“ 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,
