Fire on the Mountain (23 page)

The marshal backed toward the door as the heat became unpleasant. “This is going to hurt you,” he howled at Lee; “You’re going to have the record against you for the rest of your life.”

Lee grinned at the man again, squinting through the smoke. The marshal cursed, turned abruptly and marched out of the doorway, pushing me to one side. His eyes were red with fury and the sweat poured down his face. Lee came outside and stood beside me as we watched him stomping across the field, fading into the twilight.

The table collapsed inside, one leg eaten away, and the fire rose up with added vigor. We faced the cabin, staring at the flames, and waited. Waited till the whole interior of the cabin became a seething inferno moaning like the wind, and bits and pieces and sections of the roof began to fall in. Grandfather on his bunk disappeared within the fire, wrapped from head to foot in flame, and cell by cell, atom by atom, he rejoined the elements of earth and sky.

The fire now seemed the brightest thing in the world as evening covered the mountains and desert and the first few stars emerged from the sky. Far away to the northeast and to the south the light of Alamogordo and El Paso twinkled like tiny beds of jewels in the velvet dark. If anyone out there cared to look, he’d see our funeral bonfire flickering like a signal, like an alarm, high on the side of the mountain of thieves.

The fire burst through the roof and streamed around the walls of the cabin, flaring wild and magnificent in the darkness, blazing with angry heat. Lee and I stepped back, our faces hot. He squeezed my shoulder and smiled at me, that foolish and generous smile, his face grimy with dust, sweat and smoke.

“The old man would like this, Billy. He’d approve of this.”

The walls crackled and crashed, forcing us still further back. We stared in awe as the fire achieved the climax of its energy and towered above the cabin, rolling up and up in a pillar of smoke and sparks and flames that illuminated for one moment of splendor the entire height of the granite cliffs beyond the rim.

Far above on the mountainside, posed on his lookout point, troubled by the fire, the lion screamed.