Rain of Fire

by Linda Jacobs

  In the last light, she spread her sleeping bag and ground cloth, thankful that the team always took bedding as a precaution when they rode out. From her daypack, she pulled high calorie trail munchies.

  She scraped away the grass to bare soil in a circular area and ringed it with chunks of rhyolite. Tearing a few blank pages from her field notebook, she crumpled them, put on small sticks of kindling and applied a wooden match from her kit.

  She felt foolish. Wyatt had probably circled around and was already back at the cabin. Right now, he and Nick were no doubt bickering over who should take her turn at cooking while she sat alone. Though she didn’t want to think about it, tonight was the dark of the moon, a night when only stars cast illumination.

  Her small smoky fire was a nice touch, but it couldn’t hold back the vast ink of sky. She raised her eyes to blacker shadows of mountains that were always thrusting up and eroding away. In the canyon, gas must still be seeping.

  Strawberry nickered from where she was tethered.

  “Sorry, girl, I haven’t any food for you.” Or water. Her canteen contained less than a pint.

  Out in the darkness, a coyote howled.

  With a struggle, Kyle got the pine trunk almost to her fire. Then it hung up on a stub of branch and refused to budge. She sat on the ground and tried to use the power of her thighs.

  The approaching clop of hooves came from the trail. “Need help?” Wyatt asked gruffly.

  She turned and saw a dark shape on an even darker horse. The brimmed hat made it a scene from a Western movie.

  Urging Thunder into the ring of firelight, Wyatt slid easily out of the saddle. “You’re the last thing I expected to find out here.”

  “The canyon’s off limits.” She pointed uphill. “H2S killed two deer right on the trail.”

  He looked thoughtful. “You could have died if you’d ridden too close.”

  “Lucky for me, Strawberry smelled it and we turned back. I was afraid you would come along in the dark.”

  Wyatt looked at her little fire and the bigger log she was trying to burn. “You waited here for me? At night?”

  “You could have died,” she echoed.

  He slung an arm around her shoulders and gave her a hard squeeze. “Come on, let’s build a blaze we can read by.”

  Half an hour later, by the light of a bonfire, Kyle sat on her sleeping bag and watched Wyatt radio Nick. After explaining tersely about the gas seep, he listened for a few minutes and then signed off. “Nick wasn’t surprised about the gas … said it goes along with a volcano awakening.”

  Kyle hugged her knees and shivered despite the flames that had her front side baking. “Yesterday, when we climbed to the top, he talked about this being a volcano. I guess I’d been thinking of it in more passive terms, like volcanic terrain, or dormant.”

  “I have, too.” Wyatt set aside his radio. “But there’s a reason this expedition includes a volcanologist.”

  “I wonder how extensive the gas seeps are. How many more…?

  He put out his hand in a stop gesture. “Don’t go there. We need to get through this night without giving ourselves the heebie-jeebies.”

  Kyle took a bracing breath of smoky mountain air. “You’re right.”

  Wyatt spread his sleeping bag on the opposite side of the fire and took a seat. “Nick didn’t sound pleased about our being out here together.”

  Wyatt didn’t sound happy either.

  She leaned forward and felt the fire’s heat further warm her cheeks. “Look, about Nick and I …”

  “I don’t need to know your business.” Wyatt spoke stiffly, but the expression in his eyes gave away some essential vulnerability.

  “I want you to.” Maybe if she could make him understand, he’d settle back into being the friend she needed.

  A line appeared between his brows. “If you have to say something, I’m listening.”

  Now that she’d waded out this deep, she had to think a moment for the right words.

  “Let’s say your wife Marie dropped back into your life without warning. Wouldn’t you feel something? Nostalgia, curiosity, the old what-if?”

  Wyatt shook his head. “Bringing up Marie is not the way to make me understand.”

  “All right then, Alicia … somebody you care for a lot.”

  Wyatt looked at her for a long moment, and his expression softened. “I imagine this is tough on you … but I think I’d be clear on who dumped who. And make damned sure not to play the fool a second time.”

  Their eyes locked across the flames.

