The Big Burn

by Jeanette Ingold

  The relieved feeling surprised Jarrett, since he hadn't realized he had been worrying about Pop.

  The sight of soldiers in town also surprised Jarrett, and then he remembered talking with Seth Brown about how his outfit was probably headed here.

  Jarrett said good-bye to his crew and the Reeses outside the soldiers' camp, where an army corpsman was dispensing help as needed.

  Wallace

  August 21, Morning

  At the one remaining railroad station—one had burned—Lizbeth and Celia learned that the eastbound hospital train carrying Mrs. Marston was feared lost. Sometime during the night it had picked up additional refugees in Mullan, which had been bracing for flames sweeping down on that town. Since then no further telegraphed messages about its whereabouts had come in.

  So much was not known. Lizbeth heard someone say Supervisor Weigle had finally made it in from Placer Creek, but he'd had a narrow escape. And that Ranger Pulaski had saved a bunch of men, but he'd got hurt doing it.

  Here, men fought the remains of fires still burning in the smoke-filled city, and others patrolled, watching for flare-ups. In the light of day, though, and with the emergency at least for now behind them, they seemed to have slipped back into thinking fire work wasn't a job for females. Lizbeth's offer to help got turned down.

  Celia was needed more. Hospital beds were filling up with injured firefighters coming in from the burning mountains, and a beleaguered nurse jumped at Celia's volunteering to do what chores she could.

  The nurse didn't want Lizbeth, though. "You're just too young, child," she said, not unkindly, her Irish brogue thick. "You don't want to be seeing the wounds we'll have in front of us this day."

  "Go on," Celia said. "If things get too bad, I'm sure you'll be called on."

  At a loss for what to do, Lizbeth wandered through residential streets, where house doors and windows stood open. She watched a pair of young soldiers go from one home to another, knocking and calling, and where they didn't get an answer, they closed things up for the absent owners.

  They reminded her of the soldier who had run to Jarrett's aid, and she wondered if he might be someplace about Since half the soldiers had been sent to Avery, he might be down there.

  Avery, where Jarrett was from. Of course, he was off in the woods someplace—far, far away, she hoped, from the fires that had caught the injured men she'd seen at the hospital. What's happening on the St. Joe anyway? Does anybody know?

  Abruptly, she turned toward the Western Union office, which was open despite its being Sunday. People waited in line to send word of their situation to faraway relatives. Others bunched up to read a list of telegrams that had arrived and could be picked up.

  "Why, there's one sent from Italy," a woman said. "Can you imagine? Someone clear across the ocean is worried about us in Wallace!"

  "I don't see how you know that," another said.

  "It's from Rome. It's to Wallace. It stands to reason," the first woman answered.

  Lizbeth saw an employee come out and hurry toward Forest Service headquarters, a telegram in his hand. She followed him, only to be caught up in the crowd outside the door. Within minutes word of the telegram's contents circulated.

  "It was from Avery," she heard. "The St. Joe's burning up. Dozens of dead up Setzer and Big Creek and injured men pouring in."

  Lizbeth's whole body went cold.

  "How's Avery itself?" someone asked.

  "Apparently still safe."

  Mr. Polson touched Lizbeth's elbow. "We've got good people down there," he said. "I'm sure they'll have gotten most of the men out."

  "But you don't know?"

  Mr. Polson looked about a hundred years old. "No," he said. "With communications down all over the Coeur d'Alene, we're lucky to have the Avery line still working. And given all the backcountry between here and there, with trails probably blocked, no way to get word in or out ... it's going to be days before we know what's happened. Even closer in..."

  He paused, and when he spoke again his words sounded pained and careful. "We're hearing as many contradictions as straightforward accounts, so it's hard to know what to believe. But we do have several crews unaccounted for, and one of them is a group Samuel Logan took over just the other day." Mr. Polson shook his head as though wishing to clear it of thoughts worse than he could stand. "Samuel's likely all right, but I thought you might wish to warn your aunt."

