel he dug a shallow hole in the soft mountain soil into which he placed, first, the sheepskins and blankets which formed his bed and then the bundle of the tent, covering it all with the dirt, thus securing it from the fire. Having thus protected his food supply, he sent the dog around the sheep to bunch them up and started them up the mountainside. The sheep, frightened by the smoke and approaching fire, moved rapidly, and inside of half an hour the boy had them all bedded down on a great bare granite field in the middle of a little boulder-strewn valley where, ages ago, some slipping, sliding glacier had smoothed and polished the surface of the rocks until they were like some gigantic table top. The valley was far above timber and the sheep safe from fire. Leaving the dog to watch the sheep, he hastened back to the meadow, there to await the coming of the _patron_ as he had been bidden. Once upon the prairie, where his father lived, he had seen the men go out to meet an approaching fire and by means of back firing keep it away from the houses and fields.