October came, and a journey to the nearest settlement for winter goods and stores, must be made. After due preparation the father and his eldest son started in the emigrant wagon, and expected to be absent many days, during which the mother and her children, with only the dog for their protection, looked hourly forth upon the now frost-embrowned prairie, and fondly hoped for their return.
Day after day passed, and no sign of life was visible upon the plain save the deer bounding over the sere herbage, or the wolf loping stealthily against the wind which bore the scent of his prey. A rising haze began to envelope the landscape, betokening the approach of the Indian summer,
"The melancholy days had come,
The saddest of the year,"
and the desolation of nature found an answering mood in the soul of that lone woman. One day she was visited by a party of Indian warriors, and from them she learned that there was a war between the tribes through whose country the journey of her husband lay. A boding fear for his safety took possession of her, and after the warriors had partaken of her hospitality and departed, and night came, she laid her little ones in their bed, and sat for hours on the threshold of the cabin door, looking out through the darkness and praying silently for the return of her loved ones. The wind was rising and driving across the sky black masses of clouds which looked like misshapen specters of evil. The blast whistled through the leafless trees and howled round the cabin. Hours passed, and still the sorrowful wife and mother sat gazing into the gloom as if her eyes would pierce it and lighten on the wished-for object.
But what is that strange light which far to the north gleams on the blackened sky? It was not the lightning's flash, for it was a steady brightening glow. It was not the weird flash of the aurora borealis, but a redder and more lurid sheen; nor was it the harbinger of the rising sun which lit that northern sky. From a tinge it brightens to a gleam, and deepened at last into a broad glare. That lonely heart was overwhelmed with the dreadful truth. The prairie is on fire! Often had they talked of prairie fires as a spectacle of grandeur. But never had she dreamed of the red demon as an enemy to be encountered in that dreadful solitude.
Her heart sank within her as she saw the danger leaping toward her like some fiery and maddened race-horse. Was there no escape? Her children were sweetly sleeping, and the faithful dog, her only guardian, was gazing as if with mute sympathy into her face. Within an hour she calculates the conflagration would be at her very door. All around her is one dry ocean of combustibles. She cannot reach the tree-tops, and if she could, to cling there would be impossible amid those towering flames. The elements seemed to grow madder as the fire approached; fiercer blew the blast, intermitting for a moment only to gather fresh potency and mingle its own strength with that of the flames. She still had a faint hope that a creek a few miles away would be a barrier over which the blaze could not leap. She saw by the broad light which made even the distant prairie like noonday, the tops of the trees that fringed the creek but for a few moments, and then they were swallowed up in that crimson furnace. Alas! the stream had been crossed by the resistless flames, and her last hope died away.
Bewildered and half stupefied by the terrors of her situation, she had not yet wakened her children. But now no time was to be lost. Already in imagination she felt the hot breath of her relentless foe. It was with much difficulty that she awoke them and aroused them to a sense of their awful danger. Hastily dressing them she encircled them in her arms and kissed and fondled them as if for a last farewell. Now for the first time she missed the dog, the faithful companion and guardian of her solitude, and on whose aid she still counted in the hour of supreme peril. She called him loudly, but in vain. Turning her face northward she saw one unbroken line of flame as far as the eye could reach, and forcing its way towards her like an infuriated demon, roaring, crackling, sending up columns of dun-colored smoke as it tore along over the plain. A few minutes more and her fate would be decided. Falling on her knees she poured out her heart in prayer, supplicating for mercy and commending herself and her helpless babes to Almighty God. As she rose calmed and stayed by that fervent supplication a low wistful bark fell on her ear; the dog came bounding to her side; seizing her by the dress as if he would drag her from the spot, he leaped away from her, barking and whining, looking back towards her as he ran. Following him a few steps and seeing nothing, she returned and resumed her seat, awaiting death beside her children.
Again the dog returned, pawing, whining, howling, and trying in every way to attract her attention. What could he mean? Then for the first time flashed upon her the thought which had already occurred to the sagacious instinct of the dumb brute! The ploughed field! Yes, there alone was hope of safety! Clasping the two youngest children with one arm she almost dragged the eldest boy as she fled along the trodden path, the dog going before them showing every token of delight. The fire was at their heels, and its hot breath almost scorched their clothes as they ran. They gained the herbless ploughed field and took their station in its center just as the flames darted round on each side of them.
The exhausted mother, faint with the sudden deliverance, dropped on the ground among her helpless babes. Father of mercies! what an escape!
In a few moments the flames attacked the haystack, which was but a morsel to its fury, and then seizing the house devoured it more slowly, while the great volume of the fire swept around over the plain. Long did the light of the burning home blight the eye of the lone woman after the flames had done their worst on the prairie around her and gone on bearing ruin and devastation to the southern plains and groves.