"Don't be frightened, Ruthie," she shouted above the wind. "Keep your broom going! Don't stop to look. God will take care of us. Watch your side there, Nina; beat it out—beat it out! Here, Sam, come here and work by Nina; she needs help!"
As Sam left his station she ran to where he had been and with furious strokes of broom and sack beat out the fire that was creeping away from them.
Back-firing and beating out the flames as they went, they gradually worked back toward the wagons, leaving behind them a smoking black ring nearly two hundred feet in circumference.
Their faces and hands were black and blistered, their feet scorched, their eyes burning and smarting, and their lungs wheezed with the effort to breathe through the suffocating smoke and ashes that filled the air.
The horses, half-wild with terror, were rearing and plunging, and poor Cherry running madly in circles as far as her rope permitted.
"Run to the horses, Joe," shouted his father, after a swift backward glance at the wagons. "Put wet sacks over their heads and throw wet blankets over them! Lige, here, you take Joe's place! Watch out there, Mother, beat out that fire on thy right!"
Joe threw down his sack and ran with all speed to the horses. With soothing words and pats he did his best to quiet them, throwing their blankets over their backs to protect them from flying sparks, and enveloping their heads in wet sacks, wrung from the precious and fast-disappearing kegs of water.
He had difficulty in getting near enough to the distracted Cherry to do anything for her, but after a wild struggle, during which he was dragged in a wide circle by her rope, he succeeded in getting a wet sack over her head and a blanket on her back. The chickens were squawking and the little pigs squealing in their boxes, and he stopped long enough to throw a bucketful of water over them, and pitch a tarpaulin over their boxes. Then he rushed back to the wildly beating family.
As they backed and fired they began to see outside the ring of fire grey spectral shapes dashing by in the shadows, running madly, frantically, with the terror of the crackling flames behind.
All at once the ground under their feet seemed to tremble, and the horses, crouching and shivering with terror, began again to rear and plunge.