A History of Lipscomb County Page: 42
676 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this book.
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Memories of Lipscomb County
By Mrs. Joe L. (Maud Randolph) Davis
Gathering prairie "coal."
"It was mid-April that the fire came. For days
the haze of smoke hung to northward, hung
immovable along the straight line of a prairie horizon.
And then the wind came. Great clouds of
smoke rolled up against the blue-grey day and the
sun was like a disk of moon through saffron sky.
The men-folk saddled horses then and rode away.
Mother, Aunt Myra and my small self were alone in
our dugout home. But my aunt was prairie-born
and prairie-reared and she knew well the enemy
was coming nearer every hour. Immediately she set
about building our fortifications. Water was
hauled in barrels from a neighbor's windmill four
miles away; furrows were ploughed at a little distance
from the dugout, fuel was gathered from the
prairie and stored beside the little camp-stove.
Each night the glow in the western sky was
brighter, each morning was more filled with greyblack
smoke and the smell of burning grass. When
the wind rose a little, the weary watchers could see
the leaping tongues of flame eating their crimson
way into the plain. The few cattle we owned wereconfined in a large barbwire corral and they were
restless with fear. If the fire came too close it
would take but a minute to cut the wires and set
them free to drift before the flames. Another long
day and then the men rode home. Black with
smoke, hungry and exhausted, they almost fell
from their horses but they brought good news.
Scarce a mile away the fire had changed course and
now as passing southward to the breaks of the Gillaloo."We were safe now from the fire but there was
little food and we felt the ever-present menace of
April storms. So very early one morning Uncle
Charlie hitched the team to the old covered wagon
and started to Liberal, Kansas, for supplies. Three
days the journey would be if all went well. On the
third day, when he was only 20 miles from home,
snow began to fall. Quietly at first and then faster
and faster, finer flakes borne on a rising gale. The
team, by some instinct, kept to the dimly furrowed
trail, plodding on and on, the wind whirling and
hoisting the fine snow into their eyes and nostrils.42
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Lipscomb County Historical Survey Committee. A History of Lipscomb County, book, Date Unknown; Lipscomb, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth46830/m1/46/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .