“Out of it!” he shouted. “Quick! To the ground!”
He wasted no time. With a hook-like clutch that was almost a blow, so swift was it, he flung me bodily out of the rear end of the wagon. I had barely time to crawl out from under when father, mother, and the baby came down pell-mell where I had been.
“Here, Jesse!” father shouted to me, and I joined him in scooping out sand behind the shelter of a wagon-wheel. We worked bare-handed and wildly. Mother joined in.
“Go ahead and make it deeper, Jesse,” father ordered,
He stood up and rushed away in the gray light, shouting commands as he ran. (I had learned by now my surname. I was Jesse Fancher. My father was Captain Fancher).
“Lie down!” I could hear him. “Get behind the wagon wheels and burrow in the sand! Family men, get the women and c
