Part 11 (2/2)

Far off, low lying like a pale blue cloud, was a faint line of something that seemed to alter in look, to move, to rise and fall, to advance--down the wind. She never had seen it, but knew what it must be--the prairie fire! The lack of fall burning had left it fuel even now.

Vast numbers of prairie grouse came by, hurtling through the silence, alighting, strutting with high heads, fearlessly close. Gray creatures came hopping, halting or running fully extended--the prairie hares, fleeing far ahead. Band after band of antelope came on, running easily, but looking back. A heavy line of large birds, black to the eye, beat on laboriously, alighted, and ran onward with incredible speed--the wild turkeys, fleeing the terror. Came also broken bands of white-tailed deer, easy, elastic, bounding irregularly, looking back at the miles-wide cloud, which now and then spun up, black as ink toward the sky, but always flattened and came onward with the wind.

Danger? Yes! Worse than Indians, for yonder were the cattle; there lay the parked train, two hundred wagons, with the household goods that meant their life savings and their future hope in far-off Oregon. Women were there, and children--women with babes that could not walk. True, the water lay close, but it was narrow and deep and offered no salvation against the terror now coming on the wings of the wind.

That the prairie fire would find in this strip fuel to carry it even at this green season of the gra.s.s the wily p.a.w.nees had known. This was cheaper than a.s.sault by arms. They would wither and scatter the white nation here! Worse than plumed warriors was yonder broken undulating line of the prairie fire.

Instinct told the white girl, gave her the same terror as that which inspired all these fleeing creatures. But what could she do? This was an elemental, gigantic wrath, and she but a frightened girl. She guessed rather than reasoned what it would mean when yonder line came closer, when it would sweep down, roaring, over the wagon train.

The mules began to bray, to plunge, too wise to undertake flight. She would at least save them. She would mount one and ride with the alarm for the camp.

The wise animals let her come close, did not plunge, knew that she meant help, allowed her trembling hands to loose one end of the hobble straps, but no more. As soon as each mule got its feet it whirled and was away.

No chance to hold one of them now, and if she had mounted a hobbled animal it had meant nothing. But she saw them go toward the stream, toward the camp. She must run that way herself.

It was so far! There was a faint smell of smoke and a mysterious low humming in the air. Was it too late?

A swift, absurd, wholly useless memory came to her from the preceding day. Yes, it would be no more than a prayer, but she would send it out blindly into the air.... Some instinct--yes, quite likely.

Molly ran to her abandoned wagonette, pushed in under the white tilt where her pallet bed lay rolled, her little personal plunder stored about. Fumbling, she found her sulphur matches. She would build her signal fire. It was, at least, all that she could do. It might at least alarm the camp.

Trembling, she looked about her, tore her hands breaking off little f.a.ggots of tall dry weed stems, a very few bits of wild thorn and fragments of a plum thicket in the nearest shallow coulee. She ran to her hillock, stooped and broke a dozen matches, knowing too little of fire-making in the wind. But at last she caught a wisp of dry gra.s.s, a few dry stems--others, the bits of wild plum branches. She s.h.i.+elded her tiny blaze with her frock, looking back over her shoulder, where the black curtain was rising taller. Now and then, even in the blaze of full day, a red, dull gleam rose and pa.s.sed swiftly. The entire country was afire. Fuel? Yes; and a wind.

The humming in the air grew, the scent of fire came plainly. The plover rose around their nests and circled, crying piteously. The scattered hares became a great body of moving gray, like camouflage blots on the still undulating waves of green and silver, pa.s.sing but not yet past--soon now to pa.s.s.

The girl, her hands arrested, her arms out, in her terror, stood trying to remember. Yes, it was three short puffs and a long pillar. She caught her shawl from her shoulder, stooped, spread it with both hands, drove in her stiffest bough for a partial support, cast in under the edge, timidly, green gra.s.s enough to make smoke, she hoped.

An instant and she sprang up, drawing the shawl swiftly aside, the next moment jealously cutting through the smoke with a side sweep of the covering.

It worked! The cut-off column rose, bent over in a little detached cloud. Again, with a quick flirt, eager eyed, and again the detached irregular ball! A third time--Molly rose, and now cast on dry gra.s.s and green gra.s.s till a tall and moving pillar of cloud by day arose.

At least she had made her prayer. She could do no more. With vague craving for any manner of refuge, she crawled to her wagon seat and covered her eyes. She knew that the wagon train was warned--they now would need but little warning, for the menace was written all across the world.

She sat she knew not how long, but until she became conscious of a roaring in the air. The line of fire had come astonis.h.i.+ngly soon, she reasoned. But she forgot that. All the vanguard and the full army of wild creatures had pa.s.sed by now. She alone, the white woman, most helpless of the great creatures, stood before the terror.

She sprang out of the wagon and looked about her. The smoke crest, black, red-shot, was coming close. The gra.s.s here would carry it.

Perhaps yonder on the flint ridge where the cover was short--why had she not thought of that long ago? It was half a mile, and no sure haven then.

She ran, her shawl drawn about her head--ran with long, free stride, her limbs envigored by fear, her full-bosomed body heaving chokingly. The smoke was now in the air, and up the unshorn valley came the fire remorselessly, licking up the under lying layer of sun-cured gra.s.s which a winter's snow had matted down.

She could never reach the ridge now. Her overburdened lungs functioned but little. The world went black, with many points of red. Everywhere was the odor and feel of smoke. She fell and gasped, and knew little, cared little what might come. The elemental terror at last had caught its prey--soft, young, beautiful prey, this huddled form, a bit of brown and gray, edged with white of wind-blown skirt. It would be a sweet morsel for the flames.

Along the knife-edged flint ridge which Molly had tried to reach there came the pounding of hoofs, heavier than any of these that had pa.s.sed.

The cattle were stampeding directly down wind and before the fire.

Dully, Molly heard the lowing, heard the far shouts of human voices.

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