Chasing Fire
Page 83

“Okay, fine. We need men up on that ridge digging line before she rides this wind and shifts this way for fresh eats and builds again.”
“All right.”
“Take Dobie, Matt, Libby and Stovic.”
Night, he thought—or morning, probably—when he dragged himself to the creek. The fire trembled in its death throes, coughing and sputtering. Overhead, stars winked hopefully through thinning smoke.
He pulled off his boots, his socks, and stuck his abused feet in the gorgeously cool water. The postfire chatter ran behind him in voices raw with smoke and adrenaline. Jokes, insults, rewinds of the long fight. And the expected what-the-fuck? question about what he and Dobie had found.
More work waited, but would keep until daybreak. The fire hadn’t lain down to rest. She’d lain down to die.
Rowan sat down beside him, dropped an MRE in his lap, pushed a drink into his hand. “They dropped a nice load down for camp, so I made you dinner.”
“A woman’s work is never done.”
“More in the mood to be reasonable, I see.”
“I needed to burn it off.”
“I know.” She touched a hand to his briefly, then picked up the fork to shovel in beef stew. “I put some of Dobie’s famous Tabasco in this. Nice kick.”
“I was taking his picture. Him standing there in the black, and behind him the fire, and the sky. Surreal. I’d just taken his picture when we found it. It didn’t get to me, really, until we started up to meet you, and it just got bigger and bigger in me. Christ, I wasn’t even thinking about some guy burned to bone after taking a shot in the head.”
“Shot?”
Gull nodded. “Yeah, but I wasn’t thinking about him. All I could think about was this, and us. All the loss and waste, the risks, the sweat and blood. And for what, Ro? Since I couldn’t beat the hell out of whoever caused it, I had to beat the hell out of the fire.”
“Matt got hung up on the jump. He let down okay, but it could’ve gone bad. A widowmaker as thick as my arm nearly hit Elf when we had to retreat, and Yangtree’s got a Pulaski gash on his calf to go with his swollen knee. One of the Idaho crew took a bad fall, broke his leg. You were right to be mad.”
For a while, they ate in silence. “They want you back in the morning, you and Dobie, so DiCicco and Quinniock can talk to you. I can pack out with you.”
He glanced over, grateful—grateful enough not to mention she was taking care of him. “That’d be good.”
“I figured you’re pretty tired, so I can save you the time popping your tent. You can share mine.”
“That’d be even better. I love this job,” he said after a moment, thinking of Dobie. “I don’t know why exactly but what this bastard’s done makes me love it even more. The cops have to find him, catch him, stop him. But we’re the ones cleaning up his goddamn mess. We’re the ones doing whatever it takes to keep it from being worse. The wild doesn’t mean anything to him, what lives in it, lives off it. It means something to us.”
He looked at her then, slowly leaned in to take her lips in a kiss of surprising gentleness. “I found you in the wild, Rowan. That’s a hell of a thing.”
She smiled, a little uncertainly. “I wasn’t lost.”
“Neither was I. But I’m found, too, just the same.”
When they walked the short distance to the tents, they crossed paths with Libby.
“How you doing, Gull?”
“Okay. Better since I hear I get to skate out of mop-up. Have you seen Dobie?”
“Yeah, he just turned in. He was feeling... I guess you know. Matt and I sat up with him awhile after the rest bunked down. He’s doing okay.”
“You did good work today, Barbie,” Rowan told her.
“Never plan to do any other kind. Good night.”
Rowan yawned her way into the tent and, with her mind and body already shutting down, worked off her boots. “Don’t wake me unless there’s a bear attack. In fact, even then.”
She stripped down to her tank and panties. As she rolled toward the sleeping bag, Gull considered.
“You know, thirty seconds ago I figure I was too tired to scratch my own ass. And now, strangely, I’m filled with this renewed energy.”
She opened one eye, shut it again. “Do what you gotta do. Just don’t wake me up doing it.”
He climbed in beside her, smiling, drew her already limp-with-sleep body to his. When he closed his eyes he thought of her, of nothing but her, and slid quietly into the dark.
It was her knee pressing firmly into his crotch that woke him. His eyes crossed before they opened. Easing back relieved the worst of the pressure on his now throbbing balls.
Had she aimed, he wondered, or had it just been blind luck? Either way, perfect shot.
She didn’t budge when he rolled out to pull on his pants, fresh socks, boots. He left the pants and boots unfastened and crawled out into soft morning light.
Nothing and no one stirred. Then again, as far as he knew the other tents held occupants of one—with no one to jab a knee into their balls. Should they have them.
He stood, adjusted himself—carefully—then chose a direction out of camp to empty his bladder. Coffee, and filling his belly, would be next on the list, he decided. Being the first awake meant he had first dibs on the breakfast MREs. He’d sit outside, maybe down by the creek, give Rowan the tent for more sleep and enjoy a quiet, solitary if crappy meal until...
He stopped and looked. Looked over a meadow brilliant with wild lupines, regally purple. The faintest ground mist shimmered through them, giving them the illusion of floating on a thin, white river while dozens of deep blue butterflies danced over those bold lances.
Untouched, he thought. The fire hadn’t touched this. They’d stopped it, and now the wildflowers bloomed, the butterflies danced in the misty morning light.
It was, he thought, as beautiful, as vivid as the finest work of art. Maybe more. And he’d had a part in saving it, and the trees beyond it, and whatever lay beyond the beyond.
He’d fought in the smoke and the blistering red air, walked through the black that stank with death. And to here, where life lived, where it thrived in quiet and simple grace.
To here, which held all the answers to why.
He brought her there, dragging her away from camp before they packed out.
“We’ve got to get going,” she protested. “If we haul our asses down to the visitors’ center, they can van us back to base. Clean bodies, clean clothes. And, God, I want a Coke.”