moke.

"I found a lot of cakes over along the road," declared Kurt, with a grim
surety that he had done that well.

"They've surrounded your wheat," returned Olsen. "But if enough men get
here we'll save the whole section.... Lucky you've got two wells an'
that watertank. We'll need all the water we can get. Keep a man pumpin'.
Fetch all the bags an' brooms an' scythes. I'll post lookouts along this
lane to watch for fires breakin' out in the big field. When they do
we've got to run an' cut an' beat them out.... It won't be long till
most of this section is surrounded by fire."

Thin clouds of smoke were then blowing across the fields and the wind
that carried them was laden with an odor of burning wheat. To Kurt it
seemed to be the fragrance of baking bread.

"How'd it be to begin harvestin'?" queried Jerry. "Thet wheat's ripe."

"No combines should be risked in there until we're sure the danger's
past," replied Olsen. "There! I see more of our neighbors comin' down
the road. We're goin' to beat the I.W.W."

That galvanized Kurt into action and he found himself dragging Jerry
back to the barns. They hitched a team to a heavy wagon, in record time,
and then began to load with whatever was available for fighting fire.
They loaded a barrel, and with huge buckets filled it with water.
Leaving Jerry to drive, Kurt rushed back to the fields. During his short
absence more men, with horses and machines, had arrived; fire had broken
out in the stunted wheat, and also, nearer at hand, in the barley. Kurt
saw his father laboring like a giant. Olsen was taking charge, directing
the men. The sky was obscured now, and all the west was thick with
yellow smoke. The south slopes and valley floor were clouding. Only in
the east, over the hill, did the air appear clear. Back of Kurt, down
across the barley and wheat on the Dorn land, a line of fire was
creeping over the hill. This was on the property adjoining Olsen's.
Gremniger, the owner, had abandoned his own fields. At the moment he was
driving a mower along the edge of the barley, cutting a nine-foot path.
Men behind him were stacking the sheaves. The wind was as hot as if from
a blast-furnace; the air was thick and oppressive; the light of day was
growing dim.

Kurt, mounted on the seat of one of the combine threshers, surveyed with
rapid and anxious gaze all the points around him, and it lingered over
the magnificent sweep of golden wheat. The wheat bowed in waves before
t