The prairies were brown–a dead, crisp brown, as if they had been baked by hot suns through long, rainless days and nipped by a whole winter of killing frosts.

“I don’t understand why the grass is so dry by the middle of November,” said Dr. Morton. “Of course the summer was pretty dry, but then we had rains in September.”

“Yes, Father,” Frank replied, “but there has been less rainfall for the past two years than Kansas has known for a decade. I imagine the ground is baked underneath on the prairies, and the rains only helped for a time.”

“Well, whatever caused it, we shall have to feed earlier than usual. I am afraid we may have some 296bad fires, too, if we don’t have rain or a snowfall soon.”

“There was a fire over on Elm Creek night before last,” spoke up Sherm. “Grant Stowe’s cousin was telling us about it at school.”

“I saw smoke off to the north yesterday,” said Chicken Little.

“Oh, I hope we sha’n’t have any bad fires this fall!” exclaimed Mrs. Morton. “I do think a big prairie fire is one of the most terrifying sights, especially at night. I couldn’t sleep that first fall for dreading them. I used to get up in the middle of the night and look out the windows to see if that awful glare was anywhere on the horizon.”

“Don’t go borrowing trouble, Mother. There hasn’t been a bad fire on Big John for years. The country is so thickly settled a fire doesn’t have the sweep it used to.” Dr. Morton tried to reassure her.

“They must be wonderful things to see. I hope there won’t be any bad ones, but if one shows up anywhere within ten miles, I propose to be on hand,” Sherm said eagerly.

“You won’t be so keen after you have fought one or two, Sherm.” Frank smiled with the wisdom of the initiated. “Say, Father, I think Jim and I had better fire round those stacks on the north eighty. 297It would be hard to save them if a fire got started on the divide.”

“Yes, I don’t know but you’d best do it this afternoon. Burn a pretty wide strip. And we ought to run a guard on the west from that field of winter wheat to the county road. If a fire ever got in there, it might come down on the house.”

Chicken Little spoke up. “May I go, too, Frank? I love to watch you.”

“You will be in school, but you can come home that way if we are still at work. You can easily see the smoke. We won’t try it if the wind rises, and I believe it is going to.”

“Chicken Little, if you see the smoke you may tell Mr. Clay I won’t come for my recitation this afternoon. I am going to find out how this back-firing business is done.”

Sherm had begun his studies some two weeks previous and was making rapid progress, studying evenings, and going to the school a half hour before closing time to recite.

Chicken Little found this arrangement extremely pleasant, because Sherm was always there to walk home with her. They took all sorts of detours and by-paths through the woods, instead of coming along the road to the ford. They discovered unexpected stores of walnuts and acorns and wild rose hips, and scarlet bitter-sweet just 298opening its gorgeous berries after the first hard frosts.

Jane helped Sherm press autumn leaves and pack a huge box of nuts to send home. His mother wrote back that his father hadn’t showed as much interest in anything for weeks, as he did in the nuts. They seemed to carry him back to his own boyhood.

Mr. Dart seldom left his bed now, and Sherm’s mother told but little of his condition. Sherm understood her silence only too well. Chicken Little noticed that he always worked hard and late the days he heard from home. She began to watch for the letters herself, and to mount guard over the boy when he looked specially downcast, teasing him into going for a gallop or wheedling him into making taffy or playing a game of checkers. She got so she recognized Sherm’s blue devils as far off as she could see him.

Sherm did not notice this for some time or suspect she was looking after him, but one day he remarked carelessly when she thought she had been specially clever:

“Chicken Little, don’t make a mollycoddle of me. A man has to learn to take what comes his way without squealing.”

“Yes, Sherm, but if you get thorns in your hand, it’s better to try to pull them out than to go on pushing them in deeper, isn’t it? I know when I was 299a kid, it always helped a lot to have Mother kiss it better.”

“How’d you get so wise, Chicken Little?” The lad smiled his wry smile.

“Don’t make fun of me, please, Sherm.”

“Make fun of you? Lady Jane, I’ve been taking off my hat to you for a week. How in the dickens you girls find out exactly what’s going on inside a chap beats my time. It’s mighty good of you to put up with my glooming and try to cheer me along. Maybe I don’t look grateful, but I am.” Sherm was eager to make this acknowledgment, but found it more trying than he had anticipated. He revenged himself by starting in to tease.

