While Mr. Pertell was filming this, Russ was busy getting views of the on-rushing wagon containing the refugees. Several times the team was stopped to enable the operator to go on ahead, and show it coming across the prairie. This gave a different background each time. It was after one of these halts, and just when the team was started up again that Alice, who was on the front seat with Paul, the driver, cried out: "See! There is smoke and fire ahead of us, too! What does it mean?" For an instant they were all startled, and then, as Ruth looked behind them, and saw the fiercer flames, and the blacker smoke there, she gasped: "We are hemmed in! Hemmed in by the prairie fire!" CHAPTER XXIII THE ESCAPE Paul pulled up the rushing horses with a jerk that set them back on their haunches. There were cries of alarm from the interior of the wagon, and from the front and rear peered out anxious faces. "What is it? Oh, what is it?" cried Miss Dixon. "There's a fire ahead of us," replied Alice, and her voice was calmer now. She realized that their situation might be desperate, and that there would be need of all the presence of mind each one possessed. "A fire ahead of us!" repeated Miss Pennington. "Then let's turn back. Probably Mr. Pertell wanted this to happen. It's all in the play. I don't see anything to get excited about." For once in her life she was more self-possessed than any of the others, but it was due to the bliss of ignorance. "Let's turn back," she suggested. "That seems the most reasonable thing to do. And I wonder if you would mind if I rode on the seat next to your friend Paul," she went on to Alice. "I'd like to have the center of the stage just for once, as sort of a change," and her tone was a bit malicious. "I'm sure you're welcome to sit here," responded Alice, quietly. "But, as for turning back, it is impossible. Look!" and she waved her hand toward the rear. There the black clouds of smoke were thicker and heavier, and the shooting flames went higher toward the heavens. "Oh!" gasped Miss Pennington, and then she realized as she had not done before--the import of Ruth's words: "We are hemmed in!" "Can't--can't we go back?" gasped Miss Dixon. "The fire behind us is worse than that before us," said Paul, in a low voice. "Perhaps, after all, we can make a rush for it." "No, don't try dot!" spoke Mr. Switzer, and somehow, in this emergency, he seemed very calm and collected. "Der horses vould shy und balk at der flames," went on the German, who seemed far from being funny now. He was deadly in earnest. "Ve can not drive dem past der flames," he added. "But what are we to do?" asked Paul. "We can't stay here to be----" He did not finish the sentence, but they all knew what he meant.