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shrill whinnies.
    "Help me," Phoebe cried, her glass-beaded gown tearing.
    Lucy and Kathleen pulled her out, and she began exhorting passersby for help.
    But the pedestrians had their own concerns and ignored her.
    "It's every man—every woman—for herself," Lucy declared, feeling oddly liberated by the notion. "Let's try to get the horses loose."
    "Loose?" Phoebe blew a lock of brown hair out of her face. "If we do that, they'll run off and we'll be stranded. We should try to get the coach upright again." She studied the ominous blazing sky in the west. "We can't outrun this fire on foot."
    "Everyone else is." Lucy gestured at the bobbing heads of the crowd, borne along as if by a river current.
    "Sir!" Phoebe shrieked at a man hurrying past.
    He swung around to face her, and even Lucy felt intimidated. He was huge, clad in fringed buckskins, with long, wild hair. Even more terrifying was the large knife he took from the top of his boot. Phoebe's knees buckled and she shrank against Lucy. "Dear God, he's going to—"
    The wild man cut the leather reins of the team. A second later, the horses galloped away, disappearing into a bank of smoke along with the stranger.
    "He—he—the horses!" Phoebe said.
    "At least they have a chance now." Lucy grabbed Phoebe's hand. "This way.
    We'll go on foot."
    "I'll do nothing of the sort." Phoebe dug in her heels. "I won't get half a block in these shoes."
    Lucy was losing patience, but the sight of bellowing flames, marching like an army toward them, kept her focused on escape. She spied a flatbed wagon and hailed the driver, yanking off a ruby brooch as he approached. "Can you give us a ride?" she asked.
    He snatched the jewel, swept his gaze over her and jerked a thumb toward the rear of the cart. "Don't let anything fall off," he said.
    The load of rolled carpets, gilt paintings and furnishings teetered precariously as the wagon lurched along the road. The sky burned so brightly that Lucy had to squint to look at it.
    She was doing just that when Kathleen jumped off the back of the cart and ran toward a bridge to the West Division. Lucy screamed her name, but this time it was Phoebe who was the voice of reason. "Let her go." Phoebe coughed violently. "She won't rest until she gets home, and we must do the same. Our way is north, Lucy. You know it is."
    Shaken, Lucy clutched her friend's hands and tried not to wonder if they would ever see Kathleen again.
    The Chicago River cut a line from east to west across the city before turning south, where the conflagration had started. The howling windstorm had fanned an ordinary fire into a holocaust riding a gale, moving with voracious speed,
    devouring everything in sight.
    Lucy had never seen such a powerful force of nature. The fire smashed through whole neighborhoods at a time, destroyed reputedly fireproof buildings and then did the unthinkable—it leaped across the south branch of the river.
    The wind was the fire's greatest ally, driving the flames from rooftop to rooftop. Wooden shingles offered fuel for the blaze to feast upon. In the famous shopping district known as Booksellers Row, the buildings burned from the ground upward.
    All those lovely books. Lucy winced at the thought of them being incinerated.
    A towering dervish of flame reared at the end of the block, illuminating and then overtaking a throng of people.
    Phoebe's face turned pale in the angry light. "Did you see that?" she asked Lucy.
    "I did." As far as Lucy could tell, they were on Water Street, heading eastward toward the lake. She supposed that the driver would attempt to cross the river at the State or Rush Street Bridges into the North Division.
    "The flames are moving faster than a person can run." Phoebe craned her neck and shouted over the stacked bundles in the wagon, "Driver, do hurry! The fire is closing in!"
    "I can't go any faster than the crowd in front of me," he yelled in a hoarse voice, ragged from the smoke.
    The closer they came to the lake, the