“Say, I wish you’d try your hand at this splinter–I can’t budge the critter.”

Jane flew for a needle, unsuspecting. The splinter didn’t look serious, but she painstakingly dug it out.

“Is that all right?” she demanded, looking up to encounter a wicked glint in Sherm’s gray eyes.

“Hm-n, aren’t you going to put any medicine on it?”

“Medicine?”

“Well, you know you said it helped.” Sherm was grinning impishly.

“Sherman Dart, I think you’re too mean for 300words!” She was about to turn away affronted when she had an inspiration.

“Mother,” she called, “O Mother!”

Mrs. Morton had been placidly sewing in the sitting room while the young people were studying their lessons by the dining-room table. She came to the door, inquiring.

“Mother, Sherm’s had a splinter in his finger and he wants you to kiss it better.”

Sherm started to protest, but Mrs. Morton did not stop to listen.

“Jane, I think that kind of a joke is very ill-timed, making your poor mother get up and come to you for nothing. You must remember I am not as young as I once was.”

Mrs. Morton departed with dignity.

“Now will you be good?” chuckled Sherm.

“Oh, I guess I’m square,” Chicken Little retorted, going back to her lessons.

Mrs. Morton had said truly that she was not so young as formerly. She had not been well all fall. Dr. Morton had persuaded her to see another physician, who, having assured her that she was merely run down, had prescribed the usual tonic. He had told Dr. Morton, however, that her heart action was weak and warned him to guard her against shocks of any kind and to have her rest as much as possible. This had agreed with the doctor’s own diagnosis of 301her condition, and the family had been trying to save her from all exertion. So Chicken Little was a tiny bit conscience-stricken.

High winds and more pressing farm duties had interfered with running the fire guards. It was not until the week before Thanksgiving that the men got at it, then they succeeded only in protecting the stacks. They had intended to finish the job the following morning, but one of the neighbors, passing through the lane, stopped to tell Dr. Morton of a sale of yearlings to be held the next afternoon in the neighboring county.

“It must be part of the Elliott herd. They’re three-quarters bred shorthorn; I’d like mighty well to pick up a bunch of them. We have plenty of feed for any ordinary winter.” Dr. Morton was talking the matter over with Frank after supper.

“Suppose we ride over, Father, it’s only about twenty miles. We can start early–we don’t need to buy unless they are actually a bargain.”

They were off at six the following morning, planning to return the same day. Dr. Morton, however, warned his wife not to be anxious if she did not see them before the next afternoon. If they bought the steers, they would not try to drive them home the same day.

The morning was bright and pleasant, but the wind rose toward mid-day and was blowing a young 302gale by the time Chicken Little returned from school at half-past four. Mrs. Morton began worrying lest the doctor and Frank had not wrapped up sufficiently.

“Why, it isn’t cold yet, Mrs. Morton. In fact, it is astonishingly warm for November. And there’s the queerest, yellowish haze I have ever seen.” Sherm said this to reassure her.

“Probably dust,” replied Mrs. Morton carelessly, relieved from her anxiety about her family.

Chicken Little hurried through her supper and went over to see Marian. Presently Marian threw a shawl over her head and they both climbed the hill back of the house. The wind was still blowing fiercely. Sherm saw them on the ridge and followed to see what was tempting them to a stroll on such a night.

“What’s up?”

Marian answered. “Why, Jane thinks all this yellow haze comes from a prairie fire. We’ve been trying to see if we could see any trace of it. It seems to me I do smell smoke–there’s a kind of pungent tang to the air, too.” Marian sniffed uneasily.

“Like burning grass or leaves?”

Marian’s face paled. “Sherm, that’s exactly what it is! What can we do? And the menfolks all away except Jim Bart, and he’s gone to Benton’s on an 303errand. He’ll be back in a few minutes though.”

“Don’t worry, Marian,” said Jane, “if it’s a prairie fire it’s miles and miles off. It must be on the other side of Little John. It can never cross the creek–besides, the wind is blowing the wrong way for it to sweep down on us.”

