_Prairie Fires_
The second evening after leaving Battleford, the party camped inside
a huge but distant arc of fire. All day the sun had been almost
hidden by smoke, though the fire itself was not visible. A hot, dry
wind from the south-west, which had licked up all moisture except
sloughs and running creeks, rushed across their front like a gust
from a furnace.
In the abstract they knew a little about prairie fires, as they did
about horses, and organic chemistry, and Confucianism, and other
popular topics. They knew, in a casual sort of way, that the long,
dry grass was as inflammable as chips soaked in kerosene. Round
their own campfires they had observed that tiny spots of burning
grass had a queer getting-away quality. Somehow the knowledge had
bitten into their unfamiliar intelligence that, on a perfectly calm
day, a little patch of fire possessed the power of raising its own
breeze.
"That's the surrounding air rushing in to fill the vacuum," Bert
explained one day, as he watched Sam trying to beat out an embryonic
prairie fire.
"That's wot you calls it, eh?" puffed Sam, who though entirely
ignorant of physics, was energetically flapping at a widening ring of
fire with the back of a shovel.
Bert picked up a bit of burning grass and calmly lighted a cigarette.
"Yes," he said, "that's the theory of it."
Sam didn't seem to be particularly impressed. For a minute or two he
leaned on his shovel like a professional road-mender, partly with the
idea of catching his wind, but chiefly to permit him to utter
something sarcastic. Meanwhile, the blaze was romping away like a
train of gunpowder alight.
"An' wot's the proper way of explainin' a feller watchin' anuvver
silly fool puttin' it aht?"
"Why, pure unadulterated ignorance, Sam, me lad," laughed Bert, who,
taking the hint, at once commenced to singe a perfectly good pair of
boots in an attempt to trample out some of the fire.
Trailey regarded the circumstance with his usual detached air of
innocent unconcern. He apparently thought that some new-fangled,
pyrotechnic display was being put on for his special amusement.
"Fancy it burning!" he ejaculated wonderingly. "I never knew grass
would burn like that. It doesn't in England."
Trailey's constant journeyings through his own private wonderland
were a source of much pleasure to him. His delightfully naive
remarks amused everyone--except his wife, Martha, who flung showers
of scorn at him, only to see it splash off his incorrigible
dreaminess and drain away uselessly. He appeared to be everlastingly
surprised that the country wasn't filled with buildings, and 'buses,
and other products of a comfortable civilization.
Westwards from Battleford, the prairie resembled a vast virgin park.
Judged as a whole, it was flat; but, upon closer examination, it
turned out to be quite rolling. Ridges alternated with dips.
Occasionally hogbacks grew into real hills, seamed with valleys and
ravines. Nature's works were all well rounded and smooth. There
were no jagged outcroppings, no splintered rocks, nor anything at all
that suggested abruptness or impetuosity. Even the angles and
corners of gullies had been planed off by Time and coated with grass.
Obviously, much patience had gone into the making of this part of the
earth; which is the reason, perhaps, why a good deal of the same
attribute is needed in getting anything out of it. A few Barr
Colonists comprehended this the first month--but not many did.
Patches of poplar and willow, bare of leaves, smudged the tawny
landscape in every direction. Shallow swamps, filled with tangled
yellow grass, which when alive had been three and four feet high,
were in some areas almost as numerous as the bluffs. Pea vines,
vetches, rose and wild fruit trees, native grasses of many kinds--all
encircled the clumps of timber in masses of luxuriant vegetation, at
this time of the year dead and dry as a cinder.
Within the bluffs, the trees were thickly interspersed with old
undergrowth, some of it half-consumed relics of previous
conflagrations. The whole land was one vast tinder box, with a wind,
like an ever-ready bellows, waiting to fan into fury any little blaze
started by some idiot with a match. There were no graded roads, nor
railways; no ploughed land, no mowing machines, no grazing cattle,
nor anything at all to contribute one jot of prevention to the
spreading of black desolation when once a fire was whisked out of
man's control. Two or three years' growth of grass covered the
earth. It actually made walking difficult, so thick was the matted
mass. Into this potential fire-trap went hundreds of innocent
people, all of whom were utterly unused to a climate whose drying,
parching wind was twin brother to the fire fiend itself.
