Half the earth and half the sky were aflame. The stars had fled before the great burning. Booming in the strong wind, a wave of flame was coming over the hills and reaching long, spiteful arms toward the village in the valley. Spellbound, the people gazed. Then of a sudden a cry ran among them, for they had seen, through a momentary rift in the flame and smoke, high upon the eminence of a peaked, fire-blackened hill, a man standing upon a pony’s back, with his arms above his head. He looked prodigiously big and seemed to ride upon a flood of fire. Then the flames closed in, the smoke hid the peaked hill, and frantically the people fled from their village to a nearby creek, where they huddled in the stream, and where the loud flame passed over them, booming on into the north. When the gray of morning fell upon the blackened prairie, the people returned to their village. But at the opening in the circle of lodges stood a mounted man. Both he and his pony were blackened as with fire. It was Little Weasel. As his people drew near he raised a wheezing voice and said: “Behold Little Weasel, whom the fire-spirits love! All day I rode across the hills, thinking of my people’s unkindness. In the evening a great fire grew up about me. It was not a common fire; it was a medicine fire. It grew up about me and my pony, and lifted us like the waters of a flood. And I was frightened till I heard a voice that thundered, and it said: ‘Little Weasel has been punished by a foolish people. The spirits of fire will take him back and his people will take him in again.’ And lo! here I am, Little Weasel. I want my eagle feather.” And the people, believing many strange things, took him in with a great feasting. And from that day they called him by another name—Paeda-Nu, the Fire-Man. And he was great among his people. IV THE SCARS MY friend, the old frontiersman, poked an extra supply of cobs into the stove, meditatively watched the sudden flame lick about the husks, then began this monologue after his usual manner: * * * * * Yes, I’ve got a nice place here—nice ranch. Didn’t work for it either—lied for it! Now, I’m not given much to that sort of thing, as you will grant; but when I see a place where a good manly twisting of the truth can sweeten matters up a bit, I’m not so scrupulous. Back in the late fifties I was living in St. Louis, pretty nigh broke, for all I’d lived a hard, industrious life up and down the river. One day I got a note bearing the postmark of some California mining town, and it informed me that I had a considerable credit with a certain St. Louis bank. I never heard directly where the money came from, but I thought I knew. I bought this place with some of that money, you see. And there’s a little story attached to this.