“That’s so–but the wind might change any minute, and in a gale like this I’m not so sure it might not jump Little John. I do wish Frank had finished that back-firing.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t be possible to do it until the wind lulls, but Mrs. Morton, I’ll sit up and watch to-night–at least until the wind goes down. It often falls about midnight,” said Sherm, looking troubled.

“It looks to me as if we were in for a three-days’ blow,” Marian replied despondently. “But I’d be much obliged if you would, Sherm, I don’t quite like to ask Jim Bart to, for he’s had such a hard day. Do you think you can keep awake? And, Chicken Little, don’t let on to Mother–we mustn’t worry her.”

“Sherm,” said Jane, after they went into the house, “I’m going to stay up, too; I’ll slip down again after Mother goes to bed. It’s a lot easier for two people to keep awake than one.”

“No, Chicken Little, I don’t believe you’d better. Your mother wouldn’t like it. And we’d be dead sure to laugh or talk loud enough for her to hear 304us. I hope the wind will go down early. If it doesn’t and I find I can’t stay awake, I’ll call you and let you watch while I doze on the couch here.”

Jane stayed up as late as her mother would let her, and Sherm made the excuse of having special studying to do, to sit up later. After Mrs. Morton had retired he made frequent excursions to the hill top. A lurid glare lit up the horizon to the northwest. He could still catch the tang of smoke and whiffs of burning grass, but these were not so pungent as earlier in the evening. The fire seemed farther away. By eleven, the glare was decidedly fainter and the wind had subsided noticeably. At twelve, he concluded it was safe to go to bed.

Chicken Little waking about two, stole down stairs and finding everything dark, made the rounds of the windows, but the distant fire showed only a faint glow in the night.

When they arose the next morning there was no trace of the fire to be seen. Sherm hailed some men passing, for news. They reported that it had swept the north side of Elm Creek and said it had burned up a lot of hay. There was a rumor that two of the upland farmers had lost everything they had and that a man and team had been caught in it. But they hadn’t been able to get any details.

“Though it wouldn’t be surprising,” one of the 305strangers added, “that fire was traveling faster than any horse could run.”

Chicken Little had come out and was standing beside Sherm. Her eyes grew big. “Do they really think somebody got burned?”

One of the men nudged the man who had spoken.

“No, Sis, it was just a rumor–I don’t ’low it was true. When folks can’t give you any name or place–it most generally ain’t so.”

The men drove on.

It was Saturday. Jim Bart had gone down to town for the weekly supplies and Sherm was busy with odd jobs. He asked Jane to go up to the hill top occasionally to make sure there were no fresh signs of the fire, though Jim Bart had assured him the danger was over. Sherm noticed that the wind had changed. It was blowing freshly from the very direction where they had seen the fire the preceding night.

Chicken Little obediently made trips once an hour until noon; she could detect nothing to occasion alarm. After dinner her mother set her to making doughnuts and she forgot all about it.

Mrs. Morton was not so well to-day and Jane persuaded her to go to bed. Drawing the blinds to, she put a hot iron to her mother’s feet and left her to sleep. The clock striking four attracted Jane’s attention as she came back into the sitting room, the 306last doughnut was draining in the collender while Annie mopped the kitchen floor.

She stood irresolute for an instant, undecided whether to read or to fetch some walnuts from the smokehouse for Sunday. Dr. Morton always liked to have a basket of walnuts handy on Sunday afternoons. “I guess I’ll get the nuts, and perhaps I’d better run up the hill to be sure that old fire hasn’t had a change of heart. Father says often some little side fire smolders and burns after the main fire is all out. Though I guess one would have showed up long before this if there’d been any this time.”

She argued with herself for two or three minutes, finally deciding that it wasn’t much trouble to go take a look, even if it were foolish. Just outside the door she met Sherm and he walked up to the crest with her.

Half way up the slope Chicken Little suddenly stopped, sniffing suspiciously. “Sherm, I believe I smell smoke again.”

Sherm stopped also to draw in a long breath. He did not wait to announce his observations, but broke into a run for the top of the hill. Chicken Little followed him a length in the rear. Sherm took one look and gave vent to a surprised whistle. Chicken Little stared, fascinated, at a tiny line of fire burning merrily on a hillside not a mile distant.

