Willette was in her element. Not an inch of the line escaped her lynx-eye, and all the while she kept giving advice to Olive, who stood in awe of her superior practical knowledge in this emergency.
“Now this hyar fire’s agoin’ to spread along, an’ yo’ jes’ got ter mind this end by yerself.”
She darted twenty yards away and paddled out a flame and came back, her face begrimed with smoke and dirt, so that she looked not unlike the nigger whose modes of speech she so much affected.
“You jes’ take off that ar hat and them big skirts, else you’ll be burnt to death right hyar,” said Willette surveying Olive with considerable disapproval.
Willette’s hickory trousers and shirt were exactly the thing for a prairie fire in a high wind, as indeed they were for most of the occupations that fell to her lot. What with the constant bounding backwards and forwards over the flame, Olive indeed thought that she had better accept the advice and slip off her wide calico skirt which was forever in the way and might easily catch fire. She put it along with her hat just at the top of the slope where Weddell’s Gully began, where she could easily get them next day, if all went well.
It was night now and would have been quite dark but for the bright glare from the fire. All the inhabitants of the Community were out working desperately. Olive paddled down her fire and kept her line bravely for a couple of hours, in spite of choking smoke and clouds of dust and many a burn. Willette was far away, lost in the darkness, following her end of the fire, and only became visible as she leaped backwards and forwards over her line of fire like some agile fiend engaged in roasting its victims. Olive was all alone. She felt very much frightened, for she did not know what might happen, nor what in any new emergency she would have to do. She wished somebody would come, for it was a strange experience to be in the black night and lurid glare all alone minding a fire. The air was full of the burnt fluff from the big fire, and the roar as it now had come near was terrifying. True the worst of it was passing to the south, and their land was now pretty well guarded on all sides. Suddenly the cheerful black face of Napoleon Pompey appeared in the light of the flame.
“Oh, Pompey, I’m so glad you’ve come. Where is everybody?” said Olive, overjoyed to see a human being once more.
“Wal, Mis’ Ollie, I on’y jes’ take ole plough to de bars. We’uns rip up dat furrow golly spry. Done turn de hosses loose.”
“Why, the poor horses will be burnt!” exclaimed Olive in dismay.
“Dem hosses, dey dre’ful cute critters. Dey go off slap to de bottom lan’. You bet hosses knows mos’ as well nor white folks ’bout prairie fires. I come min’ yo’ fire fo’ yer, Mis’ Ollie. Ole man he done tole me.”