h formed
their safety line toward the house, and the three soon had several
hundred feet of fire running to meet those menacing flames on the
neighboring hillside. For a while it seemed almost pretty play save for
that haunting dread of disaster. But the dripping mops were heavy for
girls' wrists and arms, the constant stooping and rising and the lifting
of the heavy buckets pulled painfully on aching muscles. They must
backfire for a third of a mile before they dared hope the place was
safe.

A field of winter wheat adjoining the wagon road where they had started,
and extending down to the bank of Big John, was the best of protection
to the lower half of the farm. West from this, there was neither track
nor field to break the tindery sweeps of prairie grass, until the strip
of breaking on the north boundary of the pasture was reached. The old
Santa Fe trail along which they were firing, fortunately extended to
within some two hundred yards of the breaking, and was their safeguard
against the ever-present danger of letting the fire get away from them
to the rear.

Older heads would have selected that hundred yards of high grass as a
starting place, while they were fresh and best able to cope with its
perils. Chicken Little was leaving it to the last. Swiftly as the three
worked, the head fire was rapidly gaining on them. Again and again, one
of them glanced toward the house in the hope that Jim Bart might have
returned, or some neighbor have seen their danger and be on the way to
help. Not a human being was in sight in any direction.

Marian straightened up with a groan and glanced despairingly at the head
fire. Sherm's gaze followed hers anxiously.

"We've got to do better than this, girls. Here, Chicken Little, make a
torch of some of those resinous weeds--those long crackly ones--and fire
just as fast as you can. I'll follow with the mop and yell if I can't
manage it."

The plan worked well for a time--their haven of hope, the brown strip of
breaking, seemed to move steadily nearer. But Chicken Little and Marian
were fast becoming exhausted. The main fire was now so close that its
smoke was beginning to drift in their faces. Prairie chickens and quail,
startled and confused by the double line of flame, whirred above their
heads, uncertain how to seek safety. A terrified jack rabbit leaped up
almost at Sherm's feet. Rabbits, ground squirrels, one lone skunk, and
even an occasional coyote, darted past them. Back