The smoke swept following around the black stallion, and a great tongue of flame licked hungrily after the trio.

But the stallion stood with head erect, and ears flattened, pawing the ground.
With that cloud of destruction blowing him he stood like the charger which the last survivor might ride through the ruin of the universe in the Twilight of the Gods.
At the same instant, another smoke-clad figure lunged from the door of the barn, his hands outstretched as though he felt and fumbled his way through utter darkness.

It was Buck Daniels, and as he cleared the door the section of tottering wall which he had upheld to keep the way clear for the Three, wavered, sagged, and then sank in thunder to the floor, and the whole barn lay a flame-tossed mass of ruin.
The watchers had scattered before the plunge of Satan, but he came to a sliding halt, as if his rider had borne heavily back upon the reins.
Barry slipped from the stallion's back with the wounded dog, and kneeled above the limp figure.
"It ain't the end," growled Mac Strann, "that hoss will go runnin' back into the fire.

It ain't hoss nature to keep from goin' mad at the sight of a fire!" In answer to him, the black stallion whirled, raised his head high, and, with flaunting mane and tail, neighed a ringing defiance at the rising flames.

Then he turned back and nuzzled the shoulder of his master, who was working with swift hands over the body of Black Bart.
"Anyway," snarled Haw-Haw Langley, "the damned wolf is dead." "I dunno," said Mac Strann.