"Get back,
sir; for God's sake, get back!" ere the life blood came gushing from his
mouth. Bending low, Field grabbed the faithful fellow in his strong arms
and, calling to the nearmost men to look to Wing, bore his helpless
burden back through stifling smoke clouds; laid him on the turf at the
foot of a cottonwood, then ran again to the perilous work of fighting
the flame, stumbling midway over another prostrate form. "Both hands!
Both hands!" he yelled as again his blanket whirled in air; and so, by
dint of desperate work, the inner line of flame at last was stayed, but
every man of the gallant little squad of fire fighters had paid the
penalty of his devotion and felt the sting of hissing lead--Field the
last of all. Westward now, well nigh an hundred yards in width, a broad,
black, smoking patch stretched across the pathway of the swift-coming
wall of smoke and flame, a safeguard to the beleaguered command worth
all the soldier sacrifice it cost. In grand and furious sweep, the
scourge of the prairie sent its destroying line across the wide level to
the south of the sheltering grove, but in the blood and sweat of heroic
men the threatening flames of the windward side had sputtered out.
Pages:
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168