  Lizbeth realized she must be looking puzzled, because Mr. Polson asked, "Did I misunderstand your aunt's interest? When she came in yesterday to ask about him, I assumed ... Well, I better get myself back to work. And, Lizbeth, as far as your young man goes—I hear firefighters are pouring into Avery. Chances are Jarrett's safe among them."

  Lizbeth felt herself blush. "I don't think he's my young man," she said.

  "You might not," Mr. Polson told her. "But he does."

  Avery

  August 21, Morning

  Seth walked patrol with other soldiers up and down the crowded platform of the railroad depot, not sure they were being much help. As far as he could tell, the railroad men were running things the way they wanted to. Or running them, anyway, as much as they could in all this crush of people trying to find out what was going on.

  Like Abel had said, outsiders were coming in from all over, adding to the townspeople in the streets.

  Seth had finally figured out what Abel wanted to do. Even told straight it sounded mad. Change their uniforms for regular clothes and think they could get away unnoticed?

  Seth wouldn't have listened for a minute, except the other things Abel had said were turning out to be true. By midmorning everybody was sure Avery would burn, and everybody knew that only the civilians were going to be sent out.

  "It'll work, you'll see," Abel had promised. He'd said how he one time saw a place being evacuated, and how all the people had gone pure crazy with fright. "Crowding and shoving and trying to be the first out." "Don't you see?" Abel had said. "All we got to do is go patrol some empty houses for suits of clothes and whatever else might help us after. Money. Or watches. Stuff like that. Then..."

  Seth had stopped him right there. "I'm not doing any thieving," he said. "And I ain't going with you if you are."

  The instant he'd said those words, he'd wished he could take them back.

  "I knew you'd come along," Abel had said. "We're a team."

  Seth, smarting from how he'd outtalked himself, had said, "I been meaning to ask about that. How come you just don't do all this stuff by your own self? You don't need me for none of it"

  "Just because...'Cause everybody got to have a buddy. You're mine." Abel had given Seth a hard-to-figure look. "I'm yours. Who else you got?"

  Now Seth reached the end of the platform, made a smart turn like he learned in drill, and started back the other way. It was the half of his patrol where he could better see into town.

  Lord, there sure was a lot of firefighters roaming about, and they were wearing all kinds of bandages. Mostly around their eyes, Seth saw, thinking fire must be real hard on eyes.

  One thing to say for Abel's plan—them not having white skins wouldn't matter in that mob. Right this minute, wasn't Seth seeing a pair of firefighters blacker than him?

  And all sorts of people who looked foreign.

  Seth turned again and saw two men come around the closest corner of the depot One of them, wearing an engineer's cap, seemed to be having a hard time shaking free of the other. Angrily, the engineer said, "I told you, I don't know where Logan lives. Now stop bothering me." He jerked out of the other man's grip, and Seth glimpsed a hand that was missing fingers.

  West of Wallace

  August 21, Morning

  Something probed at the back of Samuel's neck, an insistent touch that sent pain screaming through him. He tried to say Stop, but he couldn't draw enough air up his throat to form the word.

  Even breathing was an agony of choking and hacking up grit He'd got a mouthful of dirt all right he thought, but that
wasn't nearly as terrible as the persistent poking at the base of his skull.

  It's bad enoug/i I've failed my pack test, he thought letting that mule boot me to kingdom come. That Forest Service man giving the exam has no need to torment me more.

  And why was the man whining? Samuel wondered. He wasn't the one eating dirt.

  Samuel struggled to turn his head, the effort causing him to spit up more grit—it tasted like a potato jacket burned to ash in a campfire. Ash...

  A clearer thought stirred in his mind, and he groped toward it This wasn't his ranger's examination, was it? That was years before. And he'd passed it after all. Showed how he could run a survey line, fell a tree where he was told to put it, estimate timber, and shoot a pistol and a rifle. Answered questions. How would you put out a snag fire? What would you do in a wildfire?

  Run like crazy, he'd written. The Forest Service had hired him anyway. Maybe nobody there had known a better answer.

