As if in answer to his words, there came from behind them a gust of hot air that carried with it the smell of burning grass. He faced to the rear with an exclamation of alarm and, shading his face, peered back along the rails. "Catch that?" he asked excitedly. "There is a fire somewheres; it's behind us. And the wind's in the west!"
The little girl sprang to her feet, the buckboard still going, and also looked behind. "Why, I can see smoke," she said. She pointed to where a dark haze, like shattered thunder-clouds, was rising from the sky-line.
"It's been set by that confounded engine," declared the biggest brother. He seized the reins and brought the blue mare to a stop.
The little girl stood upon the seat, holding his hand to steady herself. "Don't you think we'd better drive home?" she questioned anxiously.
"Well, I don't know," he replied. "Seems to me like the smoke's gettin' thicker awful fast. We don't notice it much because the sun's so bright. But it ain't more 'n eight or ten miles away, and comin' like sixty. It could make the farm ahead of us. We'll just get on to the back-fire at the station and keep from gettin' singed."
They sat silent for a moment. Then the biggest brother turned about and clucked to the blue mare. But the little girl continued to squint against the sun until, in descending into a draw, the black haze behind was lost to view.
The biggest brother kept the blue mare at a good gait, and the road, with its narrow strip of weedy grass down the center, flew by under the bouncing buckboard. Soon the long, gradual incline leading up from the ravine was climbed. At its top, on a high bench, the horse halted for breath. Both the biggest brother and the little girl at once rose to their feet. As they did so, they uttered a cry.
A moving wall of animals, that stretched far to north and south, was heading swiftly toward them from beyond the river bluffs. They could hear the sound of thousands of hoofs, like the ceaseless roll of dulled drums, and across the black level of the wall they saw a bank of smoke, into which leaped tongues of flame.
Without losing a second, the biggest brother began to urge on the blue mare. The black-snake was missing from its place in the buckboard. So he used the ends of the reins. He saw that the wind, which had been brisk all day, was now redoubled in strength, increased by another that found its source in the advancing fire. He wondered if he had not better unhitch and let the horse carry them both, abandoning the buckboard to its fate on the road. Yet he feared to lose any time, and, reflecting that perhaps the spirited creature would refuse to ride double, he decided to hurry on without making the change. As the mare responded to the rein ends, something like a prayer moved his dry, firm-set lips. For he knew that they were menaced not only by a conflagration, but by a mad stampede.
"The local'll be along in about half an hour," said the little girl, speaking for the first time since their dread discovery. "Do you think the fire'll hurt it?"