sharply at him, wondering again at this change of mood. “You can’t think about it that way. You know that. That’s one of the first rules of firefighting. You make the fire too real and you lose your ability to combat it. And it’ll consume you.”
“Exactly.” He continued eating methodically, musingly. “Either you’re consumed with combating it, or it’ll consume you. Either way, you lose something of yourself.”
Was he right? Maura asked herself. Her thoughts turned to the fire that had been scorching the countryside for more than eight weeks since it started just outside of her hometown of Rumor. It had steadily marched, like a plague of locusts, south-southeast into the Custer National Forest, one of the most diverse and spectacular pieces of forestland in the state of Montana. Already the fire had torched more than 250,000 acres, leaving nothing in its wake, the soil charred so badly it was as hard as her plastic helmet.
And the fire didn’t seem to be letting up. It did seem possessed, in fact, with its own vicious temper and capricious moods that were as unpredictable as that of a wild man, making the damage it did that much more senseless.
Maura set her dessert aside, no longer hungry. “Maybe you’re right,” she admitted. “But even if I try to be objective about forest fires, the truth is, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care about a lot of things having to do with the land.”
She gave a rueful shake of her head. “It’s the main reason I got a degree in forestry and natural resources management, because I love this state—love it like it’s a part of me. This fire…well, you know how it goes. Its effects will reverberate throughout the whole ecosystem. The jackrabbits, sage grouse and ground squirrels lose food, shelter and nesting cover with the cheatgrass and sagebrush gone. With those animals dying off, there’s nothing for raptors and snakes to prey on. And it goes on and on from there.”
“It’s called survival of the fittest,” Ash murmured. He had set his meal aside, too. The dank, depressing smell in the cave seemed worse all of a sudden.
“Is it? Or is it not getting the God-given right to thrive and have a normal existence, like Smokey and his mother?”
He gazed at her calmly. “No one’s ever said that life was fair.”
She gestured around her, rather urgently, she realized. “And we’re not to try and do our best to make it a little more fair?”
Was she trying to convince Ash? Or herself? She only knew she had to try.
She leaned forward intently, forearms on her knees. “You know how you have dreams you want so badly to make happen you can nearly taste it?”
“I guess.” He was wary, watching her.
“Well, I have a dream. Someday I want to have a ranch. It wouldn’t have to be big, maybe just a few dozen acres. I’d invite all kinds of disadvantaged children there—children from broken homes, or who’ve had some behavioral problems, or who just need a place to go after school instead of a dark, empty house.” She clasped her hands in front of her. “I’d teach them how they can be a part of taking care of the land. I’d show them how we need to be good stewards and protect and preserve our environment and wildlife. And maybe by doing that, the children will learn how to be responsible and helpful and purposeful. And they’ll feel safe and secure themselves. And happy.”
“You think that will do it?” Ash asked. His voice wasn’t skeptical so much as carefully neutral. “Spending some time on your ranch is gonna turn these kids’ lives around, and it won’t matter what they have to go back home to each evening?”
“I think it will help, at least a little, or maybe just enough.” She dropped her chin, studying the sooty toes of her lug-soled boots. “I get frustrated, though, knowing that there are so many children and animals who are going without that help every day, every single day.”
She gave a huff of frustration, and again she couldn’t have said with whom she was frustrated.
“You can’t save the world, Maura,” Ash said, and it was now as if he were trying to convince her of something that meant a great deal to him.
She wouldn’t go there. She couldn’t go there.
“If I help rescue just one soul,” Maura said stubbornly, “it’d be worth it. I mean, don’t you feel your life has been given new purpose by saving mine?”
He didn’t answer, only gazed at her with that same wariness.
She rose, needing to move, and went to stand at the entrance to the passage that led to the outside. Even from several yards in, the sound of the wind was like getting up close and personal with a volcano. The worst of the fire would have passed by now, but the danger—and the fury—were not over. They would never be over, for there would always be forest fires. There would always be the suffering of the innocent. It was a law of nature.
Panic again fought its way upward in her chest.
Distracting herself, Maura passed a palm across the back of her neck. “Heavens, I feel grubby. I’d give anything for a nice hot shower.”
“I’d suggest freshening up in the spring,” Ash said from behind her, “but it’s just a little spit of water, and the pool it flows into isn’t something you’d give your dog a bath in, much less yourself.”
She turned to regard him. He had exhibited little reaction to her diatribe, except for his eyes returning to that cool silver that created enough distance between them you could have inserted the Grand Canyon with room to spare. She knew she hadn’t changed his mind a bit. Of course, she knew what he believed; he’d said it outright.
“Just a spit of water, eh?” She elevated her chin an inch. “Not exactly my idea of clean, but better than nothing.”
She found the bar of Ivory she always kept in her pack and took it and her helmet with her as she headed stalwartly down the tunnel. She wasn’t going to let Ash Whatever-his-last-name-was get her down.
She gave the doe a quick check on the way by. Smokey was still glued to his mother’s side. Maura stooped to soothe a hand down the bridge of the doe’s nose. She barely responded. She seemed to be resting better, though. Maura would take the next turn bathing the burns after her own abbreviated ablution.
The spring, she discovered, was the trifling affair Ash had warned it would be, barely a trickle down the side of one wall into a small muddy pool at the bottom. She sighed. It would have to do.
Wedging her helmet into a crevice in the opposite wall, she removed her fire shirt, then hesitated with her hands on the hem of her T-shirt, listening. The only sounds were that of the spring echoing in the chamber. Not that Ash would peek; she knew that without asking. She drew the T-shirt over her head, reveling in the feel of fresh, albeit cold, air on her skin, and impulsively removed her bra as well. She used the red bandanna she’d had tied around her throat to catch the meager stream from the spring, soaped the dampened area and washed herself as best she could, shivering a little in the cool of the cave. Meager as it was, the bath did revive her spirit.
She didn’t know why she cared, anyway—about what Ash thought or if he had the disposition of a badger and an outlook so gloomy it would take a trip to the far side of the sun to brighten it up a bit. But she had to wonder what had made him that way: wary, secretive, cynical.
Something flitted past her ear, ruffling her hair. Maura knew it was
