History and stories of Nebraska . nd the place. This was doneon the first quiet evening after the grass was dry. It wasgreat fun for the children, who loved to take long wisps oflighted grass and carry the fire along the inside of the fire-guard with shouts and laughter, while the dark prairie waslighted until their moving figures made shadows upon thefields. A little later the prairie fires appeared. Every night ared glow against the sky was the sign of distant fires. Thedays were smoky and the smell of burning grass was uponthe air. Sometimes there came a high wind driving the 142 THE PRAIRI
History and stories of Nebraska . nd the place. This was doneon the first quiet evening after the grass was dry. It wasgreat fun for the children, who loved to take long wisps oflighted grass and carry the fire along the inside of the fire-guard with shouts and laughter, while the dark prairie waslighted until their moving figures made shadows upon thefields. A little later the prairie fires appeared. Every night ared glow against the sky was the sign of distant fires. Thedays were smoky and the smell of burning grass was uponthe air. Sometimes there came a high wind driving the 142 THE PRAIRIE FIRE 143 flames faster than a horse could run. Blazing tumble weedsand sunflower heads were caught up in the gale and whirledhundreds of yards, starting new fires wherever they fell. The front of such a fire was called a headfire. It ranwith the wind across miles of prairie, with its long red tongueslicking at every object, jumping fireguards and even riversin its path. Behind it the prairie roared and crackled, for V;- ^tfefe-. An Early Prairie Fire. {From Catlin.) the headfire had no time to burn the grass in its course. Ittouched it with the torch and rushed on to find fresh level prairie looked like a lake of fire with a lurid cloudof smoke rising above it. It was a grand sight, but terribleto the settler whose farm lay in its path. The only way to protect against a high headfire was tostart a backfire some distance ahead of it which would burnaway the grass and leave nothing to feed it, The backfire 144 STORIES OF NEBRASKA was set at the edge of a fireguard facing the wind, or it wasset on the open prairie by carrying a line of fire along a fewfeet at a time and whipping out the side of the fire away fromthe wind. In either case the backfire burned slowly againstthe wind until it met the headfire. In a furious gale a back-fire was hard to control for it would get away from the men. In October, 1871, great fires burned along the Nebraskafrontier. There had been n
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