  "Stop bothering me!" Samuel demanded, but he couldn't tell if he'd managed to say the words aloud. Painfully, he swatted at his neck, wanting to halt the hurtful jabbing. He touched sticky fur.

  Boone?

  Boone surely wasn't at Samuel's ranger examination. Boone didn't come until later, a puppy scraping out survival in an abandoned logging camp Samuel had holed up in for a time his first winter as a forest guard. The little guy had dug himself into a snowbank, and his eyes had blazed fearful and hopeful as Samuel had coaxed him out. Samuel had stretched full out in the snow to do it, just like now.

  But that was wrong. Snow would feel good, not like the hot, rocky earth scratching against Samuel. And it would smell clean, instead of like smoke and things burning. If he could just remember...

  Snowbank ... dirt bank ... dirt hollow...

  ***

  The next time Samuel awoke, he knew he lay facedown in the hollow depression he'd dug by the rocks. And he remembered setting backfires, the way he'd promised his crew. As long as he could stand to, he'd fanned the backfires toward the onrushing flames, and then he'd run to the hollow and flattened himself as deep into it as he could. Boone had burrowed in next to him as Samuel had tried to keep his breathing shallow in the thin band of fresh air along the ground. So we've lived, Samuel thought He hadn't expected that He wondered if his crew had gotten away. And Thistle? The last Samuel had seen of his horse, Thistle was racing in circles, terrified, neighing. A bull elk had run by, and Thistle had shied away from it and then bolted in the other direction as a mountain lion streaked past.

  If Samuel could just open his eyes, he thought he could see who it was that wouldn't leave his neck alone.

  Then he remembered that it wasn't a person but Boone who was with him.

  They'd need someone to come for them soon, or they would die. Samuel knew that Die of thirst if not bums.

  It took Samuel long moments of worrying over how dry mouthed he was before he remembered he'd saved a canteen of water for just this. And then it took him a long, long time to unscrew the cap and get the canteen to his mouth. To drink some and spill some into his hand for Boone.

  Avery

  August 21, Afternoon

  The scene at the depot was degenerating into pandemonium as more and more women piled onto the evacuation train, dragging children, carrying babies, pulling bags of belongings along.

  Hearing someone call his name, Jarrett turned and saw Mr. Blakeney, the railroad man who'd hired and fired him from his job as a fire spotter. Without a word of greeting, Mr. Blakeney demanded, "Logan, where's your father? I need him to help direct these soldiers."

  "Isn't Pop on a run?" Jarrett asked.

  "No, his run was cancelled, and anyway, he didn't show. First time I've ever known him to miss."

  I never have, Jarrett thought.

  "When you find him," Mr. Blakeney went on, "tell him to get down here and make himself useful. These soldiers mean well, but they don't know squat about loading trains."

  A woman carrying a dog and pulling along a small child claimed his attention. "There's a soldier over there saying no animals. Explain to him pets are different."

  "They're not, madam," Mr. Blakeney answered shortly He told Jarrett, "Get your father," and he disappeared into the milling people crowded six feet deep along the platform. "Order, please," Jarrett heard him call. "In turn, now—women and children only for now. No need to push. No need to push."

  Jarrett heard the woman tell her dog, "Don't you worry. We'll just go to a different car." She headed farther up the platform, going in the same direction Jarrett went, and he saw her try to push ahead of others closer to the train.

  A voice that sounded familiar said, "Ma'am, you have to step back and wait where it's safe." Jarrett turned and saw the speaker was Seth Brown.

  "I will step and wait where I wish," the woman told him. "And I will not have any colored boy giving me orders. Now, move out of my way."

  Jarrett watched Seth set his feet wider apart and angle his rifle across his chest The woman raised her handbag, and for a moment Jarrett wondered if she was going to hit Seth with it but then a white officer stepped between the two. "Ma'am," he said, "you will follow whatever orders my troops give."

  Before moving she called Seth a name Jarrett wouldn't have thought a lady would say.

  And then other people shoved by, and when Jarrett next saw Seth he'd moved out of talking range.

