by Mark Henry
The fire boss’s thunderous voice rolled through the trees. “Rainwater, get over here and look at this map.”
Daniel looked back and forth at the two giants, poised for a fight. Monroe’s hand hung above the handle of his knife. Rollins stood with empty hands, his big chest heaving, eyes narrowed.
“Ask Corporal Rollins to come along,” Zelinski yelled. “I need to see him as well.”
“You best run along like you’re told, soldier man.” Ox Monroe smirked. “I reckon we’ll have to put off this match until later.”
“Oh, we’ll get to it, Monroe,” Rollins said. The relaxed smile returned to his broad jowls. “I’ll make certain of that.”
* * *
Horace Zelinski rubbed at a five-day growth of black beard and stared at a square map held down by four stones on the flat stump in front of him. An enormous gray wolfhound with a head the size of a small horse’s head rested on the ground to his right, its shaggy face cocked quizzically to one side. The dog had appeared in camp the week before, wandering in to steal or beg whatever it could find in the way of scraps and fresh water. It was a little gaunt, but other than a singed coat, it looked in excellent health. It couldn’t have been roaming the hills for too long. Several men, lonely for their own families, tried to coax the animal over to them with bits of bacon or ham, but it remained aloof to everyone but the fire boss. The dog seemed to sense the leader of the group, and after sniffing the air around the camp padded straight to Horace Zelinski. Ever alert to the moods of its new master, from the time it first went to him the shaggy wolfhound never strayed far from the ranger’s side.
The fire boss scratched his own head and then the dog’s before he pitched a small book, its pages curled and worn from much reading under the elements, on top of the map. When he stopped scratching to rub his weary, smoke-reddened eyes, the wolfhound whined and nosed at an elbow until he resumed his attentions.
“George,” Zelinski sighed, his voice gravelly from shouting orders over countless roaring fires. “We are up against something the patent-leathered bean stackers back in Washington didn’t think on when they wrote our little handbook.”
George White, Zelinski’s second in command, took a swig of water from the canteen on his belt and wiped his mouth with the back of his blackened forearm. At just over thirty years old, his thick hair had gone prematurely gray. Some said it was from trying to live up to the expectations of his mentor and superior in the Forest Service. If it was stress-related, it didn’t show in the rest of his demeanor. Where Zelinski’s gaze was sharp and hard as fire-tempered steel, White’s sky-blue eyes always held a spark of mischief and pure glee. The bulk of the fire crews followed both men out of sheer devotion and respect.
White chuckled. “I used the last few pages in my little book earlier this morning at my constitutional.” He winked at young Rainwater, who returned the kind look with a smile.
The Use Book that was intended to guide each forest ranger on his roving patrol over what sometimes amounted to millions of acres was not much use for anything besides kindling backfires.
“Ride as far as the Almighty will let you and get control of the forest fire situation in as much of the mountain country as possible,” the handbook taught. “And as to what you should do first, well, just get up there as soon as possible and put them out.”
By way of strategy, Zelinski and his men were on their own. Luckily for the crew, Zelinski was a man of action who needed little direction from his superiors. Though the Washington bureaucrats who wrote the Use Book gave men like him little in the way of practical instruction, Congress had made fire bosses arguably the most powerful men in the government’s employ in 1908 when they passed a law permitting deficit spending to fight fires. Who else could hire as many men as he wanted, requisition as much equipment as he needed, and never worry about the cost? Not even the Army had that kind of authority.
Consequently, the Washington bureaucrats put a great deal of time and forethought into the type of men they hired for such positions. They needed men of high moral character, men who could be trusted with the lives of other men as well as the taxpayers’ dollar. They needed men of action. They needed men like Horace Zelinski. The son of a Lutheran minister and Wyoming schoolteacher, Horace was as at home in the woods as he was in front of a congregation. He’d never missed a day of work in his life due to illness, and the word “shirk” was not in his vocabulary. He pushed himself beyond the limits of human endurance, and expected those in his employ to do the same. Firefighting was, after all, just that: a fight. It was a battle against the most destructive force in nature. A devil incarnate sent to destroy his beloved woodlands.
