When they arose the next morning there was no trace of the fire to be seen. Sherm hailed some men passing, for news. They reported that it had swept the north side of Elm Creek and said it had burned up a lot of hay. There was a rumor that two of the upland farmers had lost everything they had and that a man and team had been caught in it. But they hadn’t been able to get any details.
“Though it wouldn’t be surprising,” one of the 305strangers added, “that fire was traveling faster than any horse could run.”
Chicken Little had come out and was standing beside Sherm. Her eyes grew big. “Do they really think somebody got burned?”
One of the men nudged the man who had spoken.
“No, Sis, it was just a rumor–I don’t ’low it was true. When folks can’t give you any name or place–it most generally ain’t so.”
The men drove on.
It was Saturday. Jim Bart had gone down to town for the weekly supplies and Sherm was busy with odd jobs. He asked Jane to go up to the hill top occasionally to make sure there were no fresh signs of the fire, though Jim Bart had assured him the danger was over. Sherm noticed that the wind had changed. It was blowing freshly from the very direction where they had seen the fire the preceding night.
Chicken Little obediently made trips once an hour until noon; she could detect nothing to occasion alarm. After dinner her mother set her to making doughnuts and she forgot all about it.
Mrs. Morton was not so well to-day and Jane persuaded her to go to bed. Drawing the blinds to, she put a hot iron to her mother’s feet and left her to sleep. The clock striking four attracted Jane’s attention as she came back into the sitting room, the 306last doughnut was draining in the collender while Annie mopped the kitchen floor.
She stood irresolute for an instant, undecided whether to read or to fetch some walnuts from the smokehouse for Sunday. Dr. Morton always liked to have a basket of walnuts handy on Sunday afternoons. “I guess I’ll get the nuts, and perhaps I’d better run up the hill to be sure that old fire hasn’t had a change of heart. Father says often some little side fire smolders and burns after the main fire is all out. Though I guess one would have showed up long before this if there’d been any this time.”