Then, God smote the rock of deliverance,—a divine hand reached out in infinite compassion. The heavens opened, the rain descended in blinding torrents, the earth trembled with deafening peals of thunder, the lightning pierced the clouds in fearful grandeur, as if the Almighty, in His immeasurable goodness, were hurling an admonition at the flames. Providence grappled the devouring demon by the throat, as he was in the very act of exulting over an almost certain victory. The fire-king of terror surrendered to an omnipotent decree. Its mighty strength was broken, and what a few moments before had seemed an irresistible artillery of power and defiance became a charnel-house, wrapped in the sable robes of its own defeat. Then there went up a cry from the people, “God lives! Our lives are spared! All praise to the Ruler of the universe!” When the wreck and ruin had been surveyed in the gray dawn and morning of a new day, these loyal people, with a fortitude unequaled in the history of communities, returned to the burning embers of their dugout homes, and, forgetting the devastation of the hot winds and the calamity of the greatest prairie-fire that had ever swept over the Southwest, they went on loving Kansas,—the land of sunshine and of sunflowers. CHAPTER XXXV.—A BUCKING BRONCO THE great fire left nothing in its trail but ruin and hunger. The farmers were, indeed, in sad circumstances. Want and misery were in reality glaring at the people with gaunt and hollow eyes. The spring sunshine and rain had clothed the landscape in brilliant green; the hot winds had changed all, as if by magic, into a world of dullest brown; while the great fire had spread over the prairie a sable robe of ruin. Nor had the fire-king been entirely cheated of the sacrifice of flesh and blood. The brown prairie had been turned into a vast graveyard where suffocated men, horses, cattle, wild animals, and flying things had, alike, been offered up to the insatiable greed of the flames. Side by side lay these half-burned carcasses and bones, telling where the victims had fallen, vanquished in their race for life. Time, however, would strangely change this field of desolation. Other seasons would come, and here, where blackened embers lay scattered for miles in every direction, new hopes would blossom. Springing up from among these very bones, and enriched by them, would grow the johnny-jump-ups, the daisies, and the dandelions. The plum bushes that grow in straggling bunches along the sand-dunes would again blossom and yield their plenteous offerings of scarlet-red sand-plums. A new carpet of growing green, interspersed with a myriad of rainbow-tinted flowers, would cover these barren plains with a mantle of renewed life and beauty. This hope stimulated the people and robbed their defeat of many remorseful stings.