“We’ve got to do better than this, girls. Here, Chicken Little, make a torch of some of those resinous weeds–those long crackly ones–and fire just as fast as you can. I’ll follow with the mop and yell if I can’t manage it.”
The plan worked well for a time–their haven of hope, the brown strip of breaking, seemed to move steadily nearer. But Chicken Little and Marian were fast becoming exhausted. The main fire was now so close that its smoke was beginning to drift in their faces. Prairie chickens and quail, startled and confused by the double line of flame, whirred above their heads, uncertain how to seek safety. A terrified jack rabbit leaped up almost at Sherm’s feet. Rabbits, ground squirrels, one lone skunk, and even an occasional coyote, darted past them. Back at the road where they had begun, the head fire was already 312meeting their line of back fire and dying down in sullen smoke. Still, that hundred yards of blue stem was untouched.
They paused a moment at its edge in hurried consultation.
“Let’s souse all the mops–dripping wet–and trail across first,” suggested Chicken Little in short, labored gasps. She had been running for several minutes.
“Yes, and then fire back. Christ!–we must hurry!” Sherm, too, was breathless. “Can you stick it out a few minutes longer, Marian?”
Marian Morton’s face was drawn and colorless. She nodded and rested a moment, leaning on her mop.
For the next sixty-five yards the blows of the wet mops rained down with the precision of clock work. Twice the flames started in quick eddies back of their line, but, panting, the girls almost sobbing, they beat them back. The smoke was growing stifling. The wind, freshening, blew it from both fires full in their faces. They could see only a few feet ahead.
“Light another torch and run, Chicken Little–there’s no time to lose–we must chance it!”
Chicken Little obeyed silently. Half way to the breaking she stumbled and fell. Her torch of twisted grass flew from her hand, scattering the burning fragments about her. Before she could get 313to her feet, the grass was ablaze all around. Quick-witted Sherm threw her a mop, then beat his way toward her. Marian, summoning her last remaining strength, ran to help, but sank to the ground in a faint before she could reach Jane.
Sherm and Chicken Little, beating, stamping madly, did not see her fall. The flames fairly licked up the long grass. They beat them out around Jane only to see them spread in an ever-increasing circle. Chicken Little’s legs gave way under her and she sank helplessly down, watching the rushing fire. Sherm struggled on with parched throat and stinging eyes, but he, too, was fast becoming exhausted in the unequal fight, when a strong pair of hands seized the mop from his straining arms and rained swift blows on the flaming grass. Answering blows resounded from four other stout pairs of hands and an irregular line of charred vegetation was soon all that was left to tell the tale of the danger they had escaped.