CHAPTER XVIII
THE WAVE OF FLAME
Pratt was pale, as could be seen where his face was not smudged withearth and axle-grease. He came and accepted his pony's bridle fromFrances' hand.
"What shall we do?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.
It was plain that the teamster had little idea of what was wise or bestto do. The young fellow turned to Frances of the ranges quite as amatter of course. Evidently, she knew so much more about the perilouscircumstances than he did that Pratt was not ashamed to take Frances'commands.
"This is goin' to be a hot corner," the teamster drawled again; butPratt waited for the girl to speak.
"Are you frightened, Pratt?" she asked, suddenly, looking down at himfrom her saddle, and smiling rather wistfully.
"Not yet," said the young fellow. "I expect I shall be if it is veryterrible."
"But you don't expect me to be scared?" asked Frances, still gravely.
"I don't think it is your nature to show apprehension," returned he.
"I'm not like other girls, you mean. That girl from Boston, forinstance?" Frances said, looking away at the line of fire again. "Well!"and she sighed. "I am not, I suppose. With daddy I've been up againstjust such danger as this before. You never saw a prairie fire, Pratt?"
"No, ma'am!" exclaimed Pratt. "I never did."
"The grass and greasewood are just right for it now. Mack is correct,"the girl went on. "This will be a hot corner."
"And that mighty quick!" cried Mack.
"But you don't propose to stay here?" gasped Pratt.
"Not much! Hold your mules, Mack," she called to the grumbling teamster."I'm going to make a flare."
"Better do somethin' mighty suddent, Miss," growled the man.
She spurred Molly up to the wagon-seat and there seized one of theblankets.
"Got a sharp knife, Pratt?" she asked, shaking out the folds of theblanket.
"Yes."
"Slit this blanket, then--lengthwise. Halve it," urged Frances. "And bequick."
"That's right, Miss Frances!" called the teamster. "Set a backfire bothsides of the trail. We got to save ourselves. Be sure ye run it a mileor more."
"Do you mean to burn the prairie ahead of us?" panted Pratt.
"Yes. We'll have to. I hope nobody will be hurt. But the way that fireis coming back there," said Frances, firmly, "the flames will be tenfeet high when they get here."
"You don't mean it!"
"Yes. You'll see. Pray we may get a burned-over area before us in timeto escape. The flames will leap a couple of hundred feet or more beforethe supply of gas--or whatever it is that burns so high above theground--expires. The breath of that flame will scorch us to cinders ifit reaches us. It will kill and char a big steer in a few seconds. Oh,it is a serious situation we're in, Pratt!"
"Can't we keep ahead of it?" demanded the young man, anxiously.
"Not for long," replied Frances, with conviction. "I've seen more thanone such fire, as I tell you. There! Take this rawhide."
The ranchman's daughter was not idle while she talked. She showed himhow to knot the length of rawhide which she had produced from under thewagon-seat to one end of his share of the blanket. Her own fingers werebusy with the other half meanwhile.
"Into your saddle now, Pratt. Take the right-hand side of the trail.Ride as fast as you can toward the river when I give the word. Go amile, at least."
The ponies were urged close to the campfire and he followed Frances'example when she flung the tail of her piece of blanket into the blaze.The blankets caught fire and began to smoulder and smoke. There wasenough cotton mixed with the wool to cause it to catch fire quickly.
"All right! We're off!" shouted Frances, and spurred her pinto in theopposite direction. Immediately the smouldering blanket-stuff was blowninto a live flame. Wherever it touched the dry grass and clumps of lowbrush fire started like magic.
Immediately Pratt reproduced her work on the other side of the trail. Atright angles with the beaten path, they fled across the prairie, leavinglittle fires in their wake that spread and spread, rising higher andhigher, and soon roaring into quenchless conflagrations.
These patches of fire soon joined and increased to a wider and widerswath of flame. The fire traveled slowly westward, but rushed eastward,propelled by the wind.
Wider and wider grew the sea of flame set by the burning blankets. LikeFrances, Pratt kept his mount at a fast lope--the speediest pace of thetrained cow-pony--nor did he stop until the blanket was consumed to therawhide knot.
Then he wheeled his mount to look back. He could see nothing but flamesand smoke at first. He did not know how far Frances had succeeded intraveling with her "flare"; but he was quite sure that he had come morethan a mile from the wagon-trail.
He could soon see a broadening patch of burned-over prairie in the midstof the swirling flames and smoke. His pony snorted, and backed away fromthe approach-fire; but Pratt wheeled the grey around to the westward,and where the flames merely crept and sputtered through the greasewoodand against the wind, he spurred his mount to leap over the line offire.
The earth was hot, and every time the pony set a hoof down smoke orsparks flew upward; but Pratt had to get back to the trail. With thequirt he forced on the snorting grey, and finally reached a place wherethe fire had completely passed and the ground was cooler.
Ashes flew in clouds about him; the smoke from the west drove in a thickmass between him and the darkened sky. Only the glare of the roaringfire revealed objects and landmarks.
The backfire had burned for many yards westward, to meet the threateningwave of flame flying on the wings of the wind. To the east, the line offlame Pratt and Frances had set was rising higher and higher.
He saw the wagon standing in the midst of the smoke, Mack Hinkmanholding the snorting, kicking mules with difficulty, while a wild littlefigure on a pony galloped back from the other side of the trail.
"All right, Pratt?" shrieked Frances. "Get up, Mack; we've no time tolose!"
The teamster let the mules go. Yet he dared not let them take their owngait. The thought of that cracked axle disturbed him.
