"Doby, help the men to start fires to the south of us in the path of the wind," cried his father, as part of the folks of the train ran forward to light the grass. The only defense they could muster was their plan to fight fire with fire. It flamed up. The wicked little tongues noisily licked the ground brown and bare as the now strong wind blew the flames away from the wagons. Other men were violently busy trying to hurry on to this barren ground the oxen who pulled the wagons, and the horses and cows which followed them. The ashes were hot to their feet, stifling to their nostrils. The utmost urging was necessary to force them over the burned acres. Women and children ran along, screaming with fear and constantly stopping to beat one another's garments where the embers had ignited them. The wagons and their utensils rattled and banged. Cattle lowed. Horses neighed. Men struggled to keep up a semblance of order and to control the animals. "Whenever there is a panic I must try to keep sensible," thought Doby as he helped steadily at the teams where he was most needed. From the north they could now see the awful wall of red and black rushing after them as they fled. In the bedlam of the burned district, between the two great blazing waves, they hung to their animals, covering them and their own bodies with woolen blankets and skirts and coats. They endured with fortitude what they could not remedy. Doby sat on the yoke between his oxen, for his moccasined feet could not bear the smoldering ground. He tried to quiet the beasts as he listened to the cries of birds above him and the plaints of small, scurrying creatures of the thickets. Deer and wild pigs galloped past without noticing the wagon-train, so wildly were they driven by fear of the coming fire. The emigrants had managed to get many rods into their charred oasis. In the midst of their suspense the fire which was coming toward them met the district that had already burned, and died down suddenly for lack of fuel. The blaze running from them had leaped into a triangle between two flowing creeks and quenched itself. The woods on the bluffs had not caught. The danger had passed as quickly as it had come. In the sooty, half-strangled train no serious harm was done. After a scrambled supper where they stood, most of the emigrants sank to exhausted sleep under doubled sentries. But wakeful Doby sat on a tail-gate and viewed the smoking, blackened landscape with misery in his heart.