Below him, in great gusts, yellow-edged billows of black smoke clouds poured up. Funnels of sparks blasted up on the winds and scattered to shower back into an inferno of flames.
Hal swerved aside, but sent his plane in a huge circuit nearer earth, so that without danger he could inform himself concerning this disaster.
It was a barn in flames—the great red barn of some lonely ranch place. Crammed as it must be with hay and wheat shocks, it had become a roaring furnace, spouting flames up into the very skies.
Disastrously near to the doomed barn was the house. The little white farmhouse seemed to crouch pitiably, seemed almost a human thing, earth-bound and with fire-death sweeping against it.
As Hal circled nearer, he could see little frantic specks that were human beings running back and forth with futile buckets of water. From experience out here, Hal had come to know something of the water dearth of the plains. What avail were the few hundred gallons of water in a little cistern against this raging fire monster?
But the human specks fought on madly. The barn was doomed. They were fighting for the house. Up went the buckets of precious water to wet down the roof. Now they were spreading sopping blankets. And to what use? The wind was veering more, the sparks were showering continuously. For one flaming shingle stamped out, two more leaped into blaze.
Like one fascinated by danger, Hal circled nearer. It was madness. A spark on his wing, curl of flame bursting out of the inflammable lacquer pigment—then the death crash.
But this little white house was somebody’s home—his all!
The boy flung caution from him. He dropped low, aimed his plane straight out. With a zoom of the mighty wind-makers of his wings, he drove forward down the air lane between the flaming hell of the barn and the little crouching house in its imminent doom.
In his wake swept vast air currents swirled upward by the speed of his passage, a wind wall that turned back spark and flames from showering on the house roof.