the Kid, beguiled with
wonderful stories of how baby bear cubs might be taught to do tricks. He
listened and believed, and invented some very wonderful tricks that he
meant to teach his baby bear cub. Not until the shadows began to fill
the gullies through which they rode did the Kid awake to the fact that
night was coming close and that they were still traveling away from home
and in a direction which was strange to him. Never in his life had he
been tricked by any one with unfriendly intent. He did not guess that he
was being tricked now. He rode away into the wild places in search of a
baby bear cub for a pet.

CHAPTER 25. "LITTLE BLACK SHACK'S ALL BURNT UP"

It is a penitentiary offense for anyone to set fire to prairie grass or
timber; and if you know the havoc which one blazing match may work upon
dry grassland when the wind is blowing free, you will not wonder at
the penalty for lighting that match with deliberate intent to set the
prairie afire.

Within five minutes after H. J. Owens slipped the bit of mirror back
into his pocket after flashing a signal that the Kid was riding alone
upon the trail, a line of fire several rods long was creeping up out of
a grassy hollow to the hilltop beyond, whence it would go racing away
to the east and the north, growing bigger and harder to fight with every
grass tuft it fed on.

The Happy Family were working hard that day upon the system of
irrigation by which they meant to reclaim and make really valuable
their desert claims. They happened to be, at the time when the fire
was started, six or seven miles away, wrangling over the best means of
getting their main ditch around a certain coulee without building a lot
of expensive flume. A surveyor would have been a blessing, at this point
in the undertaking; but a surveyor charged good money for his services,
and the Happy Family were trying to be very economical with money; with
time, and effort, and with words they were not so frugal.

The fire had been burning for an hour and had spread so alarmingly
before the gusty breeze that it threatened several claim-shacks before
they noticed the telltale, brownish tint to the sunlight and smelled
other smoke than the smoke of the word-battle then waging fiercely among
them. They dropped stakes, flags and ditch-level and ran to where their
horses waited sleepily the pleasure of their masters.

They reached the level of the benchland to see disaster swooping down
upon them li