307“Jumping Jehosophat!” exclaimed Sherm, “how did it ever creep up on us this way?”

Jane was thinking rapidly. She scarcely noticed what he said.

“Sherm, Frank left the water barrels and the mops and everything on the wagon, didn’t he?”

“Yes–what—”

“Are the barrels filled?”

“Yep, do you think—”

“Sherm, run hitch the bay team to the wagon quick. I’ll get Marian and warn Annie not to tell Mother–she’s asleep still. Hurry, Sherm, every minute’s precious!”

Sherm’s “All right” drifted from him on the run. He was already on his way to the stable. He realized that Jane knew more about fire fighting than he did.

Jane hurried to the cottage. Marian listened to her news, white to the lips.

“Annie can take Jilly. Perhaps I’d better ride over after Mr. Benton.”

“Marian,” protested Chicken Little, “there isn’t time. And if Mr. Benton’s home, he has probably seen it, too, and is trying to protect his own place. No, we’ve got to work fast. Unless we can run a fire guard before the fire reaches that tall grass on the division line, the whole place is a goner! It isn’t coming very fast yet. Here, I’ll run with Jilly 308over to the house and you put on a pair of Frank’s trousers–your skirts might catch. I’ll get that old pair of Ernest’s. Hurry, Marian, hurry!”

Chicken Little gathered up Jilly and started on the run.

Both Marian and Jane reached the stable yard just as Sherm drove the heavy farm wagon clattering out of the gate. They hurriedly climbed in and Sherm lashed the horses into a gallop. As they passed the cottage, Marian exclaimed: “Did you get matches either of you?”

Sherm slowed up the team and examined his pockets.

“A handful.”

“Stop a moment–I’ll run fetch a box. It takes a lot.” Chicken Little was over the wheel before the words were fairly out of her mouth.

She was back in a jiffy with the matches, which she proceeded to divide among them, while the horses leaped forward again.

“Stop on the backbone where the Santa Fe trail strikes the road.”

Precisely four minutes later Sherm pulled up the panting team. Chicken Little promptly took command. She had been out many times with her father and brothers and knew exactly what to do.

“Wet your mop–take a bucket of water and fire 309right along the trail, Marian,–that buffalo grass burns slow. Call if it starts to get away from you. I’ll begin there by the hedge. Drive about fifty yards farther on, Sherm,–the horses will stand. Fill all the buckets and wet the extra mops. We’re liable to want them in a rush.”

“All right, Jane, save your breath–you’ll need it. Careful there, Mrs. Morton, beat out the flames along the trail as you go. Never mind how fast it whoops the other way. CÆsar’s ghost! that fire is getting close!”

The waving, irregular lines of flame on the hillside were coming steadily on, now leaping up several feet high as the breeze freshened, now creeping close to the ground when the gusts died away. The wind was fitful.

Marian and Sherm both had their trail of fire flickering into a blaze before Chicken Little got hers kindled. Her hands shook so she could hardly hold the match. The first flickered and went out, a second, then a third, blackened, before she could coax the stubbly grass to burn. She caught up a bunch of weeds, set it blazing in her hand and dragged it swiftly along the ground. Tiny swirls of yellow flame wavered in her wake, crackled feebly for an instant in the shorter herbage, then, reaching out tongues into the longer blue stem beyond, leaped forward like a frolicsome animal. Sherm’s and 310Marian’s lines of fire were eating their way merrily toward hers on each side.

It was easy to beat out the flame in the Buffalo grass, which formed their safety line toward the house, and the three soon had several hundred feet of fire running to meet those menacing flames on the neighboring hillside. For a while it seemed almost pretty play save for that haunting dread of disaster. But the dripping mops were heavy for girls’ wrists and arms, the constant stooping and rising and the lifting of the heavy buckets pulled painfully on aching muscles. They must backfire for a third of a mile before they dared hope the place was safe.

A field of winter wheat adjoining the wagon road where they had started, and extending down to the bank of Big John, was the best of protection to the lower half of the farm. West from this, there was neither track nor field to break the tindery sweeps of prairie grass, until the strip of breaking on the north boundary of the pasture was reached. The old Santa Fe trail along which they were firing, fortunately extended to within some two hundred yards of the breaking, and was their safeguard against the ever-present danger of letting the fire get away from them to the rear.

