272    LITERATURE   OF   LOUISIANA   TERRITORY.
Extinction seemed imminent. The burning buildings were
already crumbling into charred ruins; while others were
being enveloped with roaring, swirling sheets of fire. Like
prophets, tbey seemed to be foretelling, by example, a cer-
tain destruction. The cattle, the wolves, the jack-rabbits
and the people, were alike demoralized and stampeded by
an overpowering fear.
The fire now advanced like a line of molten lava. On, on
it came, to the very limits of Meade. Man and beast seemed
about to be offered up on a fiery altar. The cattle moaned
a sacrificial dirge. The smothering smoke crept stealthily
down through the streets, and suffocation hushed the wail
of the people. Like hordes of painted savages, the flames
seemed to be brandishing bloody tomahawks, as they
rushed at their victims with demoniacal shrieks of exulta-
tion.
Then, God smote the Rock of Deliverance,— a divine hand
reached out in infinite compassion. The heavens opened,
the rain descended in blinding torrents, the earth trembled
with deafening peals of thunder, the lightning pierced the
clouds in fearful grandeur, as if the Almighty, in His
immeasurable goodness were hurling an admonition at the
flames.
Providence grappled the devouring demon by the throat,
as he was in the very act of exulting over an almost certain
victory. The fire-king of terror surrendered to an omnipo-
tent decree. Its mighty strength was broken, and what a
few moments before had seemed an irresistible artillery of
power and defiance became a charnel-house, wrapped in
the sable robes of its own defeat. Then there went up a
cry from the people, " God lives! Our lives are spared!
All praise to the Ruler of the Universe! "
When the wreck and ruin had been surveyed in the gray
dawn and morning of a new day, these loyal people, with
a fortitude unequaled in the history of communities,
returned to the burning embers of their dugout homes,
and forgetting the devastation of the hot winds and the
calamity of the greatest prairie-Are that had ever swept
over the Southwest, they went on loving Kansas — the
land of sunshine and of sun flowers.