ool wind from somewhere. A huge
storm-wave of yellow dust was rolling out of the southwest; beyond it the
heavens were copper-green, and back of that, midnight darkness; while,
borne onward by its force, low waves of prairie fire were swept along the
ground.

Down at the third bend of the river where long growths overhung the
stream, the flames crossed easily. Even as Asher Aydelot watched the
storm cloud, long tongues of fire came licking up the valley toward him,
not a towering height, but a swift crawling destruction which he looked at
with unseeing eyes, for his only thought was for Virginia.

"How could I have missed her if she started to meet me? Yet, where can she
be now?" he groaned.

The hungry flames gnawed vainly about his broad fireguard, then wavered
back and forth along the south prairie, while he watched them under the
fascination the mastery of the elements can exert. He turned at last from
the fire and storm to see Juno and her rider swinging down the northwest
prairie, keeping close to the river line before the chill north wind.

"Oh, Virgie, Virgie," he cried, as she slipped from the saddle and he
caught her in his arms. "I've lived a hundred years since I left you this
afternoon. What made you run away?"

In the joy of her safe return, he forgot the fire.

"Why, don't you see the wind is from the north? And it is blowing
everything south now? I saw it begin away up the river. Did that guard
really keep off that thing I saw from the high bluff up yonder?"

"I put it there to do it, and I'd take the chances. Awful as it is, it
can't do anything but burn, and there's nothing here to burn. If it hadn't
been there, everything would have been gone and you would have come back
to a pile of ashes if the wind had left a pile."

"And you put your puny hands to the plow handles and say to that awful
fury, 'So far, and no farther. This is my home.' You, one little human
being!" Virginia's eyes were glowing with wonder at the miracle.

"Yes, with my puny hands. Me--a little man," Asher smiled quizzically, as
he spread his broad brown hands before his face and drew himself up to his
full six feet of height. "Only I say, 'our home.' But I was so scared
about you, I forgot to notice the change in the wind. The fire is chasing
to the south, and the hailstorm has veered off down that stream this side
of those three headlands over there. The wind gives and the wind takes
away. You can't plow a guard around it.