Directly below him, near a tree with a black scar, two men fanned a flame in a small pile of tinder. They were so intent on what they were doing that they didn't notice Samuel approaching until he was almost on them.
"Want to tell me what you're up to?" he said, a hand rest ing on the handle of his pistol. Boone, teeth bared, circled and growled.
"Nothing," the smaller of the two men mumbled, rising. "Honest Making a cooking fire."
"Where's your food?"
The other man slowly got to his feet "What if we said we ain't got none?" he asked. Only then did he raise his head to look directly at Samuel.
Jarrett saw recognition flicker across his brother's face. "Why aren't you on a fire crew? Didn't the Forest Service take you on?"
"I didn't like the job they offered," the man said. He waved a hand, and Jarrett noticed it was missing fingers. "They wanted to send me off on some fire that was to hell and gone."
"And so you decided to create a more convenient one?"
The smaller man said, "You got it wrong, Ranger. We was putting it out" He stamped on the tiny flames now licking from tinder into kindling. "Wasn't we, Tully?"
The one he'd called Tully ignored him. "What are you gonna do about it, Ranger?" Tully said. "Give me another Logan to get even with?"
"What I'm going to do," Samuel said, drawing his gun, "is haul you two before the sheriff in Wallace. You're under arrest."
"Not me," Tully said, turning his back on the pistol and starting away. Boone growled and looked to Samuel for direction.
Off to one side, on the uphill slope, the other man grabbed a rock and raised it to bring down on Samuel's head.
"Watch out!" Jarrett yelled, and he plunged down to help his brother. He saw the men below him look up, and he heard Samuel yell, "Jarrett, get back."
Then his foot caught on a tree root. He plummeted forward, and things got confused. There were shouts and sounds of running. Then Samuel was standing over him, whistling to.
Boone. "Let 'em go, boy."
***
The walk back to the ranger station was strained.
"I'm sorry," Jarrett said. "I didn't mean to get in the way."
"I gave you an order," Samuel said. "I told you to stay where you were."
"The guy was going to hit you with a rock."
"Boone wouldn't have let him."
"You could have gone after them. You had your pistol, and Boone to help. And I would have helped."
Samuel didn't reply.
Jarrett thought for a moment. "I still don't get it. Why were they starting a fire on purpose?"
"My guess is they wanted to get hired to put it out," Samuel said. "They probably thought working a fire this close to Wallace would be easier than working one miles into the wilderness."
"But you knew who they were? You recognized the one."
"Tully. I met him once," Samuel answered. Then he added, "Of course, they might have had intentions other than making jobs for themselves. There's been talk of vagrants starting fires as cover for looting remote cabins." Jarrett felt a chill. He could imagine men like those two doing that. Tully, with his missing fingers and vicious-sounding voice. The other man, smaller and cockeyed, more of a coward but ready to bring a rock down on Samuel's head.
***
After supper the brothers sat on the ranger station porch cleaning soot from tools. Jarrett was still trying to make sense of the afternoon.
"Samuel, what did that one man, Tully, mean about having another Logan to get even with?" he asked.
"Just talk," Samuel answered. "He begrudges a run-in he had with Pop."
"What will you do about him?"
"Now that you've stopped me from arresting him and his friend for arson?" Samuel's cold voice told Jarrett he wasn't making a joke. "Not much besides seeing headquarters knows not to hire them on, and I doubt they'd apply there again anyway."
"You could tell the sheriff."
"I'll mention it, but he's got his hands full, too, this season. Most likely Tully and his friend will disappear into the crowds of strangers in town and in the woods, and they may or may not cause more mischief. My guess is they will."
A long silence followed as Jarrett considered the implications. Then he said, "Things would have gone different today if I wasn't your brother. You wouldn't have told a regular helper to stay where he'd be safe. And if you had and he'd done something as dumb as ignoring your orders and then falling down that hill, you wouldn't have left those men alone while you went to see to him."