Older heads would have selected that hundred yards of high grass as a starting place, while they 311were fresh and best able to cope with its perils. Chicken Little was leaving it to the last. Swiftly as the three worked, the head fire was rapidly gaining on them. Again and again, one of them glanced toward the house in the hope that Jim Bart might have returned, or some neighbor have seen their danger and be on the way to help. Not a human being was in sight in any direction.

Marian straightened up with a groan and glanced despairingly at the head fire. Sherm’s gaze followed hers anxiously.

“We’ve got to do better than this, girls. Here, Chicken Little, make a torch of some of those resinous weeds–those long crackly ones–and fire just as fast as you can. I’ll follow with the mop and yell if I can’t manage it.”

The plan worked well for a time–their haven of hope, the brown strip of breaking, seemed to move steadily nearer. But Chicken Little and Marian were fast becoming exhausted. The main fire was now so close that its smoke was beginning to drift in their faces. Prairie chickens and quail, startled and confused by the double line of flame, whirred above their heads, uncertain how to seek safety. A terrified jack rabbit leaped up almost at Sherm’s feet. Rabbits, ground squirrels, one lone skunk, and even an occasional coyote, darted past them. Back at the road where they had begun, the head fire was already 312meeting their line of back fire and dying down in sullen smoke. Still, that hundred yards of blue stem was untouched.

They paused a moment at its edge in hurried consultation.

“Let’s souse all the mops–dripping wet–and trail across first,” suggested Chicken Little in short, labored gasps. She had been running for several minutes.

“Yes, and then fire back. Christ!–we must hurry!” Sherm, too, was breathless. “Can you stick it out a few minutes longer, Marian?”

Marian Morton’s face was drawn and colorless. She nodded and rested a moment, leaning on her mop.

For the next sixty-five yards the blows of the wet mops rained down with the precision of clock work. Twice the flames started in quick eddies back of their line, but, panting, the girls almost sobbing, they beat them back. The smoke was growing stifling. The wind, freshening, blew it from both fires full in their faces. They could see only a few feet ahead.

“Light another torch and run, Chicken Little–there’s no time to lose–we must chance it!”

Chicken Little obeyed silently. Half way to the breaking she stumbled and fell. Her torch of twisted grass flew from her hand, scattering the burning fragments about her. Before she could get 313to her feet, the grass was ablaze all around. Quick-witted Sherm threw her a mop, then beat his way toward her. Marian, summoning her last remaining strength, ran to help, but sank to the ground in a faint before she could reach Jane.

Sherm and Chicken Little, beating, stamping madly, did not see her fall. The flames fairly licked up the long grass. They beat them out around Jane only to see them spread in an ever-increasing circle. Chicken Little’s legs gave way under her and she sank helplessly down, watching the rushing fire. Sherm struggled on with parched throat and stinging eyes, but he, too, was fast becoming exhausted in the unequal fight, when a strong pair of hands seized the mop from his straining arms and rained swift blows on the flaming grass. Answering blows resounded from four other stout pairs of hands and an irregular line of charred vegetation was soon all that was left to tell the tale of the danger they had escaped.

“Thank God, we got here in time!” Captain Clarke ejaculated fervently, raising Marian’s head and dashing water in her face to restore her.

“We’re so shut in by the timber at our place, I didn’t dream the fire was in this part of the country till one of the hands went up in the pasture. We mounted and came double quick, I tell you. And we’d have got here quicker, if I’d known what straits 314you were in. You’re a plucky lot! Easy there, Mrs. Morton, you are all right, and the fire is safe to smoke out at its leisure. Here, drink a drop of this whiskey.”

Sherm had gathered up Chicken Little and carried her beyond the smoke, then dropped down beside her with a sigh to recover his breath. He felt numb and so dazed he hardly heeded what the Captain was saying.

“Pretty well done for, yourself, aren’t you, lad?” one of the men inquired. “You sure knew exactly what to do, if you are a tenderfoot.”

Sherm roused himself enough to twist the corners of his mouth into his wonted smile.

“Me? I didn’t do anything–Chicken Little was the boss of this gang.”