Prior to the air becoming smoke-logged, the Trailey party had
observed, rolling up into the sky in the distance, great columns of
smoke, which stretched out and spread to the horizon with startling
rapidity. At night, the scene had been one of grandeur. With the
wind in such a direction as to carry the smoke away from them, they
saw, twenty and thirty miles off, the fringe of fire leaping and
licking its way along. Devouring tongues of yellow flame shot up
like miniature volcanic eruptions as the masses of fuel-laden brush
timber were consumed.
By the first week in May, the whole tremendous, V-shaped territory,
situated between the two rivers westwards, was ablaze for hundreds of
miles. Even in the open spaces, where the growth was relatively thin
and short, the flames, fanned by powerful air currents, were three to
six feet high. But in the ravines, and bluffs, and hollows, the
enormous amount of combustible material sent them shooting up to a
height of thirty and forty feet.
Though awe-inspiring, the sight was grand. The members of the
Trailey party, from a sightseeing standpoint at first, afterwards as
possible sufferers--were extremely interested in the spectacle.
"My word," Trailey commented to his wife, "it beats the fireworks at
the Crystal Palace. What a remarkable country this is!"
Mrs. Trailey's sensitized organs had long since become aware of
something burning. She had repeatedly stuck her small, thin nose
into the air and sniffed. "Something's certainly on fire,
somewhere," she said. "It can't be anybody's chimney--not out here,
can it?"
"Oh, no, my dear," replied Trailey; "the police would see to that.
They wouldn't let people set fire to their chimneys without coming
down on them severely. The Canadian police are very efficient.
Don't you remember Egerton R. Young, the missionary, telling us so in
his lectures at chapel?"
"What! that man who dressed up like a Red Indian, and told us all
about Canada, and then sold us a book, or something? H'm!"
"Yes; we bought one from him. "By Snowtrain and Dogshoe" it was
called, I think. Where is it, Martha? Find it, my dear. I should
like to read it again. It was very interesting, and told you all
about ice, and snow, and things like that. It might be useful to us
with all this fire about."
"You never mind Everton R. Flung, or whatever his name is. I gave
his book away; I'm sure I did. Let me see---- Oh, yes! I made Lucy
Flatt a present of it. She wanted something for a prize for her
Sunday-school class, and she wasn't quite sure whether to get a copy
of 'Josephus,' I think she called it; or whether to get 'Uncle Tom's
Cabin' with gilt edges; so I gave her this Kingston B. Strong's book
about Indians that you keep worrying me about. She said it was just
what she was looking for, only she couldn't remember the title--the
cat, her. I know if I were a Sunday-school teacher I shouldn't tell
such horrible fibs. She only mentioned it because she knew I should
give it to her--and so save her a paltry half-crown. It's
disgusting, and her with a young man like she's got. He's a lot too
good for her. I nearly told her so; but thank goodness I didn't.
She'd only have told him, and then they'd have talked us over if you
like. She's two-faced enough. I hate people who are everlastingly
picking others to pieces. If I were Lucy Flatt's young man--and
thank goodness I'm not--I'd enlist for a soldier, and go off to
India, or Ireland, or somewhere, and break her heart. What ever he
can see in her, I don't know. She isn't even pretty, let alone being
a Christian. And talk about a temper! And her tongue! If that poor
young fellow can put up with her, well, he's an angel, that's all.
And fancy you wanting me to find his book! If you want to read about
fires, read your Bible, and see what happens to... H'm!"
William Trailey had made a noise in his throat. He had snored.