Samuel shrugged. "I don't know that."
"Anyway," Jarrett said, "I've been thinking for a while now I ought to get on a fire crew the way I set out to do. I'll put that new roof on the springhouse like you asked, but then I'll head on up to Wallace."
"You don't have to go. Just, if you stay around, obey my orders."
"I really want to get out on a big fire anyway," Jarrett said.
"You'll have to obey orders anyplace you go."
"That's not the point," Jarrett said.
Samuel studied him. "No, it's not. You had it right before. I did act differently today because you're my brother, and I might again." He stood. "So maybe it's just as well you do go."
Jarrett searched his brother's face for some hint that Samuel regretted how things had turned out, but if Samuel had any feelings one way or the other, he was keeping them to himself.
Part Two
Wallace
July 28, Morning
Jarrett entered Coeur d'Alene Forest headquarters in downtown Wallace behind two other men also seeking fire-fighting jobs. He got a quick impression of a house turned into an office, the fancy wallpaper above dark wood paneling now a place to hang notices and a calendar. He was surprised to see two women working at stations just inside the door, one at a typewriting machine. She glanced at Jarrett and the other newcomers and waved them farther inside. "You'll want to see Mr. Polson," she said.
Mr. Polson, in a suit and glasses, his hair neatly combed, sat at a scarred wooden desk.
One of the men who'd come in with Jarrett asked, "You still got work?"
A smile flitted across Mr. Polson's face. "Some. You know where we can hire an army?" The man responded with a blank look, and Mr. Polson sighed and picked up his pen. "Name?"
"Joe Sullivan." Sullivan nodded toward the other man. "That's Frank Naylor. We're together."
"Hometown?"
Sullivan shrugged. "All over."
"Vagrant," Mr. Polson said, and wrote it down.
Naylor said he didn't know what town to call home, since he'd been in the Montana State Prison so long.
The Forest Service man handed them slips of paper. "Take these to a hardware store, get yourselves each a shovel, and report back here for your orders. Pay's twenty-five cents..." He looked up hopefully. "Don't suppose either one of you is a cook?...No, I didn't think so. So, twenty-five cents an hour, and the government will pay for your transportation to fires and back here when you're discharged. You work at your own risk. No alcohol or disruptive behavior while on duty. Glad to have you. Next?"
Jarrett asked, "What do cooks get paid?"
"Whatever we can get them for," Mr. Polson answered, a smile again flickering across his face. "At four dollars or better a day, they're making more than I do. Why? Can you cook?"
"Not for an army. Twenty-five cents an hour will do fine, just so you send me somewhere I'm needed. I'm Jarrett Logan, from Avery."
Mr. Polson put down the pen and sat back in his chair. "Samuel's brother," he said. "I heard you were headed to the Cool Spring Station. He didn't have work for you there?"
"Not really. That is, he could use a hand, but patrolling and all's not really what I came for, and anyway—" Jarrett broke off awkwardly.
Mr. Polson gave him a questioning look but didn't pry. "Well," he said, "there's certainly fireline work if you want it. Especially for fellows like you, showing up wearing decent-boots and work clothes. Some men we've hired..." Mr.
Polson's voice trailed off, and he shook his head. "Pitiful, really."
An inner door opened, and a man walked rapidly through, nodding without stopping on his way outside.
"That was Mr. Weigle," Mr. Polson volunteered. "My boss and yours, now."
And Samuel's, Jarrett thought. Forest Supervisor Weigle, in charge of seeing the whole Coeur d'Alene doesn't burn up. He'd heard Samuel say Weigle was doing his level best in a hard situation.
Mr. Polson logged Jarrett into the hiring book and wrote out a purchase order like he had given thé others.
"Buy yourself a shovel, and if the hardware store's got them, you might pick up a couple of picks and mattocks. I'm going to send you up to the Graham Creek fire, which is growing enough they can probably use the extra tools." He wrote out another form. "If you hurry you can catch the train going that way. This will get you a ticket."
