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One •————————————• Death in Flames Walford, Iowa, February 3, 1897. Martin Loder woke up. It was about 1:30 am and someone was shouting at him. It was his wife Emma. “Martin, get up!” she screamed. “The store’s on fire!” The Loders lived about one hundred yards down the street. Dressing quickly, Loder jammed his feet into a pair of boots. At the same time, he sent his brother-­ in-­ law to rouse the Novaks, who lived a few blocks away, since their son, Frank Novak, owned the dry goods store along with Charles Zabokrtsky. Loder knew that Novak was in the habit of sleeping in the place. In fact, he had last seen Novak behind the counter about an hour and a half ago, preparing to close for the night and then go upstairs to sleep on a small cot. The store had been burglarized about two years ago and Novak had vowed it wouldn’t happen again, so he and his partner, whom everyone called Charley Zeb, had been taking turns sleeping there, guarding the store in case the robbers returned.1 Loder ran through the blowing snow to the two-­ story store, the largest building in the little town of Walford. Twenty-­ three-year-old Joe Strened had already woken up the Novaks and was right behind him. Both men saw the flames flash brightly, breaking out of the second floor window, and Loder could hear the wood cracking and popping. It was then that Strened yelled to Loder that Frank Novak was still inside.2 4 f i r e a n d i c e The whole scene was a nightmare. The tavern owner tried opening the heavy front doors, but they were both locked. He picked up a large wooden plank and worked to pry them open, but the plate glass shattered and the doors held fast. A strong odor of gas poured through the broken glass and drove Loder back. Thinking fast, he ran around to the other side of the building and tried several times to raise a ladder to the second floor. It was then that he noticed something curious. The cellar door was open. This was odd, he thought, since he had always known Frank Novak to keep that door locked. Loder dropped the ladder and made a few attempts to enter the cellar but was driven back by the heat and the fear that the gas-­ fired boiler might explode at any moment.3 Now the spreading fire raced through the rest of the building, burning everything in the general store—shelves full of blue work shirts from the nearby Amana colony, overalls, heavy winter jackets, food supplies, tobacco plugs, and other materials.4 The flames rose high into the night. As the townspeople gathered, there was little to do but stand and watch. Some of the men brought water from a nearby creek in wooden buckets, but their efforts were in vain as the fire raged with an angry ferocity, tearing through the building as if it were some hungry animal with a life of its own, consuming all of the goods on the shelves and eagerly engulfing the row of coffins stacked neatly in one corner on the second floor. After a while, the firefighting efforts stopped and the townspeople stood by, helpless, the sloshing water in their buckets cooling as they watched the wood frame succumb to the flames. The south wind blew the fire around to the other side of the building and soon the entire structure was ablaze. Everyone began to move back slowly, as if in a trance, staring as the conflagration burned all night, lighting the sky for miles across Benton County. No one slept very much during the early morning hours of February 3. Most of the hundred or so residents of Walford5 watched the flames, while a few men worked to keep the fire from spreading to the other buildings in the town, which consisted of a hardware store, Death in Flames 5 saddle and harness business, a small lumber yard, and a creamery.6 Through the work of the townspeople, these structures were saved but the store and its adjoining bank building were lost.7 In the morning, when the weak slanting rays of the winter sun lit the bleak Iowa countryside, everyone saw that the store and bank were destroyed, with nothing left standing but a portion of a blackened brick wall. Someone had hooked up a small...

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