Chapter XI The Prairie Fire
A few days later the travelers drove into a dreary, straggling little settlement of a few log and sod shanties on a little stream called Salt Creek. Here they spent the night, glad of the company of other white settlers. There was a general store in the little settlement, at which Joshua Peniman bought a barrel of salt pork, a barrel of flour, sugar, coffee, rice, tea, beans, dried peas, and a bucket of lard and a firkin of butter.
“I am doubtful,” he said as he loaded them into his wagon, “whether we will come to another place where we could get supplies.”
Early the next morning they loaded up their wagons, bade farewell to the other movers, and struck off across the trackless prairies.
It was still early, and the drum of the prairie-chickens came to their ears across the silence of the plains. Joe and Lige took their guns and went in search of them, and soon returned with a couple of fine young hens, which Mrs. Peniman cooked for their dinner.
A strong, hot south wind was blowing, which toward evening increased to a gale. Even the shadows of night did not bring relief from the heat, which seemed to increase rather than diminish. Mrs. Peniman could not sleep. With a feeling of suffocation and uneasiness upon her she tossed from side to side. The air was hot and close, and in her nostrils there was a pungent smell. With the instinct of danger strong upon her she sprang up, and jumping out of the wagon looked about her.
Off to the south the sky was red, and straining her eyes through the darkness she saw, low against the horizon, a leaping tongue of flame.
She ran to where her husband lay sleeping. “Joshua,” she whispered, laying her hand on his arm, “Joshua, wake up! I smell smoke, and away over yonder I think I see a fire——”
“Fire!” the sleeping man was wide awake and on his feet in a moment. “Fire? Where?”
Mrs. Peniman pointed.
For an instant he stood staring at the little tongues of flame that licked up over the horizon, then sprang to the pickets and began untying the horses.
“Prairie fire!” he cried. “And there’s no telling where it will stop in this wind! Call the boys!”
When the boys were roused he gave them no time to ask questions. In quick, nervous tones he issued his orders.
“Hitch up as quick as you can, Joe,” he shouted, “there’s a prairie fire over yonder! Lige, get up the black team. Sam, run and bring in the cow. Pack those things in the wagons, Hannah, never mind order now. Ruth, get a couple of pails of water out of the kegs. Paul, pull up those stake-pins, wind up the ropes and throw them in the wagons! Hurry, hurry, all of you, we haven’t a moment to lose!”
Working with feverish haste he turned often and glanced at the line of red on the horizon.
“It’s miles away yet,” he said in a low voice to his wife; “we may be able to get out of its path, but with this wind——”
He stopped abruptly, then leaping into the wagon shouted, “Come on, in with you, never mind those things, Hannah, never mind anything now! The wind has changed, and that fire will be down upon us in less than half an hour. Whip up your horses, boys, don’t spare them now! With that fire behind us——”
He leaned forward as he spoke and lashed his team; the horses plunged forward with a leap that made the wagon careen.
Over the coarse prairie grass they fled, the horses straining and plunging, while they looked continually behind them to where the red line had left the horizon now and was creeping toward them, the red tongues of flame leaping higher and higher as they caught the dry grass and rosin weeds.
The air grew suffocatingly hot, and before long particles of burned grass and weeds, carried by the gale, began to fall about them.
“Watch that nothing catches fire in the wagon, Hannah,” shouted Joshua Peniman, bending forward and laying the whip across the backs of the petted team that had scarcely ever felt a blow in their lives before. “Watch the children’s clothing. Have wet cloths handy!”
The wind, a gale before, now seemed to have increased in fury, and before it the fire leaped and roared like a furnace.
“Faster, Joe, faster!” yelled his father; “it’s gaining on us, we’ve got to reach a stream or draw of some kind——”
Leaning far forward on his seat with the whip in his hand and the reins clutched hard, Joe did not wait for the finish of the sentence. With voice and whip and lines he urged the horses forward, shouting at them, shaking the lines over their straining backs, whirling the whip about their heads, as in a blinding reek of smoke and dust they thundered on, while closer and closer behind them came the roaring flames.
The horses were soon panting and lathered with sweat, staggering and stumbling under the strain of the heavy wagons, and poor Cherry, fastened on behind, was almost pulled off her feet, and slid and stumbled bawling wildly.
The whole sky was illuminated now, and the air so filled with smoke that they could hardly breathe. Behind them the ominous crackling and snapping of dry grass grew louder and louder, as the fire, fanned by the high wind, rushed through the tall, dry prairie grass with the velocity of a cyclone.
All at once without decreasing the pace of his horses, Mr. Peniman stood up in the wagon and looked back.
They heard him utter a sharp, inarticulate sound, and the horses were stopped with a jerk that almost threw them upon their haunches.
“No use,” he shouted, leaping out, “we can never make it! Got to fight it out here! Out everybody, and fight for your lives!”
Joe and Lige stopped their teams, and drawing the wagons up together they leaped out and tied their teams to the rings in the side of the other wagon.
“The kegs!” shouted Joshua Peniman, “roll out the kegs, and those gunny-sacks! We’ve got to back-fire, it’s our only chance now!”
With frantic haste the boys rolled out the precious kegs of water, while Mrs. Peniman, with an instinctive knowledge of what to do, threw out a couple of brooms, some old coats, and a bundle of gunny-sacks.
