The Prairie Detective: Secret Service Series No. 24 — page 158: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

156 THE PRAIRIE DETECTIVE. heated to a brilliant hue. Tossed like feathers upon the tempest, they flashed through the air, casting reflections of rare and prismatic beauty. The two battling currents of air, as they came _ together, caught and sucked up the burning fragments with irresistible force. Long and gaunt-looking branches ‘of dead trees; great bunches of dried grass; little clumps of sage-brush; slender, spear-like reeds, which had grown, bloomed, and faded in the hol- - lows; all were torn from the spot on which they chanced to lie, and tossed upward, surrounded with flame. It was a scene not witnessed once in a cen- tury. | | : The roar of the contending elements now became deafening. The air, too, was freighted with the un- wholesome odor of burning vegetable matter. A dull, dry heat settled down upon the spot where the besieged party stood. But the danger had passed, and each mentally thanked Heaven for having preserved them from the danger which threatened. The wall of burning fragments began to diminish in height. It was soon filled with great black gaps, beyond which the heavy mantle of night shot gloomily in. Across these increasing breaches in the once solid chain, darted at distant intervals, single objects, bright with fire. They looked in that gloomy atmosphere like grand pyrotechnic displays. - The perils over, the friends began to realize the rare beauty of the-scene around them. But they had lit- tle time to comment upon its many points of attrac- tiveness. Since fires had been kindled by Ryan and Dan, the scout had been silent to an unwonted degree. His comicbooks