Snow in the high country the previous winter had been sparse, so the streams and rivers flowed at half their usual rate. Every blade of grass and twig was dried to the point of combustion at the tiniest notion of a spark. So dry, the swish of a pretty girl’s petticoat walking by might ignite them.
No one knew what started the first fire—summer lightning, sparks from a passing train, a stray cigarette from a wandering cowboy. There were so many separate fires now, all were likely to blame. Hundreds of men had been hired or pressed into service in fighting the fires: from rich cattle barons down to a trainload of vagrants brought in from Spokane. Almost everyone with a backbone was enlisted, not only to save the forests, but to save their towns and their own homes as well.
“What did you see up there, lad?” Zelinski waved Rainwater over to the stump table.
“Too many fires to count, sir. Thirteen plumes of smoke coming up in this valley alone. All the really bad ones look like they’re to the south of us.” Daniel looked down at the map and tapped it with his finger. “Two big fires over along the back side of Bear Mountain—here.” He pointed to a deep, narrow valley running from the high country and spilling into a wide plain that swept down above the tiny railroad town of Grand Forks, Idaho.
Zelinski’s head snapped toward White, then back at the Indian boy. “Did you say there are two separate fires back there? That’s a mighty narrow valley.”
Rainwater gave a single nod. “I saw two plumes of smoke, one near the mouth of the valley and another north, closer to the headwaters of this little creek here.”
The wolfhound gave a startled jerk when Zelinski pounded his fist against the stump. “I’ve got men down there, George.” His voice echoed across the parched clearing. He turned to Rollins. “Corporal, has the Army got any troops nearby that can go assist them?”
Rollins shook his head. “No, sir, not that I know of. Want me to take some of my men and look in on them?”
“No.” Zelinski glared across the shadowed camp toward the base of a huge white pine where Ox Monroe sat napping, his huge paws across his belly. “I’m afraid I need you here for the time being.” The fire boss turned to George White.
“Pete Seaver and his boys are down there, maybe trapped between two fires. George, I need you to take two men with you and get a signal to them. The fires should lay down tonight. Pete might have sent up scouts, but he’s young and inexperienced. I should never have sent him over there in charge of such a young crew. Let’s just pray you can get to them in time.” Zelinski picked up the map and held it closer to study in the failing light. “It’s just over four miles, but you have two sizable mountains to hump before you get there.” He traced a line on the map with a blistered finger. “If you cut down here toward the trail to Grand Forks, you should be able to make it well before morning.”
George White studied the map for a moment before he handed it back to his boss. “I’ll get to him, H. I’ll take McGowan and Baker. Be nothing but a short stroll for us.”
Zelinski rolled the map and slid it back into a leather tube. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said, buckling the end cap. “Oh, one more thing. Corporal Rollins, you have my permission to stage a wrestling match whenever you see fit. I think it might be good for the morale of the men.”
Rollins slapped his great hands together with
such relish, Monroe jumped in his sleep clear across the camp.
* * *
Firefighting was a war all right, but Horace Zelinski aimed to win it without any casualties. He waved George White on his way, confident he’d picked the correct men to make the journey. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, White made the same decisions Zelinski would have made himself. The other one percent of the time, it was a coin toss as to who was right.
The big wolfhound nosed at his master’s thigh and let out a low, mournful whine, sniffing the air. The ranger scratched his companion on the shaggy head and raised his own face to the smoky breeze.
The wind was shifting around to come in from the south. The dusty green fronds of the great cedar trees seemed to shake with anticipation of things to come. The dog noticed it, as did Zelinski.
Almost imperceptibly, the wind began to build.