  Wyatt’s gaze broke away and he got up to put more wood on the fire.

  “You go on to sleep,” he said. “I’ll make sure you don’t wake up in the cold … or dark.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  SEPTEMBER 25

  Near noon the next day, Kyle and Wyatt rode into sight of the cabin.

  When they drew closer, she caught sight of a beard-stubbled, tousle-haired Nick at the corral fence offering Gray a feed bucket.

  Wyatt clucked to Thunder. Kyle nudged Strawberry into a trot to keep up with the longer-legged stallion.

  Nick met them; his eyes flicked from one to the other. “You two keep warm last night?”

  “Snug as bugs,” Wyatt retorted.

  He’d been as good as his word, keeping the fire stoked so Kyle never opened her eyes to darkness.

  Wyatt got off Thunder and began to unload the data drives.

  To Kyle’s surprise, Nick did not escalate a confrontation. Instead, he led the other two horses into the pen and offered food. Both animals bypassed the bin for a drink from the trough.

  Nick headed toward the cabin, pausing to pick up some of Kyle’s gear. He stopped about halfway there and pointed to a nearby rock. Atop it lay two dead ground squirrels and one of the usually vibrant gray and black birds known as the Clark’s Nutcracker.

  Kyle looked at the carcasses. “Where did you pick those up?”

  “Not close by or we’d be leaving.” Nick gestured east along the valley between Little Saddle and Nez Perce. “Found them over there when I was mapping a fault this morning.”

  Kyle frowned. “None of the geologic maps show a fault in this area.”

  “Come inside and I’ll lay it out.”

  As they entered the cabin, Wyatt spoke softly to Kyle. “I’ve been all over this area and didn’t recognize a fault.” He sounded as though he didn’t believe Nick.

  Kyle poured her and Wyatt a cup of coffee while Nick spread his field map on the table. Superimposed on a published topographic quadrangle, he had sketched and made notes in red ink.

  He pointed to an east-west line cutting by the cabin. “Here the edge of the Nez Perce flow is abrupt, against a fault that’s part of the older range.” Block letters indicated he had named it the Saddle Valley Fault.

  Kyle caught his inference and felt her breath come faster. “You mean we’re seeing an ancient fault, reactivated when Nez Perce erupted.”

  Nick had made a notation of where he found the asphyxiated squirrels and birds. Kyle put her finger on the spot and ran it west past the cabin until she came to the canyon where the deer had died.

  “It all lines up,” she said. “The son of a bitch is active again.”

  “I’m going out with you guys,” Kyle told Nick and Wyatt after they’d spent an uneasy half an hour over lunch.

  Wyatt demurred. “We need you monitoring the stations. It may seem dull, but I, for one, am counting on you to let us know if we need to get out of here.”

  Kyle’s chest clutched. After their deduction that the Nez Perce vent was so much larger and younger than previously thought, Nick had seemed both edgier and more exhilarated. With the discovery of the active fault, he had become more so.

  He turned to her. “I was intrigued by Brock Hobart predicting a quake as large as a 6.0, but discounted it because volcanic areas usually don’t experience large shakes. But with this fault, and the new moon tonight, we’d be foolish not to hav
e you on alert here.”

  For several hours, she monitored the stations, surprised to find them transmitting a continuous signal of quiet. Nonetheless, she watched the computer screen with distrust.

  Finally, for something to distract her, she checked email. Another nastygram from Hollis suggested her ‘unauthorized leave of absence’ should be unpaid.

  Adrenaline shot down her arms, leaving her tingling the way she had when the van jolted to a stop against the Gardner Canyon slide. Her breath coming fast, fingers flying, she fired back:

  Before Colin left for Asia, he appreciated the gravity of the Yellowstone situation enough to send us Dr. Nicholas Darden of the Volcano Hazards Group. We are currently at the Nez Perce Patrol Cabin monitoring a situation that Dr. Darden believes could result in a sudden need for evacuation.

