It is needless to detail the excitement which had followed this. "Lies, lies, liars!" were the epithets hurled from Gregory. "The railroad is in Gregory to stay; to stay for"—oh, they couldn't say how many years, perhaps a hundred; but all that noise to the west was a bluff, a simon pure bluff, and that ended it. That is, until they started the same noise over again. But it had not been a bluff. The tracks had been laid from Gregory to Dallas early in the spring that followed, and now Dallas was the town instead of Gregory, and the boom that had followed the building of the town, is a matter never to be forgotten in the history of the country.
Gregory's one good fortune was that she had secured the land office which necessitated that all filings should be entered there, and in this way got more of the boom that was occasioned by the land opening at the west than it had expected to when the railroad company had pushed its way west out of the town.
It was about this time while great excitement was on and thousands of people were in the town of Dallas that something occurred that came near literally wiping that town off the map. Jean Baptiste had loaded his wagons and was on the way from his land to the claims of his sister when the same came to pass.
The greatest danger in a new country comes after the grass has died in the fall and before the new grass starts in the spring. But in the fall when the grass is dry and crisp, and the surface below is warm and dry, is the time of prairie fires. No time could have been more opportune for such an episode than the time now was. The wind had been blowing for days and days, and had made the short grass very brittle, and the surface below as hot as in July. Jean Baptiste was within about a mile of where New Dallas now reposed vaingloriously on a hillside, her many new buildings rising proudly, defiantly, as if to taunt and annoy Gregory, against the skyline, when with the wind greeting him, he caught the smell of burning grass. He reached a hillside presently, and from there he could see for miles to the west beyond, and the sight that met his gaze staggered him.
"A prairie fire," he cried apprehensively, and urged his teams forward toward Dallas. One glance had been sufficient to convince him what it might possibly mean. A prairie fire with the wind behind it as this was, would bid no good for Dallas, and once there he could be of a little service, since he knew how to fight it.
When he arrived at the outskirts of the embryo city, he was met by a frightened herd of humanity. With bags and trunks and all they could carry; with eyes wide, and mouths gaped, in terror they were hurrying madly from the town to an apparent place of safety—a plowed field nearby. Miles to the west the fire and smoke rose in great, dark reddened clouds, and cast—even at that distance, dark shadows over the little city. As he drew into the town, he could see a line of figures working at fire breaks before the gloom. They were the promoters and the townspeople, and he imagined how they must feel with death possible—and destruction, positive, coming like an angry beast directly upon them.
Soon, Jean Baptiste, with wet horse blankets, was with them on the firing line. The speed at which the wind was driving the fire was ominous. Soon all the west was as if lost in the conflagration, for the sun, shining out of a clear sky an hour before was now shut out as if clouds were over all. The dull roar and crackle of the burning grass brought a feeling of awe over all before it. The heat became, after a time, intense; the air was surcharged with soot, and the little army worked madly at the firebreaks.
Rolling, tumbling, twisting, turning, but always coming onward, the hurricane presently struck the fire guards. In that moment it was seen that a mass of thistles, dried manure, and all refuse from the prairie was sweeping before it, as if to draw the fire onward. The fire plunged over the guards as though they had not been made, pushed back the little army and rushed madly into the town.
It was impossible now to do more. The conflagration was beyond control. Now in the town, an effort was therefore made to get the people out of their houses where some had even hidden when it appeared that all would be swept away in the terrible deluge of fire. One, two, three, four, five, six—ten houses went up like chaff, and the populace groaned, when, of a sudden, something happened. Like Napoleon's army at Waterloo there was a quick change. One of those rare freaks—but what some chose to claim in after years as the will of the Creator in sympathy with the hopeful builders, the wind gradually died down, whipped around, and in less than five minutes, was blowing from the east, almost directly against its route of a few minutes before. The fire halted, seemed to hesitate, and then like some cowardly thing, turned around and started back of the same ground it had raged over where it lingered briefly, sputtered, flickered, and then quickly died. And the town, badly frightened, hard worked, but thankful withal, was saved.