25

Then, behold! the King returning
  With a pageantry so bright,
That the shadow-clad usurpers
  Fled in ignominious fright. 
As he saw the hosts approaching
  Through a cloud of battle smoke,
Charging wildly down upon him,
  He, in sudden fear, awoke. 
As he looked, the blackened heavens
  Splashed with demon-tinted blood
From the hue of burning prairie
  Throbbed above the fiery flood. 
Leaping o’er the rounded bluff-tops,
  Down the valley’s long incline,
He could see the lurid column
  Spread its blazing battle line.

26

Like a troop of charging horsemen
  Sweeping on with maddened roar,
Mowing down the grass battalions,
  Crackling flames swept all before. 
Then the driftwood’s rifted breastwork,
  Left there by the waters high,
Flashed up in a hissing furnace,
  As the red-armed fiends leaped by. 
Clinging to the swaying saddle
  And the plunging horse’s mane,
Billy dashed through falling embers
  To the level, open plain. 
On the right and left, the head fires
  Rushing on at furious pace,
Stretched beside the horse and rider
  In the life-and-death-fought race.

27

Here the gale with venomed fury
  Met in vortex from afar,
Raising high the flaming pennons
  Of the fiery fiends of war. 
Flashing by, the blazing grass stems
  Sped like arrows through the air,
Falling on the distant prairie,
  Kindling fresh fires everywhere. 
Pressing through the low-flung smoke clouds—­
  Stifling fumes of Hades’ breath—­
Fiercer with each flying moment
  Drove those scorching blasts of death. 
Thrice his horse, ’neath quirt and rowel
  Bravely struggling, almost fell,
As he fled in desperation
  O’er the trail that led through hell.

28

One poor singed and panting coyote
  Through the perils of the ride
Hemmed in by the flames pursuing
  Ran close by the horse’s side. 
Scarce a meager pace behind them,
  Pressing hard the coyote’s rear,
Raced a frantic old jack rabbit,
  Ears laid low in speed and fear. 
Reaching now a stretch of upland,
  Here the coyote changed his course,
Breaking through the narrow side-fire,
  Followed fast by hare and horse;
And, upon the smoking prairie
  Over which the fire had passed,
Steaming horse and stricken rider
  Found a breathing space at last.

[Illustration:  “Fiercer with each flying moment Drove those scorching blasts of death.”]

29

When the morning sun in splendor
  Rose upon the blackened plain,
His red beams revealed the lover
  Back at Old Man’s Bend again. 
Waist deep in its soothing waters
  Bathing blistered brow and hands;
While near by, in pain a-tremble,
  Faithful Zeb impatient stands. 
Through the bend he searched and wandered,
  But except the furrowed bark,
Of a gnarled and aged elm tree
  Which revealed one bullet-mark,
Naught was left save blackened embers;
  And the words he “knew in part”—­
“Dust to dust and then to ashes”—­
  Told the story of his heart.