Nearly every living creature possesses some sort of protective
device. This was his. They sat, not uncomfortably, atop of the
loaded wagon, towards the back, beneath the schooner-top. Forward,
silhouetted in the semi-circular opening, two figures leaned against
each other like the sides of a triangle. They were Esther and Bert,
the latter driving. Only six feet separated them from Mr. and Mrs.
Trailey, yet the two couples were worlds apart. The other wagon,
with Sam in charge, was ahead slightly.
Although thinking of something entirely different, Esther and Bert
were discussing fires. The low rumble of the wagon did not interfere
with their conversation, which was very spasmodic. The pungent smell
of smoke troubled them little.
"What a terrible thing fire is," Esther said, withdrawing her gaze
from the sun, which, like a great bloodshot eye, peered through the
thickening haze from straight before them. Bert, too, had been
looking at the fiery orb. In his own mind he had compared it with a
solicitor's red wafer seal, clinging to an old yellow parchment.
"Our friend up there is a big fire," he said, glancing at the sun.
"He'd be something of a catastrophe if he were closer, I suppose.
The people in Arabia think so, no doubt."
"What about the people in Alaska?" laughed Esther, but Bert did not
reply. Martha Trailey was knitting. Her husband was asleep, and,
from the look on his face, unquestionably he was as happy as only
oblivion can make anyone.
None of them noticed that the wind had changed its direction. The
air was laden with floating particles of ash. The smoke grew
suddenly thicker, completely veiling the sun. All through the day
the wind had been driving the distant fires obliquely across their
line of travel. Now it was coming at them head on.
Cautious Sam brought his team to a halt. A much more experienced man
than he was could not have judged how far away the fire was, nor of
its extent. He jumped down from his wagon to consult with Bert.
"Wot abaht it?"
"It's looking pretty thick. Wind's rising, too. What d'you suggest,
Sam?" A faint roar could distinctly be heard coming down the wind.
Every minute the smoke grew more opaque.
"'Ow would it be ter do some of this 'ere backfirin' they told us
abaht at Battleford?"
"All right," replied Bert. "You know how the dodge works, I suppose?"
"Why, set fire ter the blinkin' grarss--over there, s'y; an' then
move on to it when it's burnt." Sam waved his arm towards a bit of
open prairie.
Old-timers at Battleford had warned them to be particularly careful
about the smoke from prairie fires--not to get asphyxiated into
unconsciousness, and then probably burned to death.
Where they were halting was a fairly favourable position--yet it
wasn't. They were in the slough and brush country thirty or so miles
west of Battleford. There were any number of tree-fringed water
holes to walk into for protection from the fire. But sloughs meant
grass, and much of it; and a heavy growth of grass meant large
volumes of smoke, against which water was of no avail.
Sam had been doing some thinking. So had Bert, as far as that goes.
His thoughts, though, were flitting about like butterflies, and,
apart from love matters, were of no particular consequence.
"It won't be necessary ter backfire," Sam said, a new note in his
voice. "Look at that!"
Flying embers floated through the smoky pall, which was now almost
choking in its denseness. Hot gusts blew in their faces. A fearful
crackling sound, mingled with a sullen roaring, beat down the wind to
them in terrifying waves. Sam pointed at a glowing fragment of stick
which had settled in the long, twisted grass a few yards distant.
After hesitating a moment, the ember flared up into a blaze, which
crept hungrily into the surrounding grass. Slowly it devoured its
way along, then suddenly one of the powerful gusts of wind which are
so characteristic of the Western plains caught the fire and whipped
it away as fast as a man could walk.
"Gawd!" muttered Sam, open-eyed. Other specks of flame were falling
all about. Some merely spluttered and died out. All at once the
wind howled like a fury, as it always does near a prairie fire. The
smoke was suffocating.
"Foller me!" yelled Sam, refusing to be fascinated any longer.
"There's the fire!" He pointed through the choking air. A dull, red
glow lit up the huge columns of smoke.
Sam sprang aboard his wagon, grasped the lines, and then commenced
frantically to inject some of his own excitement into his horses.
