tood breathless, clinging to the projections of rock, and
did not realize the fire was so near them until they were struck in the
face by pieces of burning buffalo-chips that were carried toward them
with the rapidity of the awful wind. They were now badly scared, for
it seemed as if they were to be suffocated. They were saved, however,
almost miraculously; the sheet of flame passed them twenty yards away,
as the wind fortunately shifted at the moment the fire reached the foot
of the rock. The darkness was so intense that they did not discover the
flame; they only knew that they were saved as the clear sky greeted them
from behind the dense smoke-cloud.

Two of the Indians and their horses were caught in their own trap, and
perished miserably. They had attempted to reach the east side of the
rock, so as to steal around to the other side where the mules were, and
either cut them loose or crawl up on the trappers while bewildered in
the smoke and kill them, if they were not already dead. But they had
proceeded only a few rods on their little expedition, when the terrible
darkness of the smoke-cloud overtook them and soon the flames, from
which there was no possible escape.

All the game on the prairie which the fire swept over was killed too.
Only a few buffalo were visible in that region before the fire, but
even they were killed. The path of the flames, as was discovered by the
caravans that passed over the Trail a few days afterward, was marked
with the crisp and blackened carcasses of wolves, coyotes, turkeys,
grouse, and every variety of small birds indigenous to the region.
Indeed, it seemed as if no living thing it had met escaped its fury.
The fire assumed such gigantic proportions, and moved with such rapidity
before the wind, that even the Arkansas River did not check its path for
a moment; it was carried as readily across as if the stream had not been
in its way.

The first thought of the trappers on the rock was for their poor mules.
One crawled to where they were, and found them badly singed, but not
seriously injured. The men began to brighten up again when they knew
that their means of transportation were relatively all right, and
themselves also, and they took fresh courage, beginning to believe they
should get out of their bad scrape after all.

In the meantime the Indians, with the exception of three or four left
to guard the rock, so as to prevent the trappers from getting away, had
gone back to the