"It's miles away yet," he said in a low voice to his wife; "we may be able to get out of its path, but with this wind----"
He stopped abruptly, then leaping into the wagon shouted, "Come on, in with you, never mind those things, Hannah, never mind anything now! The wind has changed, and that fire will be down upon us in less than half an hour. Whip up your horses, boys, don't spare them now! With that fire behind us----"
He leaned forward as he spoke and lashed his team; the horses plunged forward with a leap that made the wagon careen.
Over the coarse prairie grass they fled, the horses straining and plunging, while they looked continually behind them to where the red line had left the horizon now and was creeping toward them, the red tongues of flame leaping higher and higher as they caught the dry grass and rosin weeds.
The air grew suffocatingly hot, and before long particles of burned grass and weeds, carried by the gale, began to fall about them.
"Watch that nothing catches fire in the wagon, Hannah," shouted Joshua Peniman, bending forward and laying the whip across the backs of the petted team that had scarcely ever felt a blow in their lives before. "Watch the children's clothing. Have wet cloths handy!"
The wind, a gale before, now seemed to have increased in fury, and before it the fire leaped and roared like a furnace.
"Faster, Joe, faster!" yelled his father; "it's gaining on us, we've got to reach a stream or draw of some kind----"
Leaning far forward on his seat with the whip in his hand and the reins clutched hard, Joe did not wait for the finish of the sentence. With voice and whip and lines he urged the horses forward, shouting at them, shaking the lines over their straining backs, whirling the whip about their heads, as in a blinding reek of smoke and dust they thundered on, while closer and closer behind them came the roaring flames.
The horses were soon panting and lathered with sweat, staggering and stumbling under the strain of the heavy wagons, and poor Cherry, fastened on behind, was almost pulled off her feet, and slid and stumbled bawling wildly.
The whole sky was illuminated now, and the air so filled with smoke that they could hardly breathe. Behind them the ominous crackling and snapping of dry grass grew louder and louder, as the fire, fanned by the high wind, rushed through the tall, dry prairie grass with the velocity of a cyclone.