  It took at least an hour to calm down, as she kept checking for another salvo from Salt Lake. When none came, she alternatively studied the seismic patterns and stirred an iron pot of beef stew hanging from a hook in the fireplace. The recipe was one from Franny, who had been quite the chef.

  The contrast between twenty-first century technology and nineteenth century living made Kyle think of Franny’s life in Jackson Hole during the 1920s. Then, most roads were unpaved, though the late nineteenth century advent of the bicycle had brought some macadam to the West. Horseback and wagons were still common modes of transportation alongside the automobile.

  Though the land was wilder than her native Tuscany, and a far cry from New York, where Franny had worked briefly as a cook, the Italian immigrant had found her soul in the West.

  As she replaced the lid on the stewpot, Kyle recalled that on her family’s last trip together, Mom and Dad had stopped by the old dude ranch near Jackson. Kyle’s memory was of rail fences falling into disrepair and abandoned buildings that had begun their return to the land, as the Park Service intended.

  The Nez Perce cabin, although newer, was fashioned of the same rustic log construction. Running a hand along the rough wooden wall, she walked to the door. Outside, nature’s gift of Indian summer beckoned.

  Today’s sky was almost indigo. Flaxen grasses rippled in a zephyr of breeze. Though the last of the season’s goldenrod had dried on the stalks, bees droned around it. Stalks of the camas plant bowed nearby, their blue summer flowers’ history; like the Nez Perce who had camped in these meadows in the high summer of 1877.

  According to some stories, believing the pursuing Army to be far behind them, the refugees had stopped to rest their horses and gather camas roots, a staple food they enjoyed in all seasons, boiled, mashed, and ground into flour long after the first snows flew. And with that group had traveled a small orphan boy.

  Kyle hunkered down on the cabin’s front stoop and imagined her great-grandfather, not quite part of any culture due to his mixed blood. She had no idea whether he had been an outcast or accepted by the tribe. Perhaps he had put up barriers between himself and the world the way she had, albeit for different reasons.

  From inside the cabin, she heard a male voice on the radio.

  Startled from her reverie, she went in and answered.

  “What’s shakin’?” Nick asked.

  “Nada. The latest data says the quake swarm has completely subsided.”

  He chuckled. “Brock Hobart won’t care for that. According to him, tonight is show time.”

  Another jolt shot through Kyle. “He’ll have to be disappointed.”

  “Time will tell.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’ve found a lava cave a ways up from the cabin. Not far from the ridge along the dike. If there hadn’t been a forest fire here in ‘88, I might not have seen it.”

  “Did you go inside?” She imagined a dark opening in the hillside, one she would not care to approach.

  “The entrance drops down a hole. There was a cone of last season’s snow in there, insulated by the lava, but I figured if I skied down I might not be able to get back up.”

  Pleased that for once Nick had avoided danger, Kyle said, “Wise choice. When are you coming back here?”

  “Depends what’s for dinner.”

  “Homemade beef stew.”

  “Well, hell, honey, I’ll just hang up my rock hammer and rush right over.” Nick stopped transmitting without any kind of radio protocol.

  An instant later, he said again, “Come in, Nez Perce?”

  “Nick?”

  Wyatt drawled, “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  Kyle bit her lip. “He just called in from a lava cave on the east ridge.”

  “He should be back to the cabin by dark then?”

  “I suppose. Why?”

  A moment of silence had Kyle thinking they’d been cut off. Then Wyatt said, “I got the idea you didn’t much care for the dark.” Tonight really would be black, with the new moon rising in the middle of the night.

  “There’s the generator and the lantern.” She tried for casual.

  “I know.” He sounded a little embarrassed. “The thing is, I’m down the Lamar at site seven and may not get back until tomorrow.”

  Nick had said he was coming to the cabin soon, but the reminder of impending nightfall made her say, “Wyatt, if you’re not here you’ll miss my best beef stew.”

  “Damn. You don’t know how sick I am of the dog food Dr. Darden throws together.”

  “Try and make it?” she said. “Even if you get in late?”

  After signing off, Kyle checked the seismic charts again. Continued quiet made her wonder what Brock Hobart was thinking, for she was certain he must be following the signals today.