CHAPTER 9
“I’m askin’ with all due respect.” Blake O’Shannon rode abreast of his father’s best friend. Clay Madsen had been a fixture in the O’Shannon home for as long as he could remember, and Blake thought of the brash Texan as a much-revered uncle. “All I ever heard you talk about to my father was how you wanted to get back to Texas and work your father’s ranch someday.”
The trail before them was a bold one, so they kept the horses at an easy dogtrot and tried to eat up ground as fast as they could.
“I did say that. Hell, I even thought it was a fact until I went back and started in doing it.” Clay turned up his nose and shrugged. “Found out that the ranchin’ way of life is pretty much like bein’ a farmer. It’s every rancher’s dirty little secret. Seems like I was on the ground doing something or another with the hay fields or fences more than I was in the saddle working cattle. Reckon I always wanted to be a cowboy more than a rancher anyhow. A rancher can’t afford to be as lazy as I am.”
Madsen’s bay had a smooth trot, and he carried on the conversation like he was sitting around the stove swapping stories. The Texan had a kind of easy, hat-thrown-back, feet-up personality and his zest for life jingled as loudly as his spurs.
He leaned across the space between the two horses as if to confide a secret matter to Blake. “Truth be known, I reckon I don’t really have the gumption for that kind of hard work. Once you get a taste for man-huntin’, everything else is bland as empty piecrust. When the railroad called and said I’d come highly recommended, well, it seemed like my ticket off the ranch.” Madsen shrugged. “My sis wanted it all for herself and those mean-hearted little whelps of hers anyhow. She always did resent me coming back to take it over, what with me being the prodigal and all.”
“And they didn’t say who recommended you to them? The railroad, I mean.” Blake was still having a hard time chewing over the fact that arguably the three best trackers in the nation just happened to be in the right spot when marauding Apaches carried away a Boston girl.
“Nope. Just said they needed someone to head up security for the railroad and wanted to offer me the job if I’d come up to Helena. We ain’t got one of those telephones out on the ranch yet, so all our correspondence was by letter or telegram.”
Madsen let out a rumbling chuckle that caused his horse to cock an ear back and throw him a wary eye. “I should have known something was up when the letter said I came highly recommended. I ain’t been highly recommended for anything in my life except maybe a whippin’ back in grade school when I popped the gawky kid who called himself a teacher in the ass with a piece of broken quirt.” He saw Trap and Ky on the road ahead of them and stood in the saddle, urging his horse a little faster at the sight of his friends. Before letting the bay break into an easy lope, Clay looked over and winked at Blake. “The bully son of a bitch had it comin’. The whippin’ was well worth what I paid for it.”
It was impossible not to like Clay Madsen.
Ky Roman sat, arms folded loosely across the saddle horn on his lanky sorrel, keeping an eye on the horizon while Trap studied the ground. Both figures seemed to dance in the heat waves that drifted up from the blackened landscape. A scar of burned buffalo grass cut a swath a half mile wide as far as the eye could see to the east, and culminated in a huge gray-white plume of smoke that billowed up from behind a scorched ridge to the west where the fire devoured a stand of lodgepole pine.
Madsen coughed as he reined in the bay next to Trap and Ky. He spit to clear his throat. “I thought Texas was hot. If it weren’t for all these pretty mountains, I’d figure you were about to welcome me to Beelzebub’s doorstep.”
“Not quite yet, but I imagine you know the way.” Roman extended his hand with a grin. “Good to see you, Clay. You’re looking well.”
Madsen tipped his hat. “So are you, Hezekiah. Or, it’s Marshal now, isn’t it? I hear from young Blake here congratulations are in order.”
“Thank you, but it’s got nothing to do with me; it’s my wife and her good politics.”
“Well, whatever it is, they ought to pay you marshals a little more so you can afford the rest of that mustache you’re trying to grow. I remember your face hair being a lot more robust than that little shadow of a thing you’re wearin’ now.”
Trap groaned from his stooping and took a step toward his old friend. “I’m glad you’re here, Clay Madsen,” he said with a genuine grin that turned up not only the corners of his mouth, but caused the apples of his cheeks to glow and his brown eyes to sparkle with more life than Blake had seen in them in a long while. “We could use another good set of eyes on these tracks.”
