3
Looking back upon that night of wind and gusty rain when the Brailsford barn burned like a pile of dry shavings in a forest fire, Sarah sometimes wondered what blind impulse had sent her through the smoke and flames to save the twin Percheron colts. She thought that perhaps it was her feeling of protection for young things. She couldn't bear to think of the colts being burned.
"Save yourself, Mother," Brailsford had cried above the roaring fire, struggling vainly to save the stallion; pleading, whipping and cajoling. At last he left the inert sire, rushed to the box stall of Napoleon and led the bull to safety.
"Help Gus with the cows down at the other end," Stud shouted to his wife. "I'll get the horses."
He went in among the fire-crazed mares and geldings, old work horses who were faithful and quiet in the field but who were now leaping, terrified, wild animals, straining at their halter ropes, pawing the floor, and shying like unbroken yearlings at the thunder of the flames. Early Ann led the three ponies into the tobacco shed, then ran like the wind to the telephone in the kitchen.
"Hurry, it's the Brailsford barn," she cried. "Take the short cut over Barton's hill."
Vern Barton, Ole Oleson and Dutchy Bloom were carrying water from the stock tanks. Sarah and Gus were leading out the cows.
The big flames ran in sheets up the curving walls of the wooden silo, burst like a volcano through the peaked roof, cracked and thundered like a kettle drum in the half-empty cylinder. The resinous siding of the barn burned like a fire of pine knots, kindling the hand-hewn oak and hickory timbers cut from the forest with axe and adz fifty years before.
Cows bawled. Pigeons and sparrows shot out like flaming rockets and fell into the fields. Chickens squawked as they tumbled from the building, ran around in circles like fighting cocks, or flew back crazily into the scorching flames. A mother cat carrying a singed kitten in her mouth stalked out of the barn, her eyes gleaming like green coals. Ganders added their hiss to the hiss of the fire, men shouted and women screamed.
In the hub-bub that went on about him Stud alone kept a clear head. He ordered the men to form a bucket line, sent others for the spray wagon which was used to throw a small stream on the adjoining buildings, rushed in again and again after horses. It was while he was leading out the last, maddened gelding that he was all but caught in the passageway by the rearing, screaming beast. He could hear Sarah calling him, beside herself with fear. He could see the flame licking at the edges of the doorway and eating at the lintel.
"Steady, boy. Steady."
He patted the nervous shoulder, talked quietly to the frantic animal. Slowly the horse subsided, seemed to listen, followed Stud in a dash through the door not a moment too soon as the flaming lintel came crashing down behind them.
When the fire reached the haymow there was a flare and flash almost like an explosion as the dust and loose hay ignited. All the colors from blue-white to crimson played across the surface of the hay. Then the fifty tons of timothy, alfalfa, and clover settled down to a forty-eight hour blaze. Flame and smoke sucked and twisted up the hay chutes like dust in a tornado. These blasts cut through the shingled roof like a dozen blow-torches and spurted their yellow pennants skyward. The flames licked and bellied in the wind, belched from the open door of the loft with the hollow intonation of a big gun.
"Help pull the hayfork down," cried Gus. He said in after years that he had intended to fasten barrels of water to the fork, run them down the fork track, and dump them on the flame. Before he could attempt the impractical scheme the ropes had burned and the fork had fallen with a crash, imbedding itself in the snow and mud.
Finally the fire department arrived. The big dapple grays had run four miles dragging the heavy fire engine through the slushy snow. They galloped into the barnyard lathered and panting, the red wheels and brass mountings of their engine flashing in the fire-light, steam and smoke belching from the funnel.
"Unwind the hose, boys," shouted Hank Vetter. "Where's the water, Stud?"
"We'll use the tanks and then the cistern," Stud roared. "I got the gasoline engine pumping from the well."
But all these sources were soon insufficient for the two inch hose through which the fire engine forced its stream. They led the hose to the creek, chopped a hole through the ice, and began to pump from the deep hole beside the mill. The water sprayed upon the burning roof, was shot in through the loft door; hissed into the inferno leaving scarcely a trace.
"Look out!" cried Stud. "There goes the roof!" It fell with a mighty crash throwing embers high into the air, shooting flames seventy-five feet above the barn: blue, yellow, and red against the inky sky; lighting up the countryside from Cottonwood Hill to Charley's Bluff. Another fire was burning on the frozen lake, the flames pointing downward toward the center of the earth.
Then the timbers holding up the hay collapsed and half-a-hundred tons of burning grass fell into the stables. The great stallion screamed once and then was still.
Sarah came over to comfort Stud.
"We've got each other and most of the stock," she said.
"We'll make it somehow, Mother. We'll start all over."
"I'll go to the house now and fix something for the firemen."
"I guess you might as well."
Hank Vetter, chief of the volunteers, left his engine and came over to where Stud was listening to the condolences of his neighbors.
"How'd it start?" yelled Hank.
"Darned if I know," said Stud, scratching his singed head. "I was tending a sick stallion and...."
"Was you smoking?" asked Hank.
"Never smoked around the barns in my life."
"Didn't tip over the lantern?"
"Lantern was hanging from a peg. Never touched the lantern."
"Well, it couldn't have started by itself," said Hank. "Let's look around."
They had taken less than a dozen steps down the lane when a figure started up from behind a stump, jumped the fence, crashed down the hill toward the lake, and began to skirt the bay.
"It's Joe Valentine," shouted Early Ann.
"This is my job," Stud cried, dashing after the fleeing figure.
Hearing shouts, Joe Valentine decided to risk the shortest way to Lake House Point. He leaped onto the melting ice and ran and stumbled two hundred yards out from the shore. They saw him clearly in the light of the burning barn as he crashed through into the black water and went down; and although they watched the dark hole in the ice for twenty minutes he did not come up again.
BOOK FIVE