The wagon led, however, through the smoke and dust; the two ponies fellin behind upon the trail. Frances and Pratt looked at each other. Theyoung man was serious enough; but the girl was smiling.
Something she had said a little while before kept returning to Pratt'smind. He was thinking of what would have happened had Sue Latrop, thegirl from Boston, been here instead of Frances.
"Goodness!" Pratt told himself. "They are out of two different worlds;that's sure! And I'm an awful tenderfoot, just as Mrs. Bill Edwardssays."
"What do you think of it?" asked Frances, raising her voice to make itheard above the roar of the fire and the rumble of the wagon ahead ofthem.
"I'm scared--right down scared!" admitted Pratt Sanderson.
"Well, so was I," she admitted. "But the worst is over now. We'll reachthe river and ford it, and so put the fire all behind us. The flameswon't leap the river, that's sure."
The heat from the prairie fire was most oppressive. Over their heads thehot smoke swirled, shutting out all sight of the stars. Now and then aclump of brush beside the trail broke into flame again, fanned by thewind, and the ponies snorted and leaped aside.
Suddenly Mack was heard yelling at the mules and trying to pull themdown to something milder than a wild gallop. Frances and Pratt spurredtheir ponies out upon the burned ground in order to see ahead.
Something loomed up on the trail--something that smoked and flamed likea big bonfire.
"What can it be?" gasped Pratt, riding knee to knee with the range girl.
"Not a house. There isn't one along here," she returned.
"Some old-timer got caught!" yelled the teamster, looking back at thetwo pony-riders. "Hope he saved his skin."
"A wagoner!" cried Frances, startled.
"He cut his stock loose, of course," yelled Mack Hinkman.
But when th
ey reached the burning wagon they saw that this was notaltogether true. One horse lay, charred, in the harness. The wagon hadbeen empty. The driver of it had evidently cut his other horse loose andridden away on its back to save himself.
"And why didn't he free this poor creature?" demanded Pratt. "Howcruel!"
"He was scare't," said Mack, pulling his mules out of the trail so as todrive around the burning wagon. "Or mebbe the hawse fell. Like enoughthat's it."
Frances said nothing more. She was wondering if this abandoned wagon wasthe one she had seen turn into the trail from Cottonwood Bottom early inthe day? And who was its driver?
They went on, puzzled by this incident. At least, Frances and Pratt werepuzzled by it.
"We may see the fellow at the ford," Frances said. "Too bad he lost hisoutfit."
"He didn't have anything in that wagon," said Pratt. "It was as empty asyour own."
Frances looked at him curiously. She remembered that the young man fromAmarillo had taken a peep into the Bar-T wagon when he joined them onthe trail. He must have seen the heavy chest; and now he ignored it.
On and on they rode. The smoke made the ride very unpleasant, even ifthe flames were now at a distance. Behind them the glare of the firedecreased; but to north and south the wall of flame, at a distance ofseveral miles, rushed on and passed the riders on the trail.
The trees along the river's brink came into view, outlined in manyplaces by red and yellow flames. The fire would do a deal of damagealong here, for even the greenest trees would be badly scorched.
The mules had run themselves pretty much out of breath and finallyreduced their pace; but the wagon still led the procession when itreached the high bank.
The water in the river was very low; the trail descended the bank on aslant, and Mack put on the brakes and allowed the sure-footed mules totake their own course to the ford.
With hanging heads and heaving flanks, the two cow-ponies followed.Frances and Pratt were scorched, and smutted from head to foot; andtheir throats were parched, too.
"I hope I'll never have to take such another ride," admitted the youngman from Amarillo. "Adventure is all right, Frances; but clerking in abank doesn't prepare one for such a strenuous life."
"I think you are game, Pratt," she said, frankly. "I can see that Mack,even, thinks you are pretty good--for a tenderfoot."
The wagon went into the water at that moment. Mack yelled to the mulesto stop. The wagon was hub deep in the stream and he loosened the reinsso that the animals might plunge their noses into the flood. Molly andthe grey quickly put down their heads, too.
Above the little group the flames crackled in a dead-limbed tree,lighting the ford like a huge torch. Above the flare of the thick canopyof the smoke spread out, completely overcasting the river.
Suddenly Frances laid her hand upon Pratt's arm. She pointed with herquirt into a bushy tree on the opposite bank.
"Look over there!" she exclaimed, in a low tone.
Almost as she spoke there sounded the sharp crack of a rifle, and a ballpassed through the top of the wagon, so near that it made the poniesjump.
"Put up your hands--all three of you folks down there!" commanded anangry voice. "The magazine of this rifle is plumb full and I can shootstraight. D'ye get me? Hands up!"
"My goodness!" gasped Pratt Sanderson.
What Mack Hinkman said was muffled in his own beard; but his hands shotupward as he sat on the wagon-seat.
Frances said nothing; her heart jumped--and then pumped faster. Sherecognized the drawling voice of the man in the tree, although she couldnot see his face clearly in the firelight.
It was Pete--Ratty M'Gill's acquaintance--the man who had been orderlyat the Bylittle Soldiers' Home, and who had come all the way to thePanhandle to try to secure the treasure in the old Spanish chest.
Perhaps Frances had half expected some such incident as this topunctuate her journey to Amarillo. Nevertheless, the reckless tone ofthe man, and the way he used his rifle, troubled her.
"Put your hands up!" she murmured to Pratt. "Do just what he tells you.He may be wicked and foolish enough to fire again."