ashing down and sending up great gouts of
fresh flame as they fell, the leader sings out an order, and all that is
not on their hosses jumps on, and they rides away from the blaze. They
come across the square--not galloping now, but taking it easy, laughing
and talking and cussing and joking each other--and passed right by my
lumber pile agin and down the street they had come. You bet I laid low
on them boards while they was going by, and flattened myself out till I
felt like a shingle.

As I hearn their hoof-sounds getting farther off, I lifts up my head
agin. But they wasn't all gone, either. Three that must of been up to
some pertic'ler deviltry of their own come galloping acrost the square
to ketch up with the main bunch. Two was quite a bit ahead of the third
one, and he yelled to them to wait. But they only laughed and rode
harder.

And then fur some fool reason that last feller pulled up his hoss and
stopped. He stopped in the road right in front of me, and wheeled his
hoss acrost the road and stood up in his stirrups and took a long look
at that blaze. You'd 'a' said he had done it all himself and was mighty
proud of it, the way he raised his head and looked back at that town. He
was so near that I hearn him draw in a slow, deep breath. He stood still
fur most a minute like that, black agin the red sky, and then he turned
his hoss's head and jabbed him with his stirrup edge.

Jest as the hoss started they come a shot from somewheres behind me.
I s'pose they was some one hid in the lumber piles, where the street
crossed the railway, besides myself. The hoss jumped forward at the
shot, and the feller swayed sideways and dropped his gun and lost his
stirrups and come down heavy on the ground. His hoss galloped off. I
heard the noise of some one running off through the dark, and stumbling
agin the lumber. It was the feller who had fired the shot running away.
I suppose he thought the rest of them riders would come back, when they
heard that shot, and hunt him down.

I thought they might myself. But I laid there, and jest waited. If they
come, I didn't want to be found running. But they didn't come. The two
last ones had caught up with the main gang, I guess, fur purty soon
I hearn them all crossing that plank bridge agin, and knowed they was
gone.

At first I guessed the feller on the ground must be dead. But he wasn't,
fur purty soon I hearn him groan. He had mebby been stunned by his fall,
and was coming to