f fire ever got a start on the Burnt Thigh now, with its thick high
grass as dry as powder and no water, every habitation would be
completely annihilated. Protests about our lack of protection seethed
until they found expression in the newspaper. We had no equipment, no
fire fighters, no lookouts, no rangers. Surely the government owed us
some means of fighting the red devil of the plains.

One evening when the parched ground was beginning to cool we noticed a
strange yellow haze settling over the earth, felt a murky heat. The
world was on fire! Not near the settlement, miles away it must be,
probably on the Indian lands beyond the Strip.

From the heat in the air, the threatening stillness, the alertness of
the animals as they lifted their heads high in the air with nostrils
dilated, we knew it was coming toward us. The heavy reddish fog
portended a big fire, its tongue of flame lapping up everything as it
came.

Already a group of homesteaders was gathering at the print shop,
organizing systematic action; men from every section hurrying in with
little sacks and kegs of water splashing until they were half empty; a
pathetic, inadequate defense to set up against so gigantic an enemy.
Chris Christopherson rattled by with his tractor to turn broad furrows.
Dave Dykstra, who would never set the world on fire but would do a good
deal in putting it out, hastened up to help. Here they came! Men with
kegs of water, men with pieces of carpet, men with nothing but their
hands and their fear to pit against the fire.

Off to the south the sky was red now, and the smell of fire was in our
nostrils, faint but unmistakable. None of us knew how fast a big fire
could travel. The settlers still knew so pitiably little about combating
the frontier.

From the Indian settlement came Swift Running Deer on the horse which
had taken the State Fair prize last year. In Sioux (the young buck was
too excited to remember his English) he said the fire was on beyond the
Brule somewhere. Most of the Indians had ridden off to it while he had
come to tell the whites.

"If the wind stay down, it mebbe no come, but heap big fire like that
take two day--three day--mebbe seven to die."

It was still and peaceful now, but there was little hope that two or
three days could pass without wind--and if the wind came from that
direction there was no hope for the Brule.

Coyote Cal, who had come riding through the Strip, stopped at the print
shop. Ida Ma