Page:Micheaux - The Conquest, The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913).djvu/167

 little city lying silent before, it reminded me of a picture of Pompeii before Vesuvius. It looked as if Calias were lost. Then, like a miracle, the wind quieted down, changed, and in less than twenty minutes was blowing a gale from the east, starting the fire back over the ground over which it had burned. There it sputtered, flickered, and with a few sparks went out, just as L. A. Bell pulled onto the scene with lathered and bloody eyed mules drawing a tank of Megory's water, and was told by the Nicholson Brothers—who were said to resemble Mississippi steamboat roustabouts on a hot day—that Calias didn't need their water.

Following the day of the high wind which brought the prairie fire that so badly frightened the people of the town, the change of the wind to the east brought rain, and about two hundred automobiles that had been carrying people over Tipp county into the town. I remember the crowds but have no idea nowhow [sic] many people there were, but that it looked more like the crowds on Broadway or State street on a busy day than Main Street in a burg of the prairie. This was the afternoon of the drawing and a woman drew number one, while here and there in the crowd that filled the street before the registration, exclamations of surprise and delight went up from different fortunates hearing their names called, drawing a lucky number. I felt rather bewildered by so much excitement and metropolitanism where hardly two years before I had hauled one of the first loads of lumber on the ground to start the town. I could not help but feel that the world moved swiftly, and that I was living, not in a wilder-