  The train was about ready to leave. Up and down the line, soldiers were loading on buckets of water and slamming shut windows. They pushed aboard the last of the women, with no more time to do it nicely but just getting them on however they could.

  Mr. Blakeney hurried by and then veered back to Jarrett. "Logan!" he said again. "Where's your father?"

  "I'll go check the house," Jarrett said, following as Mr. Blakeney started on. "But I was just wondering—have you had any news from Wallace?"

  Mr. Blakeney briefly turned back. "The talk is, Wallace burned up. If you had people there, I'm sorry."

  Jarrett felt sick deep in the pit of his stomach.

  A whole town gone? Jarrett thought. That's not possible, is it?

  But it must be, or Avery wouldn't be evacuating against the possibility of its happening here.

  What about the people up there—Lizbeth and her aunt, Mrs. Marston in her hillside boarding house? And where was Samuel? Was there an evacuation train for all of them?

  Jarrett spotted a Forest Service man and hurried over to ask if it was true that Wallace had been destroyed.

  "I don't know," the man answered. "We're getting telegraphs in from there, so something's still standing."

  "And Placer Creek?"

  A bystander overheard the question and answered, "What I heard is Placer Creek is where the Wallace fire came from."

  "Look," Jarrett told the Forest Service officer, "I'm a firefighter already hired on. Is there a crew going up to help out? I'll join it."

  "Are you crazy? Nobody can get through the fires between here and there, and if anybody needs help, it's us, right here."

  Avery

  August 21, Afternoon

  Abel caught Seth's arm. "You with me? Because I got the clothes."

  "I told you, no."

  "I didn't hear it. Anyway, why not? I heard that woman not taking your orders. You want to die taking care of things for the likes of her?"

  "We're not gonna die," Seth said.

  "No? Then why you think all the town folk are leaving this place? Next thing you know, Avery is gonna be deserted. It's gonna be just G Company and the fires."

  "Some other men will stay," Seth said, trying to convince himself.

  "Yeah. Fools!"

  Seth looked toward the mountains. People kept coming down out of them, some in awful shape. Seth had seen one just like what Jarrett Logan told about, a man who had a smell and a sound.

  "You saw the women's train go," Abel said. "It barely got out without catching fire. There's only gonna be one more train, and then we won't get another chance."
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  Seth drew in a deep breath. "Where you got those clothes?"

  Avery

  August 21, Afternoon

  Jarrett found Pop lying close to the kitchen stove, stunned but conscious. His leg was twisted under him, and blood from a scalp wound trickled down his face.

  "Pop!" Kneeling, Jarrett gently moved Pop's hair back from the cut. At least it didn't appear deep. "What happened? Did you fall?"

  "Surprised a looter," Pop mumbled. "Got away." Then he seemed to register who was talking to him. "Jarrett?"

  "Yeah, it's me. Is your leg broken?"

  Pop frowned at the question. "Don't know," he said. "I don't think so." He shook his head as though trying to clear his mind. "Jarrett?" he said again. "How did you get here?"

  "Long story, Pop," Jarrett answered. "That looter—was it Hilly, that brakeman you fired? Because..." Jarrett trailed off, realizing that wasn't what mattered right then. "Look, can you stand up? You can lean on me. We need to get you down to the station before the last evacuation train leaves."

  "Tully. That was him," Pop said. Then, seeming to grasp what else Jarrett had said, he struggled upright. "Avery's being evacuated? Help me get my uniform on."

  "You're dressed fine," Jarrett told him.

  "I'll be needed to work. I must be in uniform."

  "Pop! You're hurt."

  "My jacket, then. Is all in order at the depot?"

  "No, but there's soldiers to keep the lid on."

  Pop looked aghast. "Soldiers directing passengers? That's not right. Those soldiers are here to fight fires, not take over railroad jobs."

  "Pop, the worry is the town will burn. Now, put your weight on my shoulders while I pull you up. We really do have to make the train out."

  Pop groaned as he stood. "Are you going with me? I still don't understand what you're doing here." Anger reddened his face. "I thought I told you not to come back."