The Flying U's Last Stand

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER 25. "LITTLE BLACK SHACK'S ALL BURNT UP"

  It is a penitentiary offense for anyone to set fire to prairie grass ortimber; and if you know the havoc which one blazing match may work upondry grassland when the wind is blowing free, you will not wonder atthe penalty for lighting that match with deliberate intent to set theprairie afire.

  Within five minutes after H. J. Owens slipped the bit of mirror backinto his pocket after flashing a signal that the Kid was riding aloneupon the trail, a line of fire several rods long was creeping up out ofa grassy hollow to the hilltop beyond, whence it would go racing awayto the east and the north, growing bigger and harder to fight with everygrass tuft it fed on.

  The Happy Family were working hard that day upon the system ofirrigation by which they meant to reclaim and make really valuabletheir desert claims. They happened to be, at the time when the firewas started, six or seven miles away, wrangling over the best means ofgetting their main ditch around a certain coulee without building a lotof expensive flume. A surveyor would have been a blessing, at this pointin the undertaking; but a surveyor charged good money for his services,and the Happy Family were trying to be very economical with money; withtime, and effort, and with words they were not so frugal.

  The fire had been burning for an hour and had spread so alarminglybefore the gusty breeze that it threatened several claim-shacks beforethey noticed the telltale, brownish tint to the sunlight and smelledother smoke than the smoke of the word-battle then waging fiercely amongthem. They dropped stakes, flags and ditch-level and ran to where theirhorses waited sleepily the pleasure of their masters.

  They reached the level of the benchland to see disaster swooping downupon them like a race-horse. They did not stop then to wonder how thefire had started, or why it had gained such headway. They raced theirhorses after sacks, and after the wagon and team and water barrels withwhich to fight the flames. For it was not the claim-shacks in its pathwhich alone were threatened. The grass that was burning meant a greatdeal to the stock, and therefore to the general welfare of every settlerupon that bench, be he native or newcomer.

  Florence Grace Hallman had, upon one of her periodical visits among her"clients," warned them of the danger of prairie fires and urged them toplow and burn guards around all their buildings. A few of the settlershad done so and were comparatively safe in the face of that leaping, redline. But there were some who had delayed--and these must fight now ifthey would escape.

  The Happy Family, to a man, had delayed; rather they had not consideredthat there was any immediate danger from fire; it was too early in theseason for the grass to be tinder dry, as it would become a month or sixweeks later. They were wholly unprepared for the catastrophe, so far asany expectation of it went. But for all that they knew exactly what todo and how to go about doing it, and they did not waste a single minutein meeting the emergency.

  While the Kid was riding with H. J. Owens into the hills, his friends,the bunch, were riding furiously in the opposite direction. And thatwas exactly what had been planned beforehand. There was an absolutecertainty in the minds of those who planned that it would be so,Florence Grace Hallman, for instance, knew just what would furnishcomplete occupation for the minds and the hands of the Happy Familyand of every other man in that neighborhood, that afternoon. Perhaps aclaim-shack or two would go up in smoke and some grass would burn. Butwhen one has a stubborn disposition and is fighting for prestige andrevenge and the success of ones business, a shack or two and a few acresof prairie grass do not count for very much.

  For the rest of that afternoon the boys of the Flying U fought side byside with hated nesters and told the inexperienced how best to fight.For the rest of that afternoon no one remembered the Kid, or wonderedwhy H. J. Owens was not there in the grimy line of fire-fighters whoslapped doggedly at the leaping flames with sacks kept wet from thebarrels of water hauled here and there as they were needed. No one hadtime to call the roll and see who was missing among the settlers. No onedreamed that this mysterious fire that had crept up out of a couleeand spread a black, smoking blanket over the hills where it passed, wasnothing more nor lees than a diversion while a greater crime was beingcommitted behind their backs.

  In spite of them the fire, beaten out of existence at one point, gainedunexpected fury elsewhere and raced on. In spite of them women andchildren were in actual danger of being burned to death, and rushedweeping from flimsy shelter to find safety in the nearest barren coulee.The sick lady whom the Little Doctor had been tending was carried out onher bed and laid upon the blackened prairie, hysterical from the frightshe had received. The shack she had lately occupied smoked whilethe tarred paper on the roof crisped and curled; and then the wholestructure burst into flames and sent blazing bits of paper and boards tospread the fire faster.

