file:D|STORAGEBrighteyes%20FTPUPLOADSEBooksJanet%20DaileyDailey,%20Janet%20-%20Stands%20A%20Calder%20Man%20[txt]stands%20a%20calder%20man1.txt by Stands A Calder Man

Author:Stands A Calder Man [Man, Stands A Calder]
Language: rus
Format: epub
Published: 2011-05-25T20:33:12+00:00

STANDS A CALDER MAN

II (cont.)

Pounding hooves vibrated over the ground as riders and wagons raced toward the growing tower of smoke. Webb was among the first group to arrive on the scene. The fire had started in the tar-paper shack of some homesteader, raged through it, and set the grass around it ablaze. From there, it had begun spreading quickly. The heat from the fire generated its own draft to fan the flames onward.

Cowboys peeled off their horses and paused long enough to strip off saddle blankets and use them to beat the flames. Loose horses scattered and milled, interfering with arriving wagon teams. A wide, plowed strip of fallow land formed a firebreak to confine the spread of flames on one side.

The fire was inching fastest to the west, and the cowboys threw all their energies in that direction to check the spread. "There's no damned water!"

someone complained. Without water to wet blankets, they weren't as effective.

Next to the smoldering remains of the shack, there was a charred and blackened barrel that held the drylander's water. The wet contents had kept the barrel from burning, but it was too far away with too much smoldering ground between it and the firefighters to do them any good.

The cowboys had organized themselves into a combat unit, experienced at fighting prairie fires, but the drylanders, for all their eagerness to help, were milling about in confusion, not knowing what to do. As Webb was driven back by the heat of the flames, he noticed the directionless homesteaders advancing uncertainly toward the fire, without blankets or any weapons except their own will to stamp out the flames.

"Where is the fire wagon?" one of them demanded. "Why hasn't it come?"

Webb stifled the run of impatience at the question and pulled down the kerchief he'd tied around his face to keep from inhaling too much smoke. Most of these drylanders came from the cities, where they relied on someone else to fight their fires. But they weren't living in the city now.

"If any of you have water barrels on your wagons, bring them up here!" Webb shouted the order. "Wet down blankets and jackets, anything you have, and use them to beat down the flames!" No one objected to his directives, relieved to know what they were to do, and Webb suddenly found himself taking charge.

"Spread out and form a line! Don't all of you bunch together! If the wind shifts, you'll find yourself trapped in a circle of fire!"

A homesteader came running up to him, stricken and pale. "You got to keep the fire from burning my wheatfield!"

"To hell with your wheatfield!" Webb glared.

"If we don't stop this fire, it'll blacken hundreds of square miles!" He pushed the man toward a gap in the newly formed line. "Get in there!"

Two wagons came rolling up, the horse teams plunging and shying at the swirling curtain of smoke that heralded the advancing flames. Both had water barrels in back. Webb vaulted onto the back of one of the wagons and lifted off the barrel cover.

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