"I'm taking a train to a fire?" Jarrett asked.
"Beats walking."
Graham Creek
July 29, Night
Jarrett arrived at the Graham Creek fire camp as everyone frantically rushed to control a blaze that had picked up and was threatening to jump a fireline. "Find a gap and pitch in!" someone yelled, running by.
Jarrett dropped his bedroll, grabbed his shovel, and headed toward the sounds of crackling fire, snapping branches, axes thudding into wood, and metal clanging against stone. His first sight of the crew was of fast-moving silhouettes working against pulsing curtains of crimson light.
Forcing himself not to shrink back from the fiery scene, he searched through the overwhelming confusion for someone who might say what exactly he was to do. The only person who even paused to glance his way just shouted, "Earn your pay!"
Jarrett struggled to grasp what was going on. This inferno was no more like the neat lightning strikes he'd worked with Samuel than a house fire was like a candle's glow.
The only thing that seemed the same was how the men striving to halt the belching onslaught stooped and stabbed, bent and dug. Jarrett moved into a space between two of the figures and smashed his shovel into a chunk of burning wood. He gathered up the pieces and flung them toward the flames, and then he stabbed at another piece of fire that he might throw back to the blaze. His shovel blade hit rock with a jolt that sent shock zinging up his arm. He caught his breath, waited out the wave of pain that quickly followed, and then he reached again for the same piece of fire and heaved it as far as he could throw.
Gradually, his work and that of the men around him began to pay off, as they protected and widened the threatened fireline, chopping off each groping finger of fire and throwing it back.
He'd never worked so hard or pushed his body so far. Breathing hurt deep in his lungs, and the shifting eddies of wind sent smoke swirling about his head, leaving him working blind for long moments.
He lost all feeling of time passing, until he began to wonder how much longer he could stand the hot aching in his shoulders or how his head felt like it was about to break open. Finally, the smoke blew away for a moment and Jarrett could see everything around him in light-edged clarity. He asked the nearest man, "How long do we go?"
"Until we get told to stop," the man answered. He appeared to be an older guy, stringy, lean. "Name's Elway," he said.
"Jarrett Logan."
They went back to work.
***
The order to knock off didn't come until the middle of the next morning, when their part of the fire finally seemed stalled where it was. Wearily trudging back to camp, Jarrett saw that Elway was even older than he'd first thought. The man's hair was gray under its coat of soot. Sweat running down Elway's face made it look like he'd painted himself with india ink.
With a start, Jarrett realized his own face must look the same way.
As they came into camp, they passed another crew heading out. "Poor sods," Elway said. "You think we had it bad, son, them's on day work has got it worse. Hotter than hell, and no hope of doing more than holding their own."
A woman—a fireguard's wife, Elway said—stood behind a table in an open-sided tent, ladling out stew and handing sourdough biscuits to all who wanted breakfast Most did, but Jarrett felt too tired to stand up for another minute, much less hold a spoon and chew food.
"Anybody with sprains, burns, or cuts," the woman called, "I'll wrap ankles and put on ointment soon as I'm done here."
Jarrett decided that getting help for his blistered hands wasn't worth the effort of staying awake. Instead, he found a flat patch of ground a decent distance from the pack-mule string, spread out his bedroll, and lay down, expecting to fall asleep in an instant.
He hadn't counted on how being still would make him aware of the way his whole body hurt Smoke and soot jammed his head, his throat was raw, and when he closed his eyes it felt like sandpaper scraping his eyeballs. He wondered if any of the other men were too tired to eat or ached as bad as he did. He wondered if any of them were asking themselves the same thing he was: How could he ever go back on that fireline and put in another night like the one he'd just had?
Homestead off Placer Creek
August 6, Evening
One chore and then another had kept Celia from writing Dora Crane, until Lizbeth was sure her aunt was putting off the trip to the mail drop and ranger station on purpose.