  Fire guards which the inexperienced settlers thought safe were jumpedwithout any perceptible check upon the flames. The wind was just rightfor the fanning of the fire. It shifted now and then erratically andsent the yellow line leaping in new directions. Florence Grace Hallmanwas in Dry Lake that day, and she did not hear until after dark howcompletely her little diversion had been a success; how more thanhalf of her colony had been left homeless and hungry upon the charredprairie. Florence Grace Hallman would not have relished her supper, Ifear, had the news reached her earlier in the evening.

  At Antelope Coulee the Happy Family and such of the settlers as theycould muster hastily for the fight, made a desperate stand againstthe common enemy. Flying U Coulee was safe, thanks to the permanentfire-guards which the Old Man maintained year after year as a matterof course. But there were the claims of the Happy Family and all thegrassland east of there which must be saved.

  Men drove their work horses at a gallop after plows, and when theyhad brought them they lashed the horses into a trot while they plowedcrooked furrows in the sun-baked prairie sod, just over the easternrim of Antelope Coulee. The Happy Family knelt here and there along thefresh-turned sod, and started a line of fire that must beat up againstthe wind until it met the flames, rushing before it. Backfiring isalways a more or less, ticklish proceeding, and they would not trust thework to stranger.

  Every man of them took a certain stretch of furrow to watch, and ranbackward and forward with blackened, frayed sacks to beat out thewayward flames that licked treacherously through the smallest break inthe line of fresh soil. They knew too well the danger of those little,licking flame tongues; not one was left to live and grow and raceleaping away through the grass.

  They worked--heavens, how they worked!--and they stopped the fire thereon the rim of Antelope Coulee. Florence Grace Hallman would have beensick with fury, had she seen that dogged line of fighters, and theragged hem of charred black ashes against the yellow-brown, which showedhow well those men whom she hated had fought.

  So the fire was stopped well outside the fence which marked the boundaryof the Happy Family's claims. All west of there and far to the north thehills and the coulees lay black as far as one could see--which was tothe rim of the hills which bordered Dry Lake valley on the east. Hereand there a claim-shack stood forlorn amid the blackness. Here and therea heap of embers still smoked and sent forth an occasional spitting ofsparks when a gust fanned the heap. Men, women and children stood aboutblankly or wandered disconsolately here and there, coughing in the acridclouds of warm grass cinders kicked up by their own lagging feet.

  No one missed the Kid. No one dreamed that he was lost again. Chip waswith the Happy Family and did not know that the Kid had left the ranchthat afternoon. The Little Doctor had taken it for granted that he hadgone with his daddy, as he so frequently did; and with his daddy and thewhole Happy Family to look after him, she never once doubted that he wasperfectly safe, even among the fire-fighters. She supposed he would beup on the seat beside Patsy, probably, proudly riding on the wagon thathauled the water barrels.

  The Little Doctor had troubles of her own to occupy her mind She hadridden hurriedly up the hill and straight to the shack of the sick
woman, when first she discovered that the prairie was afire. And she hadfound the sick woman lying on a makeshift bed on the smoking, black areathat was pathetically safe now from fire because there was nothing moreto burn.

  "Little black shack's all burnt up! Everything's black now. Black hills,black hollows, black future, black world, black hearts--everythingmatches--everything's black. Sky's black, I'm black--you'reblack--little black shack won't have to stand all alone any more--littleblack shack's just black ashes--little black shack's all burnt up!" Andthen the woman laughed shrilly, with that terrible, meaningless laughterof hysteria.

  She was a pretty woman, and young. Her hair was that bright shade of redthat goes with a skin like thin, rose-tinted ivory. Her eyes were bigand so dark a blue that they sometimes looked black, and her mouth wassweet and had a tired droop to match the mute pathos of her eyes. Herhusband was a coarse lout of a man who seldom spoke to her when theywere together. The Little Doctor had felt that all the tragedy ofwomanhood and poverty and loneliness was synthesized in this woman withthe unusual hair and skin and eyes and expression. She had been comingevery day to see her; the woman was rather seriously ill, and neededbetter care than she could get out there on the bald prairie, even withthe Little Doctor to watch over her. If she died her face would hauntthe Little Doctor always. Even if she did not die she would remain avivid memory. Just now even the Little Doctor's mother instinct wassubmerged under her professional instincts and her woman sympathy. Shedid not stop to wonder whether she was perfectly sure that the Kid waswith Chip. She took it for granted and dismissed the Kid from her mind,and worked to save the woman.

  Yes, the little diversion of a prairie fire that would call all handsto the westward so that the Kid might be lured away in another directionwithout the mishap of being seen, proved a startling success. As adiversion it could scarcely be improved upon--unless Florence GraceHallman had ordered a wholesale massacre or something like that.