It was locked, bolted,
or barred from the other side. Blindly he turned and rushed for the
side porch and the open air, stumbling against the striker as the
latter came clattering headlong down from aloft. Then together they
rushed to the parlor window, now cracking and splitting from the
furious heat within. A volume of black fume came belching forth,
driven and lashed by ruddy tongues of flame within, and their shouts
for aid went up on the wings of the dawn, and the infantry sentry on
the eastward post came running to see; caught one glimpse of the glare
at that southward window; bang went his rifle with a ring that came
echoing back from the opposite cliffs, as all Camp Sandy sprang from
its bed in answer to the stentorian shout "Fire! No. 5!"
CHAPTER XIII
WHOSE LETTERS?
There is something about a night alarm of fire at a military post that
borders on the thrilling. In the days whereof we write the buildings
were not the substantial creations of brick and stone to be seen
to-day, and those of the scattered "camps" and stations in that arid,
sun-scorched land of Arizona were tinder boxes of the flimsiest and
most inflammable kind.
It could hardly have been a minute from the warning shot and yell of
No. 5--repeated right and left by other sentries and echoed by No.
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