“Some of you lead the saddle-horses back to the willows and picket them.  The rest to the stables and bring out the working beasts.  The plows are by the corral, and the first team that comes up is to be harnessed to each in turn.  Then start in, and turn over a full-depth furrow a furlong from the fire.”

There was no confusion, and already the hired men were busy with two great machines until Winston displaced two of them.

“How that fire passed the guards I don’t know, but there will be time to find out later,” he said to Dane.  “Follow with the big breaker—­it wants a strong man to keep that share in—­as close as you can.”

Then they were off, a man at the heads of the leading horses harnessed to the great machines, and Winston sitting very intent in the driving-seat of one, while the tough sod crackled under the rending shares.  Both the man and the reins were needed when the smoke rolled down on them, but it was for a moment torn aside again, and there roared up towards the blurred arch of indigo a great rush of flame.  The heat of it smote into prickliness the uncovered skin, and in spite of all that Winston could do, the beasts recoiled upon the machine behind them.  Then they swung round wrenching the shares from the triplex furrow, and for a few wild minutes man and terrified beast fought for the mastery.  Breathless half-strangled objurgations, the clatter of trace and swivel, and the thud of hoofs, rose muffled through the roar of the fire, for, while swaying, plunging, panting, they fought with fist and hoof, it was rolling on, and now the heat was almost insupportable.  The victory, however, was to the men, and when the great machine went on again, Maud Barrington, who had watched the struggle with the wife of one of her neighbors, stood wide-eyed, half-afraid and yet thrilled in every fiber.

“It was splendid,” she said.  “They can’t be beaten.”

Her companion seemed to shiver a little.  “Yes,” she said, “perhaps it was, but I wish it was over.  It would appeal to you differently, my dear, if you had a husband at one of those horses’ heads.”

For a moment Maud Barrington wondered whether it would, and then, when a red flame flickered out towards the team, felt a little chill of dread.  In another second the smoke whirled about them, and she moved backward choking with her companion.  The teams, however, went on, and came out, frantic with fear, on the farther side.  The men who led them afterwards wondered how they kept their grip on the horses’ heads.  Then it was that while the machines swung round and other men ran to help, Winston, springing from the driving-seat, found Dane amid the swaying, plunging medley of beasts and men.

“If you can’t find hook or clevis, cut the trace,” he said.  “It can’t burn the plow, and the devils are out of hand now.  The fire will jump these furrows, and we’ve got to try again.”

In another minute four maddened beasts were careering across the prairie with portions of their trappings banging about them, while one man who was badly kicked sat down gray in face and gasping, and the fire rolled up to the ridge of loam, checked, and then sprang across it here and there.