Page:The Overland Monthly, Jan-June 1894.djvu/223



1894.]

A/ter the Fire.

159

in a wild dance over the doomed town. The wind would sometimes part the great curtain of smoke, and the fire could be seen coming close now, leap- ing like some living thing, licking up the dry leaves and dead trees, springing up the resinous trunks of those yet standing. In the great heat they seemed to catch fire all over at once, and flare up into the thick air like great torches.

Grass and dry weeds in the fence corners caught and burned quickly. The wreckage from the houses blown down the previous winter soon caught, and added to the great heat that now seemed almost intolerable. Foxes, coons, and rabbits, ran about distractedly among the hurrying people as if seeking from them some relief.

A small party of Chinamen were camped a mile or two below town, where they were black sand mining. They quit their camp, which was, from its location with the direction of the wind, entirely out of danger, and came to help those who needed it. With their aid some bedding and such valuables as could be hastily gotten together from the burning houses were carried to the wet sand of the shore, where the most of the women followed, and with their household stuff were covered with wet blankets from the rain of falling fire. Their shelter was soon shared by timid wild things. One woman found a litter of wild rabbits nestled close to the pet cat she was holding in her lap. Though the wind was shut off by the bluff, the heat there was increased by the burning piles of bleached driftwood, reflecting the heat and color from the yellow cliffs above until the breaking seas looked crimson as blood.

When the empty hotel caught, the wind carried the broad sheet of the flame across the street, and flicked it over the edge of the bluff in derision at the crouching and nearly suffocated people below. That center of heat seemed to form a great whirlpool of

fire in which ashes, burning timbers and torrents of flame, went whirling around with unimaginable velocity and uproar. The few men left in town were strug- gling as best they could to save some- thing more, but at this point they were obliged to hold on to a fence post or throw themselves flat on the ground, while everything combustible in reach of the mad whirl was soon reduced to ashes.

When at last it died down for lack of further fuel, it was found there was but one house left. It stood by itself, and the owner had nailed wet blankets to the roof as soon as the sparks began to fall, and had managed to wet them a time or two after. With strength and courage born of the danger, he and his wife had saved the house of five rooms that contained the postoffice and village store, and in them that night were shel- tered all the homeless ones.

The last to arrive, late at night, was a little old lady who lived on the heads. That day she had been entirely alone, and no one could get to her while the danger was greatest, because of the burning trees that tell between. But she had carried buckets of water up a shaky ladder, and climbed about over the roof, extinguishing the burning shingles, and squeezing out with her hands the flames that would start from her fluttering skirts. Fortunately for her the struggle had not lasted long, and she had saved her house. But her clothes were burned through to the skin, and she was speech- less when at last some one came to look for her. It was many days before she could speak, and tell of her struggles during those few hours. All who fought the fire that terrible day, and breathed the flaming, smoke-thickened air, lost for a time the power to speak above a whisper.

Into this fire-blackened scene of deso- lation the astonished politicians re- turned the next day. Tents were put up, and lumber sent for to Coos Bay im-