Chicken Little gathered up Jilly and started on the run. Both Marian and Jane reached the stable yard just as Sherm drove the heavy farm wagon clattering out of the gate. They hurriedly climbed in and Sherm lashed the horses into a gallop. As they passed the cottage, Marian exclaimed: "Did you get matches either of you?" Sherm slowed up the team and examined his pockets. "A handful." "Stop a moment--I'll run fetch a box. It takes a lot." Chicken Little was over the wheel before the words were fairly out of her mouth. She was back in a jiffy with the matches, which she proceeded to divide among them, while the horses leaped forward again. "Stop on the backbone where the Santa Fe trail strikes the road." Precisely four minutes later Sherm pulled up the panting team. Chicken Little promptly took command. She had been out many times with her father and brothers and knew exactly what to do. "Wet your mop--take a bucket of water and fire right along the trail, Marian,--that buffalo grass burns slow. Call if it starts to get away from you. I'll begin there by the hedge. Drive about fifty yards farther on, Sherm,--the horses will stand. Fill all the buckets and wet the extra mops. We're liable to want them in a rush." "All right, Jane, save your breath--you'll need it. Careful there, Mrs. Morton, beat out the flames along the trail as you go. Never mind how fast it whoops the other way. Cæsar's ghost! that fire is getting close!" The waving, irregular lines of flame on the hillside were coming steadily on, now leaping up several feet high as the breeze freshened, now creeping close to the ground when the gusts died away. The wind was fitful. Marian and Sherm both had their trail of fire flickering into a blaze before Chicken Little got hers kindled. Her hands shook so she could hardly hold the match. The first flickered and went out, a second, then a third, blackened, before she could coax the stubbly grass to burn. She caught up a bunch of weeds, set it blazing in her hand and dragged it swiftly along the ground. Tiny swirls of yellow flame wavered in her wake, crackled feebly for an instant in the shorter herbage, then, reaching out tongues into the longer blue stem beyond, leaped forward like a frolicsome animal. Sherm's and Marian's lines of fire were eating their way merrily toward hers on each side. It was easy to beat out the flame in the Buffalo grass, which formed their safety line toward the house, and the three soon had several hundred feet of fire running to meet those menacing flames on the neighboring hillside. For a while it seemed almost pretty play save for that haunting dread of disaster. But the dripping mops were heavy for girls' wrists and arms, the constant stooping and rising and the lifting of the heavy buckets pulled painfully on aching muscles. They must backfire for a third of a mile before they dared hope the place was safe.