Confronted, Celia finally admitted, "I don't want it looking like you're chasing after that boy."
"Why would it look any more like that than like you're chasing after Ranger Logan?" Lizbeth asked, regretting the words the instant she'd said them. "I'm teasing, Cel," she added hastily. "The way you and the ranger disagreed, he couldn't misunderstand."
Still, it took a newspaper left by a passing logging camp foreman to jolt Celia into action. She read an account of the Pine Creek fires spreading and then took out a sheet of writing paper. "Perhaps tomorrow we can go to church, mail this, and stop by the ranger station," she said.
"Thank you!" Lizbeth exclaimed. Then she sobered. "Are you very worried about Mrs. Crane?"
Celia answered, "I'm not worried so much as I'd just like to hear she's all right."
Lizbeth pictured the large motherly woman who had befriended them during their first winter in Wallace. Between Dora Crane and old Mrs. Marston, they'd quickly been made welcome.
Mrs. Marston, who owned a boardinghouse, had given them a room and meals in exchange for help with the cooking, an arrangement they'd returned to each winter since.
Dora Crane, in Wallace with her own children for the school year, had introduced Celia to shopkeepers and Lizbeth to teachers.
Lizbeth and Celia had missed Dora Crane ever since several Pine Creek families put up a schoolhouse so they could stay on their places year-round.
Lizbeth hoped Mrs. Crane and her big family were all right.
***
While Celia wrote the letter, Lizbeth made a mincemeat pie. She wasn't nearly as good a baker as her aunt, but she gave it her best effort.
She hoped the ranger and his brother wouldn't be away on patrol. Surely, Lizbeth thought, the Forest Service gave Sundays off.
She tested the oven's heat with her elbow and then put the pie in. While it was baking she scanned the fire stories scattered across the newspaper's eight pages, looking for any fires close enough they might be a threat to her and Celia. She wondered if Jarrett Logan had got involved in fighting any of them.
She'd liked how he'd understood her feelings about this place. How he hadn't laughed at her wish to make a go of things or her ideas for how it could be done.
With a sigh, Lizbeth turned back to the newspaper's front page and began reading it more carefully. For once she was seeing a paper that was current—out just Thursday, and here it was only two days later. Most of the time, living so isolated, she didn't know what was going on elsewhere until after it was long done and over.
Graham Creek
August 7, Morning
On Graham Creek, Jarrett was partway through another shift of cutting fireline.
One of the first things he had learned on his new job was that night and early morning were make-progress time on a wildfire. The still air, higher humidity, and cooler temperatures let firefighters go on the offensive.
For almost a week now, he'd been part of a day crew steadily carving an ever longer trench designed to starve the advancing fire of fuel. At first he hadn't been able to see beyond his own job. Then, as he'd been put on one task and then another, he'd started to understand how the various jobs fit together.
This was his first time as an axman, pushing the fireline into new territory by chopping down brush and small trees.
Not far behind, sawyers using crosscut saws took down the bigger stuff, cutting through downed logs and dropping trees with branches that hung over the fireline's path.
A third group followed them, raking away all the small, burnable fuel—pine duff and sticks, leaves and grass—and scraping the line down to bare soil.
And word was, when conditions were right, a low blaze would be run along the inside of the break to widen it with a charred black line.
It was all backbreaking, arm-numbing work, but Jarrett had built up calluses and lung power, and that helped. And the crews were working far enough in front of the main fire that its heat didn't blast them the way it did when they had to dig hot line, laboring close to the flames.
Of course, working so far ahead of the spreading fire also meant they had to cut a longer trench than they would have closer in, and Jarrett had asked Elway the sense in that.
"Buys time," Elway had answered. "What you want is to strike a line just big enough so you can get it done before the fire can outflank you."
"Sounds reasonable."
"Just theory," Elway had said. "Me, I'd put money on the losing side of a fixed fight before I'd bet on outguessing afire."
Now the foreman called, "Take ten!"
The Big Burn Page 6
