Horses were quickly hitched to the plows, and the work of making a number of furrows of damp earth, to act as a barrier to the flames, was started.
While Mr. Pertell was filming this, Russ was busy getting views of the on-rushing wagon containing the refugees. Several times the team was stopped to enable the operator to go on ahead, and show it coming across the prairie. This gave a different background each time.
It was after one of these halts, and just when the team was started up again that Alice, who was on the front seat with Paul, the driver, cried out:
"See! There is smoke and fire ahead of us, too! What does it mean?"
For an instant they were all startled, and then, as Ruth looked behind them, and saw the fiercer flames, and the blacker smoke there, she gasped:
"We are hemmed in! Hemmed in by the prairie fire!"
CHAPTER XXIII
THE ESCAPE
Paul pulled up the rushing horses with a jerk that set them back on their haunches. There were cries of alarm from the interior of the wagon, and from the front and rear peered out anxious faces.