It was not until we had gone some distance farther, that we found the true explanation—on perceiving that there was smoke in the air! Smoke it was that was causing the bitterness in our eyes.
The denizen of the prairie never regards such an indication with indifference. Where there is smoke, there is fire, and where fire, danger—at least upon the broad grassy steppes of the west. A burning forest may be shunned. You may stand near a forest on fire, and contemplate such a scene with safety; but a blazing prairie is a phenomenon of a different character; and it is indeed a rare position where you may view, without peril, this sublime spectacle.
There are prairies that will not burn. The plains covered with the short “buffalo-grass” (sesleria dactyloides), and the sward of various species of “gramma” (chondrosium), rarely take fire; or if they do, horse, man, buffalo, or antelope, can easily escape by leaping across the blaze. ’Tis only the reptile world—snakes, lizards, the toad, and the land-turtle (terrapin)—that fall victims to such a flame.
Not so upon the “weed-prairies,” or those where the tall reed-grass rises above the withers of a horse—its culms matted and laced together by the trailing stems of various species of bindweed, by creeping convolvulus, cucurbitacese, and wild pea-vines. In the dry season, when a fire lays its hold upon vegetation of this character, there is danger indeed—where it rages, there is death.
It was smoke that affected our eyes, causing them to wince and water. Fire must be causing the smoke—what was on fire?
I could detect apprehension in the looks of my followers, as we rode on. It was but slight, for as yet the smoke was scarcely perceptible, and the fire, wherever it was, must be distant—so fancied we.
As we advanced, the glances of the men became more uneasy. Beyond a doubt, the smoke was thickening around us, the sky was fast becoming darker, and the pain in our eyes more acute.
“The woods are on fire,” said Stanfield.
Stanfield was a backwoodsman—his thoughts ran upon “woods.”
Whether forest or prairie, a conflagration was certainly raging. It might be far off—for the wind will carry the smoke of a prairie fire a long distance—but I had an unpleasant suspicion that it was not distant. I noticed dropping around us the white floe of burnt leaves, and from the intense bitterness of the smoke, I reasoned that it could not have floated far—its gases were not yet dissipated.