WILD FIRE
The afternoon wore on, much occupied with duties connected with the sad
scenes of the tragedy. No word came of Woodhull, or of two others who
could not be identified as among the victims at the death camp. No word,
either, came from the Missourians, and so cowed or dulled were most of
the men of the caravan that they did not venture far, even to undertake
trailing out after the survivors of the massacre. In sheer indecision
the great aggregation of wagons, piled up along the stream, lay
apathetic, and no order came for the advance.
Jed and his cow guards were obliged to drive the cattle back into the
ridges for better grazing, for the valley and adjacent country, which
had not been burned over by the Indians the preceding fall, held a lower
matting of heavy dry grass through which the green grass of springtime
appeared only in sparser and more smothered growth. As many of the
cattle and horses even now showed evil results from injudicious driving
on the trail, it was at length decided to make a full day's stop so that
they might feed up.
Molly Wingate, now assured that the Pawnees no longer were in the
vicinity, ventured out for pasturage with her team of mules, which she
had kept tethered close to her own wagon. She now rapidly was becoming a
good frontierswoman and thoughtful of her locomotive power. Taking the
direction of the cattle herd, she drove from camp a mile or two,
resolving to hobble and watch her mules while they grazed close to the
cattle guards.
She was alone. Around her, untouched by any civilization, lay a wild,
free world. The ceaseless wind of the prairie swept old and new grass
into a continuous undulating surface, silver crested, a wave always
passing, never past. The sky was unspeakably fresh and blue, with its
light clouds, darker edged toward the far horizon of the unbounded,
unbroken expanse of alternating levels and low hills. Across the broken
ridges passed the teeming bird life of the land. The Eskimo plover in
vast bands circled and sought their nesting places. Came also the sweep
of cinnamon wings as the giant sickle-billed curlews wheeled in vast
aerial phalanx, with their eager cries, "Curlee! Curlee! Curlee!"--the
wildest cry of the old prairies. Again, from some unknown,
undiscoverable place, came the liquid, baffling, mysterious note of the
nesting upland plover, sweet and clean as pure white honey.
Now and again a band of antelope swept ghostlike across a ridge. A great
gray wolf stood contemptuously near on a hillock, gazing speculatively
at the strange new creature, the white woman, new come in his lands. It
was the wilderness, rude, bold, yet sweet.
Who shall say what thoughts the flowered wilderness of spring carried
to the soul of a young woman beautiful and ripe for love, her heart as
sweet and melting as that of the hidden plover telling her mate of
happiness? Surely a strange spell, born of youth and all this free world
of things beginning, fell on the soul of Molly Wingate. She sat and
dreamed, her hands idle, her arms empty, her beating pulses full, her
heart full of a maid's imaginings.
How long she sat alone, miles apart, an unnoticed figure, she herself
could not have said--surely the sun was past zenith--when, moved by some
vague feeling of her own, she noticed the uneasiness of her feeding
charges.
The mules, hobbled and side-lined as Jed had shown her, turned face to
the wind, down the valley, standing for a time studious and uncertain
rather than alarmed. Then, their great ears pointed, they became uneasy;
stirred, stamped, came back again to their position, gazing steadily in
the one direction.
The ancient desert instinct of the wild ass, brought down through
thwarted generations, never had been lost to them. They had
foreknowledge of danger long before horses or human beings could suspect
it.
Danger? What was it? Something, surely. Molly sprang to her feet. A band
of antelope, running, had paused a hundred yards away, gazing back.
Danger--yes; but what?
The girl ran to the crest of the nearest hillock and looked back. Even
as she did so, it seemed that she caught touch of the great wave of
apprehension spreading swiftly over the land.
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 grass the wily Pawnees had known. This was
cheaper than assault 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
faggots 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 grass, a
few dry stems--others, the bits of wild plum branches. She shielded 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 passed 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, passing but not yet
past--soon now to pass.
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 grass 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 grass and
green grass 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 astonishingly soon, she
reasoned. But she forgot that. All the vanguard and the full army of
wild creatures had passed 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 grass 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 grass 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 passed.
The cattle were stampeding directly down wind and before the fire.
Dully, Molly heard the lowing, heard the far shouts of human voices.
Then, it seemed to her, she heard a rush of other hoofs coming toward
her. Yes, something was pounding down the slope toward her wagon,
toward her. Buffalo, she thought, not knowing the buffalo were gone from
that region.
But it was not the buffalo, nor yet the frightened herd, nor yet her
mules. Out of the smoke curtain broke a rider, his horse flat; a black
horse with flying frontlet--she knew what horse. She knew what man rode
him, too, black with smoke as he was now. He swept close to the wagon
and was off. Something flickered there, with smoke above it, beyond the
wagon by some yards. Then he was in saddle and racing again, his eyes
and teeth white in the black mask of his face.
She heard no call and no command. But an arm reached down to hers, swept
up--and she was going onward, the horn of a saddle under her, her body
held to that of the rider, swung sidewise. The horse was guided not down
but across the wind.
