The Big Burn (21 page)

And burned they would be.

And, probably, the homes and buildings in Avery, along with them.

That seemed increasingly certain as Sunday wore on and fierce winds picked up strength, defeating attempts both to fight the fires and to escape them.

The efforts blurred and overlapped in Jarrett's mind, until he hardly knew which was which.

He and others tried following the Milwaukee tracks into the North Fork canyon, but fire soon drove them back. A man couldn't battle flames that shot hundreds of feet high and covered the width of a gorge.

Jarrett huddled by the river, occasionally slipping into the water to escape showers of burning brands. Clogged with downed trees, the river was a drowning danger in itself.

When night came he watched the entire western sky turn a beautiful, terrible red. Fires burned in the hills to the south, and fires burned behind him and to the north, but it was those wind-fed fires advancing from the west that looked most dangerous.

When it appeared inevitable that Avery would bum, the soldiers and some other men hooked a boxcar behind an engine and left, headed west Jarrett would have gone with them, if he hadn't been watching the conflagration long enough to know there wasn't any staying alive that way.

***

Seeing a small fire blaze on the edge of town, Jarrett thought perhaps the town would burn
ahead
of the forest fires reaching it Then he realized someone was attempting a small backfire.
It won't help,
he thought.
Not against what's coming.

A telegraph operator said he was going to send out word that Avery and the people in it were doomed.

Jarrett believed it.

He couldn't remember why he was still there—why he hadn't caught a train out while he could.

Where's everybody gone?
Seth fought down panic as he walked Avery's main street. Hot wind blew burning things about and a cat ran by, but he couldn't see any
people
moving in the weird light thrown down from the red sky.

Did they all leave while I was trying to get back?
It had taken him hours to work his way out of the fiery canyon after he'd let the evacuation train go on without him. He'd been scared he'd burn up out there without anybody ever knowing what had become of him. He'd worried that if he did make it to Avery, he'd be arrested before he could get back in his uniform.

He just hadn't thought of this—that everybody would be gone away and him left.

I surely messed up this time,
he thought.
It won't be nobody's fault but my own if I die here, which I likely will.
He started up the hill to the shack where he and Abel had changed into civilian clothes.
But maybe I can at least do that right.

***

Seth, again looking like a soldier of the Twenty-fifth Infantry, even if he didn't feel like one, considered what to do next. Expecting to die was no excuse for not trying to save himself. Maybe he should go down to the river?

Metal clanged somewhere, but Seth didn't pay it much mind.
Just the wind blowing things.
But then ... the noises became too hard and sharp.
More like someone using a sledgehammer.

The sound seemed to be coming from the rail yards, past the depot. Seth started walking that way, and then he saw the lights of swinging lanterns and began running.

As he neared he made out soldiers moving in the space between a boxcar and an engine tender. And then he saw that the boxcar doors were open and the inside was crammed with men. Men in uniform.

My company!

***

They went west, hoping to escape by racing through fire that burned from the mountains, across the railroad tracks, down to the river.

Seth, wedged into a corner of the boxcar, felt about to suffocate from the press of soldiers packed around him; from the smoke, from the smell, from the roar and heat, from the air so acrid he could hardly breathe it.

And then word passed along that the train was almost to the flames, and someone slammed shut the boxcar doors. As the train sped into a place that seemed all terrifying roar, more than a few men screamed.

Seth, staring through cracks between floorboards, saw cross ties burning and waited for the car's belly to catch fire, only it didn't. And then the roar lessened. Someone cautiously cracked open the boxcar doors and then threw them wide.

Another soldier stepped back to let Seth move down to the doorway and take a turn breathing outside air. Seth drew it in, in long, shaky gulps. He could hardly believe that the train had made it through the inferno.

He looked up at burning hills. Looked behind, to where the sheets of flames they'd come through towered so high they hid the mountains. Looked to the curving river, sparkling with the small fires that flickered in the logs floating down it.

He looked ahead, to the fiery trestlework of a bridge they'd have to cross. And beyond that...

"
Dear God,
" someone breathed.

Beyond that was a wall of flame even higher than the one they'd come through.

Sunday night and Monday morning, for seven hours, give or take, the train with the Twenty-fifth Infantry's G Company shuttled back and forth along an ever-shortening length of track. It would go as far as it could one way, until flames at a burning bridge or culvert stopped it. Then it would back up until it was stopped again, blocked in the other direction.

It stopped so men could roll burning trees off the tracks.

It stopped while men cleared away rocks that the fires had dis-lodged from hillsides.

In the cars men sweated and gasped for air and probably vomited and prayed. Certainly, they must have feared that they would be burned alive, because as each westward shuttle ended a little sooner, it became increasingly clear there would be no escape that way.

Finally, thought, just before dawn, the flames behind them, in the east, lifted long enough that the train was able to retreat to where it had started from.

G Company returned to Avery.

Hank Sickles left Wallace at dawn to guide a search party going after Samuel Logan.

Hank had reached town only a couple of hours before, but he'd brought all of Samuel's men with him. A few had minor injuries and all were hungry, but they were safe. Just exhausted from their pell-mell race before a firestorm; from a night spent evading the blazes that sprang up on all sides; from hiking in circles.

They were lucky to be alive, and they knew it. Just as they all knew Ranger Logan's escape plan was the reason that they were still breathing.

All the way in, Hank had hoped to find Samuel waiting for them. Samuel had never caught up like he'd said he would, but they'd had to change routes so many times it would have been easy for him to miss them.

But Hank's old buddy wasn't in Wallace, and no one had heard from him.

At the Forest Service office, Mr. Poison had told Hank to get some sleep while he rounded up a search party.

"I want to lead it," Hank told him, before stretching out on the floor along the back wall.