Bert did likewise, feeling doubly heroic because of Esther's
presence. The women were terrified, but far from panic-stricken.
Sam had wheeled for a big, flat slough, which a little way back the
trail had skirted. Headlong into it splashed the horses, dragging at
the heavy load frenziedly, urged to their last gasp by their little
driver. Bert followed. Crashing through a fringe of water-willows
at a trot, Arthur and Freddie for once waived their right to get
stuck, and actually strained and tugged till they were fairly in the
centre of the slough, by the side of Tempest and Kruger.
"Jump into the water, Esther," cried Bert, repeating the order to the
others inside. The jolting had wakened Trailey. He coughed a good
deal, having been sleeping with his mouth wide open. Wonderment at
the sudden and dramatic twist of events occupied his sluggish mind.
Mrs. Trailey was moderately silent. A few "Mercy me's," soon taught
her that it would be safer to keep her mouth shut tightly against the
smoke.
"Thank God!" gasped Trailey fervently, as he clambered down from the
wagon and dropped into the cool, thigh-deep water. His exertions had
compelled him to inhale large draughts of furnace-like air and smoke.
The ladies were already standing in the slough, trembling and
terrified.
"Quick, Esther!--Mrs. Trailey!" Bert cried excitedly, as the
advancing wall of fire bore down on them with frightful speed. "Duck
into the water!" he yelled; then, climbing into the wagon, he dragged
the tent--which was always kept handy for Trailey to recline on--into
the slough, soaked it hastily, and flung it without ceremony
completely over the cowering females.
A pair of luxurious scarlet blankets fell off the load with the tent,
so Bert soaked these also, and threw them over Trailey.
"What about yourself?" called Esther anxiously--"and Sam?"
"Don't worry about us, Esther. Stoop right down into the water, all
of you," commanded Bert. Sam had already pulled the other tent off
his own load, and soaked it for him and Bert to crawl beneath.
The fire, propelled by a fierce wind, and fanned into a lurid furnace
by its own draught, roared and crackled all around them. The slough
split the blaze in two. The horses snorted and tugged to get free;
then stood still, shivering with fear. Sam made one or two brave
attempts to splash them with water, but in vain. He was forced to
retreat. Almost suffocated, he cringed again beneath the tent.
The slough was oval-shaped, and was probably two or three acres in
extent. Raging like ten thousand demons, the main fire devoured its
edges, licking everything up in its path, living vegetation and dead
alike. Tongues of crimson flame swept over the water, and columns of
spark-laden smoke rose high into the air. Impatient of the slough's
obstruction, glowing embers leaped the water and fell into the grass
beyond, continuing their consuming paths ahead of the main fire.
Esther and her mother huddled together, struck speechless with the
suddenness of the catastrophe. However, within twenty minutes, the
danger had passed. Although patches of timber and thick undergrowth
still burned and smoked furiously all around them, the prairie grass
was swept clear.
"By Jove, Sam! sloughs are useful things, after all," remarked Bert
when they poked their heads from under the tent's enveloping folds.
"Not 'alf, they ain't," replied Sam, inhaling a deep, smoky breath.
In a flat, toneless voice, Trailey stuck his head forth, and said:
"God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform," and then he,
too, drew in a large mouthful of very welcome air. He seemed pleased
to be alive, which, no doubt, accounted for the wonderful relevancy
of his quotation.
Lifting the blankets off his shoulders, he calmly surveyed the
smoking landscape. "Ah-h-h," he sighed, "wonderful!--wonderful!"
Bert withdrew the tent from the half-smothered ladies. "All's well!"
he cried joyously. "The fire's passed over, and I don't think we've
suffered any damage in the least--beyond a few holes burned in these
blankets, perhaps; and one or two in the wagon-covers." He was
examining the tents, and the blankets, and the schooner-tops,
appraising the damage. Sam was at the horses' heads, comforting the
faithful brutes with pats and caresses, and queer expressions of
fondness and appreciation, like men do when no one is listening.
