Sentence:  Down in the bottoms the sycamore and cottonwood are casting off their yellowing leaves; but the white oak will cling to her gorgeous finery till the blizzard comes shrieking up the gulch to wrest it from her, or until the <WSD>winking</WSD> prairie-fire leaps among her branches, and mounting upward to the highest limbs, finally leaves the vain beauty a blackened skeleton. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  To gleam fitfully or intermitently; to twinkle; to flicker.