She was
seeing Dan as he must have wakened from a swoonlike sleep with the
smell of smoke and the heat of rising flames around him. She saw him
struggle, and fail to reach his feet. She almost heard him cry out--a
sound drowned easily by the roar of the fire, and the crackling of the
wood. She saw him drag himself with his hands across the floor, only
to be beaten back by a solid wall of flame. Black Bart crouched beside
him and would not leave his doomed master. Fascinated by the raging
fire the black stallion Satan would break from the shed and rush into
the flames!--and so the inseparable three must have perished together!
"Why don't you speak, Kate?" called her father.
"Dan!" she screamed, and pitched forward to the floor.
CHAPTER IX
THE PHANTOM RIDER
In the daytime the willows along the wide, level river bottom seemed
an unnatural growth, for they made a streak of yellow-green across
the mountain-desert when all other verdure withered and died. After
nightfall they became still more dreary. Even when the air was calm
there was apt to be a sound as of wind, for the tenuous, trailing
branches brushed lightly together, making a guarded whispering like
ghosts.
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