Vern Barton, Ole Oleson and Dutchy Bloom were carrying water from the stock tanks. Sarah and Gus were leading out the cows.
The big flames ran in sheets up the curving walls of the wooden silo, burst like a volcano through the peaked roof, cracked and thundered like a kettle drum in the half-empty cylinder. The resinous siding of the barn burned like a fire of pine knots, kindling the hand-hewn oak and hickory timbers cut from the forest with axe and adz fifty years before.
Cows bawled. Pigeons and sparrows shot out like flaming rockets and fell into the fields. Chickens squawked as they tumbled from the building, ran around in circles like fighting cocks, or flew back crazily into the scorching flames. A mother cat carrying a singed kitten in her mouth stalked out of the barn, her eyes gleaming like green coals. Ganders added their hiss to the hiss of the fire, men shouted and women screamed.
In the hub-bub that went on about him Stud alone kept a clear head. He ordered the men to form a bucket line, sent others for the spray wagon which was used to throw a small stream on the adjoining buildings, rushed in again and again after horses. It was while he was leading out the last, maddened gelding that he was all but caught in the passageway by the rearing, screaming beast. He could hear Sarah calling him, beside herself with fear. He could see the flame licking at the edges of the doorway and eating at the lintel.
"Steady, boy. Steady."
He patted the nervous shoulder, talked quietly to the frantic animal. Slowly the horse subsided, seemed to listen, followed Stud in a dash through the door not a moment too soon as the flaming lintel came crashing down behind them.
When the fire reached the haymow there was a flare and flash almost like an explosion as the dust and loose hay ignited. All the colors from blue-white to crimson played across the surface of the hay. Then the fifty tons of timothy, alfalfa, and clover settled down to a forty-eight hour blaze. Flame and smoke sucked and twisted up the hay chutes like dust in a tornado. These blasts cut through the shingled roof like a dozen blow-torches and spurted their yellow pennants skyward. The flames licked and bellied in the wind, belched from the open door of the loft with the hollow intonation of a big gun.
"Help pull the hayfork down," cried Gus. He said in after years that he had intended to fasten barrels of water to the fork, run them down the fork track, and dump them on the flame. Before he could attempt the impractical scheme the ropes had burned and the fork had fallen with a crash, imbedding itself in the snow and mud.