ns, running to fight the threatening prairie fire. Men
went to work, fighting fresh outbursts of flames and putting out fire on
the ruins. Women hovered about us in sympathy, some with tears streaming
down their sunburned cheeks under the straw hats and bonnets. Neither
Sister nor I could shed a tear.

Dazed and dizzy, we stumbled back across the breaks to the charred ashes
of our labors. Apart from the tangible losses that lay in coals, the
newspaper, the voice of the Brule, was gone. "Down into frontier
history," Senator Phillips said. Into it had gone the ambitions, the
heartbreaking labor, the vision of two girls.

Half-naked, our scanty clothing burned and torn, hair singed, faces and
parts of our bodies scorched and black with smoke--tar paper makes
black, smudgy smoke--eyes red and burning, we stood there in the middle
of the open spaces that had dealt us their blow. Our _pazuntas_ hadn't
worked, that was all. But at least we had checked the prairie fire. We
had won that much from the Brule, the "Burned" land.

We clung to each other wordlessly. There was nothing to say. Everything
that made up our daily life and our plans for the future had been wiped
out in thirty minutes.

"We still have the claim," Ida Mary murmured at last; "nothing can
destroy the land."

"But all our bright hopes--"

How the fire got such a start before we detected it was a mystery. With
the shack walls already burning hot and the strong wind, it had been
like spontaneous combustion. Ma Wagor was baking bread on an old oil
stove. Perhaps a draft from the open window had fanned the fire. But the
origin didn't matter now.

Ma Wagor had worked heroically, helping us to save the important
records, the mail, and the prairie from being swept by fire. When it was
all over she did not whimper about her loss.

When I saw Pa coming, I ran to her. "Ma, here comes Pa. This will kill
him. You had better go meet him." He had not wanted her to buy the store
in the first place; now there were debts piled up, and only the
homestead to pay them.

She sat on the ground, burying her face in her hands. "Let him come to
me," she replied. "It's his place to comfort me in time of trouble."

True to her feminine intuition, he went to her and put his arm around
her shoulders. "Elizabeth," he said. No response. "Elizabeth," he
entreated. "Don't give way like this. We will pull through somehow."

I felt a hand on my arm, and Alex Van Leshout's voice hoar