But perhaps that was not all Wade's motive in sparing him.
Once more mounted, Wade turned his attention to the burned district.

It was a dreary, hideous splotch, a blackened slash in the green cover of the mountain.

It sloped down into a wide hollow and up another bare slope.

The ground was littered with bleached logs, trees that had been killed first by fire and then felled by wind.

Here and there a lofty, spectral trunk still withstood the blasts.