When Martha Trailey saw that the dripping blankets had been
instrumental in saving her husband from the fire and smoke, she was
greatly moved. "Oh, Mr. Tressider!" she exclaimed with (for her)
deep emotion. "What a godsend! They've saved my husband's life,"
and she regarded first Bert, and then the saturated and somewhat
soiled blankets gratefully.
William Trailey cast his eyes upwards into the smoke with a vacuously
pious gesture. "His work, my dear," he murmured abstractedly. "You
must never part with them."
"Part with them! Not for worlds! How dare you suggest such a
thing?" Martha bent down to inspect the blankets more closely. With
shining eyes and tender fingers she examined three or four tiny,
brown holes which had been burned in them by drifting sparks.
Bert was secretly elated. He alone really knew why he had presented
the blankets to Mrs. Trailey; although intuition might have whispered
the reason to Esther.
Sam was unhooking a team preparatory to doubling-up on the other
wagon. "When you've all done prayin' we may as well get aht of
'ere," he broke in irreverently; then, looking at the depressing
scene about him, he added: "There's a lot of things ter be done yet.
Wot a stinkin', smoky, black-lookin' ash-'eap! By gum, if it ain't!"
Bert saw that the ladies were experiencing some difficulty in
releasing themselves from the slough's muddy bottom, so he told Sam
to wait a minute while he rendered them some assistance.
"You hang on to Mrs. Trailey's arm," he said to the good lady's
husband, who was still surveying with a sort of childish curiosity
the smoking world around him----"and you take my arm----Esther."
Esther obeyed. She stole a shy glance at Bert's face upon hearing
him call her by her Christian name. Something in her look made him
grasp her hand, which he passionately squeezed thirty or forty times
during their progress shorewards. Esther reciprocated, just
sufficiently modestly to convey exactly the right message. Bert's
heart pounded and jumped till he became quite dizzy with the
intensity of his joy.
For a girl of Esther's calibre to return the pressure of his hand,
especially when accompanied by such an eloquent avowal as that
written in her lovely eyes, showed plainly enough where her
affections lay. If actions speak louder than words, then Bert's
silent proposal was answered by a joyous shout of consent. He was
radiantly happy, almost to the extent that Esther herself was.
In the exuberance of his joy, he bubbled over to Sam as they
extricated the wagons from the slough: "Congratulate me, you ugly
little devil!"
"Wot for?"
"I'm engaged. It amounts to that, anyway. Esther loves me, Sam."
Sam slipped a trace off a whiffletree, then turned round to have a
good look at his companion.
"Rushin' things, aren't yer?"
"We've cared for one another all along. I suppose the excitement
helped things a hit. But isn't she a wonderful girl, Sam?"
"The blinkin' world's full of wonderful girls. Leastw'ys, London is."
"That's what I used to think. But I know different now. Esther's
queen of 'em all. And thank God for prairie fires! that's all I've
got to say."
"Gawd's bein' thanked fer a lot of things jus' nah, ain't
'e?--sloughs, an' blankits, an' nah prairie fires. Wot's 'e got ter
do wiv it all? Ooo d'yer reckon ter thank when yer gets things like
a broken neck, or a missis wot runs away wiv anuvver bloke, or----"
"Oh, shut up! you're nothing but a wet blanket yourself and a cold
blooded heathen to boot. Haven't you ever had any religious
training?"
"No."
"Or attended church, and listened to clever sermons, and all that
sort of thing?"
"No, never. My guv'ner always told me ter be careful ter do to
uvvers wot they did ter me----"
"What you'd _like_ them to do to you, I suppose you mean?"
"All right; 'ave it yer own way. It all comes ter the same thing.
But 'e was only a blinkin' cab driver, so 'e couldn't know anythink
abaht religion. I'm glad you've got that gel of Trailey's, though;
she's a good un."