Prairie chickens, plover and curlew, with once in a while
a bittern, went hurriedly along to the eastward, and several wolves
crossed our path, trotting along and paying no attention to me or the
cows; but stopping from time to time and looking back as if pursued
from the west.
They were pursued. They were fleeing from the great prairie fire of
1859, which swept Monterey County from side to side, and never stopped
until it struck the river over in the next county. I felt a little
uneasy as I hiked my cattle down into the marsh on my own land, and saw
them picking their way across it toward my grove, which showed proudly a
mile away across the flat. I had plowed firebreaks about my buildings
and stacks, and burned off between the strips of plowing, but I felt
that I ought to be at home. So I rode on at a good trot to make my
circuit of the marsh to the west. The cattle could get through, but a
horse with a man on his back might easily get mired in Vandemark's Folly
anywhere along there; and my motto was, "The more hurry, the
less speed."
As I topped the hill to get back to the high ground, I saw great clouds
of smoke pouring into the valley at the west passage into the big flat,
and the country to the south was hidden by the smoke, except where, away
off in the southwest in the changing of the wind, I could see the line
of fire as it came over the high ground west of the old Bill Trickey
farm. It was a broad belt of red flames, from which there crept along
the ground a great blanket of smoke, black at first, and then turning to
blue as it rose and thinned.
Pages:
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370