The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer

  CHAPTER XXIV

  "AND THE CROWDS DID COME." THE PRAIRIE FIRE

  The registration opened at twelve o'clock Monday morning. Seven trainsduring the night before had brought something like seven thousandpeople. Of this number about two thousand got off at Megory, and theremainder went on through to Calias. The big opening was on, and the bidfor patronage made the relations between the towns more bitter thanever.

  After the first few days, however, the crowds, with the exception of afew hundred, daily went on through to Calias and did not heed the catcalls and uncomplimentary remarks from the railway platform at Megory.Among these remarks flung at the crowded trains were: "Go on to Caliasand buy a drink of water", "Go on to Calias and pay a dime for the waterto wash your face"--water was one of Calias's scarcities, as will beseen later. However, this failed to detract the crowd.

  The C. & R.W. put on fifteen regular trains daily, and the little singletrack, unballasted and squirmy, was very unsafe to ride over and thecrowded trains had to run very slowly on this account. Because of thefact that it was difficult to find adequate side tracking, it took twofull days to make the trip from Omaha to Calias and return.

  All the day and night the "toot, toot" of the locomotives could be heardand the sound seemed to make the country seem very old indeed. Megory'sbrass band--organized for the purpose--undaunted, continued to playfrantically at the depot to try to induce the crowded trains to unload agreater share, but to no avail, although the cars were stuffed likesandwiches.

  Those times in Calias were long to be remembered. As the trainsdisgorged the thousands daily it seemed impossible that the little citycould care for such crowds. The sidewalks were crowded from morn tillnight. The registration booths and the saloons never closed and moreautomobiles than I had ever seen in a country town up to that time,roared, and with their clattering noise, took the people hurriedlyacross the reservation to the west.

  Along toward the close of the opening a prairie fire driven by a strongwest wind raced across Tipp county in a straight line for Calias.Although fire guards sixty feet wide had been burned along the west sideof the town, it soon became apparent that the fire would leap them andenter the town, unless some unusual effort on the part of the citizenswas made to stop it.

  It was late in the afternoon and as seems always the case, a fire willcause the wind to rise, and it rose until the blaze shut out the westernhorizon. It seemed the entire world to the west was afire.

  Ten thousand people, lost in sight-seeing, gambling and revelry, all ofa sudden became aware of the approaching danger, and began a rush forsafety. To the north, south, and east of the town the lands were undercultivation, therefore, a safe place from the fire that now threatenedthe town. All business was suspended, registration ceased, and the hugecans containing more than one hundred thousand applications for lands,were loaded on drays and taken into the country and deposited in thecenter of a large plowed field, for safety. The gamblers put their gainsinto sacks and joined the surging masses, and with grips got from thenumerous check rooms, all the people fled like stampeding cattle to aposition to the north of town which was protected by a corn field on thewest.

  Ernest Nicholson, leading the business men and property owners, bravelyfought the oncoming disaster. The chemical engine and water hose wererushed forward but were as pins under the drivers of a locomotive. Thewater from the hose ran weakly for a few minutes and then with a blowingas of an empty faucet, petered out from lack of water. The strong windblew the chemical into the air and it proved as useless. The fireentered the city. One house, a magnificent residence, was soon envelopedin flames, which spread to another, and still to another.

  The thousands of people huddled on a bare spot, but safe, watched theminature city of one year and the gate-way to the homesteads of the nextcounty, disappear in flames.

  Megoryites, seeing the danger threatening her hated rival five milesaway, called for volunteers who readily responded and formed bucketbrigades, loaded barrels into wagons, filled them with water and burnedthe roads in the hurry-up call to the apparently doomed city.

  I could see the fire from where I was harvesting flax ten miles away,and the cloud of smoke, with the little city lying silent before, itreminded me of a picture of Pompeii before Vesuvius. It looked as ifCalias were lost. Then, like a miracle, the wind quieted down, changed,and in less than twenty minutes was blowing a gale from the east,starting the fire back over the ground over which it had burned. Thereit sputtered, flickered, and with a few sparks went out, just as L.A.Bell pulled onto the scene with lathered and bloody eyed mules drawing atank of Megory's water, and was told by the Nicholson Brothers--who weresaid to resemble Mississippi steamboat roustabouts on a hot day--thatCalias didn't need their water.

  Following the day of the high wind which brought the prairie fire thatso badly frightened the people of the town, the change of the wind tothe east brought rain, and about two hundred automobiles that had beencarrying people over Tipp county into the town. I remember the crowdsbut have no idea now many people there were, but that it looked morelike the crowds on Broadway or State street on a busy day than MainStreet in a burg of the prairie. This was the afternoon of the drawingand a woman drew number one, while here and there in the crowd thatfilled the street before the registration, exclamations of surprise anddelight went up from different fortunates hearing their names called,drawing a lucky number. I felt rather bewildered by so much excitementand metropolitanism where hardly two years before I had hauled one ofthe first loads of lumber on the ground to start the town. I could nothelp but feel that the world moved swiftly, and that I was living, notin a wilderness--as stated in some of the letters I had received fromcolored friends in reply to my letter that informed them of theopening--but in the midst of advancement and action.

  When the drawing was over and the crowds had gone, it was found that thegreatest crowds had registered--not at Calias--but at a town just south,in Nebraska, which received forty-five thousand while Calias came secondwith forty-three thousand and Megory only received seven thousand,something like one hundred fifteen thousand in all having applied.

  The hotels in Calias had charged one dollar the person and some of thelarge ones had made small fortunes, while the saloons were said to haveaveraged over one thousand dollars a day.

  After the opening, land sold like hot hamburger sandwiches had a fewweeks before.