he wind, and the silken rustle, heard above the confusion of yelling
men, was like a voice whispering to Kurt. Somehow his dread lessened
then and other emotions predominated. He saw more and more farmers
arrive, in cars, in wagons, with engines and threshers, until the lane
was lined with them and men were hurrying everywhere.

Suddenly Kurt espied a slender column of smoke rising above the wheat
out in front of him toward the highway. This was the first sign of fire
in the great section that so many farmers had come to protect. Yelling
for help, he leaped off the seat and ran with all his might toward the
spot. Breasting that thick wheat was almost as hard as breasting waves.
Jerry came yelling after him, brandishing a crude beater; and both of
them reached the fire at once. It was a small circle, burning slowly.
Madly Kurt rushed in to tear and stamp as if the little hissing flames
were serpents. He burned his hands through his gloves and his feet
through his boots. Jerry beat hard, accompanying his blows with profane
speech plainly indicating that he felt he was at work on the I.W.W. In
short order they put out this little fire. Returning to his post, Kurt
watched until he was called to lend a hand down in the stunted wheat.

Fire had crossed and had gotten a hold on Dorn's lower field. Here the
wheat was blasted and so burned all the more fiercely. Horses and mowers
had to be taken away to the intervening barley-field. A weird, smoky,
and ruddy darkness enveloped the scene. Dim red fire, in lines and dots
and curves, appeared on three sides, growing larger and longer, meeting
in some places, crisscrossed by black figures of threshing men
belaboring the flames. Kurt came across his father working like a
mad-man. Kurt warned him not to overexert himself, and the father never
heard. Now and then his stentorian yell added to the medley of cries and
shouts and blows, and the roar of the wind fanning the flames.

Kurt was put to beating fire in the cut wheat. He stood with flames
licking at his boots. It was astonishing how tenacious the fire
appeared, how it crept along, eating up the mowed wheat. All the men
that could be spared there were unable to check it and keep it out of
the standing grain. When it reached this line it lifted a blaze, flamed
and roared, and burned like wildfire in grass. The men were driven back,
threshing and beating, all to no avail. Kurt fell into despair. There
was no hope. It seemed like an