All my life I have had intimate acquaintance with camp fires; I have eaten with them, slept with them, coaxed them in storm, watched them from afar.

I thought I knew all their tricks, all their treacheries.

I have seen apparently cold ashes blow red quite unexpectedly and fire grass and bushes and go racing away,--I have fought them then with whatever came to hand.
I admit that an odd, prickly sensation at the base of my scalp annoyed me while I watched this fire race up the slope and leave no red trail behind it.

Then it disappeared, blinked out again.

I opened my mouth to call Casey's attention to it--though I felt that he was watching it with that steady, squinting stare of his that never seems to wink or waver for a second--but there it was again, come to a stop just under the crest of the mountain where the white slide was topped by a black rim capped with bleak, bare rock like a crude skullcap on Tippipah.