He clapped his
hat down on my bare head. Then he started running up-stream.
I darted in the opposite direction. I heard Bud and Bill yelling, and the
angry crack and hiss of the fire. A few rods down I stopped, struck another
match, and lit the grass. There was a sputter and flash. Then the flame
flared up, spread like running quicksilver, and, meeting the pine-needles,
changed to red. I ran on. There was a loud flutter behind me, then a crack
almost like a shot, then a seething roar. Another pine had gone off. As I
stopped to strike the third match there came three distinct reports, and
then others that seemed dulled in a windy roar. I raced onward, daring only
once to look back. A fearful sight met my gaze. The slope was a red wave.
The pines were tufts of flame. The air was filled with steaming clouds of
whirling smoke. Then I fled onward again.
Match after match I struck, and when the box was empty I must have been a
mile, two miles, maybe more, from the starting-point. I was wringing-wet,
and there was a piercing pain in my side. I plunged across the brook, and
in as deep water as I could find knelt down to cover all but my face. Then,
with laboring breaths that bubbled the water near my mouth, I kept still
and watched.
The back-fire which I had started swept up over the slope and down the
brook like a charge of red lancers.
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