Twice and three times, silent, he flung her off and was down, kindling
his little back fires--the only defense against a wildfire. He breathed
thickly, making sounds of rage.
"Will they never start?" he broke out at last. "The fools--the fools!"
But by now it was too late. A sudden accession in the force of the wind
increased the speed of the fire. The little line near Molly's wagon
spared it, but caught strength. Could she have seen through the veils of
smoke she would have seen a half dozen fires this side the line of the
great fire. But fire is fire.
Again he was in saddle and had her against his thigh, his body, flung
any way so she came with the horse. And now the horse swerved, till he
drove in the steel again and again, heading him not away from the fire
but straight into it!
Molly felt a rush of hot air; surging, actual flame singed the ends of
her hair. She felt his hand again and again sweep over her skirts,
wiping out the fire as it caught. It was blackly hot, stifling--and then
it was past!
Before her lay a wide black world. Her wagon stood, even its white top
spared by miracle of the back fire. But beyond came one more line of
smoke and flame. The black horse neighed now in the agony of his hot
hoofs. His rider swung him to a lower level, where under the tough cover
had lain moist ground, on which uncovered water now glistened. He flung
her into the mire of it, pulled up his horse there and himself lay down,
full length, his blackened face in the moist mud above which still
smoked stubbles of the flame-shorn grass. He had not spoken to her, nor
she to him. His eyes rested on the singed ends of her blown hair, her
charred garments, in a frowning sympathy which found no speech. At
length he brought the reins of his horse to her, flirting up the singed
ends of the long mane, further proof of their narrow escape.
"I must try once more," he said. "The main fire might catch the wagon."
He made off afoot. She saw him start a dozen nucleuses of fires; saw
them advance till they halted at the edge of the burned ground, beyond
the wagon, so that it stood safe in a vast black island. He came to her,
drove his scorched boots deep as he could into the mud and sat looking
up the valley toward the emigrant train. An additional curtain of smoke
showed that the men there now were setting out back fires of their own.
He heard her voice at last:
"It is the second time you have saved me--saved my life, I think. Why
did you come?"
He turned to her as she sat in the edge of the wallow, her face streaked
with smoke, her garments half burned off her limbs. She now saw his
hands, which he was thrusting out on the mud to cool them, and sympathy
was in her gaze also.
"I don't know why I came," said he. "Didn't you signal for me? Jackson
told me you could."
"No, I had no hope. I meant no one. It was only a prayer."
"It carried ten miles. We were all back-firing. It caught in the
sloughs--all the strips of old grass. I thought of your camp, of you. At
least your signal told me where to ride."
At length he waved his hand.
"They're safe over there," said he. "Think of the children!"
"Yes, and you gave me my one chance. Why?"
"I don't know. I suppose it was because I am a brute!" The bitterness
of his voice was plain.
"Come, we must go to the wagons," said Molly at length, and would have
risen.
"No, not yet. The burned ground must cool before we can walk on it. I
would not even take my horse out on it again." He lifted a foot of the
black Spaniard, whose muzzle quivered whimperingly. "All right, old
boy!" he said, and stroked the head thrust down to him. "It might have
been worse."
His voice was so gentle that Molly Wingate felt a vague sort of
jealousy. He might have taken her scorched hand in his, might at least
have had some thought for her welfare. He did speak at last as to that.
"What's in your wagon?" he asked. "We had better go there to wait. Have
you anything along--oil, flour, anything to use on burns? You're burned.
It hurts me to see a woman suffer."
"Are not you burned too?"
"Yes."
"It pains you?"
"Oh, yes, of course."
He rose and led the way over the damper ground to the wagon, which stood
smoke-stained but not charred, thanks to his own resourcefulness.
Molly climbed up to the seat, and rummaging about found a jar of butter,
a handful of flour.
"Come up on the seat," said she. "This is better medicine than nothing."
He climbed up and sat beside her. She frowned again as she now saw how
badly scorched his hands were, his neck, his face. His eyebrows, caught
by one wisp of flame, were rolled up at the ends, whitened. One cheek
was a dull red.
Gently, without asking his consent, she began to coat his burned skin as
best she might with her makeshift of alleviation. His hand trembled
under hers.
"Now," she said, "hold still. I must fix your hand some more."
She still bent over, gently, delicately touching his flesh with hers.
And then all in one mad, unpremeditated instant it was done!
His hand caught hers, regardless of the pain to either. His arm went
about her, his lips would have sought hers.
It was done! Now he might repent.
A mad way of wooing, inopportune, fatal as any method he possibly could
have found, moreover a cruel, unseemly thing to do, here and with her
situated thus. But it was done.
Till now he had never given her grounds for more than guessing. Yet now
here was this!
He came to his senses as she thrust him away; saw her cheeks whiten, her
eyes grow wide.
"Oh!" she said. "Oh! Oh! Oh!"
"Oh!" whispered Will Banion to himself, hoarsely.
He held his two scorched hands each side her face as she drew back,
sought to look into her eyes, so that she might believe either his hope,
his despair or his contrition.
But she turned her eyes away. Only he could hear her outraged
protest--"Oh! Oh! Oh!"