Rewriting the 1843 prairie fires

Original, from the 1843 Santa Fe Journal of Philip St George Cooke:

The meal rations being nearly gone, and the prairies on fire, I pushed on, leaving a small party with five wagons, to follow slowly until relieved. The march from Council Grove began amid flames and billows of smoke tossed by violent winds: (it ended with two days of snow storm and severe winter weather.) Two days this side I found grass in a timbered creek bottom, and stopped a day to feed the horses. . . .

… These companies, and a portion of A, have this year marched with me about 1500 miles in the wilderness— about half of it has been through cold rain storms, and black frosts. Sometimes without fuel: not seldom a large river was waded to procure it: exposed to the scorching blasts of the hill-top plains—now blackened by fire—now whitened by snow and frosts, I will only say for them that they have done their duty, cheerfully and like men. 

--Letters Received by the Adjutant General 1843 / C /  Cooke, Philip St Geo (307) p9

Now the rewrite in Scenes Beyond the Western Border:

Leaving the Grove, as we passed over the lofty prairie hills, all the world seemed a-fire! The unresisted winds seemed to riot with fire, which they drove to madness! Black clouds and columns of smoke were wildly tossed in the tempestuous air; whilst the flames, now darted with lightning speed and glare—now flickered with baleful illumination and stifling effect over our hurried path. Thus desperately, I pushed on for two days—regarding nothing—with a will fixed upon this haven of shelter and relief.

And now, our horses browse at will through out the forest; our log fires crackle under the noble arches of boughs and foliage; we read our letters and news; our repose is home-like; and as we gaze at our forest-roofs so cheerfully illumined, we indulge in extravagant anticipations of winter enjoyment at Fort L.

Two nights and a day were thus spent; and when, almost unwillingly, we ventured forth again from the pleasant forest, the scene and the actors were changed! Autumn—so long our tyrant—pursuing us with frosty breath on wings of flame,—in the last act had met a master; and shrieking over the desert, had fled—like a blusterer—to the South. Stern winter had come with his pure winding sheet of snow, to cover the blackened scars of the conquered and dead year.  --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, January 1852

What we have here is the matter of 1843 in Scenes Beyond the Western Border concluding with an inspired riff on this sentence in Cooke's 1843 Santa Fe Journal:

The march from Council Grove began amid flames and billows of smoke tossed by violent winds: (it ended with two days of snow storms and severe winter weather.)

See how the rewrite skillfully expands and intensifies the experience of prairie fires, keeping however the now this / now that structure in Cooke's retrospective summary.

Leaving the Grove, as we passed over the lofty prairie hills, all the world seemed a-fire! The unresisted winds seemed to riot with fire, which they drove to madness! Black clouds and columns of smoke were wildly tossed in the tempestuous air; whilst the flames, now darted with lightning speed and glare—now flickered with baleful illumination and stifling effect over our hurried path.

In place of Cooke's serviceable retrospective ("—now blackened by fire—now whitened by snow and frosts"), the 1852 rewrite substitutes an energetic metaphor of the stage. Autumn is now personified as a theatrical "tyrant" chasing the dragoons home "with frosty breath on wings of flame." Cooke's original 1843 reference to the snow-whitened plains inspires the personified figure of Winter as undertaker, covering the fire-blackened prairie "with his pure winding sheet of snow."

BLUSTERER

But in Vivenza there were certain blusterers, who often thus prated . . . --Mardi

". . . especially as Peleg, his friend and old shipmate, seemed such a blusterer." --Moby-Dick, The Ship

WINDING SHEET (Nature's)

". . . and kelp for a winding sheet." --The Haglets