  If only they knew more about Nez Perce Peak. Their study of the layered thickness of flows used the geologist’s first principle: “The present is the key to the past.” The problem was that more and more scientific studies lead to: “The present is the key to the present.”

  What went on in the past didn’t always look like today’s world. In fact, it seldom did.

  During the Cretaceous, marine dinosaurs and flying reptiles inhabited seas that spread over the North American continent. In the Pennsylvanian, great swamps harbored dragonflies the size of Cessnas and spawned coalfields that stretched over thousands of square miles.

  If, deep within the earth, molten rock now pressed toward the surface, what path would it take? Might the earthquakes be a sign of magma moving up the preexisting and reactivated fault line? Or was it gathering beneath the high peak of Nez Perce as it had less than 10,000 years ago?

  Another check of the passive seismic response, and her restlessness increased. Feeling field-grubby after last night’s campout, she decided Nick and Wyatt’s absence was an excellent opportunity to use the shower.

  The black plastic bag full of solar heated water suspended from a tree a few yards away from the cabin. No curtain, just au naturel in a perfect afternoon.

  Yet, as she lathered her lean flanks, rinsed, and dressed in a pair of clean black fleece pants and a matching top, she could not forget the hours ticking away to the new moon.

  Despite Nick’s jovial threat to throw down his rock hammer and return to the cabin right away, it was several hours before he arrived. At the sound of his footfalls on the porch, she looked up and was startled to find it had gotten dark. The light from her computer was the only illumination save the cook fire.

  Nick looked as grimy and field weary as she had been, shrugging out of his daypack and unlacing his boots to place them side-by-side near the door. With an appreciative sniff, he went to the fireplace and grabbed a rag to lift the stewpot lid. “This definitely shows a woman’s touch.”

  He put another log on and used the poker to bring the blaze to brightness. “Where’s the cowboy?”

  “Down the Lamar Valley. He may not make it back this evening.”

  Nick gave a low whistle and padded in sock feet to her side. “All still quiet on the Nez Perce front?”

  Kyle nodded. “It’s creeping me out.”

  Bending, he inhaled
close to her hair. “You took a shower.” So lightly that she scarcely felt it, he lifted a strand and twirled it round his finger. “Think I’ll clean up, too.”

  Left alone with her heart thudding while he went into the bunkroom, Kyle shut down the computer and turned on the utility light.

  When he passed through the main room carrying a towel and fresh clothes, Nick shielded his eyes with his arm. A moment after he went outside, she heard the rhythmic cough of the generator go silent. In the same instant, the bulb over the table went dark.

  Kyle took a calming breath. She tried not to hurry as she reached for the Coleman lantern, pumped up the pressure in the fuel reservoir, and applied a match to the delicate mantle of ash. Going to check on the stew, she sniffed the mingled aromas of beef, potatoes, carrots, and onions, while she tried not to imagine that just outside Nick was naked.

  This was too much. His voice floated in a cappella, a concert of bawdy drinking songs including his old field camp standard “Charlotte the Harlot.”

  He came in a few minutes later dressed in sweats. “Still too bright.”

  With a glance at the shadowy corners, she left the lantern on.

  He sauntered toward the bunkroom. “With any other woman, I’d think the glare was a brush-off, but you’ve always insisted on a night light.”

  It was his first allusion to her penchant for 24/7 illumination. Following him to the bunkroom door, she hesitated over what to say.

  As he bent over his bed beneath hers, putting down his dirty clothes and hanging his towel on the bed frame, she realized he didn’t know she was behind him. When he raised his head, she saw him pause and stare at her twisted sleeping bag on the top bunk.

  Very slowly, he bowed his head and put his nose to the fabric as though detecting her scent. In profile, she saw him close his eyes while he crushed a handful of nylon-covered down in his fist.

  “Nick?”

  He stepped back, the movement stirring up a clean soap smell that mingled with his own distinctive essence. For a moment, their eyes met, then he gave a little ‘you caught me’ kind of shrug and bent to drag something from his bag from under the bed.