Aside from Clay, none of the men were given to much foofaraw or wordiness. After a quick exchange of pleasantries at their reunion, they were content to let him do the lion’s share of the talking.
After a short scout, Trap regained the killers’ track on the far side of the burn. The trail headed straight for Grand Forks, a little nubbin of a town not far across the Idaho line through the railroad tunnel and less than a mile away to the southwest. Blake watched the way his father smiled while he studied the trail and listened to his friend go on and on. He thought of the times when it was probably just so—his father watching the ground, Captain Hezekiah Roman scanning for ambush, and Clay Madsen providing the entertainment with his lusty yarns and general love for life on the trail.
After hearing what the others knew about Angela and the massacre, Clay filled them all in on his life in Texas, his father’s death, and the telegram from one Mr. Elwood R. Pasqual III, Esquire, of the Northern Pacific Railroad that had asked for his services as a railroad detective.
“I figured it would be a good excuse to take a trip up here to look in on that beautiful wife of yours.” Clay twirled his reins while he spoke. “Needed to see if she was ready to get shed of you yet and take up with someone of greater substance and charm.”
Trap beamed and shook his head at Blake, like he was just so proud to be back in the company of such a good friend. Another man might have earned a bullet for the same kind of talk, but Blake knew Madsen was more devoted to his father than any man alive.
The Texan slowed his horse along with the rest of the men and looked across the trail at Blake, scratching his goatee. “What the hell kind of a name is Pasqual anyhow?”
Ky stopped his sorrel at a broken water trough by a dried-up spring where dusty trail turned into rutted wagon track. Most anything that would burn looked as if it already had. Everything else had been hewn down with a vengeance in a wide swath along the edge of the tumbled excuse for a town. The dry ground was tilled in such a way that the ramshackle tents and buildings looked as though they were surrounded by a parched, unproductive garden two hundred feet wide. A scorched wooden sign made out of a broken barn door proclaimed in white letters a foot high: FIREFIGHTERS WELCOME AT THE SNAKE PIT.
“They got a constable of sorts here,” Blake said. “Least he used to be a constable over in Missoula—he’s a railroad agent for the Northern Pacific now. Think he migrated here to make it a little easier to booze on duty.” He pointed to the assortment o
f yellowed canvas tents and shacks of rough-cut timber that made up the settlement of Grand Forks, Idaho. It lay jumbled in the rocky crook of a mountain valley like a pile of unwanted lumber, and was likely filled with the same sorts of vermin, poisonous spiders and snakes. “He’s gettin’ along in years,” Blake went on.
“You mean old, like your pa,” Clay offered.
Blake nodded. “A mite older.”
“Looks like a fire swept through here not long ago,” Trap said, shaking off the comment on his age.
Blake crossed his hands on the saddle horn. “Back in July, the whole town near went up in flames. A local sportin’ woman robbed one of her patrons and ended up killing him to shut him up. She decided to burn the body to cover her crime and by the time she was done, she’d torched the whole town for good measure.”
Madsen whistled low under his breath. “You gotta watch those mean ones. What’d they do to her?”
“This one got away. No one cared much for the victim, but a lot of good whiskey went up in smoke, so they were prepared to hang her for that. I still got a wanted poster for her back at the office.”
“So all this has been rebuilt since July by the good citizens of Grand Forks.” Ky said.
“That’s a fact.” Blake pointed to an odd, boxlike structure high amid the branches of five white pines. The little copse of trees had somehow escaped the July fire. “A few of the local sports put themselves up a new crib up yonder in that tree house. They been doin’ a right smart business from what I understand.”
Clay slapped his knee and squealed enough to startle his bay. He gazed up at the treetop brothel. “Well, that would be a first for me.”
“I doubt that,” Ky replied. “We better get on about our business before Madsen goes to climbing trees.”