The children, aroused at the first call of danger, had all gotten into their clothes by this time. With their heads enveloped in wet towels, wet brooms and gunny-sacks in their hands, they stood ready to do as their father commanded.
Having secured the horses firmly to the wagons Joshua Peniman rushed back over the way they had come for some two hundred feet, and called the family to him.
“We’ve got to set a back-fire here,” he shouted; “watch it closely, don’t let it get away from you, and beat out every tongue of fire that tries to get beyond you. Have your brooms and sacks ready. Now!”
The whole family, with the exception of Mary and David, who had been left asleep in the wagons with Spotty to guard them, were now lined up at a distance of some two hundred yards nearer to the oncoming fire than the wagons. It required courage for young people who had never, until they had begun this journey, encountered real danger, to face the roaring wall of flame that rushed toward them, but they were well disciplined and obeyed their father’s orders implicitly.
Seeing that they were all in readiness Joshua Peniman stooped and put a match to the grass at his feet. Instantly it leaped into a flame. He let it burn a little way, then whipped out the edges, making a straight track of fire of about a hundred and fifty feet wide. This Joe instantly recognized as a “fire-guard.” Then backing up a few steps at a time, and keeping the flames under control, they let this second or “back-fire” burn toward the wagon, leaving between them and the oncoming wall of flame a large area of burned-over ground. This they continued to do until they had described a complete circle about the wagons.
“Watch out there, Joe, keep your eye to the right there,” yelled Mr. Peniman, black and smoke-begrimed and beating with all his might at a vicious tongue of flame that threatened to get beyond him. “Look out there, Lige! Nina, be careful to keep your skirts out of the fire! Watch behind you, Sam; better wet your broom again! Beat out that fire on your left there, Hannah!”
With her skirts pinned up about her, her hair blown down, and her sleeves rolled to her elbows, Mrs. Peniman wielded broom and sack, beating and firing as she went backwards, step at a time.
“Oh, Mother, will it get us?” cried Ruth, as a great gust of wind enveloped them in smoke and increased the roar and crackle of the flames that rushed toward them.
“Don’t be frightened, Ruthie,” she shouted above the wind. “Keep your broom going! Don’t stop to look. God will take care of us. Watch your side there, Nina; beat it out—beat it out! Here, Sam, come here and work by Nina; she needs help!”
As Sam left his station she ran to where he had been and with furious strokes of broom and sack beat out the fire that was creeping away from them.
Back-firing and beating out the flames as they went, they gradually worked back toward the wagons, leaving behind them a smoking black ring nearly two hundred feet in circumference.
Their faces and hands were black and blistered, their feet scorched, their eyes burning and smarting, and their lungs wheezed with the effort to breathe through the suffocating smoke and ashes that filled the air.
The horses, half-wild with terror, were rearing and plunging, and poor Cherry running madly in circles as far as her rope permitted.
“Run to the horses, Joe,” shouted his father, after a swift backward glance at the wagons. “Put wet sacks over their heads and throw wet blankets over them! Lige, here, you take Joe’s place! Watch out there, Mother, beat out that fire on thy right!”
Joe threw down his sack and ran with all speed to the horses. With soothing words and pats he did his best to quiet them, throwing their blankets over their backs to protect them from flying sparks, and enveloping their heads in wet sacks, wrung from the precious and fast-disappearing kegs of water.
He had difficulty in getting near enough to the distracted Cherry to do anything for her, but after a wild struggle, during which he was dragged in a wide circle by her rope, he succeeded in getting a wet sack over her head and a blanket on her back. The chickens were squawking and the little pigs squealing in their boxes, and he stopped long enough to throw a bucketful of water over them, and pitch a tarpaulin over their boxes. Then he rushed back to the wildly beating family.
As they backed and fired they began to see outside the ring of fire grey spectral shapes dashing by in the shadows, running madly, frantically, with the terror of the crackling flames behind.
All at once the ground under their feet seemed to tremble, and the horses, crouching and shivering with terror, began again to rear and plunge.
Dropping his sack Joe ran to the heads of one, Lige to the other, while Mr. Peniman dashed to the heads of the third team.
“To the wagons, to the wagons!” he shouted, and saw his wife and the other children drop their sacks and dash for the wagons as the quaking of the ground and a great roar like that of an approaching cyclone rose above the crackling of the flames.
“What is it? What is it?” shouted Joe, terror-stricken.
“Buffaloes!” yelled his father. “Stampeded by the fire! Get your guns—fire into them as they come—please God our back-fire may keep us from being trampled by them!”
There was a moment of awful suspense, while the ground beneath their feet seemed to rock and tremble with the impact of the wildly charging herd. Through the smoke and dust they could make out a great mass of enormous reddish-brown bodies being hurled madly forward before the pursuing flames. Then the terrified creatures made a wide circle to avoid the black ring of burned ground, which they seemed to fear, and the herd of buffaloes, grim, monstrous shapes in the dusk of early morning, thundered by and passed out of sight.
When the circle of back-fire was completed the nearly exhausted family leaned for a moment on their wet brooms to breathe. The last of the water in the kegs went to wet blankets and tarpaulins to spread over the canvas covers of the wagons, and as the flames swept toward them they took their stand about the wagons, still armed with their wet brooms and sacks, to make a last struggle against the fire that came crackling and rushing toward them.