Immediately Pratt reproduced her work on the other side of the trail. At right angles with the beaten path, they fled across the prairie, leaving little fires in their wake that spread and spread, rising higher and higher, and soon roaring into quenchless conflagrations.
These patches of fire soon joined and increased to a wider and wider swath 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. Like Frances, Pratt kept his mount at a fast lope–the speediest pace of the trained cow-pony–nor did he stop until the blanket was consumed to the rawhide knot.
Then he wheeled his mount to look back. He could see nothing but flames and smoke at first. He did not know how far Frances had succeeded in traveling with her “flare”; but he was quite sure that he had come more than a mile from the wagon-trail.
He could soon see a broadening patch of burned-over prairie in the midst of the swirling flames and smoke. His pony snorted, and backed away from the approach-fire; but Pratt wheeled the grey around to the westward, and where the flames merely crept and sputtered through the greasewood and against the wind, he spurred his mount to leap over the line of fire.
The earth was hot, and every time the pony set a hoof down smoke or sparks flew upward; but Pratt had to get back to the trail. With the quirt he forced on the snorting grey, and finally reached a place where the fire had completely passed and the ground was cooler.
Ashes flew in clouds about him; the smoke from the west drove in a thick mass between him and the darkened sky. Only the glare of the roaring fire revealed objects and landmarks.
The backfire had burned for many yards westward, to meet the threatening wave of flame flying on the wings of the wind. To the east, the line of flame Pratt and Frances had set was rising higher and higher.
He saw the wagon standing in the midst of the smoke, Mack Hinkman holding the snorting, kicking mules with difficulty, while a wild little figure on a pony galloped back from the other side of the trail.
“All right, Pratt?” shrieked Frances. “Get up, Mack; we’ve no time to lose!”