noon
Two or three times he found himself waking suddenly in the night , possessed with an intense desire to saddle Kit and ride off to a part of the forest where he had either dreamed or thought a fire was burning , but Rifle-Eye had been careful to warn him against this very thing , and although the morning found him simply wild to ride to this point of supposed danger , he had followed orders and ridden his regular round . Although Wilbur 's camp was high , the heat grew hard to bear , and when the boy passed from the shade of the pine along the naked rock to some lookout point the ground seemed to blaze under him . The grass was rapidly turning brown in the exposed places , and the pine needles were as slippery as the smoothest ice . Just at noon , one morning , Wilbur turned his horse -- he was not riding Kit that day -- into one of these open trails , and taking out his glasses , commenced to sweep the horizon . A heat haze was abroad , and his over-excited eyes seemed to see smoke everywhere . But , as he swept round the horizon , suddenly his whole figure stiffened . He looked long , then , with a sigh of relief , turned away , and completed his circuit of the horizon .