The Homesteader: A Novel

by Oscar Micheaux

  CHAPTER VI

  THE PRAIRIE FIRE

  "My mother grabbed me, kissed and hugged me time and again when I returned," Jean Baptiste read in the letter he received from his wife-to-be a few days after she had returned to the windy city, and he was satisfied. "She had been so worried, you see, because she had written father nothing about it, and this was the first time in her married life that she has dared do anything without a long consultation with him. But she is glad I went now, and thinks you are a very sensible fellow therefor. Papa sent a telegram advising that he had been reappointed Presiding Elder over the same district, and would come into Chicago for a few days before entering into another year of the work.

  "I am deluged with questions regarding the West, and it gives me a great deal of pleasure to explain everything, and of the wonderful work you are doing. Now, papa will be home in a few days, and, knowing how hard he is to explain anything to, I am preparing myself for quite a task. I will close now. With love and kisses to you, believe me to be,

  "Your own,

  "ORLEAN."

  Jean now went about his duties. His sister and grandmother were withhim, and he had planned to put them on their claims at once, so as toenable them to prove up as soon as possible. Therefore to their placeshe hauled lumber, coal and provisions. Their claims lay some forty-fivemiles to the northwest beyond the railroad which now had its terminus atDallas. And, referring to that, we have not found occasion to mentionwhat had taken place in the country in the two years passed.

  When the railroad had missed Dallas and struck Gregory and the other twogovernment townsites, Dallas was apparently doomed, and in a few monthsmost of the business men had gone, and the business buildings, etc., hadbeen moved to Gregory. This town, because of the fact that it was onlyfive miles from the next county line--the county that had been openedand which contained the land that Jean Baptiste had secured for hisrelatives and bride--was, for a time, expected to become the terminus.And to this end considerable activity had transpired with a view togetting the heavy trade that would naturally come with the opening andsettlement of the county west, which had twice the area of the county inwhich Gregory lay.

  Now, it was shortly after the railroad was under course of constructionthat one, the chief promoter of the townsite, called on the "town Dad's"of Gregory with a proposition. The proposition was, in short, to moveDallas to Gregory, and thereupon combine in making Gregory a real city.

  Unfortunately for Gregory, her leaders were men who had grown up in apart of the country where the people did not know all they might haveknown. They consisted in a large measure of rustic mountebanks, who,because, and only because, Gregory happened to have been in the directline of the railroad survey, and had thereby secured the road, took untothemselves the credit of it all. So, instead of entertaining the offerin a logical, business and appreciative manner, gave the promoter thebig haw! haw! and turned their backs to him.

  There was a spell of inactivity for a time on the part of the saidpromoter. But in the fall, when the ground had frozen hard, and the cornwas being gathered, all that was left in the little town of Dallas,laying beside the claim of Jean Baptiste, was suddenly hauled five mileswest of the town of Gregory. And still before the Gregory illogics hadtime even to think clearly, business was going on in what they thenchose to call New Dallas--and the same lay directly on the line of thetwo counties, and where the railroad survey ended.

  It is needless to detail the excitement which had followed this. "Lies,lies, liars!" were the epithets hurled from Gregory. "The railroad is inGregory to stay; to stay for"--oh, they couldn't say how many years,perhaps a hundred; but all that noise to the west was a bluff, a simonpure bluff, and that ended it. That is, until they started the samenoise over again. But it had not been a bluff. The tracks had been laidfrom Gregory to Dallas early in the spring that followed, and now Dallaswas _the_ town instead of Gregory, and the boom that had followed thebuilding of the town, is a matter never to be forgotten in the historyof the country.

  Gregory's one good fortune was that she had secured the land officewhich necessitated that all filings should be entered there, and in thisway got more of the boom that was occasioned by the land opening at thewest than it had expected to when the railroad company had pushed itsway west out of the town.

  It was about this time while great excitement was on and thousands ofpeople were in the town of Dallas that something occurred that came nearliterally wiping that town off the map. Jean Baptiste had loaded hiswagons and was on the way from his land to the claims of his sister whenthe same came to pass.

  The greatest danger in a new country comes after the grass has died inthe fall and before the new grass starts in the spring. But in the fallwhen the grass is dry and crisp, and the surface below is warm and dry,is the time of prairie fires. No time could have been more opportune forsuch an episode than the time now was. The wind had been blowing fordays and days, and had made the short grass very brittle, and thesurface below as hot as in July. Jean Baptiste was within about a mileof where New Dallas now reposed vaingloriously on a hillside, her manynew buildings rising proudly, defiantly, as if to taunt and annoyGregory, against the skyline, when with the wind greeting him, he caughtthe smell of burning grass. He reached a hillside presently, and fromthere he could see for miles to the west beyond, and the sight that methis gaze staggered him.

  "A prairie fire," he cried apprehensively, and urged his teams forwardtoward Dallas. One glance had been sufficient to _convince_ him what itmight possibly mean. A prairie fire with the wind behind it as this was,would bid no good for Dallas, and once there he could be of a littleservice, since he knew how to fight it.

  When he arrived at the outskirts of the embryo city, he was met by afrightened herd of humanity. With bags and trunks and all they couldcarry; with eyes wide, and mouths gaped, in terror they were hurryingmadly from the town to an apparent place of safety--a plowed fieldnearby. Miles to the west the fire and smoke rose in great, darkreddened clouds, and cast--even at that distance, dark shadows over thelittle city. As he drew into the town, he could see a line of figuresworking at fire breaks before the gloom. They were the promoters and thetownspeople, and he imagined how they must feel with death possible--anddestruction, positive, coming like an angry beast directly upon them.

  Soon, Jean Baptiste, with wet horse blankets, was with them on thefiring line. The speed at which the wind was driving the fire wasominous. Soon all the west was as if lost in the conflagration, for thesun, shining out of a clear sky an hour before was now shut out as ifclouds were over all. The dull roar and crackle of the burning grassbrought a feeling of awe over all before it. The heat became, after atime, intense; the air was surcharged with soot, and the little armyworked madly at the firebreaks.

  Rolling, tumbling, twisting, turning, but always coming onward, thehurricane presently struck the fire guards. In that moment it was seenthat a mass of thistles, dried manure, and all refuse from the prairiewas sweeping before it, as if to draw the fire onward. The fire plungedover the guards as though they had not been made, pushed back the littlearmy and rushed madly into the town.

  It was impossible now to do more. The conflagration was beyond control.Now in the town, an effort was therefore made to get the people out oftheir houses where some had even hidden when it appeared that all wouldbe swept away in the terrible deluge of fire. One, two, three, four,five, six--ten houses went up like chaff, and the populace groaned,when, of a sudden, something happened. Like Napoleon's army at Waterloothere was a quick change. One of those rare freaks--but what some choseto claim in after years as the will of the Creator in sympathy with thehopeful builders, the wind gradually died down, whipped around, and inless than five minutes, was blowing from the east, almost directlyagainst its route of a few minutes before. The fire halted, seemed tohesitate, and then like some cowardly thing, turned around and startedback of the same ground it had raged over where it
lingered briefly,sputtered, flickered, and then quickly died. And the town, badlyfrightened, hard worked, but thankful withal, was saved.