They realized now for the first time the extent of their exhaustion. They felt the pain of their burned hands, their scorched faces, their parched and burning throats.
Daylight came before they were able to realize the fact that they were saved.
The broadening light revealed a sad and dismal prospect. If the prairie had seemed monotonous to them before in its sombre dress of grey, and brown, and green, it seemed desolate beyond all description now, covered as far as the eye could see with a pall of funereal blackness.
Suffering as they were with burns and thirst it was noon before the ground was cool enough so that they could drive over the still smoking prairies.
All the afternoon they drove, straining their eyes in every direction for the sight of a town, a house, a sign of shade and water.
As fast as possible they veered away from the burned district, and about sundown got out of the track of the fire and onto the brown dry prairies.
Back of them and far away to the south and east they could still see the devastating trail of the fire, but away to the north and west the wind had turned the direction of the flames and the prairie remained untouched by its fury.
It was a tremendous relief to escape from the scorched and blackened ground, the stifling smell of burned grass, the acrid smoke that made their eyes smart and water and their throats sting, and to drive out on the unscorched prairies, which, hot as they were, seemed cool in comparison.
It was nearing nightfall when they saw, not far away, a small column of smoke rising in the air. Joshua Peniman scanned it with eager eyes.
"It might be an Indian camp," said his wife anxiously.