Air rushed in. Another ignited.
This was not going to work unless Yazzi’s burn could overpower the downslope winds.
Yazzi kept lighting. The gap heated up. He ordered his firefighters back into safe positions.
The fires fed at the fuels between them. The shift began, gradually, convection taking hold, pushing from downslope. Fire jumped from one tree to another, torching it. The heat rose, flowing over and through the next clump of trees, igniting them all. Embers carried up and into the black.
The trees along Yazzi’s arc were now blackened skeletons—a barrier to a crown fire—but the litter at their feet was burning, trying to sneak downslope. Yazzi pointed. “Get a line around it.”
His squad fell into line along the edge of the fire. The others joined them.
The Division Supervisor stepped over to Jack and turned back to the fire. “Good crew. You just saved some homes.” Then, he let out a sad little laugh.
CHAPTER 2
Jack Chastain stood perched on an outcropping, looking out over the valley, watching the crew make their way across the slope on the other side.
Hell of an assignment. Walking the edge, looking for sleepers—embers that might be laying low, smoldering since the night before—making sure they didn’t spring to life at the hottest part of the day. It was good of Ambrose to think they needed an easier job, after working most of the night with little more than a catnap, but this job was not exactly easy. Not with the lowest parts of the drainage so steep and treacherous. At least they could pace themselves until the end of the day, then get carried back to camp for a full night’s rest. They needed it.
Jack saw something he did not like. He keyed his radio. “Tammy, stop your squad. Some of them are below Paul’s people.”
“Copy.”
They stopped. Jack watched them re-stagger themselves across the slope, and then start their trudge, moving as a perfectly spaced unit. A rock kicked loose. The firefighter downslope and behind stepped back and watched it roll all the way to the bottom.
“That’s why,” Jack shouted.
The excitement settled down.
Idle chatter began to drift across the drainage.
“Me too,” one of them said, agreeing with jumbled words. “I just want to go home and sleep in my own bed.”
Another wanted to see his wife and kids.
Jack let out a quiet chuckle. Signs of homesickness. Being tired of it all. He couldn’t blame them. He was feeling it too, but being crew boss he couldn’t admit it. He was tired and sore, every part of his body wanting nothing more than to sleep in a familiar bed, and soak in a long, hot bath. Those things would be at home in New Mexico, at Piedras Coloradas.
But ready to go back there? He could hardly believe he was thinking it. Only two weeks ago, when this interagency crew was assembled in the rush to find crews, the assignment had felt somehow safer. Only the few from Piedras Coloradas National Park knew him. The others didn’t. They knew nothing about the reassignment to Piedras Coloradas, the controversies in Montana, and the local big shots who had wanted him made into an example, and who made good on their threats through connections with a U.S. Senator.
Jack dropped his eyes. Surely they all knew by now. He couldn’t rule it out, and he couldn’t keep himself from starting to put up the same barriers and the same strong face he did at Piedras Coloradas.
Might as well be at home, inside four walls. There he could drop the charade—even if it meant being alone. Even if Courtney wasn’t there to turn to.
Why had she chosen to stay in Montana? Why had she refused the agency’s offer of reassignment when it imposed one on him? Injury added to insult. When he needed someone most, why had she ended things without explanation? “Just wasn’t meant to be,” he said aloud to himself. It tired him hearing it.
He tore his mind away, and watched a BLM firefighter stop and lean on her shovel.
“You people who’ve done this for years, I don’t know how you do it,” she said. “It’s just not worth it to me. I didn’t go to college to do this kind of thing.”
“Me neither,” came another voice.
They’re tired. He’d felt that way himself, on other fires, in other years. When the callouts came, he went. They would, too, he figured.
“Found one!” the BLMer called out, sounding almost surprised. She knelt down and felt through the ashes. “I think it’s out.”
At least she’s paying attention. “Put a line around it,” Jack shouted. “Just in case.”
She scratched out a line and moved on.
“Good eyes, even if it isn’t why you went to college,” Jack said, trying to tease her.
“I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant that I’d rather be at home, doing my real job.”
“Understood. We all would.”
She stood and looked his way. “What do you do back at the park? You a ranger?”
“Kind of, but not exactly,” Jack said, not wanting to get into it.
“What then, exactly?”
He sighed. “I’m a resource manager, a biologist.”
“Cool.” She stared across the drainage, waiting for details, holding up the others behind her.
Jack held his tongue.
She moved on.
Cool. Maybe it was cool. It once was—or almost always had been. Until Montana. It always seemed such important work. It had seemed important to the public. Until Montana.
Forget Montana. You’re dealing with New Mexico now.
But would it be any different? It was too early to tell. Piedras Coloradas wasn’t a bad place, really. Nice park. Beautiful canyons. Beautiful sunsets.
Give it a chance.
Paul Yazzi stopped at his position high on the slope and probed at the ground with his shovel. Without comment, he scratched out a line.
The night before he’d misjudged Paul. Paul was just a practical guy, from a different culture. He owed Paul an apology, or a compliment—or a medal for keeping them all from being lumped into the same group as that damned arsonist.
Jack looked up at the ridge, above the crew, at blackened trunks of standing dead trees, wisping smoke into the wind. What a thing to do, he thought.
Why would someone do that? For the thrill? Because he was a pyromaniac? Or because he wanted to pick up a few bucks fighting fire?
Or was he disillusioned? Could it be that? Did something happen to him? Something like Montana?
He