***

Going on 8:00
A.M.
Hank and the other searchers reached the camp area—there wasn't much left but some shovel blades and dented pots—and fanned out from there.

Hank was the one who eventually spotted an expanse of rocks about where Samuel had described. When he saw the remains of a large horse near its base, his heart sank.
What had Samuel called him? Thistle?

Hank was about to shout for the others when he heard a dog whine. He followed the sound to where Samuel's dog stood over what at first glance looked like a burned log almost buried in charred earth.

Boone, walleyed and hair singed, the tips of his ears gone, tensed to attack, but then tentative recognition showed in the dog's glazed eyes. He stood rigid a moment, seemed to judge, and then he relaxed and let Hank approach.

Hank gently touched the burned form on the ground, intending to say good-bye to his friend. Then he realized that what he'd thought was burned skin was, instead, a badly scorched blanket. An empty canteen protruded from under one corner and an empty water bag from another.

"Samuel?"

Hank felt the figure move.

Along with everybody else in Wallace, Lizbeth had half expected Sunday's winds to turn the fires back on the town again, but that hadn't happened. Instead, as firefighters continued to stagger in, and rescue crews formed and went out, people had turned to worrying about whether the water supply was safe and where to put the refugees coming in from burned-out mines and lumber camps and homesteads.

Lizbeth wondered what other towns were doing with the refugees they were getting. Word had finally come in that the hospital train had made it to Missoula, and she hoped Mrs. Marston was being taken good care of.

First thing this morning she'd sent Mrs. Marston a short telegram saying that the boardinghouse, Celia, and she were all fine.

Lizbeth was still looking, however, for a chance to tell Celia that Mrs. Marston was safe and to pass along Mr. Polson's warning about Samuel.

Celia, busy at the hospital, hadn't returned to the boardinghouse the night before. So now, Lizbeth went to the hospital to find her and to again offer her own help.

"When I see your aunt, I'll say you're here," the nurse with the Irish brogue told her. This time, instead of sending Lizbeth away, she put a scrub brush in her hands. "If you'll keep after the floors," she said, "I'll be that grateful."

***

Lizbeth didn't see her aunt until almost lunchtime. Celia, although she looked exhausted, seemed hardly able to hold still long enough to eat a sandwich.

"I'm glad you didn't let me take that train out," Celia said. "What would all these men have done if everyone had left?"

Lizbeth put a hand on her aunt's arm. "I've got something to tell you."

Celia ignored her. "Of course, I'd be more help if I knew more about medical things. I've been thinking that maybe some training ... once things are better, of course..."

"Cel," Lizbeth said. "Samuel's missing."

Her aunt's frantic energy disappeared. "I know. I just helped care for a man from his crew."

"The streets are full of people coming in from the woods. He'll turn up."

"I know that, too," Celia said, sounding as if she didn't believe it. "Have you heard any word of Jarrett?"

"Only that a lot of firefighters who were caught along the St. Joe fled to Avery. I think if Jarrett made it that far, he's likely okay."

"Are they saying how many have died?" Celia asked.

"It's feared dozens did," Lizbeth answered. "But no one knows much of anything for sure."

***

Lizbeth was back scrubbing floors again when she heard a doctor say a telegram had come in last night, and that "the fires have overtaken Avery." She sat back so abruptly she overturned her pail of wash water, causing the doctor to turn and scowl.

She was still cleaning up when she saw Samuel being carried in. She knew it was him because she saw Boone trotting beside the stretcher bearers. Or at least, Boone trotted next to them until the Irish nurse shooed him away.

"Ranger Logan is going to look for his dog," Lizbeth told her.

"Ranger Logan is in no shape to look for anything," the nurse answered. Then she peered closely at Lizbeth. Without commenting on what she saw, she put a wad of salve on a piece of oiled paper. "Why don't you tend the dog's wounds with this," she said, "and then go around back to the kitchen. There's likely a bone or two there."

***

When Lizbeth returned to the ward, she found Celia sitting by Samuel's bed.

"Did he wake up?" Lizbeth whispered.

"Just for a moment. He may not be hurt as bad as it looks. His right hand is burned badly enough that the doctor doesn't know how much use of it Samuel will get back. His only other obvious injuries are burns on his back and neck. It's too soon to tell about his eyes."

Samuel stirred, and Celia reached out to prevent him from turning onto his wounds. "Still no news about Jarrett?" she asked.

Lizbeth, glancing quickly at Samuel, answered, "Not really."

As the nurse had, Celia searched Lizbeth's face. Then silently, she squeezed Lizbeth's hand.

Jarrett felt for the soldiers, having to return to Avery when it was looking like there was a good chance nobody there would live through the day. He'd had the night to come to terms with it, while—at least for a time—they must have thought they'd reach safety.

All the same, he was sure glad to see them. And glad to have something to do.

Everyone's spirits picked up when an officer began directing work that couldn't possibly have been accomplished without the soldiers' help.

Soldiers and civilians scrambled to place barrels about, and dug pits, and filled everything they could with water. They hosed down buildings and patrolled for sparks. They refined plans for the final, gigantic backfire that they were pinning their hopes on.

Jarrett, believing Seth had left town disguised as a civilian, didn't look for him among the returned company. About midmorning, though, Jarrett glanced across the traces of a water cart he was helping pull and saw Seth on the other side.

I must have been wrong,
Jarrett thought. But something about Seth's expression said Jarrett hadn't been wrong at all.

They parked the cart, chocked its wheels, and started back for another job.

"You think we're going to make it?" Jarrett asked, just to say something.

Seth took his time answering. Then he blurted out, "I came back on my own."

Jarrett nodded. "That's what I figured. You get very far?"

"Couple of miles is all, but coming back took time. I was lucky I wasn't missed and that my uniform was where I stashed it." Seth hesitated. "You think I'm a fool?"