her feet. A band
of antelope, running, had paused a hundred yards away, gazing back.
Danger--yes; but what?

The girl ran to the crest of the nearest hillock and looked back. Even
as she did so, it seemed that she caught touch of the great wave of
apprehension spreading swiftly over the land.

Far off, low lying like a pale blue cloud, was a faint line of something
that seemed to alter in look, to move, to rise and fall, to
advance--down the wind. She never had seen it, but knew what it must
be--the prairie fire! The lack of fall burning had left it fuel even
now.

Vast numbers of prairie grouse came by, hurtling through the silence,
alighting, strutting with high heads, fearlessly close. Gray creatures
came hopping, halting or running fully extended--the prairie hares,
fleeing far ahead. Band after band of antelope came on, running easily,
but looking back. A heavy line of large birds, black to the eye, beat on
laboriously, alighted, and ran onward with incredible speed--the wild
turkeys, fleeing the terror. Came also broken bands of white-tailed
deer, easy, elastic, bounding irregularly, looking back at the
miles-wide cloud, which now and then spun up, black as ink toward the
sky, but always flattened and came onward with the wind.

Danger? Yes! Worse than Indians, for yonder were the cattle; there lay
the parked train, two hundred wagons, with the household goods that
meant their life savings and their future hope in far-off Oregon. Women
were there, and children--women with babes that could not walk. True,
the water lay close, but it was narrow and deep and offered no salvation
against the terror now coming on the wings of the wind.

That the prairie fire would find in this strip fuel to carry it even at
this green season of the grass the wily Pawnees had known. This was
cheaper than assault by arms. They would wither and scatter the white
nation here! Worse than plumed warriors was yonder broken undulating
line of the prairie fire.

Instinct told the white girl, gave her the same terror as that which
inspired all these fleeing creatures. But what could she do? This was an
elemental, gigantic wrath, and she but a frightened girl. She guessed
rather than reasoned what it would mean when yonder line came closer,
when it would sweep down, roaring, over the wagon train.

The mules began to bray, to plunge, too wise to undertake flight. She
would at least save them. She would mount one and ride with the alarm
f