mps of low
brush fire started like magic.

Immediately Pratt reproduced her work on the other side of the trail. At
right angles with the beaten path, they fled across the prairie, leaving
little fires in their wake that spread and spread, rising higher and
higher, and soon roaring into quenchless conflagrations.

These patches of fire soon joined and increased to a wider and wider
swath of flame. The fire traveled slowly westward, but rushed eastward,
propelled by the wind.

Wider and wider grew the sea of flame set by the burning blankets. Like
Frances, Pratt kept his mount at a fast lope--the speediest pace of the
trained cow-pony--nor did he stop until the blanket was consumed to the
rawhide knot.

Then he wheeled his mount to look back. He could see nothing but flames
and smoke at first. He did not know how far Frances had succeeded in
traveling with her "flare"; but he was quite sure that he had come more
than a mile from the wagon-trail.

He could soon see a broadening patch of burned-over prairie in the midst
of the swirling flames and smoke. His pony snorted, and backed away from
the approach-fire; but Pratt wheeled the grey around to the westward,
and where the flames merely crept and sputtered through the greasewood
and against the wind, he spurred his mount to leap over the line of
fire.

The earth was hot, and every time the pony set a hoof down smoke or
sparks flew upward; but Pratt had to get back to the trail. With the
quirt he forced on the snorting grey, and finally reached a place where
the fire had completely passed and the ground was cooler.

Ashes flew in clouds about him; the smoke from the west drove in a thick
mass between him and the darkened sky. Only the glare of the roaring
fire revealed objects and landmarks.

The backfire had burned for many yards westward, to meet the threatening
wave of flame flying on the wings of the wind. To the east, the line of
flame Pratt and Frances had set was rising higher and higher.

He saw the wagon standing in the midst of the smoke, Mack Hinkman
holding the snorting, kicking mules with difficulty, while a wild little
figure on a pony galloped back from the other side of the trail.

"All right, Pratt?" shrieked Frances. "Get up, Mack; we've no time to
lose!"

The teamster let the mules go. Yet he dared not let them take their own
gait. The thought of that cracked axle disturbed him.

The wagon led, however, through the smoke and dust; the two