Kurt was overcome.  He could only wring Olsen’s hand.  Here was an answer to one of his brooding, gloomy queries.  Something would be gained, even if the wheat was lost.  Kurt had scarcely any hope left.

“What’s to be done?” he panted, hoarsely.  In this extremity Olsen seemed a tower of strength.  This sturdy farmer was of Anderson’s breed, even if he was a foreigner.  And he had fought fires before.

“If we have time we’ll mow a line all around your wheat,” replied Olsen.

“Reckon we won’t have time,” interposed Jerry, pointing to a smoke far down in the corner of the stunted wheat.  “There’s a fire startin’.”

“They’ll break out all over,” said Olsen, and he waved a couple of his men away.  One had a scythe and the other a long pole with a wet burlap bag tied on one end.  They hurried toward the little cloud of smoke.

“I found a lot of cakes over along the road,” declared Kurt, with a grim surety that he had done that well.

“They’ve surrounded your wheat,” returned Olsen.  “But if enough men get here we’ll save the whole section....  Lucky you’ve got two wells an’ that watertank.  We’ll need all the water we can get.  Keep a man pumpin’.  Fetch all the bags an’ brooms an’ scythes.  I’ll post lookouts along this lane to watch for fires breakin’ out in the big field.  When they do we’ve got to run an’ cut an’ beat them out....  It won’t be long till most of this section is surrounded by fire.”

Thin clouds of smoke were then blowing across the fields and the wind that carried them was laden with an odor of burning wheat.  To Kurt it seemed to be the fragrance of baking bread.

“How’d it be to begin harvestin’?” queried Jerry.  “Thet wheat’s ripe.”

“No combines should be risked in there until we’re sure the danger’s past,” replied Olsen.  “There!  I see more of our neighbors comin’ down the road.  We’re goin’ to beat the I.W.W.”

That galvanized Kurt into action and he found himself dragging Jerry back to the barns.  They hitched a team to a heavy wagon, in record time, and then began to load with whatever was available for fighting fire.  They loaded a barrel, and with huge buckets filled it with water.  Leaving Jerry to drive, Kurt rushed back to the fields.  During his short absence more men, with horses and machines, had arrived; fire had broken out in the stunted wheat, and also, nearer at hand, in the barley.  Kurt saw his father laboring like a giant.  Olsen was taking charge, directing the men.  The sky was obscured now, and all the west was thick with yellow smoke.  The south slopes and valley floor were clouding.  Only in the east, over the hill, did the air appear clear.  Back of Kurt, down across the barley and wheat on the Dorn land, a line of fire was creeping over the hill.  This was on the property adjoining Olsen’s.  Gremniger, the owner, had abandoned his own fields.  At the moment he was driving a mower along the edge of the barley, cutting a nine-foot path.  Men behind him were stacking the sheaves.  The wind was as hot as if from a blast-furnace; the air was thick and oppressive; the light of day was growing dim.