All at once without decreasing the pace of his horses, Mr. Peniman stood up in the wagon and looked back.
They heard him utter a sharp, inarticulate sound, and the horses were stopped with a jerk that almost threw them upon their haunches.
"No use," he shouted, leaping out, "we can never make it! Got to fight it out here! _Out everybody_, and fight for your lives!"
Joe and Lige stopped their teams, and drawing the wagons up together they leaped out and tied their teams to the rings in the side of the other wagon.
"The kegs!" shouted Joshua Peniman, "roll out the kegs, and those gunny-sacks! We've got to back-fire, it's our only chance now!"
With frantic haste the boys rolled out the precious kegs of water, while Mrs. Peniman, with an instinctive knowledge of what to do, threw out a couple of brooms, some old coats, and a bundle of gunny-sacks.
The children, aroused at the first call of danger, had all gotten into their clothes by this time. With their heads enveloped in wet towels, wet brooms and gunny-sacks in their hands, they stood ready to do as their father commanded.
Having secured the horses firmly to the wagons Joshua Peniman rushed back over the way they had come for some two hundred feet, and called the family to him.
"We've got to set a back-fire here," he shouted; "watch it closely, don't let it get away from you, and beat out every tongue of fire that tries to get beyond you. Have your brooms and sacks ready. _Now!_"
The whole family, with the exception of Mary and David, who had been left asleep in the wagons with Spotty to guard them, were now lined up at a distance of some two hundred yards nearer to the oncoming fire than the wagons. It required courage for young people who had never, until they had begun this journey, encountered real danger, to face the roaring wall of flame that rushed toward them, but they were well disciplined and obeyed their father's orders implicitly.
Seeing that they were all in readiness Joshua Peniman stooped and put a match to the grass at his feet. Instantly it leaped into a flame. He let it burn a little way, then whipped out the edges, making a straight track of fire of about a hundred and fifty feet wide. This Joe instantly recognized as a "fire-guard." Then backing up a few steps at a time, and keeping the flames under control, they let this second or "back-fire" burn toward the wagon, leaving between them and the oncoming wall of flame a large area of burned-over ground. This they continued to do until they had described a complete circle about the wagons.